Trillian waved her right hand vaguely. “Okay. That doesn’t matter much now, does it? We’re going forward. I assume you’ll be coming along.”
Alaric turned his gaze to Roderick. His eyes, Roderick noticed, were cold and steady. Marksman’s eyes.
“We will be ready,” he said. “We are always ready.”
“Fine.” The interview was over then, with as few formalities as with which it had begun. They had spent far more time looking for Alaric than they had talking to him.
“Did I really need to come all the way out here for this?” Roderick said as they walked away.
“Do you mean to the Wolf camp, or to Helm altogether?”
“Either. Both.”
“Yes. To both. You’re going to get the battle moving here. And that’s only the first thing you’ll be doing for me during this campaign.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It just means it will be nice to have someone I can trust commanding an army here.”
“I guess that’s okay. But you haven’t told me the point of coming out here to the Wolf camp.”
“To show you off,” Trillian said. “To let Alaric size you up.”
“How could he do that? I didn’t say anything. What could he find out by just looking at me?”
Trillian smiled. “That you’re not Duke Vedet. For the time being, that’s plenty.”
“This is quite a war we’ve got going here,” Roderick said. He tried to keep his voice light.
12
Helmdown, Helm
Marik-Stewart Commonwealth
28 April 3138
It was a long run, but it was the only approach that made sense to Roderick. It wasn’t efficient spending the time to make his way through the mountains, he wouldn’t pick his way through Vedet’s troops and climbing over the rocky ridge above the Helmdown fields would be suicidal—the Silver Hawk Irregulars had had plenty of time to line up shots on the ridge, and Roderick knew that any troops that crossed onto the wrong side of the mountain would be met by a barrage of fire. He could have wheeled to the west, but the mountains got worse in that direction before they got better, and that slow climb would be a waste of time. So he opted for the eastern approach, running behind the Clan Wolf troops, then curling into the city and hitting the Silver Hawks on their vulnerable southeastern flank.
They had started moving in the early morning, when the bright stars in the sky presented a decent semblance of scenery. He watched them as his Rifleman trundled forward, occasionally checking his scanner out of habit. He didn’t see anything—the Silver Hawks were not likely to be hiding out on the wrong side of the Clan Wolf troops.
The lights of the ’Mechs gleamed in the night, assorted blinks and beams of his army and the Wolves to the west making it look like he was close to actual civilization instead of wandering around a mutated farming town. Spotlights swept the ground here and there, apparently keeping a close eye on various assorted rocks.
Then there was more light. Not just blinks or beams. Flashes. Bright flashes, like lightning coming from the ground.
Roderick knew what it was before the spotters reported in. “Sword One, we have weapons fire to the west, and it’s not just practice. The Wolves are advancing. Repeat, the Wolves are advancing.”
That’s the other advantage of moving behind the Wolves, he thought, as he kicked his Rifleman into a quicker pace. There’s always the chance we could inspire them to go in ahead of us.
The flashes and distant laser beams started appearing more and more frequently. The Battle of Helm had finally restarted.
* * *
“Guard One, the engagement has started. Clan Wolf forces have advanced and have engaged the Silver Hawks.”
As tall as he was in his Atlas, Duke Vedet could not quite see above the final mountain ridge separating him from Helmdown. If he had been high enough, he would easily have seen the lights of battle flashing below him. Hopefully, he’d also see the damn Silver Hawk Irregulars moving backward, finally making it safe for him to move over the ridge and down into Helmdown.
But if Alaric had started the engagement, Vedet was damn sure not just going to sit back and let him finish it alone.
“Artillery units, this is Guard One. Time to show me how good your measuring has been. Fire at will.”
The orange trails behind the artillery shells darted into the sky, tracing long arcs over the mountain ridge and down into the Silver Hawk Irregulars. Vedet watched a couple of rounds go overhead and then decided it was enough.
“All units, this is Guard One. Let’s get down the mountain and push them back. Move according to the Point Thrust Battle Plan. Go!”
He walked forward, keeping his pace slow. The top of the ridge drew closer, flashes on the other side growing brighter and brighter until he reached the top and looked down and saw the lights and the beams and the battle, finally the battle. The slope made him speed up as he moved down toward it, but he resisted the temptation to run and instead busied himself making sure he didn’t fall over.
“Stalker One, what can you tell me about the Silver Hawks position?”
“They’re on the move, sir. Hitting and running.”
Vedet rolled his eyes. Of course they were running. After all this time, why would the Silver Hawk Irregulars choose now to engage in a toe-to-toe fight?
“Bottle them up on the west side of the city,” Vedet said. “Don’t give them an escape route. I’m not about to let this become another Danais.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Command company, with me,” Vedet said. “We’re pulling west.”
He took his command unit diagonally across the rocky slope. The explosions below and the information from his scanner helped him piece together where the front was, and it looked like it was already disintegrating. Alaric and his troops were pushing hard and would be breaking through the Silver Hawk lines soon, if they hadn’t already.
But geometry was on the duke’s side.
The Point Thrust plan was fairly straightforward, with Tiger Company at the center of it, driving toward the heart of Helmdown while the other units provided support and, as Stalker company was supposed to be doing, keeping any stray Silver Hawks from getting away. He had hoped to be able to make a claim on Helmdown before Alaric Wolf, but the way the Silver Hawks were fleeing it looked like it could be a dead heat.
Artillery shells streaked orange through the sky, arcing high over Vedet as he continued down. More and more smaller rocks covered the ground the farther downhill he got, and the fight for balance became even more difficult.
Then the comm came to life. “Guard One, this is Stalker One. The Silver Hawks have changed direction and are moving back toward the center of the city.”
Tiger Company had done its work. The Silver Hawks weren’t ready to fight through them to get out of the city, and now Vedet would be able to close on them in force and finish them.
“Keep a steady pace,” he ordered his units. “Be patient. They’ve got nowhere to go.”
* * *
Right about now, Zeke Carleton thought, would be a good time to be off the planet.
At least he didn’t have to pilot an AgroMech. That little charade was over, and he could ride a machine he felt more comfortable in. His Ocelot wasn’t going to blow anybody off the battlefield, but he could stay ahead of almost anyone. When you pilot a light ’Mech, you never underestimate the value of wearing down the enemy.
But he was running out of places to run. He didn’t know what the signal had been that told the invaders to attack, but clearly it had been given. The Clanners and Elsies were both coming in and coming hard, and their first attempt to get outside the Elsies running down the mountains to the north had failed. More than ever, he envied the Silver Hawk troops that had been ordered off-planet while the Wolves and Steiners waited for…well, to be honest, Carleton had no idea just what the hell it was they had waited for.
The force left was small, but it was fast, and it had a few
tricks up its sleeve. At least, Carleton hoped it did, or else they’d be nothing more than bugs for the big armies to the north and east to stomp underfoot.
He didn’t have to tell the troops around him where to go. They’d planned the battle at least this far. If they had managed to get around the advancing troops coming from the north, that would have been great, but not too many of them believed that would happen. So they’d prepared a contingency plan, and everyone in Carleton’s company knew what it was.
He passed by the small stores and homes of Helmdown’s outskirts, putting new cracks into the old roads with every step. From a distance, his ’Mech looked like a human jogger, legs churning and arms bobbing. His cockpit, the Ocelot’s head, looked unwaveringly ahead.
“Hades Three, are they keeping up with us?” he asked as he jogged.
“Not really,” Sam Brooks replied. “They’re being pretty deliberate.”
“Great,” Carleton said. “All right, Hades units, let’s slow down and give them some incentive to stay with us. Hel One, you wanna provide some backup?” The Silver Hawk companies that had been left behind had decided to take up new names for their defense of Helmdown—names they believed to be a fair reflection of their prospects in this battle.
“You got it. Right behind you.”
The streets on the outskirts of Helmdown were haphazard, as this was a part of the city that sort of just happened without being planned. One wrong turn and Carleton could be sent off course and forced to endure the humiliation of stomping on buildings in the city he was supposed to be defending. He settled for slowing down his machine and making a U-turn. Then he put himself into a jog and headed for the lagging Elsies.
Even though he was in the outskirts of a planetary capital, this fight would likely play out more like rural combat. The buildings were too sparse, too low and too fragile to be a real obstacle or to provide any cover. He wasn’t going to be able to hide around a corner and jump out to surprise the Elsies. He’d have to catch them off guard some other way.
The Steiner forces out in front had edged to the west, making sure they would be able to cut off Carleton and his troops if they tried to get away again. So Carleton took his troops northeast, heading for an apparent gap between the advancing Steiner and Clan armies.
He leaned into his machine, pressing the pedals down, feeling the legs beneath him driving hard into the ground. He needed speed now, lots of it, to make this look right. Roads ahead of him wavered, edging to the left, then the right, then the left again, refusing to be straight, so he wavered with them, making the small moves that would let him run their crooked lines. His company was with him, except for Brooks in her Spider, who was running ahead mainly because she could. That was okay—with her jump jets and the winglike protrusions on her ’Mech’s back, Brooks was practically a jet fighter with legs.
“All right, everyone, let’s not all turn at once,” Carleton said. “But it’s time to start—edge around to ten o’clock when you get the chance.”
One by one, the ’Mechs of Hades and Hel companies turned, now running toward the Lyrans’ left flank.
“Hades Three, are they waiting for us?” Carleton said.
“Probably,” Brooks said. “But they’re trying to act like they’re not. They just keep ambling forward, like they’re on a Sunday stroll.”
“Okay. I want everyone to be ready to turn. If Brooks is right, they’re going to pounce pretty quickly.”
Carleton angled his ’Mech slightly. It would still look like he was charging the flank, but he’d started heading slightly to the right. It would make the “run” part of this hit-and-run a little easier.
The first rounds were being fired, and most of them were coming from the Lyrans. They had the bigger machines in this fight, so they had a little better range. Autocannon rounds and gauss slugs flew through the air, ripping through the flimsy Helmdown buildings. Ahead of Carleton, one house shook under the impact of a volley and its walls collapsed, the roof falling with a puff of dust.
Carleton searched for a target. If this was going to work, he couldn’t just fire wildly into a crowd. He had to draw blood.
Then he saw it—a Jaguar, loping toward him smoothly, the gun mounted on its back sending rounds in his direction, rounds that so far fell short. He twisted his torso a touch to bring the Jaguar in line, staring at his heads-up display until the bounding machine was right in his crosshairs. Both machines were fast and both were running. There wasn’t much time.
He pulled the trigger once, twice. Heat immediately washed through the cockpit as the red beams shot out. The first one passed over the Jaguar, but the second one caught it square in the back, melting away plenty of armor, maybe even breaking that big gun.
Carleton wished he could stay to watch, especially since he would stand a pretty good chance against the Jaguar now, but that wasn’t the plan. He turned another degree or two, his angle sharper now, edging farther and farther away from the Lyrans. He had his Ocelot running hard, leaving waves of heat behind him. He watched his scanner, saw the other troops taking a similar path, hitting and running. Getting away pretty clean.
Too clean.
“Slow down, everyone, slow down,” Carleton said. “If they don’t think they can catch us, they won’t chase us.”
He pulled his ’Mech back to a jog, watching carefully to see how the Lyrans would react. There had been a lot of metal and energy flying in the sky when Carleton charged—hopefully the Elsies would think he caught some of it. Hopefully they wouldn’t figure out that he was just bait.
They bit. They were coming. Even the Jaguar Carleton had clipped was running ahead, its four legs making the machine look lighter than several tons of metal should.
“We’ve got them. Watch your six, now. Don’t let them get too close. Or too far.”
If this was going to work, Carleton had to make sure the Lyrans kept thinking they were in range. The moment the Silver Hawks got out of range, the Elsies that had dashed after them might return to the ranks, and this whole ruse would come up empty.
That meant he had to endure a constant stream of fire from behind. A laser caught him in the torso, right behind his large laser. Sensors showed that most of his armor was gone in that spot. He couldn’t take too many more like that.
The street ahead was pockmarked with embedded shells, and more fell each second. Carleton wished he could order his troops to turn around, to stand and fight, but that would finish the battle too fast. He couldn’t stand against them—he wasn’t supposed to. He was here to run.
The twisting streets provided a small degree of shelter, but not much. Most buildings came barely past his knees, leaving his torso open for anyone in range to target. His whole company was taking fire now, catching hell from the Lyrans they had let stay with them. A Cougar, a slightly slower machine than the others that had been left behind, was caught by a Wasp and a Blade who danced around behind it while pouring laser fire into the Cougar’s back. That was Eddie Carson back there, and he was going down. The order to help Eddie rose to Carleton’s lips, and then he swallowed it. Trying to save Eddie would make a lot of other troops fall. He had no choice but to continue what he was already doing.
The Cougar went down and didn’t move again, but the other Silver Hawks kept running. It wasn’t far now. Hades and Hel companies drew together, allowing the Lyrans to concentrate their fire, setting a stretch of a few blocks ablaze as the lasers and shells burst into the small wooden buildings. The air behind Carleton grew orange and black, as if the sun had set directly into the ground instead of gracefully settling behind the horizon. They were taking heavy damage now, and the Lyrans were practically howling as they gave chase.
It was exactly as it should be.
It took a dash of five hundred more meters before it happened. Behind Carleton, the street exploded, erupting beneath the feet of the Lyrans, hurling ferrocrete through their underbellies. After the first explosion, a second, then a third. Smoke billowed through the street
s, and in the confusion the Silver Hawks got out of range. Then the artillery in the center of town, which had made precise calculations during the weeks of waiting, unloaded on the Lyrans who were stumbling through the fiery streets.
The retreat didn’t take long. The Lyrans knew enough about the Silver Hawks to understand that a renewed charge was likely to follow a sprung trap. The Elsie breakaway force dashed back to the comfort of their larger army.
They were wrong, though. Carleton, or any other defender for that matter, had no intention of charging the Lyrans. That was the behavior of an army that intended to win. All Carleton was supposed to do was hold on as long as possible. And do damage where he could.
* * *
Duke Vedet Brewster towered over a small store. Its sign flashed the daily specials to no one—the streets were empty, the doors of the store locked and gated. The sign was lively, every word written in flashing colors in order to make words like “milk” and “chicken” seem exciting.
He found the sign quite irritating, so he made the Atlas kick it and was rewarded with a shower of sparks as the display shattered. He kicked it again, then brought his left arm down on the store’s roof. The building looked barely able to withstand the winds that blew down from the mountains to the north; the designers had not anticipated a pummeling by a one-hundred-ton ’Mech. His fist slammed a crater into the roof, and he heard a very satisfying crack.
He kicked in a few windows, tore away the cheap siding on the wall and turned a support beam into an L. He battered the roof a few more times until it ripped away from the walls in several places.
He pushed his Atlas back a few steps so he could see his handiwork. He was breathing heavily, even though the ’Mech, not him, had been doing the real work.
He felt better, though. His mind was a little clearer than it had been when he heard about the Silver Hawks’ trap.
His scouts had gathered enough information to tell him that a significant portion of the Silver Hawk Irregulars that had been on Helm were now gone. He wouldn’t be able to wipe them out entirely here, sad to say. But he would make them pay.
The Last Charge Page 11