Target of Opportunity

by Blaine Lee Pardoe

  It was a sign of the times. The Republic was weak. The Dragon’s Fury knew it, the Capellan Chancellor knew it, and his own leader, Jessica Marik, knew it. Ripe for the taking . . . that’s what the Republic was. But taking and holding, those were two different things.

  He didn’t know the origin of the information he was downloading from the SAFE spy satellite—most likely beamed from the planet, or possibly a JumpShip passing through the system. He didn’t care.

  “Data dump complete, Captain,” the comm officer announced.

  He grabbed a handhold and levered himself around to face his dedicated workstation. Grasping the armrests of his chair, he seated himself firmly, allowing the material of his uniform and the surface of the chair to establish the connection that would keep him in place. “Transfer to my station,” he commanded. Smoothing his left hand across his salt-and-pepper hair, cut in a maintenance-free flattop, he surveyed the information. Reports from numerous sources, some confirmed, many not. SAFE’s information-gathering was impaired by the HPG network failure, just like everyone else’s. The available intelligence, however, was delivered to operatives such as Casson using their own network of spy satellites to secretly transmit data.

  Most of the material was boring. Updates on the Liao incursion into The Republic . . . old news. Reports on the Jade Falcon presence on Skye. The usual rumblings of discontent on Terra. His eyes skittered across the screen impatiently until the data on Wyatt finally came up. Poor little Wyatt. Now that they had a working HPG, it seemed inevitable that other splinter groups and governments would make a play to control the planet. Not him. Taking an isolated planet, even one with a working HPG, wasn’t worth the risks.

  One line toward the end of the report caught his attention. According to SAFE’s source, a long-term operative—some might say a turncoat—planted on Wyatt over a decade ago, a single ComStar adept was credited with restoring the HPG. The operative suggesed that this man, Tucker Harwell, might possess the knowledge and skills to restore other HPGs, perhaps hundreds of them. His personnel profile, complete with holoimages, was attached.

  Captain Casson leaned back in his seat and stared at the screen. A single man who could control the fate of entire worlds—now that was a prize to be captured, taken back to the Protectorate. His little fragment of the once-mighty Free Worlds League would suddenly be a power in the Inner Sphere again.

  The details were sketchy; still, he was inclined to believe an onworld, deep-cover operative, even if the data was unfiltered, unverified and unconfirmed. That level of risk, he was willing to accept. A lopsided smile curved one side of his mouth. Too many times in his career confirmed intel had failed him, and he had developed a sense for the information he could trust.

  “Captain Hassin,” he called to the dark-skinned JumpShip captain. “Are we in range of the Wyatt system?”

  The man checked his command-seat display in the center of the JumpShip bridge. “We are two jumps away,” he replied, his deep voice rich with an accent Casson never had been able to identify. “But with the lithium-fusion battery, we can double-jump and get there quickly.”

  “What are the available jump points?”

  “I assume you mean pirate points?” Hassin asked in return, his bland tone somehow managing to convey his opinion of risking the safety of his ship by jumping to a point in space where a temporary gravity well, commonly called a pirate point, could be leveraged.

  “Yes. Do we have any pirate points on file?” Pirate jump points were tricky to calculate, and there were risks in using them. But successful use of a pirate point brought a JumpShip into a system undetected, and much closer to the planet than the traditional jump points.

  The captain of the Halsey manipulated the small keypad on his command seat armrest. “The Free Worlds League attacked the Wyatt system several times during the Third Succession War. On two occasions, they used pirate points. We have them on file, but there is no record of their use in more than a hundred years.”

  “Pick one that will get us close to Wyatt prime.”

  “Yessir,” the captain replied. “This will take some time,” he added. He didn’t bother to disguise the concern in his voice as he continued, “I assume I don’t need to remind you of the risks associated with this kind of jump.”

  Ivan gave him a broad grin. “I’m well aware of the risks. Begin your calculations and prep the ship for departure.” He pushed off from the seat toward the pressure door at the rear of the bridge.

  “Where can I reach you?” asked Hassin.

  “I’ll be on the Deathclaw,” he replied, “meeting with my staff. We have an operation to plan. I have an appointment with someone named Tucker Harwell.” As he moved through the door, he missed the puzzled looks of the bridge crew.

  Book Two

  Blake’s Blood

  New Earth

  One Jump from Terra

  The Secaucus Plains

  The Jihad

  Demi-Precentor Seagrams Harwell angled his LNC-25-01 Lancelot toward the grass of the rolling plains. Seagrams ran a long-range scan of the fields and saw a mass of the magnetic signatures of fusion reactors at several kilometers. Dark purple clouds rolled in over the fields and the occasional flash of lightning flickered down as the winds whipped the tall grass. Eerie shadows seemed to spring to life out on the plains with each burst of electrical energy. The use of numerous nuclear weapons had devastated the weather patterns of New Earth and countless other worlds. It was as if the planets themselves were screaming in agony, an agony that Harwell and the others often believed they could feel.

  Seagrams had seen too much fighting the last few years. Thanks to young Devlin Stone, they had taken back several worlds, but at a horrific cost. His Com Guards unit was a fragment of its former self. It had once flown the Star League banner above its own. Now there was no more Star League. It had melted away into history, just like the original commanding officer of his division, who had been ambushed and slaughtered six months earlier. The unit itself was fading into history right in front of him. Thanks to the Word of Blake, many of the personnel who had reported to him were dead, wounded, or had deserted to join their former brethren. His personal losses were far too many to count. Fortunately, his two sons were safe . . . for now.

  “Form up on my position,” he signaled to the remains of his company. “We’ll lay down a pattern of suppression fire, rolling forward. Infantry will hold the right flank with the Demons. Sweep Lance will form on the center and charge the Word of Blake’s lead units as the artillery barrage passes to their rear—while they’re still dazed.” Elsewhere on the plains, other elements of Stone’s forces were already starting to move forward, slamming into the Blake forces, probing, prodding—killing.

  “Artillery standing by. Marker rounds ready to fire,” came the call from the Long Tom that was the heart of his support lance.

  His headset crackled with an incoming transmission. The popping told him it was on an open channel, so it was coming from the Blake forces. What is this, a taunt?

  “Your transponders are familiar,” a female voice said. Though the tones were distorted, they wrapped around his heart and squeezed. “Does this Division still follow Demi Harwell?”

  “Kari,” he responded on the same channel. “You know I’m here.”

  “My husband,” she said, and he closed his eyes in gut-wrenching agony. She had turned against ComStar, against her own family, her own children, to follow a madman determined to destroy the Inner Sphere. “Surrender now, my love. I will make sure you are spared.”

  He reined in his emotions. “You are not my wife,” he replied coldly, realizing that he was on an open channel, that all of his troops could hear their exchange. “My wife died years ago.”

  A sigh sounded in his ear. “You never understood the true calling of our people. May you drink the Blood of Blake.”

  A tear ran down his cheek as Seagrams switched to a direct line to the Long Tom artillery. “Fire marker rounds, validate your
targets, fire for effect.” Kill them all.

  He heard hesitation in the voice of Adept Konrad, his artillery officer. “Sir?”

  They had been listening. The story of his wife’s betrayal and her defection to the Word of Blake was not unique. Everyone in the Com Guards and ComStar knew someone who had changed sides when the holocaust of the Jihad had begun. His wife was an officer. Her betrayal had been to release a nerve agent in the Bachelor Officers Quarters. Forty-six men and women had died in their sleep. She had given him children. She was a war criminal.

  She was no longer his wife.

  “Adept Konrad, I want that area saturated with fire. Take out the ’Mechs first. Everyone of them that you kill is one that can’t kill us.”

  Adept Konrad acknowledged the order. “Artillery going downrange. And sir, my apologies.”

  He stared out into the distance and identified the Kintaro that his wife piloted. She would be one of the first to fall. “Blake’s Blood be damned. . . .”

  Behind him, the roar of the Long Tom artillery shook his Lancelot. Lightning flickered as the spotting rounds, belching purple smoke, dropped almost directly on top of the Word of Blake line. The rain began to pour at almost the same instant. Seagrams charged up his Krupp large lasers, focusing his mind on the whine of the capacitor coils charging.

  The only things that would change by the end of the day were that his long-dead wife would finally have a grave, and a part of his soul would be lost in the fight.

  Choking back his raw emotions, he signaled his people. “Guards—charge!”

  12

  Scout Position Beta Five, East of the Bowie

  Factory Ruins

  Kinross, Wyatt

  The Republic, Prefecture VIII

  14 May 3135

  Lieutenant Tooley crawled up the slope to where his team had settled in. It was a little pocket on the steep hillside, a perfect place to hide. A lone tree hugged the hill, gnarled and twisting upward. At its base, a small boulder jutted outward, and around that grew a clump of ground brush, one of the few bushes growing on the grassy hills. The nook in the hillside gave a commanding view of the surrounding hills and deep, flat-bottomed valleys.

  Tooley opened the enhanced camouflaged Guila suit covering that draped over his head and body and a fine yellow-green powder, pollen, blew away in the breeze. Under the wrap he wore light body armor consisting of a chest plate and coverings for his thighs plus a heavily padded helmet with built-in comm and enhanced range-detection gear. The wrap was designed to reduce his infrared signature and improve his ability to blend in with his environment. The nanosensors in the cloak sensed the background and light levels and adjusted the preprinted camouflage pattern in the wrap to match. It was not a perfect system; troops wearing Guila suits still were visible, but they were able to sneak forward with a better chance of avoiding detection.

  Corporal Pusaltari, already in position, gave him a quick nod in lieu of a salute. This wasn’t the place for formalities. Tooley nodded back and elbow-crawled his way to where the corporal lay in the brush, scanning the horizon using Falcon-Is Model B enhanced sighting gear. These electronic binoculars gave him a commanding view of the area.

  “What do you have, Corporal?”

  “Cats and a nasty head cold, sir,” he replied, handing over the Falcon-Is. Tooley took off his helmet and put it on the ground next to him, then leaned forward into the brush, staring out through the low growth.

  Pusaltari wasn’t kidding. The Spirit Cats were on the ground and deployed. He saw their DropShip, a massive, spherical Union-C class. “Range, one-point seven-eight kilometers. Union-class ship is typical Clan combat transport,” he commented softly. This one was a dull gray color, with white streaks on the four support-strut legs that held it up. Its bays and drop-ramps were open and extended, and the Spirit Cats were deploying their equipment. As soon as they had pinpointed the Cats’ landing zone, the legate, prodded by Knight Holt, had deployed pickets and monitors.

  The Cats didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere. There was no evidence of the rapid, focused deployment Tooley would have expected. He was a seasoned combat veteran, having served in the Hastati Sentinels and “retired” to the Wyatt Militia in order to serve his home planet. He’d been in enough battles in his life to know that most deployments were accomplished quickly and with the goal of being highly mobile. This one was not. The Spirit Cats were on the ground, moving slowly, practically milling around the base of the DropShip.

  Kinross was to the east of him, behind him. No units were heading in that direction. Instead, they were fanning out to the west. There was nothing for them there but the contaminated zone, and that area had been abandoned for decades. The zone wasn’t particularly dangerous, but the government had ordered long ago that the area of radioactive contamination left by the Jihad was best avoided.

  Tooley felt in one of his hip packs under the armor plating and pulled out a small tube. “Pollen getting to you, too?”

  “Always does at this time of the year,” Pusaltari replied, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his Guila suit.

  “Been there and done that. Squirt a dab of this in each nostril,” the lieutenant said, handing him the tiny tube.

  “Decongestant?”

  “Jalapeno pepper juice,” Tooley replied with a toothy grin.

  “You trying to kill me, sir?” Pusaltari asked jokingly.

  “It’ll get your nose to run. I used to use it under my eyes when I was on fourth-watch sentry duty. Anything to help you stay awake.”

  The corporal nodded and squirted a painful glob of the clear gel into each nostril, tears springing to his eyes as the juice did its work. “What are they up to, sir?” Pusaltari asked.

  Tooley reached for the small welded pocket positioned right over his heart on his armored chest plate. Inside it was a small brown stub, the remains of a cigar that had been with him for a long time. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth, but didn’t light it. This particular stub had nothing to do with smoking, and everything to do with tradition and superstition. “Beats the shit out of me,” he cursed, shifting the cigar to the right side of his mouth as he talked. “Did you get their numbers?”

  “Some. The gear they deployed on the far side of the DropShip was next to impossible to scan.”

  “Let’s see what they’ve got,” Tooley said, taking the noteputer from the corporal and thumb-scrolling through the list. “A Warhammer IIC, a Black Hawk, and a Behemoth? You might get the idea that they plan on staying a while, wouldn’t you?”

  The corporal smiled. “I’m pretty sure I also picked up Elemental armor and at least one IndustrialMech.”

  “How’s the radiation level here?”

  Pusaltari waved his hand side-to-side in a cutting motion. “Minimal background radiation on this end of the zone. We could stay here for weeks—and so could the Cats.”

  “That’s all we need. You send this back to the base yet?” he queried.

  “No, sir.”

  Tooley handed back the noteputer. “You’d better do it. Tell the legate and Knight Holt that the Cats don’t seem interested in us right now. The heading that they are on will take them to the ruins of the old Bowie factory.” He rolled to his back on the hillside and held up his hand to block out the light of the sun. “If the Spirit Cats want to go and play in that radioactive waste pile, then I say let them.”

  * * *

  Knight Holt sat at the holotable, which was projecting a miniature layout of the terrain where the Spirit Cat DropShip had landed. The detail was fine enough to show a five-kilometer area surrounding the DropShip, complete with points of light where her pickets had been posted.

  As soon as she had been able to pinpoint the vicinity of the Spirit Cat landing zone, she had ordered the Wyatt Militia infantry to deploy. Their goal was simple: try to learn what the Spirit Cats had brought with them, and their target. Everything they had gotten so far was confusing.

  Legate Singh slumped slightly in his cha
ir, his eyes looking a little glazed from the painkillers he was still taking. A bandage the same color as his skin decorated the right side of his brow, mute testament to the result of his losing battle with the Raiden battlearmor. He watched the blinking green light that indicated the position of Scout Beta Five on the hillside above the Spirit Cat DropShip; then he glanced over at Alexi Holt.

  “Knight Holt, you know more about the Spirit Cats than the rest of us. Can you explain their behavior?”

  She stared at the display, hoping some sort of insight would jump out at her, but that didn’t happen. “The most likely explanation for their arrival is that the Spirit Cats are following a spiritual vision or quest. As for their interest in the factory ruins—I don’t know. It doesn’t give them any sort of tactical advantage.”

  “Given the radiation levels near those ruins, they won’t be there long,” Singh replied.

  “Well, their ’Mechs could remain there a long time without suffering any ill effect,” she replied. “But I think you’re right, they won’t stay.” She paused, then continued thoughtfully. “I have seen intelligence documents reporting that the Spirit Cats have visited ruins created by the Jihad on other planets. Given their general level of mysticism and spirituality, my guess would be that they’re paying their respects to the victims.”

  The legate shifted in his seat. “That’s very interesting, Knight Holt. But I spoke with the governor a short time ago and his official position is that they are violating the sovereignty of Wyatt and The Republic of the Sphere. He asked me to pose this question; ‘What is our Knight-Errant going to do about this violation?’ I must admit, I’m curious about your strategy now that they are here.” The legate was still challenging her, but at the moment he seemed genuinely interested in her answer.