by Andrew Keith
Vargas and his reduced squadron were on their way to support the defense at Coltbridge, but the invaders had enough craft in the air to neutralize them and still launch ground attacks that could crack the Gray Death 'Mechs open long before their heavies on the ground opened fire.
McCall had spread their BattleMechs out in a loose skirmish line, with the lightest machines far out on the flanks where they could use their superior mobility to dart in and out of the fighting once the two forces came together. Clay's post was near the center, close alongside McCall's Highlander. He could see the other 'Mech's guns tracking the approaching fighters, opening fire even before they were in visual range, trying to lay down a deadly pattern of airbursts in hopes of catching one of them with a lucky hit.
Suddenly two massive aerospace fighters, like flying BattleMechs, dropped down from the clouds on a low-level attack run. Explosions blossomed on the plain as they dumped their ordnance. Clay saw Denniken's Cataphract take a hit, while a missile swarm overshot his Griffin by scant meters. As he staggered, trying to keep his balance, he saw the Highlander continuing to blaze away as fast as its weapons could recycle between shots.
The fighter bringing up the rear seemed to lurch in midair as the Highlander found its mark. Smoke erupted from one of the engines, and a moment later it was spinning out of control toward the far bank of the Earn River. A parachute blossomed as the pilot ejected.
Clay let out a sigh of relief. "Good shooting, Major!" he whooped.
He felt safer now, knowing he was under McCall's guns.
* * *
"Red One. Good chute! Good chute!"
Leutnant-General Brannock heard the call, but right now it didn't much matter whether the pilot of the damaged fighter had ejected safely. Dead, captured, or just scrambling for cover on the ground, it all added up to the same thing. Most of the fighters had hared off after their Gray Death counterparts, and he was down to only one pilot to maintain the bombardment he'd been counting on from ten.
And that Highlander was nearly as good as a Rifleman for laying down antiaircraft fire. They had to neutralize the big BattleMech fast or risk losing the other fighter as well.
"Sparta Lance with me," he snapped, shifting the big Zeus into a lumbering run. Most pilots thought of the Zeus as a stand-off weapons platform, but Brannock had always found that the psychological advantages of engaging in close outweighed the arguments for staying back to take advantage of the LRM launchers and large laser mount. The best way to neutralize the enemy was to overwhelm him. The regimental command lance would break the enemy line in two right at the center, and then the fighter could close in for another run without having to run the gauntlet of those deadly accurate guns. Meanwhile the rest of his force would exploit the initial breakthroughs at every possible opportunity.
"Here they come!"
McCall looked up from his scanners to see the four biggest enemy 'Mechs bearing down like runaway juggernauts, straight toward the center of the Gray Death line. Nearby, Denniken's Cataphract took a few quick steps forward, all four lasers flashing while the torso-mounted autocannon slammed round after round into the Cyclops on the let flank. A moment later Hansen's Dervish and Nolans' Catapult joined the lance leader in concentrating fire in the massive machine, according to the tactics McCall had sketched out after studying the enemy battle line. When possible, all 'Mechs of a lance will engage a single target . . .
It would work, but only until the engagement became general, or until the Gray Death took enough losses to make ganging up on individual targets impractical.
The massive enemy BattleMaster was caught in a crossfire from 'Mechs of the fire lance from Hannibal's Cannibals, a Warhammer and a Crusader among them. McCall saw the Warhammer's PPCs score a pair of hits on the BattleMaster's left leg. That would weaken the limb considerably, something to keep in mind in case he had a chance to engage the assault 'Mech later.
Then McCall didn't have any time to spare to watch the other fights erupting around him. The Free Skye Archer had halted at optimum missile range and was opening fire. Though the first volley went wide, McCall had to act quickly to protect himself. And the Zeus was still running, coming straight toward the Highlander under the cover of the Archer's firepower as if to challenge McCall's BattleMech to some archaic hand-to-hand brawl.
He lowered his Gauss gun and opened fire, but the shot went wild and missed the target. As the Zeus closed in, McCall resorted to the uncanny mobility of his massive BattleMech, triggering jump jets to bound sideways and back away from the Zeus' mad charge. Jump jets were rarely mounted on something the size of a Highlander, and the 'Mech's ability to jump often took an opponent completely off guard.
Clay tried to maneuver his Griffin forward to get off a PPC shot at the cockpit of the Zeus, but he rushed the shot and the range was too short for the finicky PPC targeting system. Almost casually the enemy pilot cut loose with his large laser, and Clay fell back quickly before a second shot ripped his 'Mech apart.
McCall gritted his teeth and aimed his Gauss gun for another shot. It looked like it was going to be a long, hard fight . . .
* * *
"Red One, this is Sparta One." The words crackled over Sean Ferguson's commlink. "Repeat your attack run."
Ferguson shuddered. He didn't want to go down there again, not after what had happened to Henderson . . .
"Do you read me, Red One? This is Sparta One." The general's voice sounded breathless, impatient. "We are engaging their antiair 'Mech. Repeat your attack run while we have their ground fire neutralized."
For long seconds Ferguson couldn't force himself to move the stick. Even the general's reassurance didn't make any difference. He had reached the breaking point, and the thought of running the gauntlet one more time had him paralyzed.
I will not be afraid, he repeated to himself, a silent mantra. This is the last chance. I will not be afraid!
And somehow, he found the courage to haul the stick over and bank sharply left, swinging his fighter around to make the attack run.
* * *
"Lieutenant Bergstrom! Captain Simms! The major needs help!" Clay's throat was so tight if was almost impossible to force the words out. The Highlander was a good match for the enemy Zeus, and McCall was handling it brilliantly, but no one was dealing with the Archer that was still lobbing volley after volley toward the Major's 'Mech.
He triggered the Griffin's jump jets, thankful that King had found the time to repair the damaged ankle joint. His 'Mech bounded forward, and he drew a bead on the Archer with his PPC. If no one else would help, he must do what he could.
Explosions erupted around him, and Clay's wild look across his scanners showed a Free Skye fighter skimming low straight up the ragged defensive line toward him.
For an instant he froze again, the old, automatic reaction. Then something inside Dave Clay snapped, and he raised his PPC barrel skyward. He didn't have the sophisticated tracking gear the Highlander mounted, but a PPC hit would definitely give that fighter pilot something to think about.
Clay fired, cycled, fired, and fired again. His heat indicators shot up fast, and he heard the extra cockpit air coolers cut in to try to fight the sudden temperature surge. But he ignored all that, ignored everything except the enemy fighter and the sudden need to shoot it out of the sky.
* * *
Ferguson gaped as the tiny Griffin at the edge of his vision swelled rapidly in the screens of his fighter's cockpit. The 'Mech was standing stock-still, legs braced apart, arm upraised, making the air sizzle with bolt after bolt of raw energy from the PPC.
For a moment Ferguson couldn't react, and a moment: was an eternity in the life of a fighter pilot. Steering a straight, level course, not even remembering to maintain his fire, Ferguson didn't realize what he was dong until it was too late.
The Lucifer bucked and rocked as it flew straight into the PPC pattern. Red lights lit up his damage board, and an alarm shrilled a warning in counterpoint to the screech of armor melting and
twisting as the PPC shots played across the fighters belly.
All the commotion finally snapped Ferguson out of his trance. He scanned the damage readings quickly, but the sluggish feel of the joystick told him more about the damage to control surfaces on the underside of the wing than any pattern of red and amber lights could. The battered Lucifer was going down, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Infantrymen clustered around the terminal building gaped up at the stricken craft as it passed over the maglev station and the wide, sluggish River Earn. Awkwardly, he fumbled for the ejection mechanism, yanked back hard on the lever, and closed his eyes.
Wind whipped in his face as the cockpit canopy blew and his seat slammed upward into his spine.
A moment later he as floating gently down to the ground under a spreading parachute and straight into the arms of an infantry patrol bearing the skull patches of the Gray Death Legion.
For Sean Ferguson, the war was finally over.
* * *
McCall grunted in satisfaction as the twin medium lasers in the Highlander's left torso mount found their mark. The hit didn't do much more than scorch the heavily armored Zeus, but at least it was a score.
Another missile barrage streaked toward him, and he barely had time to trigger his jump jets and leap clear before the ground where he'd been standing erupted under the impact of forty warheads exploding simultaneously. That Archer was more dangerous, at this point, than the Zeus, at least as long as the Zeus pilot continued to insist on close combat. A sardonic, detached part of McCall's mind remembered the lecture he'd given young Carlyle after the training exercise with the simulated BattleMaster. Apparently Alex Carlyle wasn't the only MechWarrior who had catapulted to high rank without learning the value of using his weapons to best advantage instead of indulging foolish preferences for some particular, limited combat style.
"Scratch one overstuffed bastard! "Andrei Denniken whooped. McCall allowed himself a quick glance down the line. The hulking Free Skye Cyclops was still as a statue, with one arm off at the shoulder and lying in the grass nearby and a pillar of smoke roiling from the ruined remnants of its cockpit. Denniken's crack shooting had scored again.
"Hey, Russki!" McCall called. "If you can stop patting yoursel' on the back, I could aye use some help dealing with yon Archer."
"Cossacks to the rescue again," Denniken replied. "In case any of you in the fire lance couldn't understand him, our fearless leader wants that Archer taught a lesson or ten. I've got a flask of vodka for the gunner that brings the bastard down!"
. "Major," Lieutenant Bergstrom warned. "The rest of their line is starting to move."
McCall muttered a Gaelic oath under his breath, his duty as commanding officer required him to stay above the fight, direct the battle as a whole instead of letting himself get caught up in the battle madness. Wasn't that just the thing he'd lectured young Carlyle about, an eternity ago? If not for Bergstrom's alertness, he might not have noticed the second wave starting forward until it was too late.
He unloaded all his weapons at once in the direction of the Zeus and took two quick bounds back toward the Earn. "Get clear, Ghost Three!" he called. The Zeus wasn't maneuverable enough to catch up with either McCalPs Highlander or Clay's Griffin if they made a determined effort to stay out of reach. The big threat was that the frustrated enemy pilot would shift to using his formidable long-range arsenal.
McCall switched commlink frequencies hurriedly. "Captain Fraser, send in the Harassers!"
It was the same tank platoon, short-handed now, that had supported the defense at Dunkeld, three Harasser hover-tanks armed with missile launchers. They weren't quite the equal of the enemy Archer contingent, but they'd be a damned good equalizer all the same. If only McCall and his men could hold the line until the Harassers arrived to lay down a sustained barrage, he could start trading ground for time.
But somewhere in the back of his mind, McCall knew that sooner or later he'd run out of both.
* * *
A Wolverine jumped toward Clay's Griffin, its autocannon firing as it settled to the ground barely fifty meters away. A pair of rounds slammed into the Griffin's shoulder, but Clay gritted his teeth and answered the shot with a PPC bolt. It chewed deep into the armor on the enemy 'Mech's right arm. Clay made a quick jump of his own past the other 'Mech, then turned quickly as he touched down and fired again.
The maneuver took his opponent by surprise, and he was slowly turning. Clay's next PPC shot caught the Wolverine's relatively weak rear torso armor before the pilot could swivel, and the burn-through exposed the skeletal outlines of the 'Mech's framework and sparking, arcing cables that writhed as if with a life of their own. The Wolverine pilot didn't wait to argue points of honor. His next jump was away from Clay, but not far enough to escape the third shot that took the right arm off entirely.
Clay hoped his father was watching him from whatever Valhalla the veterans of the Gray Death Legion inhabited. For the first time, he truly felt like a MechWarrior, and he thought that perhaps, just perhaps, Delmar Clay might have the grace to utter a few sparing words of praise at the way his son had finally lived up to the family name.
Suddenly a pair of enemy Griffins were flashing toward him, and there was no more time for such thoughts. Clay was no more suicidal today than his erstwhile opponent in the Wolverine, and he triggered his jump jets to fall back in the face of the sudden advance.
* * *
"Bergstrom, Yuhas, get those lighter 'Mechs clear!" McCall ordered. As the heavier enemy BattleMechs closed the range, the recon lances would be in the most danger. Some of the 'Mechs in the invaders' arsenal could put one of the Gray Death's lightweights out of action with a single shot.
Missiles were still falling near his Highlander, but at least that first Archer had retreated under the onslaught of Denniken's lance. Unfortunately, they in turn had retreated from a Marauder, a Caesar, and the somewhat battered BattleMaster that had finally managed to disengage from Lieutenant Zetterling's Warhammer.
Now that both enemy fighters had been shot down and the Harassers were starting to make their presence known, the battle had started to develop a seesaw quality. A Gray Death lance would combine to destroy or drive back one of their Free Skye opponents, only to come up against some combination they couldn't handle. Then the Legion 'Mechs would give way in turn.
"Start a leapfrogging withdrawal on the terminal," McCall ordered curtly. Now that the battle was heating up, he was most afraid of being caught out here and forced into a toe-to-toe slugging match. By falling back, he might just induce the enemy to start scattering, and that would give the Legion a fresh chance to catch a few of the more foolhardy pilots flapping in the breeze.
If he could just keep everyone working together, all would be well . . .
The heat in his cockpit suddenly surged alarmingly, triggering alarms and warning lights. Reacting more by instinct than design, McCall jerked the BattleMech sideways to pull away from the laser beam that had just grazed his cockpit armor. He cursed aloud this time. While he'd been focusing all his attention on the big picture, one of the little pictures—that same damned Zeus—had caught him completely off guard. Less than a meter to the right and it would have burned right through.
As it was, he didn't like the looks of the damage board. It was showing short-circuits in the environmental controls and his ejection system.
All at once the environmental monitoring board to his left started to smoke, then spark, and then the overloaded systems simply blew, smashing McCall sideways. His harness held him, but his helmeted head was snapped back, hard, and David McCall went hurtling into darkness.
41
Near Coltbridge, Glengarry
Skye March, Federated Commonwealth
11 April 3056
"Major McCall! Major!" Dave Clay shouted the name over and over, but the weapons master didn't reply.
"He's been hit," Captain Simms said. "All units, fall back. Harassers, pour on the missiles!
Go! Go!"
Clay ignored the retreat order. He cut in his jump jets and leaped straight toward the unmoving Highlander, determined to save his father's friend or die trying . . .
Leonidas Brannock checked the BDA sensors of his Zeus and frowned. According to his computer's best estimate, his laser shot hadn't been enough to cause any serious damage to the Highlander. But it stood there, unmoving, while all around the Gray Death fell back.
A trick? He wouldn't have put it past that pilot, who seemed to have a charmed life and an ideal sense of the ebb and flow of battle. But if that was the command 'Mech, which all the signs indicated that it was, its sudden immobilization certainly seemed to have spread dismay among the rest of the legionnaires. Would the 'Mech pilot resort to a trick like that even though it could backfire and cause a full-scale panic?
Or was the retreat just another of the Legion's famous tactical tricks, too? At the NAIS Academy Brannock had studied military history from the Greeks all the way through the last Succession War, and he could think of any number of battles that had hinged on a feigned retreat that lured a foe into ambush. Hannibal had done it at Cannae, and the official accounts of William the Conqueror's triumph at Hastings claimed that he had ordered the same stratagem, though the feigned panic had probably turned all too real at the time.
Grayson Death Carlyle was notorious for doing the unexpected, and his subordinates had learned from him. Caution was the wisest course, and yet Brannock knew that unleashing his BattleMechs as the enemy fled in disorder could win the victory here and now.
He didn't waste much time thinking about it. The only sure way to keep the enemy on the run was to press them hard and make damned sure their leader really was dead.