Blood of heroes

by Andrew Keith

  "Aye ... and the Companions who are left, too. But I dinna like it. If this is the real strike, they'll hae a' the advantages. And they still have not committed everything, either. There are aye more troops up there in orbit, lad, who can still complicate things more."

  "Then I have to wrap it up here as soon as possible and get the Dreadnoughts south again. We can either reinforce you or cover another landing, if we have to."

  "Aye, 'twould be the best. Dinna let them spin wot the negotiations for lang." McCall chuckled. "Aince upon a time back in auld Scotland, aince upon a time, Robert the Bruce tied doon an army ten times his ain size for over a month just by negotiating a wee surrender. Dinna let them dae as weil wi you ... we dinna hae a month tae waste."

  "I hear you, Mac. We'll be down there to back you up as soon as I can manage it. And it won't be a month, that much I'll promise."

  "We'll be moving oot in ainither half-hour, lad. Good luck. You've done your auld faither . . . and your auld teacher . . . proud."

  39

  Glengarry

  Skye March, Federated Commonwealth

  11 April 3056

  "Surrender!" General-Kommandant von Bulow slammed his fist down on the table in front of him, dislodging his hand terminal. It floated free on the bridge of the Free Skye DropShip Asgard, but neither he nor his aide paid it any heed.

  "Yes, Herr General," Albrecht said tentatively. "Apparently Hauptmann Ison-Price opened negotiations about half an hour ago. We didn't pick it up at first because we haven't been monitoring the diplomatic channels regularly."

  "Incompetents and cowards! The whole damned Tenth Skye is falling apart because the officer corps is made up of nothing but incompetents and cowards." Von Bulow made an effort to get his anger under control. "But maybe it's not as bad as it seems. Ison-Price might actually buy more time by stretching out the negotiations than she would have on the battlefield."

  "It's possible, Herr General," Albrecht said. "But on this orbital pass the visual sensors have spotted the maglev trains in Benmor Pass starting to reload some of the equipment they were unloading last time we were overhead. I'd say they're planning to shift some of their forces south again soon."

  "Can we mount a strike on the maglev line and cut them off where they are?" von Bulow asked.

  "Herr General, that would mean weakening the fighter screen over the Coltbridge DZ or sending down a DropShip. But we haven't accounted for all their fighters yet, or for the DropShip that got away. It might take a major effort to do any good, and it could certainly undo all the plans for the rest of Trident."

  Von Bulow glared at his aide, then nodded suddenly. "You're right, of course, Johann. If we start trying to second-guess things at this point we'll end up with a hopeless muddle. I had hoped that more of their force would go north and that they'd be tied up longer. But even if they manage to leave Glensheol early this afternoon it would take a miracle for them to do their compatriots any good." He smiled coldly. "And when the real blow comes, they'll never be able to stop it."

  "Yes, Herr General," Albrecht responded dutifully.

  Von Bulow reached out to pluck the floating terminal box out of the air just as he would pluck this planet from his enemies in another few hours.

  * * *

  Alexander Carlyle lifted the neurohelmet from his head and unstrapped from the Archer's cockpit chair. He reached behind it to pull out his kit bag before slapping the touch pad beside the hatch. The lock opened and he scrambled out onto the immobile 'Mech's shoulder. Slinging the bag over his own shoulder, Alex started down the flexible ladder mat had dropped from hatch to ground when the cockpit opened.

  At the bottom, Technical Sergeant Newkirk gave him a quick thumb's up. "Good job today, sir," he said with a grin. "But you sure as hell destroyed the paint job when you took those missile hits."

  "Yeah," Alex answered him distractedly. "Look, when you get her strapped down see if you can patch up the armor there some way. I want her ready to fight when we get to Coltbridge."

  "No guarantees, sir," Newkirk said. "But we'll do what we can." He scrambled up the ladder. The astech would handle the shutdown procedure once he'd maneuvered the Archer gingerly down into the improvised cradle on the flatbed emelt car. That left Alex free to concentrate on other matters . . . like trying to plan what to do next.

  By the time Dumont and the rest of the troops had approached the southern end of Loch Sheol, the Hauptmann at Sheolport had been willing to capitulate without haggling about terms. Probably it was the sight of the Dreadnoughts' fire lance, led by Lieutenant Obote's massive four-legged Goliath, that had finally convinced them. The eight enemy Mech Warriors had stood down from their fighting machines and surrendered, together with the infantry and the three surviving tracked AFVs at Sheolport. Before surrendering, however, the enemy 'Mech pilots had frozen out their neurohelmets to keep the Legion from taking over their 'Mechs immediately. But that was only a minor inconvenience, for a competent electronics tech could have them up and running in a matter of hours.

  That would have to wait, however. Alex had concluded the negotiations entirely by commlink, and let Dumont, with his flair for the proprieties, handle the formal aspects of the surrender. The Free Skye prisoners, including the survivor of the battle at the Bridge of Benmor, had been rounded up by Legion infantry, disarmed, and confined in Loch Sheol. Captain Montclair and his original force would remain in the area to guard the prisoners and stand watch once more, but the rest of Alex's command had barely waited for the surrender before they were on their way back to Benmor Pass. A lot of stores, reloads, and technical support gear had already been going back aboard the emelts before the 'Mechs returned, and the process of hastily preparing the unit to ship out once more was already well under way.

  Once again Alex knew the agony of waiting. The last word he'd received from McCall was of a 'Mech drop of unknown strength around Coltbridge and of the old Caledonian's efforts to get his troops there in time to contain them. Vargas and his fighters were patrolling between Loch Sheol and Coltbridge in case the enemy tried to launch an air strike along the maglev route. That had been McCall's doing; Alex had never even considered the possibility—and there were reports from the eastern part of the continent that Governor DeVries was on the move again, though no one knew what his intentions were at this stage. And in the face of all these threats and rumors and potential disasters, Alex was powerless to do anything until the techs finished loading up the 'Mechs and gave the go-ahead for the move back toward Dunkeld.

  He couldn't help but wonder if any of it would make a difference in the long run.

  * * *

  I was never cut out for this, Davis McCall thought bitterly, staring at his 'Mech display without using it. This is work for the colonel ... or for Cris de Villar. But not for me . . .

  The second Legion strike force had arrived at the maglev junction near Coltbridge in just under an hour from the time the first emelt car left Dunkeld, and the task of unloading and propping the 'Mechs as they reached their destination had gone surprisingly well. The entire force, Captain Simms' company plus the much-reduced Gray Death Companions, had rendezvoused with the infantry and armor deployed outside the town. Commanding them was a former officer of the Planetary Guard who had jointed the Gray Death, a captain with the unlikely name of Lochinvar Fraser.

  Fraser had tracked a 'Mech drop from low orbit down to the ground. Instead of sending in their BattleMechs aboard DropShips and unloading them on the surface, this wave had come in fitted with ablative shielding, parachutes, and special shock-absorbing landing gear. Like outsized paratroopers, the 'Mechs had descended individually, then spread out over a wide area. It gave the Legion the advantage of having the invaders dispersed during the first stage of the ground fighting, but also made the task of locating the enemy and predicting his next move considerably harder. And since Coltbridge didn't have a port to serve as a focal point for the landing, there was no simple way for McCall to outguess his foe. All the invader
s needed in order to bring in support troops and supplies was an open field large enough to handle DropShips. And there were plenty of those around Coltbridge.

  That left the maglev station just outside town as the only logical place to focus his own efforts. If the invaders planned to use the maglev net for supplies, they'd aim to secure the station before pushing on to the capital. Without it, they couldn't master the computer-controlled switching or power distribution systems that operated this segment of the network.

  So in one way McCall's job was easy. He had a single point to defend, and plenty of men and machines to mount that defense. But they'd lost track of the enemy as their radar signals were lost in ground clutter, and there was no way of knowing from where the major blow would come—if and when it came at all. McCall was worried that this landing, like the one at Loch Sheol, might have been a feint. With all but a handful of the Gray Death drawn out of Dunkeld, perhaps General von Bulow was planning to land his main strength there after all.

  McCall muttered an old Gaelic curse under his breath. He'd never claimed to be a tactician, nor had he ever been happy waiting on the defensive. It made him nervous. The Gray Death Legion had always been a strike force, carrying the battle to the enemy. Sitting in one place and waiting for the axe to fall wasn't his idea of how to make war. If Grayson Carlyle had been on Glengarry, McCall thought unhappily, he wouldn't have been forced into this uneasy waiting game.

  "Major, I've got MAD readings to the northeast," Freida Bergstrom reported, icy calm as ever. Her 'Mech was posted two kilometers out from the station as an early warning post. "They're not ours ..."

  "Any other signs of trouble?" he asked.

  None of the other recon 'Mechs had any similar reports to make. So either the enemy was coming in from the one direction, or they were staying out of reach until the battle was under way.

  He made his decision quickly. "All recon 'Mechs to form on Lieutenant Bergstrom," he ordered. "Armor and infantry will dig in around the terminal and watch for other enemy columns. Captain Simms, prepare to move out."

  The Legion was at its best when fighting a mobile battle. McCall would try to strike that enemy column quickly, before this turned into a static defensive situation.

  He would do everything possible to win the day, but Major David McCall still wished it was Grayson Carlyle and not him in command.

  40

  New Coltbridge, Glengarry

  Isle of Skye, Federated Commonwealth

  11 April 3056

  "There they are," McCall said, in his cockpit video display, the enhanced image from the closest enemy BattleMech—still several kilometers away—filled the screen as if the fighting machine were close enough for the Bannock-burn to touch.

  "Jesus, Mohammed, and Blake!" someone muttered over the commlink. "A Zeus ... a BattleMaster ... a Cyclops. ..."

  "I count three Archers out there," another voice added. It sounded like Captain Hannibal Simms, McCall's second-in-command, his voice tinged with something between surprise and fear.

  "They're really throwing in their big guns this time," Freida Bergstrom commented coolly. "I'm almost afraid to go in there, for fear they'll step on me."

  "Quiet on the channel," McCall rasped. But he understood how they felt. Most of the Free Skye BattleMechs were heavy or assault models, weighing in at anything from seventy to ninety tons and bristling with weapons and armor. By contrast, the Gray Death had only a handful of 'Mechs massing more than fifty tons in the field, and only McCall's ninety-ton Highlander could equal a Zeus or a BattleMaster for sheer overwhelming power. If Grayson Carlyle had been in charge, McCall would probably have been making the same kind of comments as the others.

  But he was in charge, and no amount of talk would change the equation that faced them now. The Gray Death had more 'Mechs in the field today, but they were lighter than their opponents and no match for most of them in a stand-up fight. This was the kind of situation where superior mobility counted the most. If they could manage to concentrate on just a few of their opponents at a time, they might have a chance. But they'd take serious causalities doing it.

  And that kind of mobile running battle was ill-suited to the basic goal of protecting the Coltbridge maglev terminal. As long as the enemy kept advancing, they'd ultimately force McCall to make the choice between abandoning the terminal entirely and settling in for a defensive battle he couldn't possibly win.

  What would Grayson Carlyle do? McCall asked himself, still staring at the images in his monitor.

  He couldn't answer the question, but with each passing moment the two 'Mech forces drew closer to the fatal collision.

  * * *

  Leutnant-General Leonidas Brannock, commander of the advancing Free Sky forces, smiled as he studied his opponents. As expected, the Gray Death hadn't been content to stay on the defensive. They'd sallied forth from their perimeter to meet the advancing Free Skye force near Coltbridge, but he could just imagine how they would be reacting to their first sight of Brannock's 'Mechs. From the looks of it, only one of the 'Mechs out there was bigger than a seventy ton Warhammer, an odd-looking ninety-tanner that his computer's Warbook program identified as a Highlander, though this was the first time Brannock had ever seen or heard of such a 'Mech. And he could see a lot of smaller fighting machines—Valkyries and Griffins and the like—mixed in with the handful of decent-sized opponents.

  Brannock had been skeptical of the orders from von Bulow putting him in charge of this portion of Operation Trident. It was, essentially, just another preliminary to the main thrust, but as commander of the Tenth Skye Rangers, Brannock believed that the place of honor at the head of the largest landing force should have gone to him.

  Now he could see the wisdom of his superior's planning. His four lances were hard-hitting, powerful units, and even though outnumbered they would make short work of the opposition here. And if the Legion had additional reserves to throw in to the battle, Brannock's heavies would take a lot of punishment, but they'd deal out more death and destruction than they suffered along the way. Even if he didn't have the biggest force, Brannock could look forward to being the first of the Skye Rangers to enter Dunkeld once the fighting here was over.

  The commanding officer of the Tenth Skye Rangers smiled coldly under his neurohelmet's face shield. These mercenaries hadn't even begun to see everything they were up against this time. With the fighters assigned to support his landing, he could break that rabble out there without so much as exposing his own 'Mechs to more than casual damage.

  With the merest hint of a satisfied smile, Brannock reached for his comm board.

  * * *

  "All fighters, all fighters, prepare to execute Coltbridge ground support mission Beta Three."

  Weltalleutnant Sean Ferguson bit his lip nervously and obeyed the strike leader's call. He banked his Lucifer left, checking the position of Henderson's fighter behind and to the right, then pushed his throttles forward into the red afterburner zone.

  Ferguson felt as if he'd been in the air continuously for days on end, though in fact it had been only a doubled patrol shift. His superiors had made it clear that it was by only the narrowest margin that he'd missed arrest and perhaps even execution for his ill-timed retreat from the fighting over Glengarry's capital. It seemed his punishment was to fly mission after mission, until he was finally so exhausted he'd commit a fatal error and crash his fighter somewhere far from help or hope of rescue.

  Despite the punishment, Ferguson knew that the fear he'd felt in that last fight would never go away. He wasn't sure anymore if he could carry out the orders his superiors would give him, if he could face another dogfight, another attack run through hostile fire. The thought nagged at the corner of his mind all the time, in the cockpit or floating weightless tethered to the bulkhead in his quarters aboard the Merkur between missions.

  But if he disobeyed again, he'd be a sure candidate for a court martial. That is, if they didn't just space him out of a handy airlock to save the ship
's political officer time and paperwork.

  "Targets! Targets, airborne, bearing zero-six-eight!" Henderson's tone was crisp and precise, by the book all the way. He shared Ferguson's black cloud, but to a lesser degree.

  Ferguson checked his radar. Four blips, racing toward the ten fighters covering the Free Skye drop zone. Even before the computer predicted their identities based on speed, size, and configuration, Ferguson knew they were the four Gray Death fighters they'd tangled with over Dunkeld. This time the Free Skye force enjoyed a clear-cut numerical advantage, and they were ready for action, but Ferguson's mouth still went dry as he remembered the wild dogfight over the city. All by himself, one Gray Death pilot had accounted for half the Free Skye losses in the air that day. And here he was arriving for a return engagement . . .

  "Strike Flight, Strike Flight, this is Strike Leader. We will engage the enemy fighters first." There was a pause. "Red One and Two will continue with the ground attack profile." Ferguson could almost hear the thought behind the bald order. The professional pilots didn't want any amateurs or cowards flying beside them when they went into battle.

  "Red One, roger," he said, not sure if he was relieved or disturbed by the orders. "Ground attack profile."

  His hand tightened involuntarily around the joystick as he dropped the Lucifer's nose and led his wingman toward the last reported position of the enemy 'Mechs.

  I won't be afraid, he told himself. I won't be afraid . . .

  * * *

  "Fighters! Fighters! Fighters!"

  Davis Carlyle Clay heard Lieutenant Denniken's chanted warning and felt his throat tightening. As if the enemy didn't have enough firepower in those hulking 'Mechs looming in the distance, now they were bringing in fighters again. In his mind's eye he kept seeing the aircraft crashing into Cristiano de Villar's Mech. He even had visions of the Omnifighter attack that had claimed his father's life.