If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of
those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.
-Capt. Edward A. Murphy
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
-Finagle’s Law of Dynamic Negatives
Murphy is always ready to lend you a hand.
-Popular Periphery refrain
Zenith Point, Landsmark,
Taurian Concordat, Periphery,
10th September 3068
The pirate crew on board the Liu Lang Zhe were used to just sitting around and playing cards while waiting for their planet-bound comrades to bleed and die for their booty. After all, it was a pirate point, too far to reach with fighters, and even combat dropships from the planet would take days to arrive, giving them a comfortable sense of security. So it was understandable that their reactions were less than lightning fast when the infra-red sensors fed a warning into the system, triggering the sirens on the ship.
The clean-shaven jumpship captain, not even thirty years old, almost jumped out of his chair, a rare oak chair they had taken from their disastrous raid on Muridox when the sirens started blaring, shaking them out of their accustomed complacency.
They were under attack. Merchants rarely use pirate points, and that left only military units, especially in a shithole system like Landsmark. Captain Pete Montose knew the score, and he didn’t like it. Incoming jumpships were sure to have dropships, and most dropships mounted sizable arsenals that could blow away the Liu Lang Zhe easily.
With all their dropships deployed to Landsmark, there wasn’t much they could muster in their own defense. Two PPCs mounted on the hull of the Invader class jumpship was all they had, and Montose, an experienced buccaneer despite his youth, knew the odds immediately. Nope, there was no way they were going to fight off the incoming enemy.
Hell, even a mech in space could blow them away now.
“Furl the sails, and get the fuck outta here!” Montose shouted as his crew sprang into action, driven by fear. Fear of the Taurian Concordat, for though the realm was rich pickings, every pirate knew the fate of those who failed to get away. And it was entirely likely that the incoming ship belonged to the Concordat.
Suffice to say, dying was the preferable option.
Pirates were flying around the bridge in micro-gravity, more often than not colliding with one another and eliciting more than a few muttered expletives as they sought to get the jumpship ready for combat. The bridge went to emergency power, the lights turning red as they sought to gather every last quanta of energy for powering their jump to safety.
“Glick! Start the calcs for jump!” Montose continued yelling. Better to jump out if possible, though he knew that there was no way they could furl the sails, stow it in the jumpship locker, and activate the field drive in time. But better that than sitting in place. “I want the PPCs ready for action!”
As pirates, they knew the value of keeping their weapons sharp, or in this case, operational, but against whatever might be coming in? And with only two measly PPCs?
When the nearby space flashed with the entry of another Invader, loaded down with dropships, Montose could only think, we are so dead.
Then he saw on the radar the telltale sign of small spherical shapes being launched from the enemy ship. It was obvious what those were. He turned away from the screen. “All hands! Prepare to repel boarders!”
Subaltern Stephen Carr of the Taurian Marines narrowed his eyes as he stared at the tactical screen on the HUD of his Troll battlesuit. The pirate jumpship was in the process of packing up, but that’ll likely still take a few more minutes before it was ready to jump out.
More than enough time for his specially trained boarding unit to capture the Invader jumpship, in the very first action of its type in the Concordat. He waited impatiently for the jumpship captain to clear his men for launch. As much as he hated to admit it, he didn’t like being strapped in the rigid confines of the battle taxi. He felt too much like a sitting duck, even though the vehicle was capable of tearing through space at incredible speeds.
“Ping Pong, you are clear for launch,” said the captain of the Raging Bull, much to Carr’s relief, even if he didn’t like the designation, since they remind him too much of what could happen to the taxis. Moments later, his four battle taxis, each loaded down with a squad of the latest pride of the Taurian military, the Troll space combat battlesuit, burst from the Bull’s small craft bays, streaking towards the pirate jumpship, which they had identified as the Liu Lang Zhe, using data from the Capellan Confederation’s Maskirovka when the Shen Se Tian had attacked some time back.
Without any dropships or fighters to defend it, the pirate ship was a ripe fruit hanging in space, just waiting to be plucked. Still, Carr swallowed the slight feeling of nausea rising from his belly. Getting around in a ping pong ball was never fun, not even for somebody who had been brought up in space.
“Taking some fire now, sir.” The taxi pilot commented laconically, as if he was just taking a walk in the park. Carr rolled his eyes inside his suit’s helmet. His time in space had shown him that all space pilots, be they fighter jocks or shuttle drivers, were intent on the millennia old tradition of ‘big, brass ones’.
The taxi suddenly shook violently, and Carr heard the pilot again. “Uh, we’re taking some flak. Nothing serious.” Carr groaned. Yeah right. The pilot could try to fake it, but the apprehension in his voice still bled through. Then the taxi started accelerating haphazardly, throwing off the aim of the enemy by taking an erratic flight path, which also served to increase Carr’s nausea.
After swallowing hard, and giving a direct order to his stomach to remain calm, Carr opened a channel to his troopers. “Okay boys, buckle up tight. We’ll be going in soon, so stay sharp and on the bounce.”
He switched over to the pilot, “How’s things?”
There was a grunt, “Still taking fire, but we’re matching velocities now. Gimme another few seconds.”
Carr checked his tactical screen, and sure enough, all four taxis were lining up alongside the almost stationary jumpship, ready to deploy their hooks.
“Just a little more…” The pilot said, and a slight shudder signaled the grappling hooks being fired. Another violent jerk killed the taxi’s velocity, and the pulleys on the hooks started pulling the taxi towards the jumpship’s hull, where it would stick on like a bloated leech. There was a not-so-gentle bounce as the taxi encountered the jumpship’s hull, where a sealed polymer suspension would seal the airlock and enable the marines to gain direct access to the hull.
From that point, the battlesuits had one of two options. They could use their cutting torches to cut their way past the hull into the jumpship through the airlock, or make their way on the ship’s hull itself through the taxi’s other doors and make separate entry points, or even seek out docking points and airlocks on the jumpships to enter it.
But SOP for boarding actions, especially for battlesuits, mandated entering in force and concentrating their firepower, preferably towards the directions of the bridge and engineering. It’s not as if there’s much that could stop them, unless the defending forces had battlearmor of their own.
“Move, move, move!” Carr yelled out as the restraining alloy straps over his monstrous looking Troll battlesuit retracted. He led the way to the airlock, where a heavy cutting laser was mounted specially for these situations. It had been one of his better ideas, and he found it strange that few others had thought of it.
While the outer airlock doors retracted with a hiss to reveal the gleaming hull of the jumpship, a trooper quickly handled the laser, and started it up, the tightly focused emerald beam slicing into the hull. The trooper moved the beam around steadily, having trained many times for such an action, which would allow him to cut a Troll sized hole in just under a minute.
Then the laser suddenly fizzled out, after having cut two lines of a rough rectangle. The trooper squeezed the trigger several times, but there was only one final whimpering burst from the nozzle that seemingly died out from its own embarrassment.
Carr stared incredulously at the laser, then at the trooper, who held up his hands as if to say, “Not my fault!”
Time for bitching later. Carr waved his right hand forward, and two troopers moved forward to use their cutting torches, from both sides of the incomplete bottom cut. It won’t be as fast as the laser mount, and they won’t be able to cut a clean hole, but at the very least they could get by with cutting three sides and then using their battlesuit enhanced strength to peel away the cut metal.
Later on they would find out that the sudden maneuvering of the taxi shook loose part of the laser cooling mechanism, which was why the laser melted down. After all, this was the first time the cutting laser was in action. They had not put the laser through the proper series of tests in their rush to get it operational. Something that would be fixed later on. But at least the Troll had gone through the most stringent testing, especially in real combat trials.
From his feed from the other squads, he could see them his sergeants reporting in of trouble with their boarding lasers as well, in the end resorting to their cutting torches to get in.
“Stand ready,” Carr warned as he raised his support laser, prepared to blast any enemy crew just waiting behind the hull when they would open the breach.
One trooper used the basic manipulator hands on his suit to peel back the hull, while another trooper quickly rushed through, and then taking up a covering position to the left of the corridor in which they fund themselves. Carr recognized it immediately as one that would lead to the bridge. The taxi pilot had done a very good job of identifying a location near an important access corridor.
Carr was next to fly through the breach, covering the other side of the corridor, his HUD side displays in IR and audio mode to scan for incoming enemies. The suit’s ECM systems were fully engaged, which would mess up any enemy attempt at coordinating a defense.
Hawkings’ toys were good stuff.
His remaining two troopers brought up the rear, and that was when the first defenders came in.
They were ready for the pirates, having picked up their approach with their audio sensors. After all, it didn’t take much effort to hear the holler and yells of pirates scurrying to their ship’s defense, even with all the noise the battlesuits made. Stealth was one thing heavy battelsuits are not known for, even in micro-G.
Carr let it rip with his weapons, his right arm SMG firing off specially designed lead alloy bullets that could rip big gaping holes in flesh targets but malleable enough to splatter their kinetic energy over a metal surface when they hit instead of punching their way through the metal like most other slug throwers and creating all sorts of problems for the combatants.
One of his troopers unleashed his shoulder mounted support laser down the corridor, an angry glaring beam capable of busting mech armor which went straight through to the far end of the passageway, splattering itself against the thick shielded door leading to the bridge. The pirates flinched from the blast, cowering behind the cover of the nooks and crannies along the dark metallic spaces of the jumpship interior.
Carr didn’t need to speak to his troops, his well-drilled squad leapfrogging forward, using their weapons to cover for each other while the pirates returned fire, most of it useless. They left more than 5 dead pirates behind in the initial engagement, the rest ducking back frantically. The tempo was abruptly disrupted when a pirate burst out of a concealed rubber bulkhead situated in shadow.
The pirate screamed as he brought down with one hand the humming edge of a vibroaxe down on Trooper Solano’s suit, neatly slicing away the shoulder mounted laser. Solano ducked down as the pirate came on, emerging into the dimly lit corridor as a massive bear of a man, his other hand wielding a vibrokatana that he stabbed right at Solano’s torso.
The blade sliced neatly past the advanced armor composite of the battlesuit, and Carr could only grit his teeth in rage as he heard a wet gargle from Solano on the comms. He stepped off to one side of Solano’s suit, while another trooper went the other direction. No matter what, they’re going to get the bastard son of a bitch.
The pirate wasn’t stupid though, and he tried to stay behind Solano’s suit by using some sort of magnetic clamps on his knees to attaché himself to the suit, but the suit floated around, dead in the corridor without a living brain to direct it.
And that eventually brought the pirate into Carr’s gunsights.
The Taurian Marine squeezed his trigger in cold satisfaction, the lead rounds punching numerous holes in the pirate, disgorging copious amounts of blood that formed dark red spherical globules floating in air. The pirate remained stuck to Solano’s rapidly cooling corpse.
Carr applied a bit of thrust from his jets to halt his backwards motion, caused by the recoil from his weapon, and then held up one hand to halt his men. There was something he wanted.
He moved over to the broken body of the pirate, and tugged the vibrokatana out of the limply floating hands.
“Payback time.” Carr promised as he lifted the vibrokatana.
Pete Montose glared at the door as though his eyes could melt it down, and then at his bridge crew. Everybody was holding a weapon, and taking cover behind a hastily erected barricade just in front of the bridge doors while hanging on to whatever handholds were available. The smell of fear was all too apparent.
It seemed futile. And stupid besides.
Young Pete could only curse his luck, and that of the Shen Se Tian. It just seemed that nothing right was going for them recently. This was a crucial raid, one that was supposed to net them critical supplies and salvage from the Landsmark militia.
Instead, they found themselves fighting not just the militia, but also a small reinforcing unit from a jumpship that just happened to be in system. Sure, that jumpship was taken over yesterday by another pirate band, the Siphon Blades, but the fact remained that its most valuable cargo, the mechs, were probably down on Landsmark slugging it out. Never mind that the Blades were going to contest for the same supplies and salvage.
But now with yet another jumpship, obviously out for their blood, gunning for them, the conclusion was a foregone one.
The door shook, and then simply melted into molten slag from the energy of three mech class lasers. The molten globs of liquid alloy floated around, then were brushed aside by the brusque form of a hulking battlesuit.
Pete didn’t need to give the order to fire. The bridge crew unleashed everything they had, but the enemy suit dodged adroitly to one side behind the door. His own shots from his gyrojet rifle simply blasted down into the corridor beyond the door.
Then a flashbang flew into the bridge. Followed by several more, all spinning in different directions.
They went off in successive pops, blinding and deafening the crew. Pete clutched his ears in agony, his sight cut off. He fell backwards, or as much as one could fall backwards in the absence of gravity.
His ears recovered first, but the first things they heard were less than encouraging. People were screaming. The chatter of machine gun fire threatened to burst his eardrums.
Pete’s eyesight was restored sufficiently for him to see one of the rampaging battlesuits walk forward with a vibrokatana, which he recognized as belonging to Marco, who was probably dead.
The vibrokatana swiped through the air, decapitating a recovering woman as she tried to fire back with her laser pistol. The look of utter shock and fear on her beheaded face surrounded by floating blood stunned the remaining pirates into inaction, as did the savagery of the Taurian Marine.
“Stop shooting, or we’ll kill every last one of you.” The gravelly voice of the soldier said. The tone held a certain amount of eagerness for the pirates to refuse, continuing the slaughter.
Pete glanced around the bridge. There was no way any of his people left were going to fight. Even if it meant surrendering to the Concordat.
He stood up from behind the cover of a makeshift barricade slowly, careful not to alarm the twitchy Taurians. He raised his rifle to one side, again very slowly and deliberately, and released it from his hand, assisted with a slight shove. The weapon spun away slowly in space.
“We surrender.” Pete said in resignation. That simply wasn’t any other choice.
“Stay sharp as you move,” Ian Calderon reminded his makeshift command as it marched towards the likely point of contact with the enemy mech column. “They’re moving fast, and SATINT shows contact in the next ten minutes.”
A slight bump brought his full attention back to the controls for his Awesome. The terrain they were moving on was difficult, to say the least, with some rocks on the ground half the size of a man, making for very treacherous footing. An antiquated militia Wolverine behind him stumbled on one of the smaller rocks, but the pilot just managed to keep the medium mech up and moving.
It was a dry, sparsely grassed area, a hard scrabble land, with few trees and bushes scattered in isolated clumps. Brown, mud-caked hills and a few holes in the ground, along with lots of rocks, made up the rest of the would-be battleground. From the maps flashing up on his secondary displays, the entire area for tens of kilometers in all directions was the same depressing sight.
In an untidy bunch behind him were Daniela Mattlov, Benny Greaves, and a disorganized mob of mechs and vehicles that passed for Landsmark’s militia. Daniela was trying her best to organize the militia into some semblance of a formation, while Benny kept pace in his Daishi. Xie Xun was far ahead in his cutting edge Men Shen, scouting for the enemy. There was only so much satellites in orbit could do, and most of them had already been blasted away by the pirate dropships anyway. The CCAF officer had been the one to ‘conscript’ Ian and his companions into the fight to defend the planet, though Ian was sure it was more about smashing the pirates and saving face for the Confederation than defending the farmers for the Capellan.
Burning into the system at a gut wrenching 2.5 Gs, they had arrived in time to take charge of the situation and the militia, left in disarray from a recent spate of transfers and reassignments due to the disastrous Taurian incursion into the Pleiades Cluster, was more than grateful to let somebody else take overall command. And Ian found himself in the role.
Ian still couldn’t figure out why he had allowed Xie to talk him into it.
“Picking up contacts at Bravo 4,” Xie informed him. “About two-zero Mikes. I suspect a lance somewhere on our flanks. Watch it.”
Ian glanced at his map. “Understood.” It was a very basic trick, but still difficult to counter, considering the makeup of his scratch unit.
“Lancer Zero, I am moving up on the far left.” Daniela told
him. “Maybe Benny should cover the other flank. Between either the two of us,
we should be able to slow any flank or rear attack long enough for you to move
back.”
Ian nodded reluctantly. ”Okay, but watch yourself.” Sure, those might be clan
omnimechs they were running, but even clan technology could be defeated by
superior numbers. There was also a tickle at the back of his mind that did not
want Daniela putting herself in danger.
He ignored it.
The militia were a pretty standard bunch, using old technology that while reliable, were easily outperformed on the modern battlefield. They had two Wasps, a Valkyrie, and a Javelin for their light lance. A Hatchetman and a Blackjack made up their other lance. A mixed lance of Manticores and Pos backed up the mechs, along with four old APC carriers loaded with a company of militia infantry. There were more infantry on the way, but most of them were still stuck in transit, since Landsmark lacked even the most rudimentary air transportation assets.
Subaltern Posey, the commander of the militia, was an old retiree who was tasked to lead the local militia simply because there was nobody else available, not because he could do a good job. Ian had nearly blown his top at the small militia base when he discovered that two mechs on the roster, a Catapult and a Whitworth, were unusable because the Subaltern did not remember to requisition supplies for their maintenance. Their pilots were now cooling their heels at the base while trying to repair their machines with supplies from the Leopard dropship Ian had arrived in.
Water under the bridge, he reminded himself again. No purpose in shouting at Posey when there were more important matters to deal with. Like the Shen Se Tian pirates who had just jumped in, as well as another band that had captured the Farstrider just before they landed on Landsmark.
Ian was a betting man, and he knew at once that it was no coincidence that a pirate jumpship had jumped in near the Farstrider. If the Shen Se Tian had not attacked, and if he had not listened to Xie and participated in the defense…
Gotta stop thinking about it. Ian shook his head. But he couldn’t forget that somebody was probably out to get him, and had hired a pirate band to do so. And the answer for that was seductively simple.
Poor Milton Hawkings had been on the Farstrider when it was captured, and nobody knew what was going on that side. The militia had already sent out a priority one message via the local class C Word of Blake HPG, but everybody knew reinforcements would be long in coming. In other words, they’re on their own.
“Enemy sighted at grid Tango Nine. ETA is 5 minutes” Xie’s transmission made him turn to his screens. The feed streaming in from Xie’s Men Shen’s Beagle Active Probe was rapidly updating his own system database of enemy mechs, their likely configurations, and archived combat tactics.
The pirates were heading for Loca, the capital city, probably for food stores in the small city’s granaries. There were also a few small factories producing small arms and mech MG ammunition, as well as a sizable stockpile of parts in the militia base. They would be out to get all of that.
The militia had two choices. Engage the enemy in the city and base, and hopefully trap them before they could raid their targets and escape with their booty, or engage them outside the city before they could reach it, the option which Ian favored, not least because city fighting was tricky business, even with infantry. Collateral damage would also be a given, and he hated that.
So Ian planned to intercept the pirates in the Ricardo Hills just outside the city, seeking a non-decisive engagement to repulse them, or at least inflict enough damage to deter them. He didn’t think he had enough strength to push for an outright victory, as outnumbered as his forces were. The plan was to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive. He also gambled on the pirates not splitting up, because that would mean diluting their force. Hell, he had hoped they would split their forces for the raid, so that his superior technology could tear them apart piecemeal.
“Cornet Lewis, get your men to the clump of trees at four o’clock.” Posey had explained to him specifically that they were not trained in code. The APCs headed for the trees, while the other mechs of his command took up positions around his Awesome. Daniela’s Masakari and Benny’s Daishi anchored each flank, the lynchpins of his force. The militia milled around aimlessly, and Ian had to tell the pilot and crews of each mech and tank where to go and what to do. He wasn’t unfamiliar with this sort of thing, having done the same many times before in the Chaos March, but this time, it simply felt different, because he was commanding troops not as a mercenary, but as a noble of the realm.
They settled around several tall hills which offered them unrestricted line of sight in all directions. Of course, there’d be blind spots behind some of the other hills, but Ian judged that for the enemy to try going over those hills would not be easy, unless they had jump jets. The infantry on one side would shield that flank as much as possible, while his own Awesome took up position nearer Daniela’s Masakari on the side without any infantry.
Then Xie Xun’s green painted Men Shen appeared on their scopes, moving swiftly on the rocky terrain without stumbling even slightly, attesting to his superb piloting skill.
“Here they come! Watch your front!” Ian brought up his targeting cursors, aiming at the area behind the Men Shen.
Sure enough, the pirates burst into his sights in a three pronged fork formation, moving as fast as they can. Ian counted at least 10 heavies and assaults amongst the pirates, including a massive Zeus.
Still, he took solace in the fact that Benny’s Daishi was even bigger.
Ian shouted “Fire!”, and battle commenced.
Daniela Mattlov grimaced as a particle bolt splashed next to her cockpit window, melting off armor on the right torso of her Warhawk. She hammered back at the Zeus that had shot at her with her own ER PPCs, while a large pulse laser sought out a fast moving Phoenix Hawk that was jumping and sniping at the dug-in tanks.
The Zeus was exposed from the waist up, its legs shielded by an outcropping of rock. One PPC struck home, blasting armor off the left, while the other wasted itself against the rocks. Her pulse laser tracked the fast evading P-Hawk unsuccessfully as it ducked behind a large hill.
“Freebirth!” She swore vehemently, and waited for her PPCs to recharge for another attack on the Zeus.
She was about to fire her PPCs when a heavy autocannon burst from an Orion crashed against her Warhawk’s arm. Inexplicably, the status light for one PPC blinked out.
Mattlov cursed. “I have lost a PPC! There was no breach!”
Ian replied almost immediately. “Armor piercing rounds. That’s what they’re using! Daniela, pull back!” More rounds seemed to be heading for her Warhawk now, as the pirates scented blood. The blood of a assault class clan omnimech.
“Neg.” Time to show these filthy spheroids what a true clan warrior can do. She placed her targeting cursor over the Orion, and unleashed pure hellfire at it.
The Orion had been moving forward bravely to get within range for its guns, and that foolhardy move had placed it squarely within the comfortable targeting range of her Warhawk’s advanced targeting system. She held off from firing while waiting for the steady tone being issued from her neurohelmet that would indicate a successful lock.
The tone sounded high, indicating a high probability hit, and she depressed her triggers. All her remaining weapons carved into the Orion’s left side, where all the missile ammunition were stored.
After the inevitable explosion, there was no Orion anymore, just burning and melted chunks of mech scattered across the battlefield.
However, Daniela had no time to revel in her kill, because the Zeus fired at her. Missiles splintered armor all over the Warhawk, while the particle cannon just missed her mech. The autocannon shaved away armor from the legs, but all in all, the damage was manageable.
The Orion had gone down, but most of the pirates were still firing back, moving constantly from cover to cover to evade the fire from the slowly shifting militia force. Ian was keeping tabs on the enemy force, shifting his mechs around to prevent the pirates from outflanking him.
Daniela did not mind much. After the forced tedium of the past few weeks, it was a massive relief for her to be engaged in real combat. Battle was what she lived for, what she was bred for. Social functions and tours were tolerable at first, but she found herself agitating for something to do.
To her, a Falcon true, this was heaven. To crush her foes under the heel of her mech on the field of combat, to feel the thrill of battle, and hear the thunderous roar of the clash of arms. Now this was what the life of a warrior should be! Even if it was chasing pirates, something left to solahma. Right now, Daniela could hardly care less.
She swung her weapons at the offending Zeus. Without trying for a lock this time, she simply fired at it, flaying off more armor with her pulse lasers. The Zeus staggered, but stayed on its feet, moving back in a retrograde maneuver.
An explosion to her right spoke of the destruction of a Manticore tank, while a Po crew were screaming on the radio of a turret lock. The two Wasps were getting battered even though they were trying their best to stay out of range while the other militia mechs were taking a real pounding. The infantry launched SRMs at any pirate that came near their position, while they hugged the ground to avoid the fearsome mech weaponry.
Ian’s Awesome was firing its fearsome array of PPCs at extreme ranges, scouring armor off a Thug that was already moving backwards after taking too much damage. Xie’s Men Shen skulked around the edge of the enemy line, sparring with two Blackjacks, and apparently more than holding its own even though outnumbered. Benny’s Daishi had staked out a nice firing position, and unloading its prodigious firepower on a poor Atlas that had already lost an arm.
But the pirates were also shooting back with a certain degree of effectiveness; the militia mechs were taking a terrible pounding. The Hatchetman had already gone down with a destroyed leg, while the Blackjack looked certain to follow it. A Banshee and three mediums were moving steadily forward, eager to get within short range where their weapons would be most effective.
“Concentrate on that Banshee!” Ian called out, and Daniela reacted quickly. She shoved her weapons in the direction of the assault mech, as did Benny. A few seconds later, the Banshee crashed to the ground, one leg shot away.
The show of force seemed to have cowed the pirates, and the medium mechs immediately broke away rather than gamble on which of them would go down next under the guns of the clan mechs. With the medium mechs falling back, the rest of the Shen Se Tian started dropping back, conceding the field to the militia. The pirates had lost two mechs, the Banshee and the Orion, while a few others were heavily damaged.
Bunch of selfish freebirths, Daniela sneered. They do not realize that a good push would probably break our lines. So what if one or two mechs are lost? They can always claim our machines as salvage.
Ian seemed to know what she was thinking. “Daniela, they’re not so stupid to break themselves on us when there’s another pirate band coming in. That’s the real reason why they fell back.”
“So do we pursue?” Benny asked.
“We don’t have the assets to engage them in a decisive fight either, not with the other pirate band coming in,” said Xie, surprisingly. “The best we can hope for is to inflict as much damage as we can on them, hope they turn on each other, and wait for reinforcements to arrive from New Vandenburg.”
Ian agreed. “And this exchange leaves us slightly better off, but not by much. I want the Banshee salvaged ASAP. Maybe we could scrounge up something for the leg. Cornet Lewis, I want you to…” Ian suddenly paused. “Wait one.”
“What is it?”
Ian did not reply for some long moments. Daniela took the time to check the status of her mech. The Warhawk had borne the battle well, losing only armor, and of course the ER PPC to the damnable armor piercing ammunition. She hoped she could get a tech to repair the weapon, as they did not have much in the way of spare clan weapon pods. She also checked on the status of the other militia mechs, and was relived that the Hachetman could be repaired with stores back at the base.
“Good news,” said Ian minutes later. “Reinforcements are already on the way.”
Ian leaned back in his chair, while the other warriors gathered around an old conference table in the ramshackle briefing room of the militia base, all of them sweating profusely in the humid air of Landsmark. Above him, the ceiling fan fought a valiant, but ultimately losing battle to bring relief to the warriors, dirty and tired after their battle.
It was even worse for those who had arrived from the Farstrider. Ian could feel weariness from the exhausting trip pull at his consciousness. The heat didn’t help.
Spotting an old rag laying on the table, he used it to wipe off the sweat on his face. It was no time to be choosy. For all the money his father had supposedly poured into the defenses of Taurian worlds, Ian wondered why the Landsmark militia was unable to afford even an air-conditioned office. And the readiness state of the militia was far from what he expected from a Taurian militia. There could be any number of reasons for this, of course, and Ian knew them all.
I suppose I should check it out, but really, it isn’t my business. He scowled. No matter what, he was still a mercenary, and he expected to be paid for this action. But it was really getting harder to act as a mercenary.
Because right now, most of the militia were worshipping the ground he walked on. Ian was beginning to regret using his real surname when they’d just landed to assume command. After their marginal victory in the Ricardo Hills, the militia seemed to have gotten in their minds that he was going to be the man to solve all their problems.
“Something to drink, sir?” Cornet Grig Lewis walked up with a glass of cold water with a few ice cubes, which Ian accepted gratefully. Lewis’ deferential attitude made him more than a bit uncomfortable, but Ian decided to let it slide. He had bigger problems to deal with.
“Thanks.” He took a sip from the glass. “Is everybody here?”
Daniela check her datapad, “Aff, Colonel.”
“Good.” Ian sat up in his seat. “As you all know, we’ve just beaten back the Shen Se Tian, but they’ll be back before long. They’re still pretty strong, and they seem to have only 20 mechs instead of the two companies we expected. I think they were expecting to claim mech salvage and load it up on their dropships. In any case, we destroyed two of their mechs, cutting them down to 18 mechs. The other pirate band, identity unknown, is still in transit with an Overlord dropship, and will probably land on the 12th. The Farstrider is in pirate hands.”
He paused, letting everybody digest that piece of news. The Shen Se Tian had used two Unions, allowing for a maximum of two companies, plus another lance if they converted the fighter bays to carry mechs. An Overlord, however, could carry an entire battalion.
He continued. “That’s what we have on our enemies. Now for what we have. Everything we have here, of course, and the two more battalions of infantry on the way. Cornet Lewis, when are they arriving?”
“In four more days, Colonel.”
“Good. In addition, the Red Chasseurs are already in-system with 2 companies of mechs and two platoons of battle armor. They’ve already captured the Shen Se Tian jumpship when they jumped in.” Murmurs greeted his announcement, a hubbub of whispers as the troopers discussed the issue amongst themselves.
Daniela was puzzled. “But the Shen Se Tian jumpship was at a pirate point. How could they have arrived so…” Realization dawned on her. “They knew where the pirates would be!”
Ian nodded. “It was a trap, pure and simple. The Chasseurs didn’t tell me this, but they came in too quickly for it to be anything other than a prearranged plan. Somebody just forgot to keep us in the loop.”
And somebody wanted me here, he thought but did not say out loud. Again, he had his own suspicions. Why is everybody so damn insistent on manipulating me? “Questions?”
Benny popped the silence first. “Any idea how we’re going to get the Farstrider back?”
“The Chasseurs have battlearmor, which they used to capture the jumpship at the pirate point. I’d guess that they’re already planning to take back the Farstrider and also the other pirate jumpship as soon as they can.”
“But wouldn’t that leave us with two pirate bands with nowhere to go? I dunno why, but I don’t like it.” Posey mentioned.
Ian grinned humorlessly. “You’re right in a way. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard - Sun-Tzu, the ancient fellow, not yours, Xie. No offense meant.”
Xie smiled in understanding. “None taken.” The rest of the warriors scratched their heads in confusion. Looks like none of them had read the classics…
“But do we really want them to escape?” Ian asked. “This is an unprecedented chance for us to eliminate two pirate bands in the area. Yes, we will take heavy losses, but better that than allowing them to continue their rape and pillage of the Concordat.”
Everybody nodded. Piracy was ever the bane of worlds and nations sited on the edge of nowhere, and here was a rare chance to put not just one, but two bands out of business.
Ian stood up. “I’ll contact the Chasseurs, and tell them to get those jumpships. And I want everybody to get their gear in fighting shape, because you’ll be the fight of your lives once the other band arrives, and maybe even before then. If we had the Catapult and the Whitworth just now, we could have taken a bigger piece of them. So get to it.”
Dropship Bewailer,
In
Transit
Milton Hawkings squinted out of one badly bruised eye as he awoke. He coughed once, feeling the spittle drip down from his broken lips. Amazingly, he’s still alive. He looked around his makeshift cell, the brig of a large dropship. Or at least, that was what he assumed, from the steady acceleration he was feeling, and the dull thrum of fusion thrusters he was hearing. His ankles were handcuffed with plastic cuffs, as were his hands, which were behind his back.
What
a mess I am now, he thought. Wonder what these pirates want? Maybe I
could talk to them again, pay them off…
He laughed for a moment, before the pain in his ribs stopped him. Yeah, that had worked real well the first go round when the Farstrider was boarded. It had worked so well they had beaten him up instead of killing him outright.
Milton regretted not going with Ian to Landsmark. He regretted not staying back on New Vandenburg when Brenda Calderon told him she needed his help with the planetary economy. He regretted not taking a vacation back on Taurus when he could.
He regretted not taking the opportunity to propose to Jenna when he could have, because he knew he was going to die.
No, dammit, I’m not gonna die here, he promised himself. I’m going to escape, and… and what the heck?
There was a series of footsteps near his cell, and Milton thought he could hear several different people whispering. He crawled inch by painful inch nearer the source of the sounds.
“Keep it down, you surats,” somebody, a male from the sound of it, whispered. “I do not want Siphus or any of his lackeys hearing us.”
Hmmm? Milton thought, forgetting his pain for the moment. This is interesting…
“What about the prisoners? What if they overhear us?”
The voice which had spoken of silence replied, “They are just civilians. Nobody will believe them. Siphus is not so silly as to allow such divisive rumors scuttle our unity.” The man laughed scornfully.
“Okay, Hadden, so what do you want?” A female voice asked. “You get all of us here, so I assume you have heard something that concerns the clan?”
Clan?
That word piqued Milton’s interest. Jenna’s supposed to be a clanner
too, except she still doesn’t remember. So who are these people?
“Aff, Sarit.” The man replied. He was obviously the leader. “I have heard something that might interest all of you.”
“Stop wasting time and spill it out, Hadden.” Another man this time, whose voice sounded like sandpaper grating.
“Very well then. I assume all of you had heard the rumors of one warship of our clan surviving in the Periphery. I can confirm that rumor. The Osis’ Pride has survived the False Star League’s Annihilation, and is calling all true warriors of the clan to rebuild the clan.”
There was stunned silence, while Milton tried desperately to recall what he could of the clans. If he remembered correctly, after checking up on the clans when they found out about Jenna’s past, or what little there was of it, the 2nd Star League annihilated just one clan, the Smoke Jaguars. These were likely to be survivors from that clan.
“Could it be true?” Another female asked. “And if so, where did you hear this from? And why now?”
Milton could almost sense Hadden’s smile as he replied, “I have contacts on Landsmark, who I trust. They are warriors of the clan, now hiding among the sniveling masses of the Taurian Concordat, waiting to bring us back into the fold, so to speak. I could only confirm this now, and not before because all I knew was through intermediaries on Port Krin. But I just received a transmission from Landsmark that confirms those rumors, and I am sure of the source because he is an old comrade.”
“So you wish us to carry out a mutiny? This is dishonorable, and you know it. We were defeated in honorable combat by Siphus.”
Hadden scoffed. “When our mechs had only half their weapons working, and only then because he ganged up on us a small group at a time and claimed us as bondsmen! You call that honorable? I do not. Which is also why I feel it is justified for us to shatter these stravag barbarians from within when the time is right. I had bided my time for years, acting the part of the loyal but slightly antagonistic subordinate for too long. Now is the time to regain our heritage and make the Inner Sphere tremble in fear!”
“So what is the plan?” Another male asked, obviously awed by Hadden’s conviction.
Hadden started outlining his plot, and Milton listened in
carefully. This could be useful…