Masters of War

by Michael A. Stackpole

  He went about it in a very systematic fashion. He and his troops would pounce on a warehouse complex, strip it as quickly as possible of everything they could move, and ferry it back to the spaceport. Once the cargo was loaded, they would push on and raid another warehouse.

  To distract the Yedders from what he was doing, he staged other minor raids. His troops hit the world’s planning office to get a map of the tunnels. He had computer technicians wage a covert war with the Yed militia to crack the codes that operated the lifts and gates to the tunnels. He even had elementals commandeer equipment to dig tunnels of his own. This latter effort resulted in some running gun battles through the basements, sewers and streets of Henderton, with the Yedders getting the worst of it.

  A logical choice would have been to break into the tunnels and start hunting, but that would just have encouraged the Yedders to wire the tunnels with explosives. Alaric and his people might get in, but their chances of getting out would be minimal. Moreover, the Yedders could just evacuate the maze and let the Clanners wander around until they starved. Going into the tunnels would work only if the militia’s ’Mechs were known to be there.

  His raids were not without danger, but by the time the militia figured out what he was doing, he’d already taken precautions to limit the effectiveness of any counterstrikes. Moving the spoils from the warehouses to the spaceport provided the enemy with the best chances to attack, so Alaric and his people just made that process as difficult as possible.

  To do this, they demolished the city for two blocks on either side of the main route. Everything was leveled, from stores and apartments to civic buildings. The buildings might have been built to withstand lightning strikes, but battering by a ’Mech could put a dent in almost any structure. In addition to giving the Clanners clear fields of fire, their action sowed great fear among the populace and sealed up uncounted tunnel entrances.

  After they finished looting a warehouse they would bring it down, too. They continued this process, inexorably working toward the sea. It seemed very clear there would be no stopping them.

  Some did try, but their efforts were ineffective. Regardless, Alaric instituted a practice of razing any building from which a shot was fired at his troops. Aside from that, however, he left the locals alone. The message was clear: Let us pillage your planet, we’ll let you live.

  While he was pleased with the assets he was pulling off the planet, the fact that Yed Posterior hadn’t yet been pacified was not making him happy. It didn’t help at all when he learned from his reinforcements that Donovan had secured Corridan IV in half a day, and managed to do that without damaging the industry or suffering a single loss among his troops.

  When heading in to Corridan, Donovan announced he’d be grounding at one specific location. It was a good landing site, but the most direct route between it and the capital city presented several points where the opposition could ambush him. The leader of the Corridan militia had written a book about military strategy, which Donovan read. In studying the maps of the area, he picked out the most logical location for the man to stage an ambush. Instead of landing where he had intended, Donovan’s troops performed a combat drop on the militia’s position and broke them almost immediately.

  Donovan, Alaric had been told, already had pulled his line troops, had garrisoned the world and was back with the fleet planning his next assault.

  And I am stuck here on Rainworld.

  Every six hours the Yedders added to his frustration by broadcasting a message to the planet. It was mostly propaganda to bolster the courage of the people of Henderton. It promised reinforcements would be arriving soon, and while Alaric sincerely doubted that, he couldn’t discount it completely. The Yedders warned that they could and would kill the invaders and as the Wolves pushed deeper into the warehouse district, Alaric could feel something in the air.

  He smiled to himself as he waited in the cockpit of his Mad Cat. The Yedders had been very lucky so far, but they needed to continue being lucky. He only needed to get lucky once. Luck, he sincerely believed, favored the prepared. Alaric made his plan, briefed his people and set things in motion.

  And if I succeed, I will have to thank Donovan.

  Donovan’s success had gotten Alaric thinking. He’d succeeded because he had remained consistent to his nature. Donovan was a planner. He analyzed data, he figured out how the other commander thought, and then he put his knowledge to use.

  Alaric, from the very start, knew that an even more powerful tool was controlling the thoughts of the enemy. The efforts to unlock the tunnels were easily countered, which left the Yedders thinking the tunnels were secure. They dismissed them as being vulnerable. The tunnels were their domain.

  On the surface, the Wolves had become predictable. They pounced, looted and razed. They were a pack of hyenas stripping carcasses, leaving nothing but rubble and a steel-girder skeleton behind. They always moved at the same pace along the same route. Chronometers could be set by their actions.

  And attacks could be arranged.

  The Yedders accepted the challenge at noon on the second day. A hideous storm broke over the big island, making the storm on that first night seem like a spring shower. The Wolves set out as usual from the spaceport, but wind, flooding and a lack of visibility slowed their progress. While the trek to the warehouse district would have been when Alaric chose to attack, the Yedders waited, realizing that heavily laden transports would make easier targets.

  So they gathered in secret, making good use of the tunnels. Their ’Mechs mounted the elevators and rose into the hearts of warehouses where spies had confirmed a lack of Clan personnel. When the transports started forming up into a caravan, they prepared to strike.

  And while they prepared, Alaric and his troops struck. The Clan leader targeted a warehouse two blocks away and hit his triggers. Red laser darts peppered the facade and blew through tall, narrow windows. The twin PPC lightning bolts struck the building, playing over the grounding lattice, but still melting ferrocrete.

  Alaric keyed his radio. “Control, lock down the targets when you get a pause.”

  “As ordered, Star Colonel.”

  The Mad Cat sprinted across the dark, storm-lashed landscape. Alaric fought to stay upright as rubble shifted beneath the war machine’s feet. Twisted steel girders flipped up into the air as easily as twigs dislodged by a toddler’s jerky run. Though fighting the machine made the advance difficult, Alaric was thankful it also made him a difficult target. The one burst of laser darts from within his target missed well wide.

  Because of the storm and terrain conditions, Alaric took a full minute to reach his target. He didn’t bother to blast the huge scrolling door, he just plowed through it. The segmented steel curtain draped itself over his cockpit, then fell aside. He snapped his sensors over to vislight and was greeted by a large rectangular hole in the floor.

  “Shut things down now, Control.”

  At his order, the Wolves’ trap was sprung. Deep in the bowels of the building something rumbled. All of the emergency lighting in the place went dark. For a moment, until he switched to magres, Alaric could see nothing.

  But he didn’t need to see.

  The Yedders had controlled the tunnels and moved with impunity. They thought themselves safe because there really was no practical way for the Wolves to locate them. The planet’s fierce storms and the constant microtremors associated with volcanic activity rendered seismic monitors useless. The insurgents could move with impunity, and they knew it.

  What they had ultimately neglected to address, however, was that the tunnels had a limited number of entrances, and the elevators required electricity to run. Until Alaric had given the order, the Clans had never cut power to the warehouse district. Even though every warehouse had its own backup generators, in most cases they were insufficient for powering the elevators. Alaric took no chances, and now had them destroyed.

  He marched his Mad Cat forward and leaped down into the hole. He braced himself. Twenty
meters down, impact with the ground jammed him into his command couch. He crouched his ’Mech, then back-pedaled. Sweeping his crosshairs over the ’Mech outline in front of him, he hit his triggers.

  Though he had shot hastily, the forestry ’Mech was bracketed by the tunnel through which it fled. It had started to make a right-hand turn, so the twin PPCs caught it in the left flank. Armor exploded on vaporous jets, scales whirling away to smash on tunnel walls. The rent armor gave him a tantalizing glimpse of the ’Mech’s internal structure, some of which glowed.

  More important that the obvious damage was the result of his assault. The pilot, caught in the midst of a high-speed turn, lost control of his ’Mech. The damaged industrial ’Mech slammed into the far wall, catching the corner of the intersection on its left shoulder. It spun around, smashing its back against the tunnel wall, then rebounded and dropped to its knees.

  Alaric reversed his retreat and darted forward. He triggered his pulse lasers. A cloud of coherent light darts burned into the ’Mech’s left shoulder just as the ’Mech pressed its arm to the floor in an attempt to rise. The lasers evaporated armor and ate into the arm’s ferrotitanium bones. The shoulder separated and the ’Mech faltered again, this time falling on its left side, presenting its back to him.

  So easy, too easy. His crosshairs settled on the ’Mech’s glass canopy. Through the spiderwebbed glass he could see the pilot up and out of his command couch, pounding on the inside of the bubble. The canopy release had jammed, and the advancing Mad Cat’s footfalls shook the floor hard enough to knock the man down.

  The gold dot confirming a target lock obscured the man’s further struggles.

  Alaric hit the triggers, and the PPC’s backlight gave him a ghostly look at the tunnels. Stopping shy of the decapitated forestry ’Mech, he glanced at his secondary monitor, then cut left. An Uller had entered another factory just west of his and was chasing prey.

  “Seven, what do you have?”

  “Say . . . One . . .” The radio reply crackled with static that spiked with the Uller getting hit or lightning from above. The secondary monitor flickered and positions updated, but Seven no longer appeared where he had been.

  Alaric hoped it was just interference, but if it wasn’t—what could they have that could take down an Uller so quickly? Nothing in the data they’d sent for bargaining indicated anything more than medium-weight ’Mechs. The marine salvage ’Mechs had sported LRM launchers, but those would be singularly useless in the tunnels.

  Whatever it is, I bet Donovan would have found it. Alaric snorted angrily, then turned left again, heading toward Seven’s last-known position. Whatever it is, I will find it, and then I will kill it.

  The outline of a ’Mech flashed across his scanners at the next intersection, but the computer had insufficient data to determine what it was. Alaric pressed on, twisted his Mad Cat to the right. He intended to keep moving at speed but have his weapons pods cover the corridor. If the Yedder hadn’t cleared the passage, he’d get a clean shot at its back, open it up and kill it.

  Alaric had only a second to react, though the moment seemed to unfold over the course of hours. The Yedder ’Mech had not fled, but had stopped and turned around. The pilot pressed the barrel-chested ’Mech hard against the corridor’s right wall, making it a tough target to hit. Alaric’s scanners caught enough of it at point-blank range that the identification of Hunchback instantly flashed on a tertiary monitor.

  The thought they have sent a museum piece against me? flitted through his mind a heartbeat before the Yedder ’Mech opened up. Ancient it might have been; still the ’Mech sported a heavy autocannon in a boxy appendage on its right shoulder—hence its name. The cannon vomited fire and depleted uranium shells that blasted into the Mad Cat’s right hip.

  Ferroceramic armor rained down in shards. The shells cratered the Clan ’Mech’s hip and thigh, and struck with such violence that despite not fully penetrating the armor, they shifted the ’Mech’s center of balance and knocked it off its course.

  Alaric hit his triggers, but his momentum and the Hunchback’s position made it hard to keep the crosshairs on target. One of his PPCs and two of the pulse lasers missed, gouging scars through the tunnel’s tiled walls. The other two caught the Hunchback in the right arm, stripping it of armor and starting the ’Mech’s bones glowing, but did nothing to the laser mounted in the forearm.

  Then the Mad Cat hit the tunnel’s far wall. He caught the edge on his left hip and shoulder, which twisted him around. His cockpit crushed tiles as his ’Mech spun. He continued backward, crushing more tiles and aft armor against the opposite wall, then crashed his left weapons pod against the wall to keep himself upright.

  Alaric pitched himself deeper into his command couch, then hunched forward against the restraining straps. The neurohelmet’s feeds picked up brain waves and fed them to the computers governing the ’Mech’s gyroscopes. For a half second they whirled out of sync, threatening to drop the ’Mech, but then they caught. More armor and tiles littered the tunnel floor as Alaric’s left pod dragged along the wall, and he hugged it for support as he got the ’Mech’s legs under it again.

  And, in doing so, he saved his life.

  The Hunchback pilot, having seen the Mad Cat careen out of control, stepped into the intersection to finish it off. The autocannon blazed. The line of slugs ripped a furrow down the corridor wall, filling the air with tile fragments. Some of the slugs hit the Mad Cat’s left arm, further tattering its armor, but doing no serious damage.

  Unfortunately for the Yedder, to use the cannon on its right shoulder it had to step fully into the intersection. The twin PPCs spat and hit the ’Mech full in the left flank. Melted armor rained down, burning like hundreds of votive candles. The pulse lasers’ angry red darts ripped up through the ’Mech’s naked right arm. Myomer fibers snapped and the bones beneath melted away. The twisted remains of the arm dropped to the ground and the Hunchback drunkenly reeled away.

  Then, from the other direction, the green beam of a large laser stabbed through the ’Mech’s left flank. The verdant beam melted the remaining structural members. The ’Mech’s left arm dropped off and the unbalanced ’Mech spun to the ground, lying there with its back exposed.

  Seven’s Uller limped around the corner dragging its right leg. “Star Colonel, we have an emergency.”

  “And what could be more important than hunting down the militia in their warrens?”

  “There are DropShips inbound. The commander has sent us data. She is coming to reinforce Yed Posterior.”

  Ah yes, they bargained saying they would use everything they could, including reinforcements. Alaric clenched his teeth. “How much?”

  “Three battalions. Two are militia, one mercenary.”

  Fear flushed ice through Alaric’s guts. No matter how poorly armed and led, three battalions would be able to drive him off the planet. And, because I bargained as I did, I have no more reinforcements to call upon.

  “How long?”

  “Three days.” Seven hesitated for a moment, then added, “She said her name is Anastasia Kerensky and she is leading the Wolf Hunters.”

  Kerensky? Unbidden a shiver ran down Alaric’s spine. The Kerensky bloodline was long and storied among the Wolves. If there were warrior gods and goddesses seeking to be born into flesh, they would have chosen Kerensky flesh for their avatars. And now one comes hunting me. This truly is a Trial of Possession for my destiny.

  “It matters not who and what is coming, Seven.” Alaric centered his crosshairs on the Hunchback’s cockpit. “We have a job to do. We need to finish the militia before she arrives. If we do that, she’ll have a surprise awaiting her.”

  13

  South Allshot, Baxter

  Former Prefecture IX, Republic of the Sphere

  13 January 3137

  Verena smiled as Kennerly jumped back. Water still dripped from his face, and the towel he’d been using smeared a droplet of blood on his chin. He looked at her, then took ano
ther swipe with his towel, dragging it down over his throat.

  “Don’t you have better things to do than watch me shave?”

  “Maybe I hoped you would slip with the razor.”

  Kennerly snorted once, then shook his head. “You’re not serious. Without me, your life would lose all meaning.”

  Verena frowned. “Not this time, Kennerly. We are not turning a discussion into your psychoanalysis.” I have no need for your voice in my head anymore.

  “Then how may I be of service?”

  “I have to know you are going to stick with the plan.”

  “Oh, I would never dream of doing anything else but follow it, Captain.” Kennerly hung the towel over his shoulder. “You’re showing great confidence in me. Don’t think I don’t appreciate that. Lieutenant Carter, on the other hand, wonders what we have going on between us. She’s not enjoying what she sees as a demotion, but she has other problems.”

  “No doubt you are helping her sort them out.”

  Kennerly looked back over his shoulder at the slender blond woman curled up against a cavern wall sleeping. “I could, but she’s not nearly as much fun as you are. Her doubts are more raw. She watched Colonel Bradone die, and she feels guilty. It doesn’t matter that sensor data from our ’Mechs make it clear he was dead before his chair ejected. You know her feelings are going to make her suicidal.”

  Verena nodded. “I would have her stand down but . . .”

  “But her lance would revolt, and Animal company would follow.” Kennerly smiled with his mouth but not his eyes. “You’ve put yourself in a precarious situation. There will be repercussions if you fail.”

  “I know.”

  In the aftermath of the action in which the colonel had died, the Badgers had regrouped and repaired their ’Mechs. They were operational save for the loss of the Mercury and Bradone’s Vindicator. Major Peres’ placing Verena in command had not been followed with any operational orders, and this created problems. Not only did the Animals want revenge, but the lack of orders suggested to everyone that Peres had no confidence in her.