Mercenary's Star

by William H. Keith

  Nearby, Grayson saw McCall and Clay leaning from the opened hatches of their own machines. The light ‘Mech pilots were still relatively fresh, not having sustained combat as long as the heavies. They now stood guard in the quickening tide as a Kurita pilot climbed out of one of the two captured Stingers. The other Stinger, still flat on its back, had taken a round in the head. Smoke still wisped above the gore-shocked scar where the ‘Mech's cockpit had been.

  Lori smoothed wet hair back from her face. "Captain, if you'd excuse me, I'd like to get dressed."

  Grayson smiled. "Pardon me for barging into your dressing room, and thanks for the ride." He reached up and punched the winch release that dropped the Shadow Hawk's ladder, then lowered himself to the ground, careful to avoid hot spots on the ‘Mech's armor.

  The water under the Hawk was knee-deep on him and felt wonderful when he splashed it across his face.

  * * * *

  "My Lord, there was no way we could have reached Hunter's Cape with more ‘Mechs or tanks. There were only two DropShips available, and small ones at that." Stiffly at attention, Kevlavic stood in Nagumo's office at the University of Regis, his eyes focused at the greenish sky through the window behind the Governor General's shoulder. He swallowed once before adding, "We did not expect such fierce resistance. Lord. We thought to find only battered survivors of the DropShip's crash. We were met by accurate and concentrated fire from at least two enemy ‘Mech lances—and possibly a full company. They were supported by a large and powerful guerrilla force with whom they must have established contact moments before our arrival."

  Nagumo sat quietly, neither accusing nor condemning. "I see. Anything else?"

  "There was one serious tactical and logistical flaw in the operation that contributed to our defeat."

  "Yes?”

  "The DropShip Subotai arrived at the LZ almost eight minutes after the Xao was down and unloaded. The light tanks were not on the field until my lance was already being forced to withdraw. Had we been able to operate together, things might have gone differently."

  "Perhaps," said Nagumo, his face impassive, voice noncommital. Close support between ‘Mechs and ground support units was always a touchy subject during analysis of BattleMech operations. Some commanders swore that close cooperation between troops in light, swift vehicles and the lumbering ‘Mechs could vastly increase a ‘Mech unit's combat effectiveness. Others argued just as vigorously that ground units got in the way, that they slowed the ‘Mechs and hindered-their freedom to fire, that accidents and misidentification too frequently caused troops armed with anti- ‘Mech weaponry to fire into friendly, valuable machines. Nagumo was a traditionalist who felt ‘Mech operations should remain separate from conventional orders of battle, but he was open-minded enough to allow a subordinate such as Kevlavic to approach things in his own way. No matter now, for the blame would rest squarely on his own shoulders.

  "Perhaps," Nagumo said again. "Then, too, a second lance of BattleMechs might have served better. What is the final tally of damage?"

  Kevlavic noted his commander's use of the word "damage," rather than "casualties", but lost no time pondering it. In BattleMech units, equipment was far more valuable than lives. Humans could be replaced, but in an increasingly lostech universe, it was becoming harder and harder to replace man's war machines.

  "Lord, both light ‘Mechs were lost, one with severe damage to the cockpit. We must assume the enemy will be able to field one against us, but it seems unlikely that their service facilities will be up to repairing the other. For the same reason, we can assume their Rifleman is permanently out of action."

  "We can assume nothing of the sort," Nagumo replied, still quiet His eyes sparked in the harsh office lighting. "There are industrial complexes in rebel-controlled regions, centers for servicing industrial or AgroMechs, especially among the plantations. We haven't found them all... yet."

  "Y-yes, my Lord. The Orion was badly damaged, but retired from the field under its own power. My senior Tech estimates that seventy hours of work will put it back in service again and that all necessary parts and tools are available. My Marauder suffered considerable damage to its armor, and its left arm PPC was knocked out Again, nothing that cannot be repaired in our facilities here. Of. twelve Galleons, four were destroyed."

  "Not to mention one aircraft shot down," Nagumo interjected impatiently, "and the second so badly damaged it may not fly again." He was particularly worried about the losses to his AeroSpace Fighter force. First the losses during the battle in space, and now this....

  "The enemy may be able to recover one or more of those tanks," he continued, almost to himself. "The report from the Xao's Captain suggests that two of the Galleons were merely trapped in mud. When the tide recedes, the rebels may be able to free them with the help from their ‘Mechs. Colonel, I fear this... this debacle will not look good on your record at all.”

  “No, my Lord."

  "In fact, I wonder if we shouldn't be looking for someone more...adaptable to lead your regiment.”

  “As...as my Lord commands."

  Nagumo appeared to consider, then smiled. The sight of the Governor General's teeth did not put Kevlavic at ease.

  "No, Colonel. I believe that a man must learn from his mistakes. You will have another chance to demonstrate that you are capable of learning."

  "Thank you, my Lord!"

  "Not at all, not at all. In fact, I direct you to take as much of your regiment as you need to hunt these outsiders down. I want that ‘Mech unit destroyed, Colonel, before they can offer effective help to the insurgents. You are not to make any more assumptions about the enemy's abilities or weaknesses or strengths. Mistaken assumptions will lead you to underestimate him, to your sorrow. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, my Lord!"

  "My patience will not extend to another disaster such as that at Hunter's Cape. You shall not fail me again. Clear?”

  “Perfectly, my Lord!"

  "Then go. I want a progress report from you daily and an operational plan by this time tomorrow. Dismissed."

  * * * *

  Use Martinez leaned over the table that had been improvised from a strip of sheet metal laid across a pair of upright steel drums on the beach. A freshening breeze from the sea and a darkening sky tugged at her curls. Grayson held the map they were examining flat between both hands. She straightened up, shaking her head.

  "Captain, do you know what you're asking me to do?"

  Grayson's glance shifted across to Brasednewic, who fingered the grip on the laser rifle slung over his shoulder and looked away.

  His expression as much as said, This is your argument, not mine.

  "Captain Martinez," Grayson began formally, "do you know what will happen if you don't?" Though not aboard her vessel, he used the title to remind her of the responsibility of her command. Which she's already aware of or she wouldn' toe so set against it, he thought

  "The Phobos is a space ship, Captain," she said, "and, at the moment, not an especially good one. We've got the leaks fixed, but...."

  "If we leave the Phobos where she is, the Dracos will be back," Grayson said. "And, this time, more of them. We lucked out today, lucked out plain and simple, because their attack wasn't coordinated, because they weren't expecting us to be ready for them, and because we had some help from Tollen and his people. If we stay here and fight them again, we'll be wiped out And if we take off inland with these people"—he stabbed at Brasednewic with a thumb—"how long do you think the Phobos will remain intact?"

  "She's safe enough from storms."

  "I'm not talking about storms! Look, a DropShip is a small mountain of Star League technology and spare parts! Computers! Weapons! A fusion power plant and enough power module relays to run an army of BattleMechs! Conduits, piping, tubing, and wiring; semiconductors, superconductors, circuit boards, function chips, neural flow circuitry, and God knows what else! The Kurita commanders know a DropShip crashed here, and they know she's relatively intact. Int
act enough to shoot down their AeroSpace Fighters! They'll have every DropShip they can muster back here, and an army to boot, just as quick as they can manage to gather the forces and fuel the ships! They'll expect us to salvage what we can, of course, but how much do you think we could salvage, starting now? How long do you think we have?"

  "Nagumo is not slow about recovering other bits of technology," Brasednewic added. "If one of our ‘Mechs is abandoned or destroyed, he has Techs swarming over it within hours, even if we blow it with a self-destruct charge."

  "They'd dismantle the Phobos for the armor plate, if nothing else.” Grayson said.

  "I know, I know. I don't want old Phobos to fall into their hands any more than you do..."

  "Then you have to see that this is the only way! At worst, we sink the Phobos to the bottom of the Azure Sea, someplace where Kurita recovery craft can't possibly get at her!"

  "What about my crew? I can't do this alone, you know!"

  "It'll be dangerous. But you have a skimmer ready to take you all off. You'll abandon ship if you have to, but we've got to try!"

  She turned from the map and gazed across the line of breakers at the Phobos. The tide had gone out since the battle, leaving a broad stretch of beach between them and the foaming breakers. The DropShip seemed higher in the water now that the tide was lower. The crude repairs to the gash in her hull were visible, layers of sheet metal and armor tack welded across the hole. Streams of water spewed from vents in her sides, indicating where damage control parties were at work pumping out the sea water that had flooded her lower decks after the crash. Small, blue-black clouds scudded beneath the lowering overcast.

  "I don't think anyone has ever tried something like this before."

  "That doesn't mean it can't be done!"

  She turned again and looked at the map. It was laboriously hand-drawn, and Grayson wondered about its accuracy. Brasednewic had produced it when Grayson had asked him about the geography of the coastline.

  "Okay, we're... where?"

  With a grime-coated finger, Brasednewic indicated a strip of beach close by a hook of land jutting north into the sea. "Here. Hunter's Cape, it's called."

  "And you want me to sail the Phobos—by sea!—all the way across to...here!"

  Grayson nodded. 'To Ostafjord, yes. At the mouth of the Skraelingas River. The village of Westlee is here, across the bay."

  "Five hundred kilometers!"

  "More, since you'll have to skirt south of this island here."

  "And you want to tear apart my reactor to do it..."

  "Not 'tear apart!' Look—" He reached for a compad and stylus, illuminated the smooth data screen, and began sketching in lines of light. "The Phobos uses a small fusion reactor to heat and compress hydrogen up to the fusion point, with powerful magnetic fields to contain and direct what amounts to a small, controlled, and ongoing fusion explosion, right?"

  "Very small, and a lot cleaner. Yes."

  "Well, the design would also let you simply heat hydrogen, turn it into a super-heated gas, and blast that aft through the tubes as reaction mass. That was the principle of the first nuclear spacecraft. You pitch reaction mass aft, and it shoves the spacecraft forward."

  "It's also a lot cruder, and a lot less efficient than a thermonuclear field pulse."

  "Right, but we don't need efficiency here."

  "No, what we need is fuel! We ruptured our hydrogen tanks in the landing and lost what little was left of our fuel reserves. We're going to have to cook some more H if we're to move anywhere."

  "That's just it. We don't need to use H if we convert the drive to a simple reaction mass engine." He sketched rapidly. "We jury-rig intake valves here... here... here... and pump in sea water. The pumps circulate the water through the fusion reactor, which burns the H you have left just to produce heat and keep your weapons powered up. Steam is vented out the tubes. We flood the ship—"

  "Flood!"

  "Just a little! Just enough to give it some balance and keep the jet tubes underwater, and to give her a bit of a list. Steam blasts out the tubes under water, and you travel in the direction of your list!"

  She chewed at her lip, staring at Grayson's doodles. "There are a lot of practical problems."

  Grayson waved stylus and pad. "I don't give a damn about practical problems," he said. "You know your ship, and you have a small army of engineering Techs and officers who can lick practical problems. If not, we'll give them guns and stick 'em in with the foot soldiers!"

  Use tore her eyes from the pad and brought them up to meet Grayson's. "God damn," she said, and the words were almost reverent. "You want me to convert my DropShip to a steam-powered sailing ship!" She shook her head, then moved the compad aside so she could again study Brasednewic's chart. "I must be getting as crazy as you are, Captain. You’ve got me thinking about ways to..."

  She stopped short. "Look, assuming we can do it, what about our Kurita friends? Something as big as a DropShip quietly cruising across their ocean. I don't think they're going to care for that!"

  "They know the Phobos is here, at Hunter's Cape. You make the conversion as fast as you can.... Before tonight if possible."

  'Tonight!" The word was a wail of protest and horror.

  "That would be lovely, thank you! I'm not sure how much speed you'll get out of her, but you have unlimited fuel, and the fusion-heated steam is bound to give her quite a shove. Your speed may be limited by the ship's structural integrity, but I imagine you'll be moving at a pretty good clip. You'll travel at night. If you leave tonight, we can probably count on this cloud cover holding, and that will protect you from infrared detectors in orbit. I doubt that they have radar scanner satellites in orbit. That'd be impractical on a planet with this much jungle mixed with open terrain. By the time they get a ship here—tomorrow sometime, I imagine—you're well out of their way. Their first assumption will be that the Phobos broke up in the surf or in high winds. They're not going to believe that we'd actually try to sail her across 500 klicks of open sea."

  "You've got that right."

  "If the cloud cover breaks, there's a chance you'll be spotted, of course. With luck, you could make it all the way to this fjord without being spotted, and the enemy'll be left thinking the Phobos is at the bottom of the Azure Sea."

  "It wouldn't take much for them to be right" She looked again at the wreck of the DropShip, rolling slightly with the swell now that most of the water had been pumped from her lower compartments.

  "You're right" Martinez said at last. "It's worth a try, though God help me, I don't know how we'll be able to sail tonight!"

  "We can't wait for tomorrow," Grayson said. "It'll take them at least until then to collect an army to throw at us. But no longer. Not if they want to stop us from stripping the DropShip. They'll be here tomorrow, say, by local noon. You've got to be a good hundred kilometers out to sea by then if you don't want their air cover to spot you."

  "You'll lend a hand with your people, and some ‘Mechs for muscle?"

  "Of course," Grayson said, thinking about the light ‘Mechs now aboard the Phobos, unloading the Locust. "In fact, it would probably be a good idea if you took one of the ‘Mechs along with you. We don't know what you'll run into, once you reach land."

  "I wouldn't mind someone riding shotgun."

  "Fine. Now, which one? I need the Locust with me." He trusted Lori's instincts as a scout, and her ‘Mech's speed would be wasted aboard the Phobos. "And the Wolverine and the Rifleman are my heavies. You could have Debrowski, Yorulis, or Khaled. I'd suggest Khaled. I know he's had plenty of combat experience. I don't know how either of the other two would handle independent duty."

  She chewed at her lip, then said, "Khaled, then. The guy gives me the shivers, but you're right about his experience. It shows, even if he doesn't say much."

  Grayson nodded. "Good. I'll tell him."

  "Then we'd better get started. So help me, Captain Carlyle, if I get seasick on my deck, I'm going to see to it that you hav
e the fun of cleaning it up!"

  Grayson watched Martinez stride down the beach, waving for a skimmer to carry her across the water to the Phobos. The plan to save the DropShip was one born of desperation. So much could go wrong....

  Shaking his head, he rolled up the map and returned it to Brasednewic. "What's next for the rest of us, then?" he asked. "Devic Erudin had planned for us to meet with your Revolutionary Council."

  "I could take you there, I suppose," the big man said, "but it's a long march through thick terrain. All jungle and swamp, like this"— he waved behind him toward the treeline—"and worse."

  "Impenetrable for ‘Mechs?"

  "No. At least, I don't think so. We've got some ‘Mechs, you know, but no one who can pilot them in combat.”

  “How's that?"

  "Oh, we have lots of guys and gals that can operate ‘Mechs because of the many plantations burned out from the jungle below the Basin Rim through here. Most of them use AgroMechs to plant and harvest their crops, and there's a big logging operation off to the east that uses big, four-legged ‘Mechs to cut, strip, and drag trees. Piloting an AgroMech isn't all that different from running one of those things." He gestured toward Grayson's ShadowHawk, standing empty on the beach nearby.

  "We've got some BattleMechs, too, left over from the little planetary defense force from the days before Kurita took over. And some were brought in by government militia Mech Warriors who got tired of doing Nagumo's garbage details. Those militiamen are not very well trained, especially not against other ‘Mechs."

  That was understandable, Grayson thought, because the Kurita occupation forces would not wish to encourage an active BattleMech force with well-trained pilots within their puppet government's army. They would use Verthandian government ‘Mech lances as oversized policemen on riot-control duty to scatter mobs and to awe disgruntled populations, rather than as actual combat units.

  "Anyway, AgroMechs follow those trails all the time. Hell, most of 'em are old forest logging roads made by LoggerMechs in the first place, years ago. Our BattleMechs don't get out much, but when they do, they don't get into trouble if they stay on the main forest roads.