SIX
Orbit of Victoria,
New Avalon Combat Region,
Crucis March, Federated Suns,
March 19, 3074
Evee had spent the better part of her time watching the drab orb in the main monitor as Paladin made the final approach to Victoria. Preliminary radar sweep did not reveal any sign of life down there, although Paladin's accuracy – and its crews, for that matter – was highly questionable. But the lack of activities made her concern. It made everybody concern, even myself.
We spent months sharpening our instinct, working as a team, overhauling our old quirks that could get us killed in combat. We had become something we never thought we could. We hunted in pack, using our speed to quickly gain position, then attacked enemy's stronghold where it hurt them the most. We were not the old Cavaliers anymore. We were Wolves incarnate.
"The first company has boarded the dropship," I told Evee. "We are ready to drop off in 5 minutes. Once in world, I will set up a base camp and a more secure landing zone. Let Shinoyama, Kikuchi, and Yamada drop off for additional fire support. You take the last flight."
"Is he still down there?" Evee whispered her reply. "Are we too late for him?"
"You said it yourself," I embraced her shoulder to give her spirit. "Kyle Garret is a tough guy. He will not go down easily. And even if he did, he would take a lot of them with him. That's what we are here, remember? To give him a hand, or to pay homage to him by wiping out the Word of Blake from Victoria?"
She turned to face me and gave me a short kiss on the lips. "What would I do without you?"
I did not respond. Instead I gave her a soulful kiss, while my mind sang an ancient warrior's canticle of his loved one before he left her to battle. This piece was a millennium old – written in the 21st century – but still perfectly fit in the 31st century, as human's affinity to war did not change much.
How can I describe thee?
My throat and pen would dry with haste.
For the starlight contained within thy hand,
makes the futile sun furious with thy endless summer.
And if there was a waterfall that flowed to the reaches of your hair,
my hands would ravish through thine enchanting spray,
and drown in thy lovely depths.
Shall I cast thine eyes into the nightly sky?
The shine of day would never end,
for the jealous moon should forever be concealed under their sparkling perfection.
Should thou ever give me the warmth of thy beating heart,
I would never fear a freezing winter's day.
And let all confections tremble in the presence of thy sweet lips,
for they are unemployed in comparison.
Never shall thy features hide, fade or die.
They give thee the blessing of a beautiful immortality.
Red Baron's cockpit was already warm when I took the command seat. The tech had run my mech for sometime, checking all the vitals and weapons. It was grinning in its finery: one LBX20 cannon on each arm, and one ER large laser on each side of the torso. I strapped my neurohelmet and gave my company a brief pep talk, "This is what we came for. We are a long way from New St. Andrews, and I expect you to give everything you have. There is no place for Word of Blake in the Inner Sphere, and we will be the first to make them suffer!"
The comlink suddenly exploded with chants and war cries. Knowing that they were all with me, I hailed Evee, "This is First Company, we are ready to drop off. Let us loose, Eev."
The mighty jerk nailed my head on my command couch, and I knew I was flying in space. There were the usual jerks and rumblings, and the state of unawareness soon ended in a rough touch down. As soon as the bay rumbled open, I pushed the throttle, bringing my mech trampled the ramp. We landed on a small savanna. The grass swerved to give way to my gigantic feet, and I paced myself in the semi-open field, knocking several small trees. Half a click away from the dropship, I stopped and observed my company walked down the path. My radar did not show any heat signatures of battlemechs, and visual contact only showed indigenous vegetations. Resting for a minute, I leaned back on my command couch, watching Kangpae lining up the first company as they walked out of the dropship.
And then, my radar bleeped in panic. Nine hundred meters from where I stood, six BCN-3R Buccaneers, four TYM-A1 Toyamas and two SPT-N2 Spartans started to make their way toward us. Across the field in the opposite direction, two Level-2 Blakist tanks and LRM-carriers galloped through the open field.
"Dropship command, I spotted a Word of Blake task force with mixed strength coming in our direction," I dictated. "Provide cover fire as soon as they get in range. Cavaliers, get out of the dropship and form up on me. The Word of Blake decided to give us a warm welcoming party."
As my company sprinted out of the dropship, the plain went alive with blazing trails of lasers and missiles from the Union, followed by blinding explosions in the distance. The Blakist started sending forth its volleys, maiming the dropship with well-placed missile works. Some of them fired their missiles at us, but without a hard lock, their missiles served more of a strafing means than deadly, concentrated fire.
"Parker, I spotted two more Level-2 forces coming your way," Evee yelled on my ears. "Medium to heavy mechs with Spartans. Get back to the dropship and haul ass. The drop zone is hot."
But I saw a chance to make a crippling hit at the Blakist force. Pouring its military might at one place, the Blakists were enforcing its superiority. It was a bully tactic, swarming the hapless unit from every direction, showing who was the strongest player in the field. The psychological damage was much greater than physical or mechanical wound. But if my smaller unit could beat their big guns, everything would come back at them. Their morale would drop like a brick. I knew what my company was capable of, and I was confident that I could tear apart the Blakist's confidence.
"Negative, Dropship Command, there is no time," I rebuked. "Blast off!"
"Parker what the hell are you doing?" Evee's shrilled on the comlink, threatening to rupture my eardrums. "You can't take on Level-3 force alone! Get to the dropship at once!"
"They expect us to cower inside the dropship!" I barked back. "I will not give them the satisfaction! Dropship Command, I am your immediate ranking officer. Blast off! Now!"
"Dammit Parker, I don't need a dead hero! Get to the dropship!" Evee screamed as hard as she could.
I could not think with her screaming at my ears, so I disconnected my comlink from Paladin. Pillars of smoke rose as the Union left the ground, peppered by the incoming Blakists war machines. The cloud of lasers, missiles and ballistics thickened by the minute, but the dropship quickly reached safe height, sailing unabated back toward Paladin.
"I hope you know what you're doing, Parker," Kangpae said with a glint of panic in his voice.
"Full speed ahead!" I pushed my throttle forward, dashing through the bushes and small trees. My unit followed without questions, some even overtook me. Two Spartans and two Toyamas twisted their torso, lining up their guns at me within 650 meters. The Blakists' missile racks glowed. Half a dozen warheads ripped my mech from the front, peeling layers of ferro-fibrous armor. The rest of the missiles did the same thing to my mates. But I fastened the grip on the joystick and shrugged it off.
"Fire at will! Don't lose speed!" I roared and mashed my trigger, sending twin laser bolts at a Spartan. The bolts molested the front armor, melting a ton of armor of the Blakist. Kangpae's Argus barked and poured its armor-piercing rounds toward the Blakist, followed by half a dozen Cavaliers doing the same thing. The slugs tacked the Spartan's neck, failed to breach it, but clearly hurt the Blakist assault mech. It staggered hard, and my Marauder and Warhammer wisely picked up what Kangpae left. The Spartan's right knee burst up, disintegrating its hip from its shin. The Spartan swayed for one second before toppled and skidded flat-faced.
The other Spartan changed course and sprinted toward me, while the Buccaneers made their way to my right flank. Two pure energy beams missed my cockpit by a mere centimeter. I put my crosshair on the short neck of the Spartan, 600 meters away. Its laser glowed and spitted venomous strands, two of which caught the Marauder in front of me. I pressed the trigger at the first second I caught the ready beep on his console. My ER large lasers boiled a layer of its right torso armor.
The Spartan retaliated, and a PPC bolt found home on my torso. Hot, sizzling metals splattered everywhere, and the heat spiked up halfway the shutdown level, preventing me from return fire. I gripped my stick tightly, returning to fighting stance just as three medium lasers drilled holes on the belly. My breath caught in my throat, and I flushed the coolant reservoir, almost a quarter of the container, to bring the temperature down.
My Warhammer and Marauder returned fire, and one of the PPC bolts rammed the cockpit canopy, claiming everything inside the cockpit. With a massive shudder the Spartan fell back with plexiglass snippets hurled all over the place.
The remaining Toyamas unleashed everything they got. One good salvo from the Toyamas breached the Warhammer's left arm, leaving the whole structure dangling by just several strands of myomer. The Warhammer let the Toyama harass its left side, waiting for a chance to strike back. The Toyama hurled another round of missiles that connected to the leg, then took a stunted break to deal with its almost unbearable heat.
"Hit the Toyama, ten o'clock!" I directed my company to bring down the firepower on the overheated Blakist. Missiles and lasers raced toward the Toyama, with some occasional PPC and autocannon bursts. Its front armor quickly turned to orange goo, but it refused to yield. I brought my mech to 280 meters and put the crosshair squarely on the torso. Fire belched from my left LBX, and the Toyama exploded, dissolved into fiery mist.
The last Toyama opted to let us through uncontested. We had broken through the first Blakist formation. Their company had been separated, and none of the lance had the strength or the position to pin us down. The Buccaneers, trying to outflank us, did not expect us to make such a maneuver and had put themselves in an awkward position, blocking their own artilleries from taking a clean shot at us. The best they could do was to keep up with us, hoping for the other two Level-2 to slow us down.
"We have broken through their ranks," Kangpae stated. "Where to, now?"
"Another Blakist Level-2 at ten o'clock, 900 meters and closing," I watched my HUD. "We go straight through them. Keep your speed up and guns hot. Mow them down!"
"Again? You're nuts!" Kangpae replied, half protested. "You're going to get us killed!"
"No Cavaliers die today!" I rebuked his whining. "Trust in yourself and you'll be fine!"
Never expecting a close-up combat, the Blakist started pounding my company with their assault mechs, hoping to smother our fast advance so their Buccaneers and armor units could catch up. AMS worked furiously, bringing down many missiles, but the survivors found a way stagger the light mechs. The Initiates fired its missiles, slugging my Archer lance mates by ripping several myomer bundles off its leg. Ten missiles slammed into the Archer's right torso. The medium mech quivered, trying hard to maintain speed with a limping gait.
"Target the Initiates! Now!" I ordered. A curtain of missiles leapt into the sky and slugged the two closest Initiates, sending their arms flying. Medium-range lasers and ballistics slipped past battlemech formation and lashed the Initiates. I picked one and put my twin lasers on its torso. Molten slag bubbled and dripped, and the Initiates swayed violently. PPC bolts anchored the fast assault, leaving the Blakists crumbling with fireball blossomed all over them.
The Blakists responded with their missiles, then with their lasers and ballistics. Their strafing fire slammed home into mechs. As the gap between us shrunk, the Blakists saw me and concentrated their fire to bring me down. Smart move. Within seconds my armor tracker turned red, and fire broke out in most of my mech's part, leaving me with a thread-thin armor and its defiance against the Blakist's weapons.
But hoping to bring me quickly down, the Blakists let a window wide open for Kangpae and the rest of the company. Kangpae took his lance to swing left, peppering the Blakist's right flank, while the rest just let their guns loose. This forced the Blakists to divide their focus. Their fastest mechs were locked in close-quarter combat, while their flank was open wide for Kangpae's lance. One Spartan and one Toyama were caught in a crossfire, firing their weapons vainly, but in the end buckled under the unison fire.
The remaining Spartan and Toyama changed their targets, scoring hits at the limping Archer. Armor-piercing shells pounded the 70-ton mech, disrobing it from its protective armor. An unfortunate missile strike ripped its arms off. A burst of autocannon rounds came into light, sending streams of shells towards the Archer's shoulder. The massive torso armor of the Archer gave way to the armor-piercing rounds, leaving the torso eviscerated. A long, azure stream of charged particles lanced the torso into the heart of the mech. The Archer engulfed in a gigantic fireball.
By this time, the Buccaneers had entered firing range and started peppering our back with lasers. I pulled out Kangpae's lance and took the Buccaneers head on, keeping the rest tangled with the Spartan and Toyama. Kangpae's Bushwacker lance mates pumped up their missiles to slow down the incoming Blakists. My lasers blended in with the Crab's and grazed a Buccaneer on its right leg, leaving the 55-tonner limping with sizzling myomer. And Kangpae hurled everything he got, staggering yet another Buccaneer with concentrated shots to the torso.
But with speed close to 100 kph, the Buccaneers quickly arranged themselves into a staggered formation and launched a cascaded attack right to the center of my rank. Two laser bolts zipped past my mech, but another pair drilled Kangpae's Argus on the left torso. Molten armor dripped in rivulets, and the 60-ton Argus bobbed and weaved. One Buccaneer slipped past our defensive fire and fired a salvo at the struggling Argus. Fire broke out, and Kangpae had to ditch more coolant to cool down his mech.
"I'm in trouble here!" he barked amidst statics.
"All hands, cover fire!" I pushed my mech forward and hit my LBX cannons. The scattered munitions hacked the Buccaneer's left side, pushing the lanky mech to slalom like a mindless zombie. The Bushwackers picked out where I left off, blasting the cannons of their own. Fireworks ripped the Blakist apart, bringing it diving into the ground.
But another Buccaneer streaked loose into our formation, and its Artemis fire control guided its missiles straight into Kangpae's cockpit. I was powerless to stop it, and I could only watch the Argus' head turned into a fireball. Fire quickly turned to smoke, and the Argus slumped gracefully until it hunched over the ground, supported by its right torso.
I felt my senses were betraying me. Just one strike was needed to disable a 60-ton monster, a strike that would shut down its central brain. That brain was Kangpae, and that was what he got. Head shots were virtual impossibilities, and I refused to believe that Kangpae was taken out with a dumb luck. He was my captain, my friend, and the Cavalier's cardinal founder. He just couldn't die. Not yet. Not now. Not by a head shot.
However, it was the truth. Kangpae had fallen, and my denial wouldn't change a thing.
"Man down!" I screamed. I felt the rush of adrenaline burnt my brain, almost turning me berserk. I overrode my shutdown mechanism and chased the damned Buccaneer. I wanted his blood, and I did not care of anything else. My laser beams landed perfectly on its back, roasting the thin armor into smoldering shards. The medium mech paused briefly for balance and I fired my LBX. Heat tracker shot up to dangerous level, and my eyes became obscured by the waste heat. At 300 meters, my shots did not hurt the Buccaneer, but the impact shoved the 55-ton forward, pushing it off balance.
The Buccaneer turned and returned fire with its missiles, four of which gouged blazing craters along my left torso. Two bright bolts of laser followed suit, burning the armor of my right arm. The other Buccaneers lined up their guns at me. I felt cascading rattles throughout the cockpit, pushing my mech to churn to the left side. My armor tracker started flashing, coupling the warning sign that flooded me with useless knowledge about critical hits.
But at this point, I did not care about critical hits anymore. I wanted that Buccaneer dead, and I did not want to stop to care about critical hits. I fired again as soon as my laser recycled. One flew too high, but the other melted the laser casing on its arm. Fire belched from my twin LBX cannons, and this time, the munitions landed squarely on the torso. Once again they failed to breach the armor, but the impact staggered the mech.
The Buccaneer pilot fired all lasers in retaliation. My Gladiator, shot up and badly overheated, buckled under the Blakist assault. Coolant hissed upon contact with burning myomer, and fire broke out in three major areas. Waste heat overwhelmed the cockpit so much I could not breathe. At one point I did not know which would come first: internal explosion due to overheating, my meltdown, or the Buccaneer's next attack finishing me off.
But the Buccaneer's pilot did one critical mistake: he did not override the shutdown sequence. Firing all lasers in unison pushed his mech to shutdown temperature, and against his will, it stopped working. I pushed my mech forward, closing the gap to 150 meters. As the Buccaneer started to rise, I put both arms forward and mashed the trigger. This time, my shots gutted the Blakist, and it went down under a rain of ferro-fibrous splinters.
Meanwhile, Kangpae's lance mates did a good job holding the rest of the Buccaneers. They knew I wanted it for myself. While the Buccaneer struggled to get up, it fired its missiles to hold me off. But the rushed shot went meters away from its target. When he regained his footing, I was but 50 meters apart from him. I hoped he drowned in his fear.
As the Buccaneer hoisted its hatchet, I slammed home the alpha strike. Flaming splinters spread out in the air as the Blakist convulsed. The torso armor melted into sweltering ooze. Steam hissed out from the wound, and white strands seeped from its core. The medium mech rocked its limbs, then fell on its back. A second later a blazing pile of light burst from its chest, and the Buccaneer exploded in brilliant flares.
I yanked my sticks backward to bring my mech to backpedal, avoiding the explosion. Revenge never brought me satisfaction, only empty hollow. And revenge never got me anything different. Kangpae was still dead. I turned back, seeing my light lance regrouping with my Warhammer and Marauder lance mates at the back. The recon lance also lost a Commando, and the Warhammer had lost one PPC, but they were triumphant against the Spartan.
The remaining Buccaneers broke off engagement and ran away, but my sensor caught another demi-company approaching from the east, two Level-2 armor groups coming from the south-west, and yet another group rolling from the east. But the last group was not arranged in traditional 6-unit Blakist formation. There were 8 of them, arranged in two Davion-style lances.
"Welcome to Victoria," a somewhat familiar voice greeted me. "Zoe's here, Shooting Star's Recon Lance. Remember Tecumseh?"
Zoe Catherine. Yes, I remembered her. The nice girl that substituted Evee at Kyle-Natalie's wedding rehearsal. The fact that she was still alive – in good morale nonetheless – was a good indication that Kyle Garret was still around. "I remember you," I replied. "Where is Kyle?"
"We were cut off, but I know he's good," Zoe replied. "He's on the northern part of the continent. We have to break through this Blake defense to regroup with him. I see Blake's mechs on ten, then their armor backups at our three. How banged-up are you?"
"We can manage another contact with Blake's mechs," I observed my unit. "Take care of the armors."
"Damn Wolf to the end, aren't you, Kerensky?" a baritone voice interfered my comlink in half jest. "Look, we have fresher troops. Let us hit the Blake's mechs. When you're done with the armor, come give us a hand."
That must have been David Malthus, Jade Falcon expatriate and Zoe's life partner. Working with an ex Jade Falcon squeezed a wry chuckle out of me. I still remembered the damages Jerome Helmer caused me. But Malthus speaking in Inner Sphere accent – contractions and jokes – was a sign that he had fused with Spheroid's lifestyle much faster than me. I should have ditched my Jade Falcon prejudice long time ago.
"Very well," I turned my mech around. "All hands, prepare to attack the armor assets."
Despite losing half of armor and most of the ammunition, my units were more than eager to hunt down the armors. Killing armor assets should not be a problem, and it was good for their morale. Missiles started to rise high above the wind, but my comrades dove straight under the missile umbrella. The faster mechs quickly closed the gap with the armor group while the heavier mechs took potshots from the distance.
At close range, the tanks were too sluggish to track down the mechs. Chunks of burning splinters were tossed into a large radius as two massive explosions consumed a couple of Bulldogs. Then the missile launchers were singed, one after another, while the tanks trying their heart out to take protect the delicate LRM launchers. Knowing that they were outgunned, the tanks turned and left the battlefield.
"They are still in range, Chief," one of my units chattered. "Shall we wipe them off?"
"No… let them go," I switched my radar. "Regroup to reinforce the Shooting Stars."
But soon enough, I realized that it was not necessary. The Shooting Stars reinforcement scared the Blakists, so they opted to go back to wherever they came and left us. Soon, my radar did not pick up any heat signatures other than the Cavaliers and the Shooting Stars.
"I see that you haven't lost your touch, Parker, despite living in an isolated world for a long time," David Malthus commented. "We caught a live one here. I think we can get some information from him before we twist his neck."
"I want him," I sneered. "Can I ask nicely, or do I have to issue a Trial of Possession?"
"That part is our past, Parker," Malthus replied. "If you want him, you get him."
Thank you Rica Canonizado for the beautiful poem!