Warrior: En Garde (The Warrior Trilogy, Book One): BattleTech Legends, #57

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The expression on Joss’s face darkened like the stormy Pacifica sky. “We scanned nothing from the nadir jump point.”

  Kell led his guests across the ferrocrete toward the ’Mech bays. “And you wouldn’t, General, because they took care against that. The problem is that they did not take Captain Janos Vandermeer into account.”

  Sortek laughed. “Is that old pirate still in charge of the Cucamulus? I though he’d be dead by now.”

  Kell shook his head. “He’s too mean to die.” At the blank stares of both Joss and Redburn, he quickly explained. “Vandermeer, over the years, has collected an enormous amount of information about alternate jump points. Most JumpShip captains use the zenith or nadir points of the system sun’s gravity well to jump in and out of a system because that’s where it’s easiest to recharge the Kearny-Fuchida drives. But a safe jump point merely needs to be sufficiently distant from any object of mass in a system. Many of the early Star League captains used to bring in their ships much closer to a system’s planets to save the DropShips time traveling to and from the planet.”

  Joss’s grin lit her pretty face. “Vandermeer has the Cucamulus in a position where he spotted the Kurita vessels?”

  Kell nodded. “That’s a confirmed kill, General. The second your JumpShip appeared in system, Janos reported Kurita preparations.” Kell looked at his watch. “Their DropShips are scheduled to land in three hours.” He looked up at Sortek. “So, Colonel, did they ship you out on this tour just to look, or did your Prince give you a toy to play with?”

  “What?”

  Kell stepped into the ’Mech bay, and the three visitors stopped just inside the doorway. Kell waved his hand at the empty hangar. “The Kell Hounds own half the Kurita spies on Pacifica. We know the ETA, landing sites, and troop strengths for two of the three DropShips. As you can see, my hounds are out waiting for our visitors.” Kell hid the situation’s grim seriousness behind a smile. “Would you like to join us?”

  Sortek laughed, but turned to Hauptmann-General Joss. “What do you think, General?”

  Before she could answer, Kell cut in with one last comment. “Trust me, Sarah, this’ll beat anything else Pacifica has to offer in the way of nightlife.”

  The Kiken’s pilot brought the Overlord-class DropShip to a soft landing beyond the night-cloaked hills where the main body of the Kell Hounds waited hidden. Storm clouds boiled up and quickly filled the hole burned through them by the DropShip’s ion engines. Thin threads of argent lightning crackled through the clouds as the energy released into the atmosphere built and flowed through the storm system.

  The egg-shaped DropShip settled down on the moist ground in an artificial fog. Its weapons turrets revolved like bug eyes on stalks as the gunners sought out any hostile targets. Air hissed from within the pressurized ship as the crew blew the hatches. Ramps descended from the ’Mech bays, allowing the ’Mechs to troop slowly from their steel cocoons. As the Kurita spies had reported, the Kell Hounds had no fighter cover up. As nearly as the Kuritans could tell, the Hounds did not know that their ships had landed.

  Daniel Allard glanced over at his ops board for the fiftieth time to reassure himself that the “landline” indicator remained lit. While it burned its cool blue, Allard’s communications came and went without fear of interception on a slender optic fiber stretched out behind his Valkyrie. On the other end, Colonel Kell waited in his Thunderbolt.

  “We have confirmation, Patrick. This is part of the Second Sword of Light. I’ve got a company of Panthers, a mixed medium lance of SHD-2K Shadow Hawks with PPCs, and Griffins—two of each.”

  Kell’s voice crackled back into Dan’s ears. “What else do they have, Dan? They should be unloading the heavy stuff now.”

  Dan studied his scanner displays again and swallowed hard. He toggled between the two reports the battle computer offered him on the scanner screen. “Here’s the bad news, Patrick. I’ve got a Dragon, perhaps one of the new Grand Dragon designs.”

  Dan ordered up magnification on his main monitor and keyed the reference number—0-931787-84-Xp-74d—into his battle computer. The cursor blinked down at the bottom of the screen, then the computer redrew the complete scanner diagram and added the stored information from that file. “I’ve got a match. It is a Grand Dragon, so it’s sporting a PPC in the right arm and a third medium laser in the right torso.” Dan looked up at a light flashing on the scanner display. “This is odd…”

  “What, Dan?” Patrick Kell’s voice remained even, despite the commanding urgency in his words.

  “The Panthers are forming up into a spearhead, with the medium lance on the west flank and the Grand Dragon in the middle. They’re coming right at you, but the Dragon’s not moving. It seems to be waiting for something.”

  Kell’s light laugh traveled to Dan ungarbled and brought with it the assurance of victory. “Perfect. The lighter ’Mechs are drifting out to establish a perimeter without the Dragon’s firepower. Remember the plan, Dan. The Kuritans consider ‘five’ to be a lucky number and things in fives to be an omen. Let’s take five ’Mechs out in the initial ambush, and it’ll spook them. Coordinates transmitting…now. Good luck.”

  “And to you, Patrick. Severing landline and returning to command of my lance.” Dan punched the blue landline button and it died. He radioed a tightbeam broadcast back to Brand, and his lieutenant replayed it for Meg Lang and Eddie Baker. It provided them with targets for their initial attacks, and secondary targets after that. Dan quickly reviewed the assignments and shook his head. It would not be pretty.

  The eastern wing of the Panther formation came up over the hills surrounding the landing site. One Panther, which Dan’s computer labeled “Able”—the last one in the wedge—stood atop the hillock, only a hundred meters from where Dan’s Valkyrie lay beneath a scanner baffle. The Panther’s head swung slowly from side to side as though the MechWarrior inside imagined himself the lord of all he surveyed.

  Dan trained his medium laser’s targeting crosshairs on “Able,” but brought his LRM sight to rest and lock-on to the next Panther—“Bravo”—in line. He kept both target icons following the appropriate ’Mechs almost automatically as he focused his attention on the spearhead’s lead Panther. It had stopped short and brought up the PPC on its right arm.

  A light flared in Dan’s cockpit, signaling the attack. “Fire!” Dan stabbed his thumb down on the left-hand joystick and launched a flight of LRMs at the farther of the two Panthers. Six missiles struck their target. Five smashed into the left side of the ’Mech’s chest and succeeded in chipping away armor in a glowing metal rain. The sixth missile exploded against the other side of “Bravo’s” chest, but failed to check the involuntary rotation the other missiles had imparted to the Panther.

  Dan’s medium laser lanced into “Able” and seared an ugly scar into the armor of its right arm. SRMs launched by Brand’s Commando and Lang’s Wasp peppered the “Able” from head to toe. Medium laser fire pierced the smoke and flames left behind by the missile, and shredded the armor on the ’Mech’s right leg. Dan saw myomer-fiber muscles corded around titanium ’Mech bones. Able’s doomed. That leg won’t take much more damage.

  He brushed the fingers of his right hand across the toggle switch, and his scanner immediately reported “Bravo’s” condition. Laser fire from Baker’s Jenner had added to the damage his LRMs had done. All the armor from the Panther’s left torso had been blown or lased away to expose the ’Mech’s circuitry and other vital parts to the murderous fire from the ambush. Hanging in tatters, the armor on the right leg and right torso showed further damage from the Jenner’s battery of medium lasers.

  Dan looked up and saw Cat Wilson’s black and red Marauder step from ambush. The hunched-over ’Mech thrust its right claw at the wedge’s lead Panther. The Marauder’s right PPC spat a jagged bolt of man-made lighting. The blue fire licked greedily at the Panther’s chest and instantly vaporized all the armor it touched. The Marauder’s twin medium lasers slashed surgically
at the Panther’s left arm and stripped it of armor as though it were so much bark off a tree. The Marauder’s autocannon blasted the Panther and gouged massive craters in the armor over the ’Mech’s right thigh.

  Bethany Connor’s Crusader, moving up through the jungle behind Wilson’s Marauder, similarly targeted the lead Panther. Panels flicked open on the Crusader’s forearms. Two flights of LRMs burned into the night sky. The missiles spiraled down into the Panther, and one complete flight crushed the ’Mech’s chest like a hammer blow. Fragments of armor, frozen in midflight by the strobing explosions, filled the air like a flight of frightened birds. The rest of the Crusader’s missiles tore at the Panther’s right leg, blasting away armor.

  Fire from Ward’s Assault Lance ripped mercilessly into the Panther designated “Echo.” Diane McWilliams’s Rifleman and Mary Lasker’s Trebuchet combined their fire to strip armor off their target. The Trebuchet’s twin LRMs flights bracketed the Panther and blasted every shred of armor from both arms. Four of the LRMs smashed into the Panther’s head and ripped away part of its armor, giving the ’Mech a torn lip and a scorched face. The Rifleman’s autocannon fire easily peeled off the Panther’s chest armor, while its pair of medium lasers melted all but the last of the enemy ’Mech’s right leg.

  Colonel Kell and Lieutenant Finn combined their attack to hideous effect on the Panther that Dan’s readout nicknamed “Foxtrot.” Kell trained his Thunderbolt’s large laser on the ’Mech’s right torso, and the ruby beam boiled the armor away like honey on a stove. Finn’s Orion added its medium laser to the wound and burned through to the interior. Sparks flashed as circuits melted on the enemy ’Mech. The thick black smoke curling from the wounds suggested that the laser had burned away a number of heat sinks. Without them, no ’Mech could operate for long, especially a PPC-armed Panther.

  Major Salome Ward in her Wolverine, and her lancemate, Lieutenant Fitzhugh in his Catapult, concentrated their fire on one of the modified Shadow Hawks. The Catapult’s two launching racks, located where its birdlike ’Mech should have had wings, flipped open to corkscrew thirty LRMs through the Pacifica darkness. They struck in waves and exploded thunderously. With so much fire concentrated on the Shadow Hawk’s left arm, it appeared utterly consumed. As the fire melted into the night, the Hawk’s left limb lay completely vulnerable. Mangled beyond use, the hand and forearm hung frozen in place.

  The Wolverine’s SRM flight exploded in an even line across the Shadow Hawk’s torso. Though the Wolverine’s autocannon and medium laser blasted and burned huge slabs of armor from the Shadow Hawk’s left side, they had failed to breach the armor. The medium lasers of Fitzhugh’s Catapult sliced through the Shadow Hawk’s right-leg armor, laying bare the myomer muscle. This left the ’Mech scanner-tagged “Golf” with the appearance of having only one of its trouser legs on.

  Leftenant Redburn’s Hunchback stepped into the open and chased a Griffin out from amid the flames and smoke. The massive, boxy autocannon perched on the Hunchback’s right shoulder vomited fire and metal, a hellish stream that tore through the Griffin’s chest like a crosscut saw. Armor fragmented and spun away in jagged shards of waste metal. Simultaneously, the Hunchback’s medium lasers chopped armor from the Griffin’s left flank and arm.

  The ferocity of Redburn’s assault staggered the Griffin. The potency of Hauptmann-General Sarah Joss’s attack finished it. Joss’s Warhammer seemed to regard the stricken Griffin pitilessly as the ’Mech raised its PPCs.

  One blue bolt flashed from the Warhammer and probed the Griffin’s half-melted left arm with a savage caress. Armor exploded and rocketed across the battlefield as blue lightning further mauled the damaged arm. Joss’s attack left the ’Mech’s limb twisted and fused to the shoulder in a fire-blackened lump.

  The second tongue of electrical fire launched itself into the Griffin’s heart, stabbing into the chest and melting all that it touched. Fire roared through the ’Mech’s torso and jetted out through every heat sink and maintenance crawlway in its body. The Griffin shuddered and twitched as the blue lighting tightened every myomer muscle. The ’Mech fell back heavily, the center of its chest a cherry hell pit, and lay staring up at the sky.

  Confidence flared to life in Dan’s heart. We’ve hammered them hard and badly damaged six ’Mechs—better than we’d planned. They’ve got to pull back.

  Then he looked up as another ’Mech marched from the DropShip’s titanium womb. The ground trembled beneath its massive feet. His scanners instantly studied it and provided a data readout. Humanoid in configuration, the ’Mech’s hunched shoulders hid its small head. Huge wing-like counterbalances for the arms projected up past the shoulders. The left arm ended in a crude club, while the scanners reported that the right arm and the twin chest muzzles contained PPCs.

  Oh, my God! Dan’s mouth went dry as the Awesome filled his monitors. He shuddered as his confidence wavered like a candle in a tornado. Suddenly, he remembered what they always said at the New Avalon academy, joking to hide the terror in the thought:

  “It’s not over until the assault ’Mechs have finished playing.”

  Chapter 21

  PACIFICA (CHARA III)

  ISLE OF SKYE

  LYRAN COMMONWEALTH

  1 MARCH 3027

  The Kurita Awesome lumbered forward like a starving man toward a feast. The pilot raised the ’Mech’s mace-like left fist as a threat while surveying the battlefield. He trumpeted a widebeam challenge to anyone foolish enough to fight him and began to recite his impressive list of battles and victories. It was apparent from the casual way the Awesome moved and feinted toward possible foes that the pilot did not expect anyone to be so foolish as to pick up the gauntlet.

  Ardan Sortek’s Victor waded through burning Panthers and stepped over the fallen Griffin. Resplendent in the blue and gold of the Davion Heavy Guards, it looked utterly out of place among the ’Mechs camouflaged for jungle warfare. The battlefield flames skittered in glittering highlights off the humanoid ’Mech’s gold trim, but failed to pierce the dark canopy over the cockpit. As smoke from the Griffin twisted up and around it like offertory incense, the Victor waited.

  The Awesome turned, and the pilot shifted the mace in a salute to his enemy. The mace fell and the PPC mounted on the right arm came up in the same motion. The battle slowed as the two massive assault ’Mechs opened the gates of hell to attack one another.

  Three ropes of icy blue plasma groped over the Victor. Wherever they touched, armor melted like wax under a blowtorch. The PPC beams encircled the Victor’s legs in an energy snare and tightened. Armor bled down the legs of Sortek’s ’Mech in steaming rivulets, nearly stripping the right limb naked. Yet the horrible energy failed to crush the Victor as it would have any of the other ’Mechs on the field.

  Sortek’s counterattack blazed forward in a cyclone of sizzling metal and ruby spears of light. The projectiles streaming from the autocannon in the Victor’s right arm flayed armor from the Awesome’s right leg. The medium lasers on the Victor’s left arm stabbed out in tandem, slicing long slivers of armor from the left side of the Awesome’s chest. The Victor’s SRMs, launched from four tubes over the assault ’Mech’s left breast, blasted sheets of armor from the Awesome’s mace-arm.

  Again the Awesome’s PPCs flared to life, their blue energy vipers striking at random. One gnawed armor from the torso of Sortek’s Victor. The other two nipped armor from the ’Mech’s arms, but Ardan Sortek’s machine gave no sign of noticing. Instead, it returned the fire, giving better than it got.

  The Victor’s autocannon burst scourged the remaining armor from the Awesome’s left arm, but failed to destroy the now-exposed myomer muscles. Meanwhile, Ardan’s lasers vaporized armor on the Awesome’s left leg and right arm, and his four SRMs ripped an angry scar across the enemy ’Mech’s head. The Awesome flinched, as though the pilot were shaken by the explosions.

  As Dan watched the war between the two titanic ’Mechs, he realized that the rest of the battle had stoppe
d in an informal truce around the two assault ’Mechs. All of them knew that those two pilots would decide the outcome of their petty struggle. This battle would make history, and the two MechWarriors fighting it were destined for immortality. Just to be present was an honor any MechWarrior would cherish.

  The Awesome again belched out three spears of artificial lightning. One drilled to the center of the Victor, and managed to punch a small hole through Sortek’s armor without breaching it entirely. The energy singed the gyrostabilizer deep in the ’Mech’s chest, however. The Victor shuddered and staggered, but Sortek’s cool hand on the controls righted the enormous machine before it could topple. The other two shots, which melted angry weals on the Victor’s left arm and torso, did nothing but burn armor and paint from their target.

  Sortek’s angry counterpunch slammed into the Awesome’s left shoulder, stripping the myomer muscles from the limb, then snapped the titanium bone like a dry stick. The heavy limb spun off through the smoky darkness and blasted a hapless Panther to the ground.

  The Victor’s lasers stabbed out from its left wrist to slash armor from the Awesome’s torso. Metal steam rose from the lasers’ ragged incisions, and molten metal dripped from the wounds. At the same time, the SRMs spiraling out from the Victor’s chest exploded great craters in the armor of the Awesome’s left thigh.

  Sortek, fighting against the damaged gyro, boldly jetted his Victor to the right. The tactical shift caught the Awesome’s pilot by surprise because few warriors ever expected an assault ’Mech to be jump-capable. The Kurita pilot’s attempt to pursue came too slowly. He hurriedly triggered the Awesome’s PPCs, but only one of them hit. It lashed out at the Victor’s right flank and boiled away armor, but that did not stop Ardan Sortek.

  Sortek’s Victor circled and closed like a tiger smelling blood. Two laser lances skewered the Awesome’s left flank, eroding armor and washing it away in a flash of ruby light. SRMs drilled through the hole where the Awesome’s left arm had once hung and landed inside the ’Mech’s thick chest. The missile hits splashed coolant from shattered heat sinks throughout the ’Mech.