Copernicus Caldera,

Einstein, Deep Periphery

12^th March 3068

 

Battle’s Bane had landed at the site Frank and Descartin had pointed out as one of two possible locations for the hidden base. The Arch Lancer’s departure from Drop Zone Phi in the morning had been a bittersweet one, as they knew in all likelihood that some of their friends in the Warriors would be dead before noon.

That prediction was all too accurate. Karen Winslet had died in her Cyclops when its engine went critical after being pierced by a concentrated volley of autocannon and PPC fire. The Warriors had lost four more mechwarriors, but they had repulsed the Falcons.

The Warriors were now led by a Robert Feehan, a new recruit they had picked up on Outreach. The name sounded familiar to Ian, but that was just about the last thing on his mind as he grieved over Karen’s death in his office. Leaning against a wall with one hand while he read the after action report, he could barely process the information on it.

The other Lancers had been deployed to look for traces of the alien base, equipped with topographic scanners and Geiger counters to detect trace radiation. The place had been nicknamed Copernicus Caldera by a dropship engineer, and the name stuck for convenience’s sake. All this left him in his office, supposedly to coordinate his units. He was not doing that though.

What do I feel for her? This question resounded in his mind over and over again as he replayed the times they had together. He knew that she loved him, but was it just childish adoration, or the love of a mature woman? He had never treated her like a lover until the night before, and even then it was more out of sympathy. In the past, he had simply regarded her as a close friend, and an important ally. There had been numerous opportunities for him to show reciprocate, but he had never felt the urge to.

And now, it was too late. He could feel the gaping hole in his heart, and it was even worse than when Sachin had died. Logically, he knew it was no fault of his that she died, that she knew the risks of combat. But he could not help feeling sorry for never returning her love. It was sadness tinged with regret.

He punched the wall in front of him, his fists hitting with such force that a picture hung on the same wall was shook loose from its place and clattered to the floor. He wanted, no, needed the release.

Love cannot be made to order. Clichéd, certainly, but no less true even in the 31^st century. Karen had offered her love without reservation, without really expecting anything from Ian in return. Ian, on the other hand, had never been obligated to love her back in return.

Correction. He did love her, but not in the romantic sense. It was the type of love between friends, nothing more, and nothing less. That did not make it meaningless, however.

As he straightened up, he straightened out his thoughts as well. He need not feel ashamed that he did not take Karen to be his lover, but his sadness was genuine and proper, for she had been his close friend. She would have wanted him to avenge her, and to make the best out of the rest of his life.

That was her strong hint the previous night, when she had hinted at his true identity. As they shared their bodies, she had told him her dreams, her hopes for the future. She had also expressed her wishes concerning him, that he would stop wasting time running his merc unit and return to his homeland. She had said he was too good to spend his whole life fighting for every House and minor faction that needed a merc.

Very well, Karen. If that is your last wish, I will try my best to accomplish it. A look of determination appeared in his eyes as he set out his goals for the future. Maybe it’s time to claim my destiny.

As Ian walked out of the Fortress dropship, he could feel a certain apprehension in the air, as though whole armies were about to descend upon the small camp. Almost everyone was hard at work combing the area for clues, the mechwarriors on over watch in their huge mounts, the tankers zipping through the perimeter in their light, nimble tanks, and the infantry using their eyes and handheld sensors to look for anomalies.

Nobody had any idea what the entrance might look like, but from previous accounts of discovery of lostech caches in hidden bases, a cave or a flat wall was always involved.

Ian was more skeptical, however. They were looking at this from a human perspective. Who knows what the aliens might have thought? And they might even be advanced enough to put up holographic screens or something similar that the mercs were unable to think of, and thus detect.

The signs were encouraging, however. The background radiation was a bit higher than usual, which lends credence to the idea that nuclear weapons had been used in the area before, probably as a can opener.

The single huge peak in the middle of the caldera had its summit at about 5000 meters above sea level, while its base and the caldera floor was two thousand meters below sea level. Off to the north was the sea, about three clicks away from the edge of the caldera, which was about fifty kilometers across in diameter. The mountain in the middle, which they had dubbed Galileo’s Tower, was about ten kilometers across.

Ian had never seen such a weird geographic arrangement, and this was one further sign that they were looking in the right place. Thinking about it just gave him the shivers. The aliens actually had the ability to construct entire landscapes, and even terraform a planet such that it was still a paradise after the terraforming was long done.

This was in direct contrast to humanity’s efforts to terraform Venus, and countless other worlds in the Inner Sphere, which all collapsed when the technology to maintain the terraformed climate failed, which resulted in the planets reverting back to their pre-terraformed condition.

They had two days to find the base before the next challenge arrived. Rho Galaxy had agreed to allow them that much time to repair their mechs, which the techs were doing. The mechs going on the search were either not heavily damaged, or placed later in the queue. Ian had ordered Pascal to concentrate efforts on one or two mechs at a time, which would allow the other mechs to participate in the search.

He would have liked to join a search party himself, but it was more important that he coordinate the overall effort. With the Battle’s Bane nestled in the shadow of Galileo’s Tower, the search was widening out gradually as they expanded the radius.

Ian looked over the grassy plains of the caldera, marveling at the sheer beauty of the place. The air was tinged with the fragrant scent of wild flowers in bloom, raising the spirits of the mercs, while the tall walls of the caldera gave them a strong sense of security.

It will not last long. Ian thought to himself. Once the Falcons attack, the place would turn into just another battlefield, with the inerasable scars of war etched onto the land. The husks of dead mechs, the muddy ground churned up by the footsteps of the massive machines, the disposed shells of unexploded missiles and autocannon casings, would mark the land forever as mankind’s, a testament to their urge for conflict.

 

Corporal Tom Huckley was a native of Andurien, a world rich in resources, but fought over so often by Houses Liao and Marik that its former beauty was a thing of the past. The present sight of the caldera reminded him so much of his homeworld’s former glory that it threatened to bring tears to his eyes.

He had left his home when he was eighteen, the third son who had next to no prospects in the small town he had grown up in. He enlisted in a private militia for two years, before scraping up enough money to get to Outreach, the Mercenary’s Star. It was not long before he managed to get hired by the Arch Lancers, an up-and-coming merc unit fast gaining a reputation in the hotbed of the Chaos March. He had fought in quite a few campaigns since then, but the present one, for all its brevity, was the most brutal yet.

Captain Sachin was dead, along with more than half the number of ground-pounders they had. By dint of his rank, Tom, who normally commanded a subsection of three men, was now in charge of a full section since there were many gaping holes in their TO&E.

He shook his head vigorously, and got back to his task of searching for the entrance to the hidden base. The higher ups had not told them much, only that the Star League had one more base somewhere in the mountains.

Even the infantrymen, as kept out of the loop as they were, knew that was a piece of crock. If the Star League really had a base here, they would have picked the base’s fusion plant signature with their neutrino sensors.

Some eavesdropping and rumor-mongering had revealed to the troopers the incredible truth, that there were aliens on the planet once. Of course, those aliens were all dead, or Tom was sure they would have sent the meddling humans packing long ago already.

Similarly, it did not take them long to realize that the base they were looking for belonged to the aliens. If Star League devices could make them rich, then surely the alien artifacts within the base would make them wealthy beyond belief!

Best of all, Major Ian might even have enough money to outfit the infantry with battlearmor. In their battles with the Falcons, Tom had seen enough of the powerful elementals to appreciate the edge it might give them. Lieutenant Drenner, who had been promoted to the rank by a grateful Ian for their part in the previous battle, had even allowed some select troopers to try out the elemental suits. While they had all come out exhausted, Tom could see that they had all fallen in love with the idea of armored suits.

Tom was so engrossed in his thoughts while mechanically sweeping his handheld neutrino sensor from side to side, that he failed to notice an obstacle on the ground.

“What the heck?” He suddenly found the grass rushing up to meet his face, as he tripped over something on the ground. Flinging out his hands desperately to prevent his head from going splat, he knew he had succeeded when his forearms slammed into the ground just before his own face hit the arms, the double impact numbing his arms.

“Damn!” He yelled as he lifted his head. “What the fuck was that?”

Shaking off the pain, he pulled up his feet from whatever had tripped him, and stood up. He turned around to look for the offending obstacle, only to see a thin plastic wire on the ground.

A plastic wire? Crouching down for a closer look, he could see that the plastic was heavily marked and scratched from years of exposure to the elements. He decided to follow the wire to see where it led. This could be important.

It was not long before the wire split into several more wires, each leading to a ruined device, which Tom was able to identify as a camera. He walked around the area for a while, noting the locations of each camera and what they might have been filming. It was not long before he managed to determine the direction they were pointing at.

They were pointing at a jagged piece of wall, with a single long vertical line running right down the middle from the top.

 

Ian was checking his the dispositions of his far flung unit when the call came in.

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Wick. One of my men has found something. Come check it out! The location is at 3547. I’m gathering my platoon at the area ASAP.” There was a short pause. “I think we’ve found it sir.”

There was no need for Wick to tell Ian what ‘it’ was. It was what they had been searching for the past few hours, what the Star League had spent centuries trying to open.

And quite possibly what killed the researchers on the planet as well.

Twenty minutes after a hellishly fast ride on a Regulator hovertank, Ian found himself staring at the Door.

It was simply called the Door, the mercs surprisingly short of corny nicknames at the moment. Covering one side of Galileo’s Tower, it hardly stood out in orbital scans and cursory visual tracking. On the ground though, at fifty meters away, it was plain obvious that there was an entrance of some sort in the side of the mountain.

The Door was about four hundred meters high, large enough for even their dropships to enter should they manage to open it. Its width was more debatable, but Ian guessed that it was probably very, very wide.

Several warriors and infantrymen with demolitions training were examining the site, trying to find a place to place their explosives. It took Ian several stern orders before they relented.

The Star League had tried everything from naval bombardment to nuclear assault to open up the place, and these attempts had all failed. What could the mercs do to surpass that? No, what was required were the six key machines, two with the Lancers and four with the Raiders.

A transmission had already been sent to the Raiders, who would be joining them in the caldera once their mechs had been fixed up. Estimates were about two days, more than ample time for the Lancers to get their own gear into top condition.

Quickly assessing the situation, Ian ordered the Battle’s Bane to land near the Door. He did not want his men cut off from their transport if anything went wrong, and it also allowed fire support for his mobile elements.

Despite its age, the Fortress class dropship deserved its designation for being a solid fort on the ground. The Long Tom it carried further enhanced its combat ability, supplying artillery fire against unsuspecting enemies. Ian had held off using the Long Tom in his battles against the Falcons because he knew it would have been a gross bid violation and could have incurred the wrath of clan aerospace units. He did not want to sacrifice their ride home for a chance to damage some clan omnimechs!

All they can do now was to wait for the Raiders and hope that they had found out how to use the key machines.

 

Dropship Nile, In Atmospheric Transit,

Einstein, Deep Periphery

14^th March 3068

 

After two days of brainstorming, Frank and Lorik had come up with a variety of programs to activate the machines. There were preplanned sequences, with one machine transmitting after the next, two machines linked together transmitting simultaneously, and so on.

Despite all these, Frank and Lorik knew there was something they were missing, something they had not thought of. Something completely out of the box.

No time to think too much of this now, Frank thought as he sat in the cockpit of his patched up Night Gyr. The techs had managed to scrape up enough endo-steel from the carcasses of the other scrapped clan mechs to build a new leg for his mech. In the end, the Marauder leg was not needed at all.

Most of the mechs were fixed up, including the reserve mechs. Their battles had made the scratch unit wealthy in Battlemechs, still the most secure form of currency in the Inner Sphere. Frank wondered how they are going to split the mech surplus when they returned to Outreach.

He pushed that thought out of the way. That was the least of his problems. Better to take care of the immediate ones.

Several other merc units were also heading towards the site of the base entrance. Two infantry companies, and three armor units. They had yet to be challenged by the Falcons, but at the rate the Falcons were ripping through the mercenaries, they would not be far behind.

One encouraging sign was an almost imperceptible slowdown of the Falcon attacks. While there were as many as eight challenges at the very start, it had dwindled down to an average of 6 challenges now, and many of them against the really small units, like two mech lances and the sort. Frank estimated that the Falcons must have already lost the equivalent of one cluster in material, and about one and a half trinaries in personnel.

The Jade Falcons seemed to be on the comeback, however. The previous day, reports were coming in of Inner Sphere mechs fighting on the side of the clanners, retrofitted with clan technology. While not as deadly as clan omnimechs, they still posed a significant threat. Frank did not doubt that with the new mechs, the Falcons would be able to recover their original mech strength, if not their full combat power, very soon.

For the mercs, there were about five regiments of them left. In detail, there were still two regiments of mechs, another two of vehicles, and one of infantry. They had lost almost all their aerospace assets, the surviving pilots all bondsmen to Clan Jade Falcon. Only about four fighters belonging to the Warriors, and another six attached to a tank company that had yet to be challenged remained. Both units were heading for the caldera.

That left the mercs in the caldera with a great deal of combat strength, almost approaching a full regiment, in fact. Frank was wondering if the Falcons would simply send a full cluster to wipe them out, which would be very convenient to them.

Ian had said over his last transmission that it was actually a good idea. He proposed setting up one huge trap, complete with mines, artillery, and hidden infantry, to lure the Falcons into. Frank had his doubts about the idea, but his first priority was not the destruction of the clanners, but rather gaining entry into the alien stronghold.

Over the past few days, the former Nova Cats were repeatedly complaining of nightmares in their sleep. The dreams were vivid, but often they could not remember anything about it when they woke up, just a general sense of dread. Only Deserk was able to describe what he saw, which was the same dream he had been having ever since they arrived in system.

Even Jean Posavatz was having weird visions, especially after every ingestion of necrosia. She seemed to be getting more and more addicted to the substance as the visions got clearer and clearer, something which had Descartin Winters very worried. He did not want one of his best mechwarriors to suddenly go off the edge or into a coma due to an overdose of the stuff.

The dreams and visions were not confined to the clanners. Some of the tech crew and the warriors were also reporting strange visions and portents. Frank himself had an episode so far, but his memories of the dream were too hazy.

Lorik was trying to calm the slowly panicking warriors and techs, through slow and deliberate explanations that convinced many that they were not going mad. Although the results seemed to bear out the general hypothesis of psi, Lorik did not want to pile any more pressure on the mercs than he already had.

Frank knew better. It was also a good sign, in a way. It showed that perhaps an important psi event is approaching, probably the activation of the key machines. That also indicated that they would have figured out the proper configuration, and that the alien base has been opened.

He could not forget, however, Deserk’s dreams of black mechs storming all over the planet. Could the Door be a poisoned chalice, a doorway to hell?