Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

  “It’s not safe money, Countess, not yet, but these at least are holding to a tight course. Textbook vectors from their orbiting WarShip, falling straight down at New London.”

  Nodding, Tara tapped the screen over each of the other five red icons. “And these?”

  “No aspect change in bearing or velocity, but . . . I don’t know. It looks like New London, but I think they are saving delta-V to make low-atmospheric changes.”

  Going just as the defenders had predicted. Which bothered Tara a great deal.

  “Keep our aerospace fighters well away from their insertion path. Seventeen DropShips and a heavy fighter escort is more than we can bite off.” And even if they could, there was the WarShip to consider. Malvina Hazen had already shown her willingness to use it.

  Murdering bitch.

  Forcing herself to continue a slow pace along the row of workstations, Tara confirmed every detail at least twice and stopped at ground-monitoring stations to check on New London itself. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh despite the warmth of the room, tiny bumps standing out on her bare arms and legs. She was dressed for combat, already in cooling vest and padded shorts. When the time came for action, she didn’t want anything to slow her down.

  “Have the sirens done their work?” she asked another tech.

  “Working, ma’am.” He leaned aside to give her a better view of the screens he watched. Prefect Della Brown joined Tara at the bank of small monitors, crowding in at the man’s other shoulder.

  Silent camera views switched along the many arterials of New London, the green-budding parks, the commercial and industrial centers. For midday, traffic was light and thinning out every minute. No one picnicked to celebrate spring’s early arrival. Shopping was limited mostly to frantic purchases of canned goods and urban survival gear: flashlights and bottled water, sweets and cigarettes. Restaurants were closing and nonessential services were suspended for the duration. Sanglamore had been emptied and Prefect Brown’s New London Tower operated on a skeleton staff.

  After the high cost Skye paid during the last assault by Clan Jade Falcon, with her Himmelsfahrtkommando sacrificing hundreds of lives to keep their world free, Tara Campbell wanted no repeat of such a massacre. At least, not when it would not do any good.

  The Falcons were back for blood.

  “We’re not going to make it easy for them,” she promised, speaking to herself in a soft whisper.

  Della Brown straightened. “In fact,” she said, not bothering to hide her unease with the plan, “we are.”

  Prefect Brown was a tall, svelte woman who had put herself through college by working as a runway model. She had dark hair and stormy gray eyes, and had held her figure well, even if she dressed down with her gray field uniform. She wore little makeup these days, and didn’t need to. Her austere beauty and her extra fifteen centimeters of height were just a bit intimidating, though Tara fought back with a mixed package of popularity and vivacity.

  “What would you have us do, Prefect?” Tara asked simply.

  “Open resistance. BattleMechs and tank columns along the main arterials. VTOLs to skirt the edge of the city, and infantry dug in at all the hardened buildings we have.”

  “Blood in the streets,” Tara said. “We saw enough of that along Sutton Road and across Seminary Hill the last time. You don’t think the Jade Falcons came ready for that? We need to stay one step—”

  “Countess!” The woman on vector mechanics was first with an alert. “We have . . . I’ve lost signal. We have no—that’s zero—confidence. Some kind of interference pattern I don’t recognize.”

  “Same here.” She may have been first, but now other voices around the room called out with frantic need for attention. A major on tactical shouted down some nearby techs. “I have negative feedback on every channel. High electromagnetic interference.”

  “No feed,” someone else complained.

  “Wild power fluctuations on—”

  “—dead sensors.”

  Tara and Della Brown had watched as all of the New London cameras blacked out simultaneously. The tech didn’t bother with complaints or guesses, but set about working his emergency procedures to acquire data. He toggled for power, ran checks on the local electronics. Everything seemed to be in order.

  But there was something coldly familiar about this. A report Tara remembered reading from . . . from . . . a hollow pit opened up inside her.

  “Nicole!” Tara jogged back up the line of workstations to the woman on vector mechanics. “What was the last thing you saw?”

  “Possible bearing changes across the board. And the lead DropShips, I think they had all poured on harder decel burns, slowing their fall. I was working on confirmation when it all went dark.”

  “I want a direct camera view over New London.” Tara shoved herself away from vector mechanics, trying to remember which station had auxiliary taps into meteorological data. Those were local systems and might be safe from what she feared was happening. “Weather feeds,” she called out. Was that on tactical?

  No. Aerospace control. A bright-eyed young ensign waved for her attention, frowning at his monitor. “Whatever this is . . . ,” he began.

  But Tara knew. So did Prefect Della Brown, apparently, who was at the workstation a step ahead of Tara. The blacked-out sensors and interference patterns. It read too similar to reports from Glengarry, when Malvina Hazen had brought down one of the Stormhammer DropShips. The kind of disaster that Tara had hoped to avoid.

  The two women stared at the bright, glowing streaks that smeared the daytime sky like a high-strength aurora borealis.

  “That,” Tara said with false calm, “is a nuclear detonation.”

  There was no way to estimate the height, but it had to be a high-atmosphere detonation to get that kind of wide-coverage effect. Ionization covering thousands of square kilometers was reflected back down at Skye and New London by the planet’s own magnetic field.

  “What’s this going to mean?” Della asked, voice low and shaking with barely controlled fury.

  Tara held herself up against the edge of the workstation. The cold metal edge cut into her fingers like a dull knife. “Severe ionization and intense magnetic fields which will induce high voltages in power lines, communication towers, and other long-range conductors.” Bad. Very bad. “We’ll get feeds back slowly, except where electronics might be completely fried from power surges. Fortunately, our most valuable equipment should be in hardened facilities.”

  “What about our fighter craft?”

  She considered. “They should be okay. But we’ll keep them grounded or on patrol out of the area regardless. We keep to the plan, and when the Falcons try to move their DropShips after grounding, that’s when we hit them.”

  Della Brown nodded. “I suppose we should feel fortunate that Malvina Hazen didn’t take New London right off the map.”

  “Fortunate?” Tara shook her head. “If the Jade Falcons are willing to spend from their nuclear arsenal and did not want New London erased, it’s because they have something far worse in mind.”

  “Like what?”

  Tara looked over the various workstation screens. Mostly static and darkness. “We don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s the entire point. For now, we’re blind and deaf.

  “And the Jade Falcons are falling right on top of us.”

  Roosevelt Bridgehead

  Missiles shattered armor along the entire right side of Tamara Duke’s Eisenfaust, digging sharp claws through the Wolfhound’s protection. Elemental lasers raked a pair of narrow red furrows down the side of the BattleMech’s “face.” One clipped the upper corner of her cockpit’s ferroglass shield, and a single drop of molten tears trailed halfway down the transparent screen before carbonizing into a black crust.

  She thought she detected the acrid smell of burned metal, and worried for the space of a single heartbeat how deeply those lasers had cut.

  It was all the time she had. The Elementals were on her like verm
in. Nipping at her legs. Slashing at her with lasers and missiles. A few of them clambered for a good hold somewhere around the Wolfhound’s waist. She plucked one from her hip, crushing the suited figure in her “iron fist.”

  “We’re good, Kommandant. Get out of there!”

  One of these days, she’d pound it through Vic Parkins’ thick skull that he did not give her orders.

  Of course, this time it could be nothing more sinister than a need for quick communications. Hauptmann Parkins had led a short retreat back toward the Roosevelt bridgehead while she held back the Falcons. His Behemoth was perfect for anchoring a new line. She had the ability to catch up quickly. If he was set, she needed to be out of there, fast!

  Kicking out with her ’Mech’s left leg, Tamara let the armored infantry get a quick feel of her iron foot. One battlesuit trooper went flying off like a punted football. But his comrades pressed in closer, and she couldn’t risk another swarming attack. She slammed down on both foot pedals, lighting off jump jets as she arced backward in a long, flat hop.

  More ground lost.

  That had been the way of the entire morning, in fact. Ever since the Jade Falcons had landed an old Union-class DropShip and a Sassanid-class infantry carrier near Roosevelt Island. Not enough to take Cyclops, Incorporated, away from her Lyran Rangers—not without backup—but enough to put some serious hurt on her company if she once thought of standing toe-to-toe with the assault force.

  It was all stick-and-retreat from then on, with the Falcons pushing hard, taking risks time and again as they did everything possible to gain an advantage. Maybe Tamara had moved them out a bit too slowly at one point. Maybe she’d played it all a bit too cautious. Fighting their way back toward the bridgehead, her Rangers had ended up pinched between a heavy line of ’Mechs and vehicles and this ambush of Elementals. The trap cost her company a lot of armor and a few good warriors before they slipped free.

  Jasek, she knew, would have done better. She had to prove that she could as well.

  Landing alongside her lance, Tamara froze over her controls for a few seconds while a Demon raced up to take care of the lone Elemental who had tagged along for the ride. A Falcon Eyrie let fly from long range with its advanced tactical missile system, but the warheads went wide and blew impotent holes in a nearby hillside. When it attempted to race forward, a pair of SM1 Destroyers was able to change its mind and send it fleeing for the safety of the main Falcon line.

  A Vulture swaggered out to give its smaller cousin some covering fire. Behind both ’Mechs, the Clanners shook themselves into a new order of battle with Elementals fanning out in overlapping scrimmage lines.

  The bridgehead wasn’t more than a kilometer behind the Lyran Rangers now. It ran out from a rocky slope, tied into the highway system that wound and twisted its way north along the coast to eventually reach Norfolk or speared directly west toward Braggart and Miliano. Truxton Sound lay between the mainland and Roosevelt Island, home to the main factories for Cyclops, Incorporated. The wind-chopped waters reflected back a steel gray sky, exactly the color of Tamara’s mood.

  She toggled for planetary defense again, not expecting any change, but hoping. “This is Roosevelt Station. We need artillery and aerospace support. Still.” Static answered her. “This is Roosevelt Station. Come in, damn it!”

  It was Colonel Petrucci who got back to her. Again. “Sutton Road is still off-line, Kommandant. We’re on our own. Deal with the situation as you see fit.”

  Easy for the commander to say. He had the bulk of the Rangers spread out far to the south, covering several large cities, the Hemphill Company sapphire mines, and a host of small preassembly plants for Avanti Assemblies. And by reports he had only a few Jade Falcon reconnaissance lances to deal with.

  The Vulture dumped out twin loads from its missile racks, and Tamara fell back another two hundred meters to escape their maximum range. Her large laser was equally useless, though. Artillery! What she couldn’t do right now with a simple Long Tom or Paladin defense system.

  “We can hold, Colonel.” Parkins again. He was tied into the Rangers’ command frequency. Damn the man!

  “We can hold,” she agreed through clenched teeth, “but it won’t be pretty.”

  The Elementals were beginning to sneak forward under the cover of the Vulture’s missile barrage and the threat of a Kelswa assault tank. She sent her Destroyers out on a quick jaunt, threatening to run under the long-range fire to blast apart the Falcons with their assault-class autocannon.

  “You aren’t the only one with troubles, Tamara. Wolf is calling for any backup she can get, and only the Steel Wolves are in place to support her. The Highlanders and Seventh Skye Militia report heavy action north of the capital as well.”

  Alexia Wolf and elements from the Archon’s Shield had been charged with holding Miliano. Those troops had been hammered mercilessly by a veteran Falcon force. Tamara had requested the city’s defense—let the greenies handle Cyclops!—but Tara Campbell had gambled heavily on the Falcons’ being preoccupied with New London, instead. Apparently that ruse had not gone off so well as they’d hoped.

  And if the Miliano Basin fell, both Norfolk and Roosevelt Island would be flanked by a Jade Falcon push. She slammed a fist against the arm of her command chair.

  “If we pull out and go to their aid, we lose Cyclops, Incorporated. If we don’t, we might lose even more. Will Kerensky assist?”

  “She hasn’t moved yet. The Falcons threw a little bit her way, but fell back twice as fast when that Overlord spoke up with its big guns. Trouble is, pretty much the only officer that woman trusts is Campbell. And her not too far.”

  She’d dance to Jasek’s tune, if he were here. What would he say to convince Kerensky? “Colonel, we can’t let Miliano go. Point out what kind of trouble Norfolk will be in if the Steel Wolves don’t reinforce the basin. Remind them that Wolf is one of theirs.” More theirs than she was a true Stormhammer, anyway.

  Tamara triggered a laser blast as a Falcon Skadi swooped in too close. The VTOL retreated with a landing skid burned away.

  “Tell her . . . tell her Jasek would take it as a personal favor.”

  That hurt. Doubly so when Vic Parkins chimed in. “That might do it,” her exec agreed.

  Petrucci thought so as well. “I’ll see what can be bargained. In the meantime, Kommandant, keep your head low and your people safe.”

  “Safe as we can,” Parkins promised for them both. His Behemoth rolled forward, soaking up some long-range sniping as the Falcons geared for another relentless push.

  Not about to be seen accepting cover behind Parkins, or any tank commander for that matter, Tamara Duke throttled her Wolfhound into an easy walk and stalked into the open territory between her Rangers and the Falcons. Her large laser sliced angry-bright, cutting at the Vulture’s right arm.

  She ducked beneath a return salvo of missiles, taking only a handful of them across her back and shoulders. “We do not give them the island,” she told her Rangers, determined not to fall back again. They would keep the bridgehead on this side of the sound, and they’d pluck some Falcons doing it. “We dig in. We hold here.”

  She toggled off. But under her breath, she continued.

  “And we hope we get some relief forces over this way before the Falcons do.”

  26

  Sutton Road

  Skye

  30 November 3134

  Tara Campbell sprinted down the short, rough-hewn passageway that led to “the Pen.” Already in combat togs, she simply stripped off the headset she’d been using and tossed it onto a maintenance bench as soon as she burst into the cavernous bay her engineers had secretly dug into the face of the Sutton Road bluff.

  Sodium-vapor lights brightened the space, and the roar of internal combustion engines competed with the backwash of lift fans that stirred dirt and loose papers into a cyclone. Two Highlander infantrymen finished sealing up in Cavalier battle armor and boarded a waiting Maxim. Ten vehicles, all crammed in fen
der to skirt, waited for the camouflaged door to open.

  Waited for her.

  Her Hatchetman waited as well, crouched just inside the door where the ceiling had been carved high enough to admit the slender BattleMech. Its ax lay against the floor, covered in a light patina of rock dust. The sloping head tilted down at a restful angle. It took Tara all of two minutes to scale the simple handyman’s ladder, button up the cockpit, and pull on her neurohelmet. Leads to the inside of her arms and legs. Coolant line snapped into her vest’s socket. Toggles up. Switch on. The fusion engine thrummed awake, breathing life into the forty-five-ton machine. Her computer flashed for attention, demanding security protocols.

  “Tara Campbell. Countess Northwind.” Her voiceprint appeared on the monitor as a jagged sine wave, filled with a few special dips and peaks uniquely hers.

  Still, it was possible to fool neurocircuitry and voiceprints. And MechWarriors tended to be just a little bit paranoid when it came to protecting their ride. As a backup measure, the computer’s synthesized voice prompted her for secondary protocol. One wrong word—one anomalous reading in the neurocircuitry—would lock out weapons controls.

  Tara adjusted her neurohelmet, wanting good contact with the sensors. She had no time for mistakes. “Manus haec inimica tyrannis.”

  Latin. One of the advantages of a classical education.

  This hand is hostile to tyrants.

  “Where are they?” Tara asked as the main door levered open.

  A pair of hoverbikes was first out the door, with the lower edge barely clearing the drivers’ heads. A low-profile Shandra was next, and then two JES missile carriers. Tara crowded into line and duckwalked the tall ’Mech out into the day’s gray light. The balance of her forces followed after.

  Della Brown came on the communications line herself. “Still two klicks north along the river. They haven’t got you yet.”