Los gritos del silencio
(The Killing Fields)
Prologue
Part 1
Ho-lu Lowlands, Denbar
Xin Sheng Commonality, Capellan Confederation
21 February 3062
The blue-white arc of particle projection cannon fire snaked into the thick stand of trees and sliced low into a large elm. Moisture in the wood flashed to steam, splintering the bole in its rush to expand. The energy stream ate up the splinters and carved deeper, cutting through to scorch earth on the far side even as the majestic tree began to topple.
Sitting ten meters off the grown in the cockpit of his new Emperor assault BattleMech placed Major Warner Luna nearly at a height with the tops of the trees. Certainly he out massed them. The falling elm brushed against the BattleMech, branches snapping off with rifle-shot echoes and leaving smears of green moss against the Emperor's dull bronze finish. The ninety-ton machine barely shook, its widespread stance keeping it firmly rooted to the ground while the equilibrium feedback from the major's neurohelmet dealt automatically and easily with the light tremor. Major Luna noted the event but otherwise paid it little heed. BattleMechs, war machines built mostly along humanoid lines, heavily armed and armored, had reigned supreme on the battlefields for well over three hundred years. Nature countn't compete. And in an assault-class machine especially, about the only thing a MechWarrior had to be concerned with was another BattleMech.
Dragging his targeting reticle over a distant stand of trees, mostly elm and cypress so close to Denbar's Huai Bayou, the major searched his head's up display and also through the ferroglass cockpit viewscreen for a target. The Empperor's targeting system apparently found something among the trees and hanging moss that his own vision missed, the reticle flashing the alternating red and gold pattern of a partial weapons lock. He returned fire with twin large lasers, not surprised to see the ruby streams miss wide. A few more scattered bolts of gemcolored laser fire flashed between the trees at his Blackwind Lancers and equally hidden members of the Third Confederation Reserves sniped at each other.
We only need to buy a few more seconds, he thought, dismissing the errant laser fire as he gauged the final moments of his battle plan. Keep them pinned down. He knew that the Third Reserves had nowhere to go; outnumbered, their backs to the bayou and his Lancers pressing in on three sides. They simply waited for the final charge and watched for a miaracle. A position not wholly unlike that of the St. Ives Compact.
Luna swallowed against a suddenly rancid taste. Now there was a thought he could have without, at least for a little while longer.
The St. Ives Compact had once been a Capellan Commonality until splitting off from the Confederation during the Fourth Succession War thirty years prior. The war against Houses Davion and Steiner left the Capellan Confederation in shambles, too weak to prevent the loss of the Compact. So Candace Liao had ruled her small state in relative peace, separate from the madness that had later reigned in her sister Romamo's larger realm and sharing only the common Asian heritage of their family and national culture. Later, under the relative stalility Romano's son Sun-Tzu finally brought to the realm, the Compact again began to worry over the possibility of Confederation aggression.
The Compact realized those fears soon enough. Barely two years ago-Luna could hardly believe it so recent-Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao, then also First Lord of the resurrected Star League, announced his intention to tour the Confederation-Compact border. Luna had been executive officer of the Blackwind Lancer's second battalion, serving under Major Tricia Smithson. Her near-fanatical hatred of Sun-Tzu had only been intensified by the Chancellor's repeated slurs against the Compact and the pro-Confederation fervor raised by his tour. Smithson had jumped the border with battalion in an attempt to remove what she considered the final threat to the Compact's sovereignty.
An event that might be entered into the Compact's history as the beginning of the end, Luna thought, his grip on the Emperor's control sticks knuckle-white. Despite what was shaping up to be a victory here, he knew the Compact was not faring well in its fight to remain a free and independent state.