The rest was up to Jasek.
31
Norfolk
Skye
12 December 3134
Jasek Kelswa-Steiner let a pair of wheeled Demons and a towed Long Tom artillery piece take the Norfolk Bridge.
Slogging his Templar across the river on its north side, chased by a pair of Pegasus hovercraft and a Maxim heavy hover transport from his Archon’s Shield battalion, he dropped his crosshairs on one of the converted SalvageMechs that held the opposite bank, but held his fire. Listening to the comms chatter, sensing that his full line was not quite in place, he hesitated, stalling his push forward and leaving himself open to attack. The SalvageMech’s light autocannon chipped away at his armor, striking sparks from his BattleMech’s shoulders, its chest. Earlier there had been a Shadow Hawk IIC stalking his flank, using its jumping ability to threaten Jasek’s advance forces, but it was hiding in the tree line now or had moved to another part of the wide-front battle.
Instead, a Kelswa assault tank with a hastily painted Jade Falcon crest on its side rolled forward from the cover of a stand of tall ponderosa pines to anchor the enemy position. Two Cardinal VTOL transports followed, popping over the tree line, belly flopping into a clearing where Elemental battlesuit troopers jumped free.
The Kelswa’s Gauss rifles flashed telltale blue discharges, and a pair of nickel-ferrous slugs skipped across the river. One dived beneath the water, raising a large sheet that sprayed across Jasek’s ferroglass shield. The other crushed into his right-side armor, stripping away most of his protection.
“Heavy massing south of the Norfolk Bridge,” Colonel Vandel reported, his Praetorian mobile HQ breaking onto the western shore about half a kilometer downriver from Jasek’s position.
Jasek could read by his own HUD that Joss Vandel faced a trio of Skanda light tanks and paired JES II strategic missile carriers.
Beyond his sensor range to the north, Vandel’s top kommandant, Leslie Hoarus, reported much the same. “Rangers. Elementals. Damn!” Static. “One Kinnol main battle tank with a way-too-accurate PPC.”
All up and down the river the scene was repeated as the Jade Falcons fought to repel Jasek’s forces. The Clan warriors obviously thought they had a good chance to hold off the Stormhammers.
They thought wrong.
Jasek had borrowed a page out of the Jade Falcon manual for his assault on Shipil Company’s Norfolk dockyards. He followed much the same battle plan as the Clanners had in their raiding assault on the local area before he left Skye.
DropShip grounding near the North Inlet.
A solid drive spearheading his column through a gap in the western hills.
Heavy woods along the river’s edge had broken the battle up into small-unit engagements as the Stormhammers pushed for the river, the bridge, and Norfolk, which now lay only a few kilometers away. So far, the enemy had seen only a pair of BattleMechs with perhaps slightly higher-than-average supporting forces. Heavy tanks and fast hovercraft. Artillery. VTOL support. Jasek planned to reeducate them.
It came a moment sooner than expected, with two MHI amphibious APCs and a Manticore II splashing into the river just above Jasek’s position. All three vehicles bore the clenched-gauntlet crest of the Lyran Commonwealth. The Manticore II heavy tank looked fresh off the factory floor, with its pristine armor and gleaming polish to its PPC barrel and its missile launcher. It likely was, given that Hesperus II produced the veteran fighting vehicle, and Duke Brewster had promised Jasek some of his best.
Best seemed to be a relative term as the Manticore crew couldn’t hit an Overlord at five hundred meters. Its particle cannon lashed out with brilliant firepower, exploding through a magnificent elm just beyond the Kelswa. It might have provided cover for enemy forces—Jasek gave them that.
Its missiles arced overhead but fell short. Water burst up at the river’s edge in a line of geysers. At least they got the Jade Falcons wet.
“Weapons free.” Jasek gave the command as the Kelswa slammed a Gauss slug into his chest. It staggered the eighty-five-ton machine, but did not drop it.
His thumb mashed down on the firing stud. A particle projector cannon in each arm arced new lightning at the Kelswa. Both struck the vehicle along its front, carving away armor, splashing it across the ground in large molten puddles.
The Pegasus scout craft pushed past him, throwing back long rooster tails as their drive fans kicked them up toward ninety kilometers per hour in their short sprint across the river. They guarded the Maxim, only slightly slower, which turned near the water’s edge and pulled up short. Gull wing doors flew up, and Stormhammers Gnome infantry leaped out to trade laser fire with the Clan Elementals. The Gnomes bore the brunt for several long seconds, until the MHI craft drew close enough to the opposite bank that Fenrir troopers could begin to bail over the sides and splash through the water on their own.
The quadruped battle armor made all the difference. With one squad bearing medium pulse lasers and two more backpack mounts of three small lasers, they were a serious threat at range and decimating up close and personal.
Turning their attention on one of the hovering Cardinals, the pulse laser squad blasted through its light armor. Sooty, gray smoke roiled out of its engine compartment. Both craft banked away, racing back for the Shipil dockyards. The wounded VTOL hardly made it a hundred meters before it crashed down into the trees, swallowed by the forest.
Meanwhile, both of the close-in Fenrir squads had joined Jasek’s Gnomes in routing the Elementals. The genetically engineered Clan infantry were fearsome in their own right, but they weren’t so foolish as to push a losing position against superior firepower. Bounding away on their jump jets, they gained the safety of the trees with only minor losses.
Which left a lumbering SalvageMech and the Kelswa.
Jasek let the SalvageMech go, concentrating his fire on the assault tank as he waded free of the river. But the SalvageMech pilot was not about to be ignored. In a display of battlefield triage, the awkward IndustrialMech plodded forward into Jasek’s line of fire, protecting the more valuable assault tank. Jasek’s particle cannon ripped it up one side and down the other.
The Manticore II had all but disappeared beneath the water as it crossed, but came plowing out like some submarine monster looking for victims. It missed again as the SalvageMech stumbled out from beneath its sights. Jasek made up for it with double strikes from his energy cannon. Temperatures soared as the fusion reactor spiked to meet the power draw. The cockpit began to smell like a sauna.
The SalvageMech toppled over onto its side, the left leg severed just below the knee. Fenrir infantry swarmed over it while the Pegasus craft formed a defensive line, ready to bloody any attempt by the Falcons to rescue their man or salvage the ’Mech.
There would be no attempt. As Lyran ground forces broke cover along the river’s edge to bolster the Archon’s Shield battalion, the Clanners gave up the eastern bank as lost and fell back toward Norfolk.
The Stormhammers and Lyran forces paused only briefly to pull together inside the forest, and then they chased after.
“Why are we seeing such light defenses?” Vandel asked over his private channel to Jasek. His crew tucked the command crawler in behind Jasek’s Templar. “Norfolk is supposed to be the center of their operations locally.”
True. Tara Campbell had transmitted the intel to them as they made planetfall. But it was also clear that the central line of communications between the disparate elements of Skye’s defenders was haphazard. At best.
“If their forces aren’t here, it’s because they were needed elsewhere.” Jasek blinked sweat back from the corners of his eyes, cycled his weapons back to standby to let them cool. Temperatures inside his cockpit dropped slowly.
“Take the gifts where they come, Joss. It doesn’t happen this way too often.”
And it wasn’t going to be so easy on the other side of the forest. They broke out of heavy cover to find themselves rolling into several square kilometers
of planted saplings. A fairly young tree farm that Jasek had seen before. Now there were leaves budding on the slender branches, and new grass, but he could see the damage left from the previous fighting in the scarred ground and burned swaths. The Shipil Company dockyards waited directly in Jasek’s line of march. Norfolk spread away from the tree farm south and east.
Here the Jade Falcons had found time to mass up in front of their DropShip. An Overlord, painted green, standing thirty-plus stories tall and dwarfing the Shipil dockyards with its empty “nest,” it straddled the tree farm and a portion of the dockyard parking area. With its heavy array of weaponry, equal to any combined-arms company, a DropShip was no small advantage in battle. Provided you were willing to risk such a valuable piece of technology.
Jasek would make certain they did.
Long barrels flashed with high-output energy as lasers and particle cannon speared out from the sloped sides of the vessel, drawing lines of destruction down toward the tree line where the Stormhammers and their Lyran allies began to emerge. Missiles dropped on falling arcs, and fireballs blossomed among the saplings as well as over the top of a Stormhammer VV1 Ranger. The vehicle erupted into flames, turned instantly into a charred husk. The soldiers inside never knew what hit them.
“Stormhammers, press the ground forces back. Always concentrate fire on the forwardmost units. Lyran command, work over that DropShip.”
Fortunately, with its weapons bays distributed equally around its massive bulk, the Overlord could bring only five or six of its primary weapons to bear. It evened the odds, but was not necessarily tipping the battle in favor of the Jade Falcons.
The Clan warriors had formed up in a double line fronting their DropShip as service trucks and salvage vehicles formed a steady caravan carrying personnel and salvage from the Shipil Company facilities to the waiting Overlord. The Falcons were not conceding the battle, but they were preparing for the worst-case scenario.
The Kelswa assault tank Jasek had chased from the river crawled up to the Jade Falcon fore, taking a place alongside the Shadow Hawk IIC he had seen earlier and an eighty-ton Warhammer IIC, which he hadn’t. Nacon armored scouts and Skanda light tanks formed the bulk of the Falcon armor command, wheeling about in short, sharp circles, waiting for Skye’s defenders to press forward, but Jasek also counted strategic missile carriers and a Schmitt among their numbers. Skadi swift attack VTOLs, a limping MiningMech outfitted with a missile system, APCs with Elementals clinging to the sides.
Still not enough.
Jasek pressed forward in a slow walk, his PPCs ramming out one bolt of man-made lightning after another. Vandel’s mobile HQ hung out just inside the tree line, but by rank and column the Stormhammers’ Archon’s Shield unit pushed with him, adding to his firepower, savaging the Falcon line with autocannon, missile barrages, and the red spears of laser fire.
A Gauss slug spanged off Jasek’s shoulder, close enough that he saw the silver blur through his ferroglass shield. He swallowed tightly and continued on, establishing a beachhead for his emerging forces. Two Storm Raiders leading their own fast-armor contingent. A Behemoth II, which was the equivalent of most any BattleMech. Demon medium tanks. Maxim hover transports. Then came the Lyrans with a trio of Manticore II heavies and their MHI transports, Pegasus scouts . . . and finally the Zeus.
It was the Lyrans’ ace in the hole, which he had kept hidden from the Jade Falcons on the entire drive forward. An eighty-ton assault ’Mech, also produced on Hesperus II. And also fresh into battle.
The first Manticore let fly with missiles and energy cannon, striking far wide of the massive Overlord. Jasek merely nodded, having a very good guess which team crewed that tank. It actually did miss an Overlord at five hundred meters. Its brethren made up for it, though, slicing PPCs into the DropShip’s armor-plated side. Missiles pockmarked and cracked into the hull as well. When the Zeus added its own PPC and lasers into the attack, the Lyrans were giving back nearly as good as the DropShip could dish out. What they lacked in skill they certainly made up for in heavy firepower.
Evened odds. Jasek had lost both of his aerospace fighters to an assault-class DropShip on the insertion run, so he had no way to counter the Jade Falcon VTOLs that came springing forward, their nose cannon blazing long streams of fire, but he was not totally without aerial support.
“Sergeant Maxwell, give them the silver hammer,” he ordered over a combat frequency.
Jasek had left his Long Tom artillery piece back at the bridge. A good stable platform under open sky. He couldn’t see Jergen Maxwell worrying over the elevation and angle as the artillery team levered the large barrel into place, but he could well imagine the man’s beefy hand grabbing on to the hammer of polished silver that the sergeant had custom-installed on the firing mechanism. Rock it forward, disengage safeties. And pull.
Three seconds later, a large fireball erupted next to an enemy Skanda, flipping it into an aerial roll that eventually dropped it onto its side.
Another blast tore the back end off a missile carrier. Missile loads exploded in sympathetic detonations, creating a fireball that dwarfed even the massive artillery round. Jasek felt the tremor through the ground and his Templar’s thick legs.
“Correct by point-two degrees. Lower elevation.” An artillery spotter, safe and secure inside Vandel’s mobile HQ. “Bring it home!”
Jasek traded his PPCs with a quartet of ruby-bright spears that slashed at him from the Warhammer. Autocannon pounded around him, hammering armor as well as the dirt around his feet as the Overlord added a portion of its own firepower to the Clan BattleMech’s. The Falcons had obviously identified him as the Stormhammers’ point leader.
Fair enough. “Primary units, slash at their front,” he ordered. “Secondaries, transfer fire to the Warhammer. Now!”
In a well-coordinated strike, half of Jasek’s line leaped forward, suffering the VTOLs’ line of death, and turned all weapons against the ’Hammer. Less than half hit, at the ranges they traded fire at, but it was still enough to set the Clan MechWarrior back on his heels. The BattleMech teetered and swayed, but held to its feet. The Long Tom dropped an artillery strike only sixty meters behind it, crushing a Nacon scout like a tin can, and no doubt worrying the Clanners a little more.
“Transfer all fire to the DropShip. If you can get an angle on it, work over the main ramps. Let’s clip their wings.”
The last of the noncombat vehicles had lined up for entry. Two of them fell under heavy attack and erupted in flames. A Gauss slug from the Kelswa clipped Jasek’s knee and nearly sent him sprawling. He corrected with a foot planted ahead of him, turned, and sliced at the tank in a cross-body shot.
By luck more than design, one PPC found a flaw in the assault tank’s armor, cutting deep over one tread well, severing the chevron-shaped belt and anchoring it in place.
As the concentrated firepower began to work over the ramp area in earnest, it was enough for the Falcons. In good order, the main units began to fall back for emergency boarding. Jasek’s artillery piece kept working over their lines, but the Falcons got some of their own back as VTOLs continued to pounce on any vehicle that strayed too far forward.
The Overlord shook with unleashed fury as its main drives lit off, blasting the ground beneath it with a bright plasma flame. Smoke and steam curled up around its sides and hid the main ramp from view as the Shadow Hawk and the Warhammer were last to board.
The VTOLs spun about and shot off to the southeast, running for the safety of their closest stronghold.
Knowing the kind of damage a drive flare could do if the DropShip decided to hover and drift over his line, Jasek scattered his units back. Most of them took cover at the forest’s edge. A few found safety inside the near fringes of Norfolk.
Jasek waited on the field, confident in his ability to outmaneuver such an ungainly—if powerful—craft.
The DropShip tried nothing spectacular. It lifted straight off, setting fire to a new ring of saplings as it drifted slightly off c
enter, but doing little more damage than it had already caused on its landing. Within moments it was a bright star in the sky.
“Good riddance,” Joss Vandel said.
Jasek nodded. “But not good-bye. They’ll be back.” He had almost hoped for a longer stand-up fight, giving him the chance to inflict heavier damage on the Clanners. But the Falcons had learned from their earlier mistakes, it seemed. They were far more ready to retreat and re-form.
They were in this for the long haul as well.
“They’ll be back,” he said again, though this time in a whisper quiet enough not to activate his mic. Louder, he ordered, “Get some men into the facilities, Joss. Battlesuits sweep through first, then combat engineers. Make certain that it’s safe—then we’ll see what kind of mess the Falcons have left for us. And send out the call.”
“Everyone?” Vandel asked.
“All of them. If they’re not needed or supporting a current firefight, I want the Tharkan Strikers and the Rangers to begin gathering here at Norfolk.” He bared his teeth, knowing what it was about to cost them. “It’s time for the Stormhammers to draw a line in the sand.”
And then they’d see just how badly the Jade Falcons wanted Skye. If it was enough to stand, and to die, for.
32
Miliano
Skye
15 December 3134
A late frost still dusted the pale grass and rimed Miliano’s streets where trees and buildings cast their protective shadows. Skye’s sun, drifting higher every morning as local winter gave over firmly to spring, beat down out of a perfect, cobalt sky to melt what it could reach. Here, ice crystals glittered. There, wisps of steam rolled over paved, damp-black surfaces.
Cold one moment. Sweating the next.
Tara Campbell understood that sensation very well.
Riding with Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner in his stretched hover-sedan, Tara stared out of the mirror-tinted window and attempted to catalog reasons for her unease. The streets and side lots surrounding Avanti Assemblies looked nearly deserted compared with her previous visits. She had expected to see military vehicles swarming around the facilities, with damaged ’Mechs and tanks waiting in a long queue for their time in the maintenance bays. Battlesuit infantry patrolling the streets. Support vehicles bringing in salvage and the wounded. An armed camp bursting at the seams, preparing for siege—that was how she had characterized Miliano last time.
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