CHAPTER 28

RIDE THE LIGHTNING, PART I

Review Corner

jdoug4118: Thank you always for your support. I will try my best to keep up with this.

Pacifica,
Chara III, Freedom Theater,
Lyran Alliance, Inner Sphere,
March 16, 3065

The radio chatter was muddy and inconclusive. All Caelia knew was that the dropship fell under attack. She expected that. She was the one who tipped Trystan about the dustoff, and she would've expected that her brother would do anything in his power to cut off its path. It was a textbook maneuver to outflank the enemy.

What she didn't understand was the dropship failed to relay the information about the attacker. Was her brother using technologies nobody had ever seen? Or was it something else other than his brother? Was it the Clans? An annihilated Clan? The Word of Blake? The Klingons? The Horde? What?

"The situation isszzz….. breeeee….!" her built in comset kept spitting nonsense. "…. black flying… t… horns!... gauss cannons on each side offff…. lssswaefwad… ber stand! Engine cutoff! We are goin…."

"Dropship command, say again!" Linc tried relentlessly to establish proper comlink. "Dropship command, you are breaking off! Dropship command!"

"What the hell is going on?" Blitzie growled. The gnashing of his teeth echoed through the comlink. His Victor rocked back and forth, channeling his anxiety and – to some extent – fear. "The dropship's under attack? By who?"

"How come somebody knew about the dustoff? Did you talk to anybody?" Linc tried to make sense of the situation.

"No! You?"

"No! I called NaruHina at 0500 hours. That's the only comlink I established."

"Somebody must've intercepted your comlink."

"Hell no! Not my mech! Yours maybe, but not mine!"

"Commanders, we have to proceed to the landing zone," Caelia interjected. "We must assist the dropship before it's too late."

"Negative, hold position!" Blitzie immediately rebuked her. "Too hot for dustoff!"

"Commander, it's our only way out!" Caelia whined. "If it's gone, we are stuck in this hole a long time!"

"We move out and we're dead!" Blitzie started to yell. "If you want to walk into a massacre, fine, but you're not taking Blazing Aces assets with you! Exit your mech and use your guns!"

"Blitzie, she's right," Linc tuned in. "We have to protect our dropship."

"We have to protect our own existence! It's the Rule of Engagement of any military unit in the universe! Protect yourself!"

"Blitzie, if the dropship is down, how are we going to protect ourselves?"

"We'll find a way! There are ways to get out of this forsaken world! All we need to do is to put our minds together, and we can't do that if we're all dead!"

"You wanna stay in this shithole for a long time?"

"You wanna die?"

"Commanders, we're wasting time!" Caelia wondered how the two co-CO of the Blazing Aces managed to stay in control for such a long time, given their leadership skill. "We have to reinforce the dropship!"

"I see what's going on!" Blitzie instead backpedaled and raised the Victor's Gauss-laden right arm. "You two are conducting mutiny! That's right, you want the Blazing Aces for yourselves! You think you can stab me in the back, huh, Linc? I know your history with Caelia and I shouldn't have trusted you! And you, Vandenberg bitch, you're just like your brother, just because you're carrying the name Vandenberg you want this unit for yourself!"

The unexpected turn put the entire unit in utter confusion. The battlemechs, barring Blitzie's Victor, Linc's Centurion, and Caelia's Griffin, stood dumbfounded. The Victor kept moving backward while shifting its weapons back and forth between the Centurion and the Griffin. The Centurion stood fast but the Griffin started advancing toward the Victor.

"Blitzie!" Caelia had enough with their ineptitude. "You should be relieved from CO duty, but that is not my priority at the moment. I'm going to reinforce the dropship, and I'm taking the fire support lance with me. Fire support lance! Rally on me, echelon right, open fire on visual contact!"

Half of the battlemechs lined up with Caelia's Griffin, regrouping in a diagonal line with Caelia on point. Blitzie positioned his Victor behind the fire support lance and raised his right arm, aiming his Gauss rifle at the back of the Griffin's head. But before he could do anything, Linc stepped in, positioning his Centurion right in front of the Victor.

"You do that, the fire lance will turn against us," Linc called Blitzie from private frequency.

"She defies my order! It's mutiny, punishable by death!" He switched target, now aiming his gun at Linc's cockpit. "Are you defending her?"

"I'm not defending her goddammit, but there is another way to get rid of her," Linc replied. "Right now just rally behind her, get the hell out of here, then execute her on our way to Ander's Moon."

"If you two make a move against me, I'll kill you both!" Blitzie growled with hesitation, but went along with Linc regardless. He switched to general frequency. "Command lance! Rally on me, wedge formation!"

As the command lance scrambled to get into position, Caelia throttled to maximum speed. Her lance mates had trouble keeping up with her, but she didn't care. She was only concerned about the dropship. If her brother was behind the attack, fine, she could give it a rest. Trystan knew better than to obliterate the only means to leave Chara III. But if it was attacked by another force, as the distress call suggested, then the whole thing would become more complicated than she thought.

And indeed, it was a thing of surreality that attacked the dropship. It was nothing like she'd ever seen before; a four-legged animal with bright horns and spiky tail, wings that looked almost as wide as the dropship, and a sinister grin adorned by a set of white, gleaming teeth. The dropship, bleeding fire and smoke, lied helplessly on the ground as the beast circled it like a falcon, zeroing on its prey. The fact that the dropship – an awesome weapon platform – did not fire a single shot at the beast made Caelia realize that the battle had already been decided.

"What in Kerensky's name is that?" Caelia stopped her mech and lined up her crosshair with the flying beast. Her computer circled through all entries in the database, but she didn't expect it to come up with something meaningful.

"Commander, I have visual on the…" her lance mates had a hard time to find words to identify the attacker. "Permission to engage, Ma'am?"

"Negative, stand down," Caelia held back her lance mates to let the command lance catch up. She readied her PPC and lined up her crosshair with the beast but didn't attempt to lock it. The beast did not show interest in the mechs as it continued to circle the dropship. She maintained her position until Blitzie, Linc, and the rest of the Blazing Aces arrived.

"Holy shh…" Blitzie mumbled as he pulled up next to Caelia. "What is that thing?"

"Is the dropship still operational?" Linc added. "Dropship command, do you read? Dropship command…"

A garbled transmission crackled on the comlink, followed by a long pause. Then somebody answered Linc's call, "This is Star Captain Osiris. We have seized your dropship. There is no escape. Exit your battlemechs and surrender; you will not be harmed."

Caelia remembered Osiris, the Wolf Clan operative that served as Trystan's bodyguard of some sort. She expected that Trystan would make this maneuver. Still, how would Osiris take control of a dropship? The dropship was heavily armored and armed to the teeth. How did Osiris go through the barricade? Using that flying thing? He couldn't have, because he was inside the dropship. Then who piloted the flying thing? Wolf Clan pilot? How did Wolf Clan possess a weapon that nobody had seen before?

"The Clan? What is the Clan doing deep in this territory?" Blitzie snarled and raised his Gauss rifle. "All units, target the Clan's flying mech! Fire on my mark…"

"It's not of the Clan," suddenly a much-to-familiar voice reverberated on the comlink. "The zoid works for me."

Just as the voice crackled, multiple heat signatures appeared on Caelia's radar. Three Commandos emerged from behind the dropship, and a Thunderbolt, a Hellspawn, and Humberto's very own Phoenix Hawk boxed the Blazing Aces, entrapping the mercenaries in text-book crossfire. The multi-barreled cannon sitting atop the Thunderbolt gave up the identity of the mechwarrior.

"Trystan Vandenberg?" Linc blabbered.

"Surprised?" Trystan advanced with all guns trained to Blitzie's Victor. "Don't think you'd see me again, do you? You should've killed me when you had a chance, just like you murdered my mother!"

"How did you find us here?" Blitzie bemoaned, then his voice turned dark when he finally connected the dots. "There has never been an insurgence in Charra III, has there? The contract is just a subterfuge to bring us here so you can rob and kill us!"

"I told you, you should've killed me when you had a chance," Trystan sneered.

"Humberto you sonofabitch!" Linc trained all his guns at the Phoenix Hawk. "How much did he offer you?"

"Life, and he didn't take it," Trystan replied curtly. "That's not Humberto. That's my friend Ronan. He's a better mechwarrior than Humberto ever was. He will not switch sides for money. His allegiance is only to me."

"You think you can take anything you want, Boy?" Blitzie didn't know what else to do so he started goading Trystan. "You killed your CO because you want to control the Blazing Aces, and now you're doing the same with us! But the truth is you know nothing about leading a mercenary unit! You only know how to suck your mother's teats, and now she's dead, you're just kicking yourself in the dirt!"

"I'm here for you," Trystan said calmly but tersely. "No, Blitzie, I don't care about the Blazing Aces as much as I care about your death. I'm here for you and Linc. I'm here for vengeance and justice for my mother!"

"Well then, there's nothing more to say," Linc switched target, lining up his guns at the Thunderbolt. "We're just going to shoot each other until everybody's dead!"

"Look around, Linc," Trystan swiveled his laser-laden right arm, now pointing at Linc's Centurion. "Consider your situation. The dropship's disabled. I have you on a crossfire. I own the higher ground. There is no other way to end this. Just exit your mech and make it easy for your sake."

"You six against us eight and you consider yourself on higher ground?" Blitzie chuckled. "Yet another instance that you're just a boy who doesn't know squat about military organization!" He turned on his external speaker. "Blazing Aces, target the Thunderbolt! Take it down! Now!"

"Blazing Aces, stand down!" Caelia screamed before any Blazing Aces mech made a move.

"Well, you've lost some numbers even before the shooting starts," Trystan said with unwavering swagger. The urge to light up his entire arsenal at Blitzie was overwhelming, but he knew he had to conserve assets. "Blazing Aces, this is Commander Trystan Vandenberg. You are surrounded. Lay down your weapons and shut down your battlemechs. You will not be harmed. Open fire and I consider you in the same league with Blitzie and Linc."

"Blazing Aces, this is Caelia Vandenberg," Caelia moved her Griffin closer to Trystan's Thunderbolt. "Power down. Follow my lead, and nobody will be hurt."

"So that's it, huh, Bitch?" Linc shifted target again, now lining up his big autocannon at Caelia's Griffin. "Switch allegiance to whatever suits your fancy?"

"I'm trying to save the Blazing Aces!" Caelia barked. She, too, had the itch to bear down his firepower at Linc's Centurion, but she restrained herself. She did, however, aimed her PPC squarely at the Centurion's long torso. "Can't you see? They got us pinned! If Trystan wants us dead, we're dead already! The only thing that would save us is to surrender!"

"You can say what you want, but in the end you're just like your brother!" Linc said then roared through the comlink, "Blazing Aces! Fire at will! Kill them all!"

"No! No! Stand down! Stand…" Caelia tried to establish control but Linc's autocannon blasted and sheared a ton of armor from her center torso at point blank range. Her Griffin flew backward and landed on its butt. The shock almost took her out, but she bit her lips, summoning every bit of might, enforcing her will on the Griffin's control to quickly get up and retaliate. Why Linc didn't go for her head was beyond her, but she didn't want to stay to find out. She was grateful nevertheless.

"Bastard!" Trystan fired his pulse laser but Blitzie fired his Gauss rifle. The Thunderbolt arched back with its arms splayed uncontrollably, but its stocky legs kept it from falling on its back. Trystan pulled his joysticks hard, taking a few steps backward to keep his mech standing, then mashed his alpha strike button. His rushed counter attack went embarrassingly wide, but three laser bolts gored the Victor on its side, stripping a few layers of armor.

"Fire at will! Fire at will!" Trystan yelled.

"Blazing Aces! Stand down! Stand down!" Caelia pulled her mech up and launched her missiles at Linc's midsection. Linc sidestepped the attack but four missiles managed to shred the armor on his hip. The Centurion staggered under the assault.

"Blazing Aces! Fire at will!" Linc screamed as he tried to regain balance. But only half of the remaining mechs followed his order. A Catapult quickly made a tight turn and took on the three Commandos, while a JaggerMech and an Avatar broke formation and charged the Thunderbolt. Fortunately a Thanatos, the most potent battlemech of all, and an Apollo, a deadly fire support mech, followed Caelia's command and stood still.

The Thunderbolt was pushed back when the JaggerMech and Avatar scored multiple autocannon salvos on the torso, but the Phoenix Hawk jumped over the Thunderbolt and engaged the JaggerMech. Laser bolts rained down on the burly mech, melting armor layer by layer. The JaggerMech stood its ground, but the Phoenix Hawk's speed was too much. It was a bullfighting, with the JaggerMech taking the role of the bull, writhing and twisting about to get a clear shot, while the Phoenix Hawk danced around it, stabbing the bigger mech at will.

The Hellspawn boldly charged the Avatar but Trystan knew the rookie wouldn't stand a chance against a seasoned mercenary. He cut the path of the Hellspawn and exchanged fire with the Avatar, keeping an eye on the Victor. The Victor tried to sneak pot shots, but he outmaneuvered it, putting the Avatar between him and the Victor. His scheme worked for a while, until the Victor found another, easier target.

Overtaken, the Hellspawn tried to make a difference by springing into action. Its missiles ripped the leg armor of the Avatar. But the inexperienced mechwarrior was too caught up with his assault that he missed the Victor taking a good hard lock on the Hellspawn. The hypersonic nickel-ferrous ball rocketed and tore the left shoulder apart. The Hellspawn careened, splaying its arms to find support but with its left arm almost detached from the left shoulder there was nothing rigid to support the blocky torso. The Hellspawn crashed on its side.

"Shit! Valen! Get out of there!" Trystan tried to give aid but the Avatar buried a good salvo on his torso, pinning him on his position. Trystan had no choice but to train all guns at the Avatar as he could only watch the big Victor looming over its defenseless prey. "Valen! Eject! Eject! Eject!"

But the young mechwarrior was tangled in his own frenzy. He pulled everything he could pull to get his mech back up, while the Victor fired another salvo. The lasers incised the shoulder further, triggering a massive fireball that consumed half of the Hellspawn's torso. The missiles gutted the mech, and the second Gauss shot capitalized the Hellspawn's annihilation. The Hellspawn disintegrated in an earth-shaking explosion.

On the other side, Caelia pulled her mech back up and watched the Hellspawn went up in flames. She didn't know who piloted the mech, and she didn't care except the fact that Trystan's band was one mech short. She really didn't want to be in this situation; she hoped everybody followed her direction to surrender. But she realized she had come to a point where she had to choose side. She chose to be with her brother.

Linc's Centurion launched another volley but Caelia shifted, dodging the lasers and missiles, then switched target to the Catapult manhandling the Commando trio. The Commandos fared surprisingly well against a mech more than twice its size, goring the armor with a smorgasbord of laser strands until it was left a drooping mess. But the waste heat caught up with them quickly, and soon the Commando's speed started to fade. The Catapult launched a deadly missile salvo at a helpless Commando, smashing its torso until the internal structure caved in, then finished it off with lasers. The superheated engine gave up, and the mech exploded in brilliant color.

Caelia brought her Griffin to the Catapult's rear and fired her PPC. She only meant to get the mech's attention. But she overestimated the integrity of the Catapult's armor, severely weakened by the Commandos. The hull arched forward, the legs shuddered, and the missile boxes twisted in opposite directions. The Catapult wobbled but managed to get a hard lock on another Commando right in front of it. Two rounds of laser and a swarm of missiles leapt from the mech and tore the Commando to bits.

The last Commando found the will to launch a deadly laser strike. An impressive display of no less than 10 laser bolts pounded the last bits of armor still clinging on the Catapult's frame. One strand bust through the structure and lit up the magazine. A giant fireball shredded the Catapult's body, throwing scorching body parts every which way. The Commando itself immediately went limp as the excess heat triggered the shutdown sequence.

As the pieces from the Catapult plummeted Caelia observed the battlefield. Trystan was still locked with the Avatar in close-quarter combat, while the Phoenix Hawk kept pounding the JaggerMech to pulp. Blitzie tried to fire a sucker punch at Trystan, but he never let down his defense, using the Avatar as a shield. Linc's Centurion tried to outflank the Phoenix Hawk, but hesitation was apparent on its steps. How the flying thing was still out of combat baffled her to no end, but it was the least of her concern.

She took aim and fired her PPC, breaching the left arm of the Avatar. The Avatar lurched then twisted its torso to retaliate, leaving Trystan unattended in the process. Trystan punished the Avatar for making that mistake. His lasers gutted the Avatar from less than 100 meters away. The Avatar stretched its legs to keep standing, but Trystan boldly crashed his Thunderbolt on it. The hit, coupled with the loss of mass, brought the Avatar down in a loud crunch. The mechwarrior decided the battle was lost for him, so he shut down his mech and surrendered.

As the Avatar fell, Blitzie had an unobstructed line of fire to Trystan. But instead of taking a shot, he turned his Victor around and escaped the battlefield. Linc followed him a few steps behind.