Kicking the Jupiter into an unsteady walk, Raul shied away from the raising platform and drew Torrent after him. His PPCs answered the star colonel’s missiles. Where Torrent relied on lasers, Raul chopped back with his two fifty-mil autocannon.
His heat scale rose steadily as the fusion reactor pumped out joules of energy to drive the BattleMech and power all weapons. As it edged into the red band, a fresh scent of ozone and scorched insulation wafted through the cockpit and Raul breathed with difficulty. Sweat poured off his brow, beaded and ran on his bared legs and arms. On his right, the runnels of sweat mixed with blood, thinned it, and spread the stain further down his arm.
Alternating his PPCs now, Raul blasted more armor away from Torrent’s chest. Deep inside one rent sparked the golden fury of a BattleMech’s fusion fire. Dark, dry smoke roiled out of the wound.
Torrent ignored it, shaving more plating from Jove’s already-weak legs and lower torso.
On the MechWarrior’s HUD, his computer painted several new icons. Over the Tundra Wolf’s shoulder, Raul saw machines rise above the surface of the landing field: WorkMechs, a half-dozen of them, loaders, mostly, and one ConstructionMech. They displayed no targeting emissions or other evidence of military modifications. These were regular machines, gathered up by Customs Officer Palos Montgomery and urged into battle for Achernar.
“Target practice,” Torrent said. “You think I do not see them, Ortega? They will be little else but a nuisance against my Steel Wolves.”
A new flight of tactical missiles slammed a heavy fist into Raul’s gyro housing, cracking through armor and supports to throw a terrible, grinding into the stabilizer gearing. The Jupiter shuddered, swayed. Blinking through the burning haze of sweat-stung eyes, Raul ducked forward and shifted the BattleMech’s feet into a wider stance. If he went over now, it was finished. There would be no getting back up, and Torrent’s Tundra Wolf would tear through the IndustrialMechs without mercy.
This time he kept to his feet.
“You will never have your chance—at—them,” Raul said, gritting his teeth against the heat waves and punctuating each of the last three words with weapons fire. PPC. Autocannon. PPC. One of the Tundra Wolf’s arms fell to the ground, severed by a particle beam mid-humerus.
Left arm. Torrent’s quad of medium-grade lasers.
Throttling into a forward walk, Raul now marched straight into the teeth of the Steel Wolf commander. “You are through on Achernar.” Another particle cannon. This one carved a huge swath of blackened destruction across the other BattleMech’s hip.
Raul gasped for breath in the scorching air.
Tactical missiles and large lasers smashed at the Jupiter. A long branch of pressure-cracked ferroglass squealed across the front face shield. Raul leaned forward again, his face within a meter of the worried shield, forcing Jove onward. Torrent cut loose with LRMs but misjudged his angle for a point-blank assault. Most of the missiles stuttered into the ground at the Jupiter’s feet, geysering up blackened ferrocrete and throwing a veil of smoke over the lower half of the assault ’Mech.
Raul kicked his way through the broken ground, drew flashing crosshairs over the Tundra Wolf’s left shoulder. The heat-addled circuitry could do no better than a partial lock. He clenched back both primary triggers regardless.
“No more,” he whispered.
One of his PPCs gashed wide the Tundra Wolf’s chest. Flames licked out and up the broad torso, wreathed the cockpit shield in a halo of fire.
Slapping at the shutdown override, Raul stomped to a halt bare meters from the staggered Tundra Wolf. No other part of the battle registered, HUD forgotten. Nothing mattered but the ’Mech and MechWarrior in front of him. Stretching his arms forward, Raul set the autocannon barrels up against the chest of the Tundra Wolf. “Stand down, Star Colonel.” It was over, and Raul breathed a quick exhale of relief. There was no compromise left in his voice, only a promise. Torrent surely heard it.
Heard it, but did not care.
The Steel Wolf commander, reaching for the brass ring right up until the end, shifted the Tundra Wolf’s left arm over, planted it into the Jupiter’s gut, and destroyed his own arm by firing his tactical missile system with the launcher in actual contact against Raul’s gyroscope housing.
The force of nine simultaneous detonations squeezed in between two BattleMechs actually lifted the hundred-ton assault ’Mech off the ground. No balancing act would save Raul from gravity’s clutches this time. Hauling back on both control sticks, fingers tight on his triggers, Raul surrendered to the fall while pumping two hot streams of high-velocity metal into the Tundra Wolf’s chest.
The fall likely saved Raul’s life.
With feedback damage already spiking through the Tundra Wolf’s power systems, Raul’s fifty-millimeter autocannons tore through the last of the physical shielding and blasted apart the fusion engine’s safeguard systems as well. Dampening fields cut out completely, releasing the fires that burned so powerfully at the heart of every BattleMech.
The fusion reaction expanded, gobbled up myomer, armor, and titanium skeletal structure as fuel. A column of golden fire burned up and through the cockpit. Then the engine burst free completely in a violent explosion of golden fire, flattening a nearby LoaderMech, picking up a Scimitar and throwing it through the air like a child’s plaything.
The force grabbed at Raul’s Jupiter, twisted it about on the ground, but otherwise washed over it in a wave of destructive fire that did little more than finish flash-burning the paint from Jove’s front.
Then silence descended.
Silence, or Raul had gone deaf with the titanic thunderclap. Inventorying his limbs and checking his teeth with a rough-coated tongue, the MechWarrior rolled his ’Mech onto its side and then to its chest, propping himself up with one arm to better see the stunned field.
And looked into the wide-bore port of an SM1’s assault cannon.
The battle did continue in several isolated patches. The Swordsworn still fought a holding action at the city’s edge, protecting themselves from a small cordon of Steel Wolf treaded tanks and advancing infantry. Palos Montgomery and a trio of LoaderMechs shuffled into a loose circle around a Demon, hydraulic pincers grabbing and tearing. Diago was still alive and fighting as well, matching off in the distance with a Steel Wolf catapult.
But near Raul and the metal carcass that had been the Steel Wolf commander’s BattleMech, everyone waited to see what would happen now between the Jupiter and the Destroyer.
“If you are going to shoot,” Raul croaked, his voice breaking on almost every word, “do it now or quit wasting my time.”
Several painful heartbeats passed before an answer came. “I am Star Captain Nikola Demos. I claim you as bondsman.”
“No,” Raul told her, shocked that she would even think of such a thing after losing her commander. “You’ve won nothing here.”
“The Steel Wolves . . . my . . . my Steel Wolves still control the spaceport.”
“Keep it,” Raul told her. “Run the damn thing if you want. But there will be no occupation of River’s End and there is no HPG station to fight over any longer.” He coughed, trying to ease the burning itch at the back of his throat. “Pick up your dead and injured, and allow us to do the same, and tomorrow we can do this all over again or maybe—maybe—we can bargain for an honorable withdrawal.”
Remembering how Tassa Kay and Kyle Powers had both argued for the important part such concerns played in Steel Wolf reasoning, he figured it couldn’t hurt to appeal to her warrior’s nature. “Or do you really want Star Colonel Torrent’s cast-offs?” he asked derisively, with all the strength he had left.
Raul never heard the order passed but, first singly and then in large packs, the Steel Wolves broke away from the fighting and fell back toward their waiting DropShips. Blaire ordered all retreating forces to be left alone. On the far side of the field, Erik Sandoval knew enough to also let the Steel Wolves withdraw.
“We will consider our po
sition,” the SM1 commander told him. “Tomorrow we bargain.”
Then the Destroyer spun around in place and raced away, cutting close to several IndustrialMechs but never targeting them, unafraid that they would dare touch her.
“Tomorrow we bargain,” Raul agreed, but with less enthusiasm than before. With adrenaline bleeding away along with his life’s blood, a heavy weariness crept up. Rolling the injured BattleMech onto its back again, Raul stretched it out in the best possible posture for loading. “I could use a recovery vehicle here,” he said, closing his eyes.
In the darkness, he felt his shoulder throb. “And a medic.”
Lying back into his seat, he let exhaustion claim him.
28
Reunion
M.A.S.H. Truck Bravo-Four
Achernar
18 March 3133
Raul fought his way back to consciousness through dark cobwebs, peeling away one sticky layer at a time. Bit by bit, he remembered the battle.
Tassa Kay’s fighting retreat and eventual dodge back into the city.
Star Colonel Torrent’s death in a blazing, acrid pyre.
The dark exhaustion that had claimed him.
Trying to coax some life back into his body, Raul focused all his strength into one arm, lifting it to his face where he hoped to rub the last of the cobwebs from his eyes. Someone caught his hand, held it. A warm, soft touch.
“Jessica?” Was that too much to hope for? In his waking state, Raul did not want to believe so.
“Is it over?” Jessica Searcy asked.
The battle. The fighting. Raul had no doubt that that was what she meant.
“I think so. I hope so.” But because he had learned more in the last few weeks than he had ever wanted to with regard to war, he told her, “For now.”
He forced his gummy eyes open. Jess sat beside his wall-mounted cot, still wearing the paramilitary uniform, although now it was spattered with blood and smudged dark in several places.
“I told you to stay safe,” she said.
He blinked, then glanced down at his bare chest and heavily bandaged shoulder. “Just a small scar,” he reminded her. He had a double I.V. stuck into his arm, slowly rebuilding his fluid and blood loss. He started to rise, but felt too tired to put much effort into it and so slowly settled back. “Just for you.”
“Get some sleep, Raul.” Already her voice sounded distant. “You’ve earned a rest.”
He shook his head. “Not today. Not yet. One more thing to do, Jess.” He closed his eyes. “Then we’ll see.” See about the two of them. That was what he’d meant to say. Had he said it?
She seemed to know, regardless.
“Is it over?” she asked. And he knew what she meant as well.
“I hope not, Jess. I hope not.”
And he drifted back off, his hand still warm in hers.
29
Strength and Honor
DropShip Lupus
Achernar
19 March 3133
Achernar’s sun had barely cleared the spaceport’s administration buildings when Star Captain Nikola Demos arrived at the head of the Lupus’s main ramp, dressed down in a field uniform and a Needle pistol strapped against the side of her leg.
Shielding her eyes with one hand, the Steel Wolves’ ranking officer surveyed the distant edge of spaceport grounds where her salvage crews continued to work over the site of yesterday’s battle. Early-morning winds had dispersed a great deal of the battle’s dark pallor, but a gray haze still hung over the city and spaceport, and a breeze brought to her the acrid stench of scorched metal. Nikola Demos swiped at her nose, peered into the distance to watch her technicians stripping useful parts from the wreckage of so many vehicles and ’Mechs, hauling back entire bodies when useful.
Good enough, she decided. It was a new day, and time for a new leader.
She wouldn’t know until later just how prophetic that thought had been.
The Republic party waited near the ramp’s foot, their jeep parked nearby with a uniformed soldier behind the wheel and a blonde-haired medic standing next to the vehicle, repeatedly shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Their extra presence was not welcome, but Nikola let that go as she turned her attention to the waiting trio.
Three warriors, as arranged, one with his arm in a sling. No weapons on their persons that she could see, although no provision had excluded arms. Nikola checked the position of her Elemental sentries—one at each edge of the upper ramp. She didn’t expect treachery—new treachery—but like her predecessor, she had learned to plan for it.
Not everyone played by the same rules as the Steel Wolves. Not many could, she supposed, and still be able to compete against the genetically engineered warriors.
Nikola’s guests talked amongst themselves while watching her people’s activities with interest. Two of them did, at least. She was halfway down the ramp before she finally recognized the third as Star Commander Yulri. He wore a white bondcord around his wrist and hovered off the shoulder of the female MechWarrior—this Tassa Kay—like an obedient guard dog.
Rather pathetic, she thought then, seeing how low one of Torrent’s handpicked warriors had fallen. Could fall. There was another warning in that.
“If you will all follow me,” she said in clipped tones, spending courtesy with a miser’s grip, “I will take you somewhere we can sit.”
“Just the two of us will be accompanying you,” Tassa Kay said, nodding for herself and Yulri. “Captain Ortega has another obligation this morning.”
Nikola Demos nodded. “I see. You are not an officer of The Republic, MechWarrior Kay. You can batchall on their behalf?” Batchall was the formal term for a bargaining of forces for battle. Nikola wasn’t certain it would come to that, but saw no reason to waste time if it did.
“We can discuss it inside,” the other woman said.
Turning to Raul Ortega then, oblivious of the star captain’s presence, Tassa stepped half a pace closer to The Republic captain. Nikola found herself appraising him with a woman’s eye. He did not have the size or inherent presence of a man such as Star Colonel Torrent, but there was a hardness—a confidence—in his dark eyes that spoke of an inner strength. And he had bested Torrent in battle. Good genes, Nikola judged.
“You’re certain?” Raul asked. Nikola’s appraisal dropped one notch with his lazy use of contractions. “I can hold this off until tomorrow.”
“To each his own.” Tassa reached into a pocket, slipped out a folded piece of verifaxed paper and handed it over. “To your Exarch, with my compliments. I will not be needing it anymore.”
Ortega caught up Tassa Kay’s hand, tensed a moment as if caught in the act of something shameful, and then plunged on ahead. He lifted her hand up and kissed its back. “With the gratitude of Achernar.”
Tassa Kay laughed. Her voice was rich and full of life. “You are Republic all right.” Grabbing up a handful of his uniform front, she pulled him in for a brief, hard kiss on the mouth. “Save the courtly love for knights and ladies. And make certain my Ryoken is brought out here at once, or the next smack you get might loosen a tooth.”
“I will miss you, too.” With a sad smile, Ortega traded casual salutes with Tassa Kay and then left without a backward glance.
“That sounded quite a bit like a good-bye.” Nikola Demos leveled a hard gaze at the other woman. “Going somewhere?”
Tassa ignored her, stepped around the star captain and preceded her up the ramp. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked, the curt question tossed over her shoulder as if she didn’t care one way or the other whether Nikola did or not.
Nikola placed a hand into the middle of Yulri’s chest, stopping him from following and thereby also preceding her. With a hard mask set over her face, she jogged up to Tassa Kay and escorted the MechWarrior into the DropShip’s main bay and then through to officer’s country and a series of ladders that took them up to Star Colonel Torrent’s former office—now hers.
Torrent had pref
erred dim lighting. Nikola Demos did not. With so many hours logged inside cramped and dimly lit tanks, she reveled in brightly lit open spaces. The wall panels washed the Spartan room in sterile light, emphasizing the absence of any wall decorations or personal touches. Those would come later, when and if Prefect Kal Radick confirmed Nikola as Torrent’s successor.
“Bare, but functional,” was Tassa’s opinion. She slid into a seat on the near side of the desk. Star Commander Yulri waited back at the door, standing honor guard to one side of the entry. “I will not challenge you for it, so long as you provide me with good quarters and a place inside the main BattleMech bay for my Ryoken.”
“You,” Nikola said, hovering over her own chair, disbelief certainly showing on her face, “will not . . . challenge?”
“Not so long as all three DropShips are off Achernar by midnight, local time. That is the deal I bargained with the militia on the Steel Wolves’ behalf. If there is no JumpShip due from Tigress soon, we will take the next available commercial transport from this system.”
Sitting down into her own chair with a stiff, military bearing, Nikola Demos stared daggers at the woman who presumed to dictate terms to her. She was no representative of The Republic—was not even an officer except for an honorary title they had awarded her for piloting a BattleMech. Her idea of a uniform, in fact, was nothing more than hip-hugging leather pants and a leather jacket with stainless steel buckles for fastening. Beneath the jacket, she wore nothing more official than a black T-shirt emblazoned with a red hourglass. Casual. Irreverent.
Familiar . . . ?
“If The Republic believes that they can dictate terms so easily to the Steel Wolves, we can show them the error of their ways. The HPG station may indeed be out of commission, but Achernar might still be pressed to serve as a staging ground for future operations. Who do you think you are to come in here and—”
A Call to Arms Page 28