BattleTech

by Loren L. Coleman

  • • •

  Archer pivoted at the waist. There was a slight metallic grind as his Penetrator performed the maneuver, the result of a piece of armor that had been splayed back from a barrage of missile hits. Smoke rose from several places over Portsmouth, black, churning, rising high into the air. The streets had been chewed up from the feet of ’Mechs and the carnage of battle. Craters pockmarked the ferrocrete all around where he stood, some still spilling out grayish white smoke.

  “Sit Rep,” he commanded.

  Thomas Sherwood’s voice came back in a crackle in his ear. “Forester’s company reports that Reamuth is green.” Green, as in obliterated.

  “Losses?”

  “Too many. The Militia may be a hodgepodge unit, but they were tough. I’m down a full lance sir. Falling back in good form to the city now.”

  “How’s the new ’Mech?”

  Sherwood chuckled, a rarity for him. “Let’s just say I always wanted to try out the arenas of Solaris. This was the next best thing. I just wish my nephew had a holoimage of me in the cockpit of this beast.”

  Another voice cut in. “This is Ranger One,” came back the ragged voice of Captain Kraff. “Militia units have fled the city. I’ve lost half of my company either down or dead. You’d think the Militia was trying to tell us to leave or something.”

  Major Gett came on line. “Second Battalion losses are less, we’re running at 20% down. I’m pleased to report our sectors are secure sir.”

  Archer punched up the tactical monitors. “Okay then. If we’ve done our job they are going to be coming for us any time now with everything. Get the sappers out. I want the main avenues of approach rigged with mines, traps, everything we brought with us. Clear out your fields of fire and establish fire zones. Get the artillery deployed at their assigned sectors and get your fire control teams in place.”

  “Do you think it worked sir?” Major Gett asked.

  “I sure as hell hope so,” he replied. “Otherwise this was the biggest waste of troops and material I’ve ever seen.”

  Chapter Four

  Portsmouth, Avalon Island

  New Avalon, Crucis March

  Federated Suns

  24 March 3067

  The artillery rounds ripped apart the street at his ’Mech’s feet, raining chucks of ferrocrete into the bird-like legs of the Penetrator. Water surged up from one of the holes, an obvious hit on a water main, the cold water seemed to hiss and steam as it hit his legs—a warning as to how hot they were.

  The artillery had been dropping all over Portsmouth. The spotters were either not in place or doing a bad job of directing fire. Many buildings had been hit, many streets had been so badly mauled that they were impassable. It would be some time before life in Portsmouth returned to normal.

  Archer turned slightly and brought the targeting reticle down on the advancing Watchman. It was already battered somewhat from fighting its way into the city, but was still a dangerous threat. A millisecond after he heard the tone in his ears from the target lock, he hit the primary TIC.

  The heat in his cockpit soared as the emerald green beams lashed out from the captured Clan ER lasers his Penetrator mounted. Both shots hit the Watchman in its left side. The beams cut like knives slicing through hot butter, searing through the armor plating on the ’Mech as it tried to advance. The Watchman stopped for a moment mid-gait and seemed to quake where it stood. Archer knew that was an indication of ammunition cooking off deep in the torso of the ’Mech. It rocked in place for a moment and a thick cloud of gray smoke churned out of the cuts from his lasers. The Watchman’s MechWarrior had managed to save his ’Mech, but apparently no longer had a taste for the fight. He limped off to the right, taking refuge behind a building.

  The sweat stung in the corners of his eyes inside of his neurohelmet as Archer walked through the rising column of water from the blasted water main in an effort to get a better angle. No joy. The Watchman had limped out of line of sight.

  He stared at his tactical display and did not like what he was seeing. Reinforcements from three different Davion regiments, all loyal to Katherine, had hit Portsmouth. The only saving grace is that they had not coordinated their attack as well as they could have, but had come in as they had arrived—albeit from different directions. Apparently Jackson Davion felt that it was more important to hit them than to wait and coordinate. His third and second battalion had stubbornly been forced to give ground in their sectors, but they still held the waterfront port.

  First battalion had suffered three waves of attack; the Watchman had been the last element of that third wave. Losses had been high, but they had only dropped back three blocks—three painful blocks. Most important to Archer was the time it was taking for the attackers. Just over three hours had elapsed from the time of the start of the battle for Portsmouth. In another hour, the real invasion would begin.

  “Katya, how are you doing?” he asked.

  A sigh came to his ears, a weary sigh. She wasn’t normally a MechWarrior. Katya had been injured in her career and had been relegated to commanding from a vehicle. Only recently had she been pressed once more into a cockpit, this time playing the role of Victor Steiner-Davion, piloting a duplicate of Prometheus. “I’ve got one leg that is just about gone and have been hit just about everywhere else. I’m coming up on your flank right now,” she replied.

  He looked over at the ’Mech and saw scars of black laser and pockmarks from missile hits. “You’ve looked better,” he managed with a wry twist of humor.

  “You’d almost get the idea that these folks have something against the Prince.” Her voice rang with sarcasm.

  “Right,” he said, his attention suddenly turned to his tactical display. The approaching red dots on the tactical overlay of the monitor was not going to be good news. “I’ve got a lance of bandits closing down the street in front of us,” he said.

  “I’m painting them too,” she replied.

  “Let them close in,” he said. “The sappers will take care of at least the lead elements.”

  “Affirmative,” she replied, sweeping her Daishi into line next to him. Together they stared down the street.

  The enemy ’Mechs came. Painted with urban camouflage, the lance of four ’Mechs were led by two mediums, both Nightsky’s. Behind them, almost in formation, were a Salamander and a Gunslinger. None of this was good news. They were fresh, ready for a fight, and were rushing straight at them. The Nightskys were closing rapidly down the street, moving with precision down the corridor between the 10-20 story buildings on either side.

  A rumble came, and at first he thought it might be thunder even though he knew differently. The street quaked, but it was the buildings on either side of the two lead Nightskys. The sappers had planted explosives in them, very carefully. He had reluctantly given the orders for them to lay waste to the city this way—it was necessary, bitterly so. The blasts had knocked out the structural supports on either side of the street. The buildings seemed to lurch towards each other and hit in the air above the charging BattleMechs.

  For a moment, Archer wondered if the leaning buildings were going to hold each other up, each preventing the other from falling. They didn’t. Gravity won. The thousands of tons of debris plowed straight down into the Nightskys. Both tried to outrun the trap, but there was no hope. The debris hit the ’Mechs hard, cutting off the two assault ’Mechs behind them. A rolling cloud of gray white dust churned up and visually blinded Archer’s Penetrator.

  The airborne dust seemed to linger forever, even though Archer was sure that it was just a minute or two. He relied on his sensors to tell him what was out there, if anything. The collapsing of the buildings wasn’t the only trick he had up his sleeve, it was just the most spectacular. He was also counting on the fact that the enemy would keep coming at him. They want us out of here. In their minds, we are the only threat on this island.

  The Nightskys were history, but he picked up the faint magnetic reading of the assault-class ’Mech
s moving on the far side of the debris-filled street. He tried to get a lock on them but the intervening mountain of building rubble blocked a clear shot. Archer watched the tactical display and saw they were moving around, attempting to turn his position. Their move was obvious—if the path to him was blocked, they were angling to get down the street that Katya faced.

  “Specter One to Brain,” he beamed over on the direct channel. “You’re going to have company shortly.”

  “Tracking that already,” she said. Archer moved his Penetrator off to her side.

  “Let them come,” he added. There was good reason. His street was not the only avenue that had been booby-trapped.

  Archer didn’t have a clear line of sight yet, but he knew they had come into range. Katya’s Daishi, painted identically to that of the Prince, rocked under a wave of 40 long-range missiles. The General reeled for a moment. Yes, the Daishi was a huge ’Mech, but for a moment he was unsure how anything could have survived such an attack. Smoke enveloped Katya, black, churning, sick smoke. Red and yellow flames lapped through the smoke. Archer waited. If she was out, he’d feel the grind of her ’Mech falling onto the street.

  The fall didn’t come.

  Instead, through the smoke, he watched her side-step towards him. She fired, her weapons pod fitted with a Gauss rifle. The slug was so fast that it looked like a bolt of silver light, firing down the street where the missiles had come from. The arm recoiled slightly from the launch. Archer didn’t see the results of the shot. He moved his Penetrator even closer to Katya’s side.

  The pair of assault ’Mechs were two blocks away, rushing forward like a tidal wave. Katya fired another nickel slug down range into the Gunslinger, hitting it in the right arm. The arm of the Gunslinger twisted backward under the impact, tossing armor plates. The Loyalist ’Mech didn’t stop. In fact, its stride only slowed slightly, as if it was hesitating, but only for a second.

  As they charged forward, they fired. The shots came down the corridor of buildings with full force and fury. One Gauss rifle slug burrowed deep into Archer’s left side with such force that he rocked back in his seat and felt his ribs ache under the restraining straps. A burst of lasers slashed across Katya’s chest, splattering globs of melted armor, like drops of mercury, into the air.

  Archer dropped his sights on the Gunslinger and locked on. He fired, first the Clan-made lasers, then half of his pulse lasers. They hit the Gunslinger square on, most in the torso and legs. Armor popped off and danced down the street. The ’Mech came on.

  The Salamander didn’t wait. Another wave of missiles fired, a literal wall of warheads. Katya started to move the massive Daishi as if to dodge them, but it was to no avail. A few missed, racing past her ’Mech and further down the street. The vast majority hit her, blasting at her cockpit, torso, and legs. The flames seemed to linger, to hang on to the ’Mech. Archer sucked in a breath and hesitated like he had never done in combat before. No…not her.

  The Daishi started to topple. She fired a gauss slug down range into the Salamander, a snap-shot, one that seemed to be on target. It struck the Salamander at the right knee so hard that the Loyalist ’Mech contorted to the side and glanced into the side of a building. Glass shattered and rained down onto the street from the running blow. The Salamander was still charging.

  Right into the mines.

  The mines had been hastily hidden, concealed in hovercars on the street with trip lines carefully laid. Most were not even mines but ad hoc booby-traps, explosive laden cars. They went off, first one, then another. The Salamander was lifted by the concussion of the blast, tossed in the air slightly but appreciably. Its footing slipped mid-stride and the MechWarrior was obviously struggling to keep upright. It was a losing battle. Archer could see that the armor on its left leg was all but gone. Myomer strands, severed in the blast, snapped and hung outside like torn muscle tissues. The Salamander hit the ground at almost the same time as Katya’s ’Mech.

  Her Daishi dropped face forward, grinding into the pavement with a sickening metallic moan. Archer winced. Katya was down. Smoke billowed from half a dozen holes from the missile hits.

  “Specter One to all commands, Brain is down. Send backup,” he said as he locked onto the closing Gunslinger. Its six lasers lashed and pulsed out at him, a lightshow of green beams and brilliant red bursts of light reached out at his Penetrator. Several shots missed, but not nearly enough of them. His Penetrator seemed to scream from the impacts as armor melted and cut free from internal supports. A ripple of heat, suffocating, wrapped his body. Damn you!Damn you all to hell.

  He fired. Not just one target interlock, but all of them. His ER lasers lanced out and caught the Gunslinger square on. The peppering crimson blasts from the medium pulse lasers seemed to hit everywhere. He knew that at least one of the shots missed, but most found their mark. The Gunslinger, its barrel chest puffing white smoke and a slick green streak from a severed coolant feed, still ran forward. The heat was searing in his cockpit as his chest sucked it in. It burned, it hurt, it reminded him that he was still alive.

  Archer glanced over at the Daishi. It wasn’t moving. No. It had to move. She had to be okay. She had been with him from the start. He was rocked suddenly from a hit to his leg, a gauss slug. It hit with a cracking sound, like a wet towel being snapped by his ear. The Gunslinger was sixty yards away and slowing, readying for the kill. He looked at his damage display and saw the red and yellow warning lights, indications of the damage that he had taken. Far too much in the red.

  Jabbing at the foot pedals, his Penetrator moved slowly, awkwardly. It was as if it was fighting him as much as the Loyalist ’Mech. The heat was playing havoc on it. He took a wobbly step forward and made sure he was still locked on target.

  He waited what seemed like a lifetime for his ER lasers to recycle and recharge. Without even looking, he toggled one of them to the primary TIC and fired. The cockpit became an inferno. It didn’t matter. If he cooked, he cooked. What was important was taking down this ’Mech.

  The shot hit, barely, cutting from the right ankle of the Gunslinger upward to the thigh. It left a black steaming scar, sick, deep, hot. The Gunslinger was slowed as well. It aimed its Gauss rifles for another cycle.

  They fired.

  One shot passed his cockpit by less than two meters, the air-blast buffeting him hard as it whizzed past. A millisecond later the second one plowed into his left torso as if he had been punched in the stomach. Archer lurched forward to meet the force of the shot, but he couldn’t resist. The Penetrator that had carried him through so many battles was groaning under his efforts. A red warning light went off, flashing, a gyro hit. He contorted in his seat as if shifting his own weight was somehow going to help. There was a popping sound somewhere down under him, deep in the bowels of the BattleMech. An audible moan filled the cockpit and his neurohelmet.

  The ground seemed to rush up at him. There was a sickening thud, a metallic ripping sound. His head slammed into the cockpit seat as he felt himself being tossed around. A warning went off, but the sound seemed lost in the roar that filled his ears. Archer looked out his cockpit, ignoring the thin crack up the middle. The air was so hot that it was almost impossible to breathe.

  Across the way, only 20 meters distant, was the fallen form of the Daishi. He strained, stabbing at the foot controls. No response. Before the darkness overtook him, his last thoughts were not for his own safety, but that of Katya Chaffee.

  • • •

  Jackson walked into Katrina’s office, the report in his hand. He had gotten the feed only a few minutes earlier. Perhaps it was the turn of luck for which they had been waiting. God knows they needed it.

  “What is it?” Katrina demanded. “Word from Portsmouth?”

  “Yes, Highness,” he replied. “I just got confirmation from a unit in the city. The enemy still holds the city and the port facilities but we are making headway. More importantly, your brother’s ’Mech has been taken down.”

  “Victor, dead?�
� For the first time in a long time, Jackson Davion saw the look of pure joy, almost twisted, in the eyes of the Archon-Princess.

  “We’re not sure. I had assembled a special lance to take out the Prince and General Christifori per your request. Headhunters. Both BattleMechs were taken down in battle but we were not able to confirm the status of the MechWarriors. Victor’s people overran the position a few moments after Christifori went down. Unfortunately, all four of our MechWarriors were apparently killed in the action.”

  “Acceptable losses if Victor is dead,” she replied.

  Jackson said nothing. Not for the families of the men and women that had been sent to their deaths.

  “Can we send in other forces?” she asked, waving aside the deaths. “We need to make sure that he is dead.”

  A knock came to the door followed by a military sentry. “Apologies for the intrusion, Highness.”

  “This had better be important,” Katrina snapped.

  “It is,” the adjutant officer replied. “We just got reports of an invasion.”

  “We’re aware of that,” Katrina replied. “The situation in Portsmouth has been going on for hours.”

  “Highness,” the officer said, obviously nervous. “These landings are on the north end of the island. Initial reports show multiple regiments dropping in. Prince Victor has been sighted on the field of battle. Kai Allard has been seen at the head of the Outland Legion, driving off to form flanking positions.” The officer handed the report to Jackson Davion. His eyes raced through the materials.

  “Impossible,” Katrina said, rising to her feet. “Victor is dead. Christifori is dead. Allard is in Portsmouth.”

  Jackson threw the report onto her desk with what force he could. “It’s not impossible Princess. As was my initial fear, we have been duped. Portsmouth was a diversion. I’m going to pull the Seventeen Avalon and Twenty Second Avalon Hussars out immediately to challenge these new landings. The Tenth Deneb will need to be extracted from Portsmouth immediately and rushed to the north too.”