Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

  “Light him up,” he ordered a nearby warrior, who slid into the gunner’s seat. The warrior tracked the command vehicle’s lasers around to drop crosshairs over the Ranger’s front grille. The high-pitched whine of target lock would be twice as loud inside the Ranger.

  Standing in his seat, Star Captain Bogart bowed his surrender to Noritomo. The VV1 pushed forward at a regular pace now, weaving rapidly between the last few containers and breaking into the open.

  “He is early with the dailies,” Noritomo said, glancing at a nearby display on which glowing red numerals read as a twenty-four-hour military clock.

  The “dailies” were his intelligence briefings, brought back from Glengarry on one of five commercial JumpShips dragooned into his service. They actually came in every other day on a very simple rotation. A JumpShip leaped into the Glengarry system, recharged at an expedient pace, then picked up whatever intelligence Beckett Malthus saw fit to share before it jumped back to Chaffee. Without a working HPG, such a “pony express” system was the only way to keep up on Jade Falcon movements.

  “Perhaps our friends have pushed forward more quickly than we thought.”

  He frowned, unused to sarcasm from Lysle. “You mean the forces sneaking in-system? They are still two days out. Our aerospace forces will hit them tomorrow.”

  “They could increase their rate of approach.”

  They could, but Noritomo doubted it. You did not rush to battle when you had the superior force. IR signatures had indicated that at least three JumpShips had breached the Chaffee system using a nonstandard pirate point only four days out instead of the usual eight days it took to reach the zenith or nadir jump points. Three vessels. Republic or Lyran, it hadn’t much mattered to him. If he assumed an average carry of 2.5 each, the assault force would bear down on him with between six and nine DropShips. His aerospace fighters and two assault DropShips might cut the margin down somewhat, but he fully expected to be at a disadvantage against whatever landed on Chaffee.

  War so often came down to a simple numbers game.

  “We had better find out for certain,” he told Lysle, calling her over as he dropped down to the command vehicle’s door. He finished his drink in a pair of large swallows and handed the empty container and his headset to an aide. “If the JumpShip is back early,” he said to himself, “it cannot be good news.”

  It wasn’t. Meeting Bogart and Lysle outside the command vehicle, returning the man’s salute and accepting the verifax from him, Noritomo pressed his thumb to the reader and waited while a DNA check unlocked the datafiles inside. It took him two minutes, scanning through the datafiles, to see the new mess The Republic had created for him.

  “Idiots. Stravag incompetents. What did they hope to accomplish?”

  Reading over his shoulder, a feat not too difficult for a woman her size, Lysle scrunched up her face with distaste. “Ryde. Summer. Glengarry. One planet taken: Summer. Two factory lines and a munitions depot destroyed. The loss of three Stars’ worth of vehicles. I would say they accomplished quite well.”

  “In a purely tactical appraisal, that would be correct.” In fact, if Malvina had not cost the raiders a Union-class DropShip, knocking it out of the air with an Alamo, the balance would tip even farther into The Republic’s column. By one way of thinking, it was too bad she caught it on the way down, not on takeoff. Adding a Stormhammer company to the totals might have made for a solid Falcon victory.

  A numbers game.

  “But why sting at us with raiding assaults?” he asked. “What is the reason behind them?” He did not ask out of confusion, but to make his officers think. Think like the enemy.

  Bogart caught on first. “Factory production and stockpiles,” he mused, tapping a meaty finger against a square chin. The freeborn commander was a very short man with bronzed skin, large, wide shoulders, and a shaved head. Slender at the waist but with oversized legs and arms, he reminded Noritomo of a shortened version of a mythological beast—the Minotaur. “Delaying tactics?” he asked.

  “Exactly. They hope to buy more time to ready Skye against Malvina’s return.”

  Lysle shrugged, accepting the noteputer from him. “I still fail to see the problem, Star Colonel. We salvaged Ryde, according to these reports, with heavy losses to both sides. Glengarry is a wash. Summer . . .” She read the file again. “It looks as if we have given up Summer to reinforce Zebebelgenubi.”

  “Which means that Malvina Hazen does not plan to wait. Zebebelgenubi is more important than Summer only for its proximity to Skye and targets deeper within Prefecture IX.”

  He paused, thinking it through. “She will see this assault as an insult. A personal affront, given that her own ’Mech was so badly damaged in a short battle. She will launch for Skye sooner, not later.” He shook his head. “She will strike without us, and use every terror tactic at her disposal to break the spine of Skye once and for all.”

  Pandora’s evils, unleashed. With their ill-conceived raids, the Skye defenders had sealed their doom and ruined his plans. Noritomo needed more time. Now he was not going to get it.

  “She might yet summon us up,” Lysle offered.

  “With enemy forces inbound? She will wait to see how we conduct ourselves.”

  Bogart shrugged, a gesture that used most of his upper body. “Then we smash these Republicans. And we charge for Skye as soon as Galaxy Commander Hazen calls us.”

  Yes, definitely bull-like. But the freeborn warrior had said something that struck a chord with Noritomo. “Aff, we can only ready our defense and show our leaders that we are still worthy of battle. Smashing the inbound force—Lyran or Republic—will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.”

  “They are Republic,” Bogart said, sounding very certain of himself. Too certain. “And if we truly wish to shock them, we should ignore their batchall, quaiff?”

  The question struck Noritomo like a closed fist. “What did you say?”

  “Their batchall? It is in the datafiles.” He nodded at the noteputer held in Lysle’s large hands.

  There was a file he had not opened, and it was not linked through the menu of daily reports, which was why he had missed it the first time. And it was labeled BATCHALL, which was the formal bidding practice used between Clans to limit the waste of war materiel. With all the trouble Noritomo had wrestled because of using Clan traditions, here an Inner Sphere faction was recognizing the wisdom of Clan ways? It seemed too good to be true.

  He opened the file. Appended to a simple, direct question, which was the entire body of the main text, was a personal bio of the sender. Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner. Stormhammers, commanding.

  There was even an abbreviated list of his accomplishments, arranged in a similar fashion to a Clan codex: Champion of Nusakan. Victor at Zebebelgenubi. Defender of Skye.

  And if there was any doubt that Kelswa-Steiner understood Clan practices, the short message was even written in the same formal fashion that began most Jade Falcon batchalls: With what forces does Clan Jade Falcon defend its interests on Chaffee?

  Noritomo Helmer smiled. This was just what his people needed.

  20

  Longview

  Cowlitz County, Chaffee

  8 November 3134

  Pushing along the river’s edge, gaining a foothold on the blacktop-covered dockside, Jasek anchored his Templar against the water’s edge and quickly called up his Archon’s Shield battalion to cement the Stormhammers position. After chasing Noritomo Helmer’s troops for half a day, Jasek had every intention of forcing the Clanner to abandon his hit-and-fade tactics, and to stand and fight for the city of Longview.

  This certainly looked to be it. A double line of Falcon tanks held the center of the waterfront complex, flanked by a pair of modified SalvageMechs. The light autocannon replacing their left arms belted out a few long-range shots that picked and pecked at the forming Stormhammer line. A fifty-five-ton Gyrfalcon and a light Stinger teamed up at the water’s edge, directly ahead of Jasek’s posi
tion. They stood in front of a trio of Demon medium tanks.

  Jade Falcon VTOLs buzzed over the lumber mill, weaving around in a complex dance to disguise how they might break away at a second’s notice to strafe the ground-bound troops. Fortunately, Jasek had been able to peel away two two-fighter elements from the air battle raging above the cloud cover. They would arrive in moments. When they did, his line had better be set.

  “Colonel Vandel. Dress up our backfield and push those Kelswas up onto our right flank. Buy the Steel Wolves some time to deploy.”

  “That’s some valuable coin we’re risking,” the Lyran officer warned him over a tight command circuit.

  “They’re good for it.”

  At least, Jasek hoped so.

  So far Anastasia Kerensky had held to her word, following his strategy so long as he gave her complete tactical freedom. Her parallel push to his had caught several Jade Falcon warriors unprepared, even though he had bid her forces into the batchall fairly, if under the name of the Stormhammers. She was responsible for rolling up the western wing and he had opened the way into Longview. Even-up.

  Now, on the far right, an Eyrie was already trading close-in blows with Leutnant Gillickie’s Storm Raider. But as the Kelswa tanks moved up with their ’Mech-killing Gauss rifles and the Steel Wolves after them, the Eyrie fell back among two Behemoths and the only Elemental forces that Jasek had yet to see of Helmer’s bid Star.

  Joss Vandel’s mobile HQ crawled up into the seam that separated Stormhammer from Steel Wolf. “If we had kept Third Company and not left them with the Steel Wolf auxiliaries guarding our DropShips, we’d slaughter the Falcons.”

  Jasek rarely minded being second-guessed by his colonels, and gave Vandel more latitude than most because of his ties back to the Lyran Commonwealth, and Lohengrin. The first judge of a man was the company he kept.

  Just so long as they kept it on private channels.

  “This isn’t about slaughter,” he reminded his senior officer as the Gyrfalcon prodded at him with its ultra-ACs.

  A hail of fifty-millimeter caseless rang into his shoulder, with a few ricochets spanging into the side of his head. He cast one stream of particle energy across the blacktop, slashing at the Gyrfalcon’s leg.

  The Kelswas launched a double-Gauss broadside, pushing the Jade Falcon back as Anastasia Kerensky’s Ryoken II led a double Star of Steel Wolf survivors in from the southwest.

  “These warriors have to acknowledge us as fair and worthwhile enemies for this to work.”

  “Doesn’t matter how you take a world,” Vandel said.

  But it did if you didn’t want to waste valuable resources in a garrison.

  The Kelswas’ broadside had pummeled a Skanda into scrap and finally cracked the Falcon reserve. Now the Clanners rolled forward with smooth coordination. Not charging in an all-or-nothing gamble nor showing doubt in a hesitant march. Textbook maneuvers, with ’Mechs leading and vehicles flanking and infantry protected in the pocket behind.

  Did Noritomo Helmer practice that on a daily basis? It was parade ground perfect.

  “Pick them up and push them back,” Jasek ordered, throttling into a sidelong march that left the river to his salvaged Ocelot and angled his own Templar toward the center of the allied line.

  More autocannon fire converged on his position, and missiles arced up and fell in well-spaced waves from the Falcon JES carriers dug in near one of the huge sawdust piles. Fireballs blossomed in a line across his Maxim heavy hover transports, cracking one open like an egg and spilling out several Gnome battlesuit troops.

  The VTOLs pounced, augering in with their nose-mounted cannon spitting fire and lethal metal. Two slid across the spoiled infantry line and rained destruction on one of the Kelswa assault tanks. But too close, too close.

  Anastasia lit off her Ryoken II’s jump jets, rising one hundred meters over the waterfront blacktop on streamers of glowing plasma. Torso-mounted particle cannon smashed out with their lightning-style streams of energy, gutting one VTOL as it tried to bank away. The second craft turned inward, maybe thinking to beat the minimum effective range of the PPCs. Anastasia swatted it out of the sky with one backhand chop into its main rotor.

  She landed in a ready crouch, lasers and cannon alternating in perfect rhythm.

  The two VTOLs landed in explosive wreckage.

  “Worthy of your namesake,” Jasek said, toggling for an open frequency.

  “Wish I could say the same,” the commander of the Steel Wolves shot back as a Gauss slug opened a new crack in Jasek’s armor, right over his fusion engine. Still, her tone sounded more pleased than put off by his comment.

  Whatever it took, Jasek intended to keep Kerensky’s attention, and her cooperation, for as long as possible.

  The Jade Falcon center flagged, slowed by the ponderous gait of the SalvageMechs and the crawling speeds of JES II carriers and M1 Marksman tanks. As the flanks bent around, they welcomed the encroaching Stormhammers in a hot embrace. Jasek saw the encirclement beginning but did not worry about it yet. Especially with his aerospace fighters finally blipping onto long-range sensors far behind the allied forces. He welcomed the chance to chew the middle out of Helmer’s line, especially as the solid centerline force also protected the Clan’s command vehicle—an older Praetorian. Though smart money put Star Colonel Helmer in the Gyrfalcon, not some behind-the-lines armchair. No disrespect to Joss Vandel intended.

  Especially when the Lyran colonel saved Jasek’s ass not thirty seconds later.

  “Toads! Toads!”

  A nameless warrior alerted the field to the problem only a few seconds after the giant sawdust pile erupted in a fury of motion, smoke, and laser fire. Elementals leaped clear from where they had been buried, leapfrogging by groups of five. Ten battlesuit troopers.

  Then fifteen. Then twenty.

  With the five infantrymen from before, that was the full Star accounted for! Their thick-necked profile and the ninety-meter hops that first gave them the “toad” nickname more than eighty years ago were real attention getters. Most Inner Sphere battlesuit designs were based on the Clan originals, and were never quite as deadly as the real thing.

  Getting battlesuit soldiers into reach of their short-range weapons was the usual trick. Helmer had managed it by burrowing them into the soft sawdust, masking their presence until Jasek closed to a good range. But for a few seconds, the Elemental warriors were also grouped together in a vulnerable pack. With some artillery, if Jasek had been willing to use the Paladin defense system near a city (he wasn’t), the Elementals could have been chewed into so many walking wounded.

  Bombing runs could accomplish much the same thing. And there were four fighter craft already arrowing down on their attack runs.

  “Stormhammers,” Vandel called out on command override. “Ground and hold!”

  It was a risky call, ordering the assault force to give up their maneuverability. Few of them realized yet the danger facing Jasek and the Stormhammer center. So it was a good indication of unit discipline that not one ’Mech took another step after that order, and all vehicles killed their forward momentum. For five desperate heartbeats, the offensive push ground to a standstill, tempting the Jade Falcons with easy targets.

  Then artificial thunder shattered the waterfront as a pair of Stingrays slashed from backfield to fore, strafing with lasers and missiles as they ignored the remaining VTOLs in favor of the thick cluster of Elementals.

  Eisensturm followed, the heavy fighter craft again shaking the ground in a high-speed nape-of-the-earth run that blistered a fiery trail through the Elemental wall and made the Stingray run look kind.

  Knowing that four fighters were all he’d called forward, Jasek preempted Joss Vandel by yelling, “Go, go, go!” and spearheading a new drive into the midst of the momentarily stunned Jade Falcons.

  He heard metal-suited infantry land on his legs, his sides, clambering around for purchase. A pair of Scimitar hovercraft skated in quickly, dancing around their comma
nder, using their missiles like marksman pistols to carefully pick off the Elementals one by one.

  Two converging lines. One busted trap. The battlefield quickly dissolved into a free-for-all slugging match as vehicles tried to re-form on their ’Mech leads and infantry regrouped to use combined-arms force. A pack of Gnomes cracked open the crew quarters on a Falcon Skanda, letting in a hunter-seeker engineering team who quickly took control of the crew and vehicle. Elementals ran roughshod over their smaller cousins, driving them away from two other targets and unseating a pair of Steel Wolf hoverbike drivers at the same time.

  Back near the waterfront, the Stormhammers’ Ocelot traded on its superior speed and one heavy laser to slice armor from the Stinger. JES tactical carriers slipped up to the wounded BattleMech and peppered it with short-range missiles; a lean wolf brought down by hounds.

  Then the Gyrfalcon abandoned its place at the river for a direct run at Jasek’s Templar. Autocannon and large lasers cycled in alternating salvos, chewing through armor and splashing away more of the same in fiery mists of molten composite. Jasek let Helmer worry his left side a moment as he tried to finish off one of the troublesome SalvageMechs, which kept clawing for purchase with its salvage arm.

  Finally trading it off for the more dangerous man, he let one of the Kelswas move up to threaten the Salvage while he hauled his eightyfive-ton machine around for a full-on broadside against the Gyrfalcon.

  An unlucky Elemental tried to jump-scoot between them, maybe angling for a crippled Joust or looking to put some pressure on the Ocelot. Instead, it took one of Jasek’s PPCs. The lightning ripped him apart, smashing in his faceplate and ripping the arms off the suit. Jasek’s remaining PPC, his medium lasers, and his four-pack missile system all dumped their loads into the Gyrfalcon’s chest. The forward-leaning ’Mech pulled up short, staggered, but held to its feet by sheer force of will.