Tikonov Principality
May 17, 3219
The Capellan Falconer's gauss slugs went wide, the magnetically accelerated projectiles flying by to the left of Lara Steiner's Atlas. Lara let loose a volley from her 'Mech's heavy autocannon, walking the stream of armor piercing shells up the Falconer's side and into it's left arm joint. The gyro obviously destroyed, the Capellan retreated, falling back to the relative safety of the lines held by the Xiang-ning, one of Chancellor Liao's elite Death Commando units. The four regiments of the Xiang-ning had been battling the three regiments of the Bharat Gurkhas for control of the planet for weeks now, and the fighting had worn the two combatants down to a bare three regiments in strength.
Lara considered pursuing the Falconer, but it was too fast for her Atlas to catch, and she doubted that the heavily forested Indothai Range would offer any worthwhile long-range shots. Despite the forest fires that the fighting had ignited throughout the range, its trees remained thick and dense. The Atlas knocked one aside as it plodded thirty meters to the west, where a group of Twelfth Donegal combat engineers were working with the assistance of a Griffin IIC to clear a road. The Griffin used its massive hands to move boulders larger than most of the Twelfth's treaded vehicles, but the engineers were the true masters of the situation, clearing the road even faster than the 'Mech did. Finally, it was clear, and a lance of Bulldog medium tanks led the way further into the range.
"We're having a hell of a time with these traps, ma'am," Kiel said from his Jupiter. "Best guess is that the Capellans have some people up ahead, blasting crap onto the road. Our 'Mechs can bypass it, but it's giving our vehicles, especially the non-ATVs, a rough time."
"Send a 'Mech lance ahead to flush out any would-be saboteurs." Lara grimaced. "Terminate with extreme prejudice, I'm sick of this bullshit."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Realtime, what's the picture?"
"Realtime" was the codename for the mobile electronics warfare vehicle, the MEWV. Realtime's job was to monitor communications on the planet to give the peacekeepers a clearer picture of what was going on.
"Rather unclear, right now, General. The Gurkhas are fighting a pitched battle with a Capellan battalion about fifty klicks north, but the Capellans are being surprisingly quiet. Frankly, I'm not sure how they manage to communicate like this. They must be operating just with short-ranged transmitters, but that has to require really good timing. And, of course, a healthy spot of good luck."
"Let me know if you get anything," Lara said. "Kiel, those 'Mechs are on the way?"
"They're running ahead now, ma'am. They haven't reported any contact with the enemy yet, though. I'm hoping that we'll catch the bastards red-handed."
Not that it makes any difference to me, Lara thought. Dead is dead.
"This is Breaker One to any receiving unit, we are under heavy attack by Capellan BattleMechs and support vehicles. Please, any receiving unit, respond!"
Lara throttled her Atlas up to a run. "Command lance on me. Kiel, hold down the fort while I'm gone."
"With pleasure, ma'am. Good hunting."
The Atlas crashed through the trees, creating a visible path down the hillside. Up ahead, she could see where First Battalion's Breaker Lance was fighting what looked like a good mixed company of vehicles and 'Mechs. Finally reaching a somewhat clear area where the trees had been burned out, Lara settled both targeting crosshairs on a Capellan Kodiak. Her autocannon didn't have the range to score a hit, but her two large lasers did, and the ruby beams of energy hit dead on, melting a half-ton of armor off the 'Mech's back. The Capellan turned in surprise, opening himself up to an attack from a Lyran Hunchback, and fired his lasers in return. Two missed, but the third carved a long, molten scar in the Atlas's leg. Lara swore, sweat dripping from her brow with the sudden heat that turned her cockpit into a sauna.
The rest of the units in her command lance began firing, and a Capellan Harasser burst into flames under a flurry of pulse laser darts. The Kodiak took a swipe at the Hunchback as the smaller 'Mech ran past it, but missed, overextending itself and opening it up for a long burst from Lara's autocannon. The DU slugs chewed through the heavy armor on the OmniMech's chest, taking out a number of secondary armaments, but the deadly arm-mounted lasers remained intact. The Kodiak hit the retreating Hunchback with all three energy weapons, vaporizing armor from its backside. With the sudden change in weight distribution throwing the pilot off-balance, the Hunchback toppled forward into the ground, plowing a ten-meter track in the earth.
A Battle Hawk stepped up to support the Kodiak, firing at Lara's lancemate, who rode in a powerful Supernova. Lara fired off a half-dozen SRMs at the Kodiak to keep it busy while she engaged the Battle Hawk, trying to bring the heat off the Supernova. Her strategy worked a bit too well, for now the Battle Hawk and the Kodiak concentrated all their efforts on her Atlas, but this also gave her lancemate an opportunity to bring all nine of her large lasers to bear. The Battle Hawk simply came apart under that concentrated barrage, sliced to pieces by the kilojoules of energy flowing into it.
"Serves you right, you son of a bitch," Lara said, swiveling her 'Mech's torso to face the Kodiak. Along with Breaker One, who piloted a Mad Cat, the Lyran MechWarriors blasted the Capellan until it fell to its knees, its pilot ejecting out of the canopy as explosions wracked the 'Mech's metal body.
"Thanks for the save, General," Breaker One said. "That was one hell of an ambush."
"Ma'am," said Breaker Two, "we can confirm kills on six Capellan heavy-to-assault-class 'Mechs, and eight combat vehicles. Not bad for a day's work."
"Right you are, Breaker, right you are." Lara glanced around her. "Breaker Lance, continue your patrol. We'll be in earshot if you need help again."
Corporal Xin-shou Lo was quite certain that he needed to find another job. He hooked the detonator up to the wad of plastic explosive he had mounted on the slope, knowing that the ensuing explosion would cause a landslide more than capable of covering the road, and hindering the advancing Lyrans. Xin-shou also knew, though, that the Lyrans were gaining on his team, and he was quite certain that they would not take kindly to his efforts.
"Xin-shou! Xin-shou! Let's get moving!" his assistant hissed to him. Xin-shou waved the coward away.
"Shut up, you fool. If I do this wrong, we will accomplish nothing!"
"Xin-shou—aah!"
Xin-shou suddenly became aware of a towering presence above him. He looked up, right into the cockpit of a Shadow Cat. Painted on the side of the BattleMech's cockpit was the clenched iron gauntlet of the Lyran Alliance.
"Fuck," Xin-shou muttered, just before a burst from the Shadow Cat's .50-caliber tore him and his assistant apart.
Three hours and an ambush later, Lara Steiner and First Battalion made it to the spaceport where Kommandant Heller and Second Battalion had secured a headquarters for the Twelfth Donegal. The ComStar DropShips were just beginning to set down when Lara, still in the shorts and cooling vest that she wore in her 'Mech cockpit, stepped into the Combat Information Center, the spaceport's hastily converted control room.
"All right, what's the situation?" she demanded.
"First Battalion's casualty counts are coming in. Nothing too bad, only one 'Mech destroyed outright, two that we'll send salvage teams out for. We've got a number of damaged units—" including, the operations officer did not say, Steiner's own Atlas "—that'll need some time in the shop before they'll be fit again, but that shouldn't take much longer than twelve hours. Second Battalion took the spaceport by surprise, and after we destroyed their only tank, the infantrymen almost unanimously surrendered. There was a running gunfight with one particularly fanatical Capellan, and two of our people were wounded. She . . . didn't survive the apprehension attempt."
That was the ops officer's watered-down way of saying that a BattleMech had leveled the section of the spaceport where she had been hiding. Lara nodded.
"Third Battalion?"
"Third Battalion successfully completed its patrols without incident. They picked up a pair of 'Mechs from the Gurkhas, a Raven and a Joust."
"Excellent. When will Precentor McNamara's forces be deployed?"
"The 3045th Regiment will be unloaded within the hour. We'll integrate their units into patrol teams. I was thinking pairs of lances on search-and-destroy missions, perhaps light lances for recon. We'll keep a company or so at the spaceport at all times to guard against attack, but the automated systems really are quite good." He smiled. "Unfortunately for the Capellans, they were stupid enough to have them turned off when we dropped in on them."
"Thanks for small favors," she muttered. "Hauptmann Rice, what kind of perimeter do we have?"
The Chief Defense Officer glanced up from the tactical plot he and a number of staff officers had been studying. "I've got 'Mechs and vehicles holding a perimeter at five hundred meters from the base. Company F is being held back as a reserve."
"Excellent. And when can we expect the Second Regiment from upstairs?"
"Commodore Grinau is promising that they'll be down before tomorrow, but it seems that those aerofighters they ran into caused some damage to the docking mechanisms."
"Tell him that I want whatever he can offload down now." Lara leaned over the tactical plot, zooming the map out to show the Indothai Range and the half-circle of mountains that closed it in to the west. "Look, we know that the Gurkhas are very well trained in mountain combat, but only light to medium 'Mechs can be used in the mountains, so they're at a serious disadvantage in a straight fight. What they've been doing is drawing the Xiang-ning into the mountains where they can pick them off in ambushes, using hit-and-fade tactics. We've got to extract their commander, General Albert Korsakov, so he can talk to the Capellan general and hammer out a cease-fire. Since the Xiang-ning have made their intentions to shoot down anything that flies into their zones—" the Twelfth Donegal had lost four VTOL recon flights already "—we'll just have to smash our way to the mountains. Now, that's a good fifteen, twenty klicks from here—"
"Eighteen and a half, to be precise," Rice chimed in.
"—and I can think of no better way to convince the Capellan commander to talk peace than by trashing every BattleMech he has between us and them."
"It's a sound plan, ma'am, if a little obvious," Kiel said. "So we go in, get General Korsakov, and get out?"
"That's about it." Lara stood up. "I assume that Second Battalion should be up to performing the mission?"
"Damn straight, ma'am," Vincent Heller said from the back of the room. Lara smiled.
"Spoken like a true Lyran warrior. First and Third Battalions will be performing missions against Capellan targets of opportunity so that they can't just concentrate their forces on cutting Heller's people off. If Heller does get cut off, well, we'll be holding the Com Guards in reserve to smash them out." She shrugged. "And if things get really bad, we must have a DropShip or two we can scrounge up."
City of Promise, BharatTikonov Principality
General Joan Ben-Meir keyed up the channel for Captain Markham, commander of the Xiang-ning's First Company. Markham, always a joy to speak with, nodded curtly at the video pickup in the cockpit of his Grendel BattleMech.
"Yes, General?" Besides being a captain in the Capellan Army, Markham held a position as a Second Initiate in Chong-lo's secret police force, the Heaven Warriors. Knowing that his reputation was anything but angelic, Ben-Meir had been reluctant to have Markham under her command, but one did not argue with the Heaven Warriors.
"Captain," started Ben-Meir, taking the opportunity to remind him that she was the superior officer, "I have new orders for your company. I wish you to withdraw from the Indothai Range. Bring your troops back to headquarters."
"Pardon, ma'am? You wish for us to retreat?"
"You've already lost three 'Mechs, Captain, I can't have you lose anymore." When Markham started to protest, Ben-Meir raised a calming hand. "No, I do not blame you for their destruction. The Lyrans had you outnumbered three-to-one, easily. Please, return to headquarters, for I have a new mission in mind for First Company."
"Indeed, General? I certainly hope it gives me the opportunity to kill more Lyrans." He cut the connection.