Disclaimer: As before, no claims are made.
Chapter 2
Center Mech Bay, SLDS Lord George Murray
Ridderkirk System
"…Star Colonel Athen Kederk of the 328th Assault Cluster, Alpha Galaxy, Clan Wolf. What is your name and with what forces are you going to bolster this world's meager defenses?"
I keyed my comm. alive. "Star Colonel Athen Kederk, I am Lieutenant-Colonel Roland Talbot, Commanding Officer 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, Star League Defense Force Royal Command, Detachment Four-Two—"
Det. Four-Two (the name came from the Black Watch's earliest regimental number) was one of the Royal Command's official designation for the Black Watch and its subsidiary units. The Regiment itself was officially carried as the Royal 19111th regiment from its place as 191st Division, 1st Brigade, 1st Regiment (the system had a tendency to break down with higher division numbers). As far as the SLDF was concerned, everyone assigned to Det. Four-Two took orders through the Royal Command. As far as the Regiment was concerned, everyone assigned Det. Four-Two was a member of the THAF that would occasionally be on detached duty with the SLDF. By the strictest letter of the regs assigned personnel were technically member of two completely separate militaries, although theoretically subject to recall by the SLDF. On a practical level, however, once you were in 'Detachment Four-Two' you were in for life unless you really screwed up.
"—Star Colonel, you and your cluster are in violation of Member-State territorial limits. Under Article Seven Section Two of the Articles of the Star League, the mutual defense protocol, I am declaring this system under the protection of the Star League Defense Force. As senior officer in orbit I am requesting and requiring you and your forces to repair aboard your DropShips and quit this system immediately. Failure to comply with this and any further directives you are issued will have the gravest of consequences."
I held down the 'transmit' key a little longer to squelch out his broadcast, but then released it.
"—ag freebirth surat!"
"Message not understood, Star Colonel, are you having technical difficulties with your communications systems?" I asked. "My technicians would be happy to assist you with any repairs that you may require in order to be on your way."
"Jesus, Roland," George laughed over the command circuit.
"Pretenders and Imposters who seek to ape the glory of the Star League Defense Force, hear me!"
"Can you believe this guy?" a female voice asked. A glance at the section of my holographic display that was concerned with such things indicated it wasn't from one of the troopers outside of my lance, and the only woman in my command lance was—
Only it wasn't. Durandal had been flipping through avatars, still not happy with the one it had initialized with. The current model was a tall, voluptuous, and extremely muscled redhead wearing a mail bikini that could not have been much more comfortable for having been made of photons than it would of metal instead.
"Centuries ago the Great Star League Defense Force chose to follow the Great Father, General Aleksandr Kerensky, Protector of the Star League, into exile, rather then let you cowardly surats defile, corrupt, and destroy it like you have done so many of the Star League's glories. We, the Clans, Children of the Great Father and Heirs to the Star League—"
I cut him off. "Kerensky was a mutineer, his officers' guilty barratry of the highest order, and everyone who left with him was a deserter." Durandal's signal processors indicated he was trying to communicate, but I was broadcasting through all of my mechs, the dropships, and General Steiner had linked me into the planetary comm.-net.
"Talbot," I heard General Steiner ask, "what the hell do you think you're doing?"
"He's buying you time, General Steiner," Durandal replied. Bun Bun would sort out communications for me, but it had never replied without my prompting it. This was definitely going to take some getting used to.
"If the Star League was fated to die," I continued, setting aside the subject of my mech's growing independence for the moment, "better it was done without the false protection of those who would so carelessly discard honor, faith and their solemn oaths for the chance to follow a deluded old man. If the children of mutineers and deserters seek to reclaim the honor that their forebears tossed aside, I wish them luck with their quest. But if, as I suspect, that they willingly turn their weapons on those who cannot defend themselves and slaughter civilians out of hand, they will have proven that they are, indeed, their parents' children."
I finished the transmission. Stark silence awaited me.
"Did I lay it on too thick?" I asked.
"It sounded good, Boss," Kim said.
"A professionally done taunt, sir," Eugene said loftily.
"Atmospheric interface in ten seconds," Trudy barked.
Then things became very bumpy for a while.
In the skies of Ridderkirk
Pilot Wixster, Bravo-Fighter-Two-Alpha, tightened his abs and thighs as he grunted noisily. When he had first seen an image of a pilot fighting g-forces during a presentation in his sibko he had thought it funny. But what looked funny to a person who failed to grasp what he was seeing was actually a fairly effective method of pumping blood that would otherwise pool in the lower extremities of the body.
His fighter left the hard bank and above and ahead of him were the six bright arrows of aerodyne DropShips breaking into the atmosphere. The Star Colonel had, for once, failed to grant them SafeCon—not surprising considering the spheroid's remarks—and he was fully intending to claim the first victory. How many BattleMechs could a vessel that size hold? At least one of the light trinaries the spheroids used? Two?
"System check," he said. His wingman and the pair in Point Three had better be in the green, but faults could happen at any time. Unlike a MechWarrior or an Elemental one does not just stop a fighter and wait for a technician to come out and do the job he should have done in the first place.
"Bravo."
"Three."
"Three-Bravo."
Wixstar advanced his throttle and brought the nose up slightly.
Trudy frowned as a red light began to flash on her display. Momentarily taking a hand from the thruster control she swiped it through the holographic interface. A screen appeared in the cockpit at eye-level and offset to the left.
"Enemy aerospace fighters at our six o'clock low."
"I can see this," Trudy said. They had laid a series of very lightweight remotes in the atmosphere behind them. They weren't good for much, but they weren't blinded by the plasma wave that was currently curling around the droppers' ventral surface as they burned across the sky. They were good enough though to detect the four aerospace fighters closing in on them.
She glanced at the schematic of the cargo bays. They were currently haloed with green, signifying that everything in the bay was fully secured and spaced in such a way that the center of mass was optimized for in-atmosphere maneuvering. Trudy just hope that everything was as secure as the display said. Having a hundred ton mach rattling around inside a cargo bay would be…bad.
"Forward gunners, prepare for shot in…ten seconds. All hands, prepare for Kilo-Three."
3…2…1…
"Now!" she cried, easing back on the stick and feeding a little more drive plasma into the thrusters.
As Wixster watched, the DropShip in the rear-center of the formation tilted up and kicked in its thrusters even as the others tightened their descent profile.
"Orders?"
"Point Three, go after the one heading back to orbit." He did not much care for splitting his forces, but he was not going to let any escape from him.
Sucker, Trudy thought as she kicked the left rudder hard. At this altitude rudder control depended more on maneuvering jets more than it did the rudder. Fortunately, Murray's avionics were bright enough to figure out the optimum combination of jet and rudder. She killed momentum with another hard stomp just as she started to swing onto a reciprocal of her original heading. The altimeter and airspeed began to drop alarmingly as the main engines began to shed the impressive amount of momentum she had carried into the atmosphere.
The enemy opened fire, but her gunners had been waiting and got their shots off first. Each wing, carried a MetalStorm-10 rotary autocannon, paired LRM-10/20 launchers, and an over/under mounted extended-range large laser and particle cannon, while the nose carried another pair of MetalStorm-10s.
The stick bucked in Trudy's hand. Her maneuver had air flowing from the normally trailing-edge forward, and modified and upgraded as the dropship was over the original model it was still a flight profile it had never been intended to use. Heat from the weapons fire spiked temperatures that were already high due to the less effective heat exchangers in the areas now subject to the most atmospheric friction. She was heading for a stall at the rate she was shedding airspeed, and internal engine pressure was starting to edge towards the red zone from their passage blowing air back into the thrusters' plenum chambers.
But she held it. She held it as the lasers and PPCs from the energy-weapon-heavy clan fighters struck back. Blue-white lightning-bolt and ruby-red aftereffects of PPC and laser fire, sparkled in the backs of her eyes, and armor plating shattered in man-sized splinters. She held it as she watched missiles coming at her and point-defense mounts left streaks of light dancing across her vision. The starboard wing dipped as armor was shed unevenly and she compensated on the fly. A second wave of missiles rose towards her…
Then the two enemy fighters were falling pieces of shredded tinsel.
And just like that the scope was…clear.
Immediately she dipped the nose and fed in left rudder to bring them back around, then throttled up slightly. "Report!"
"Two enemy fighters destroyed."
"Damage?"
"…approximately ten tons of armor sheathing lost—"
"Damage unbalanced to the right," Trudy noted. "Compensating. Systems?"
"Nominal."
Trudy nodded as she reentered the glide-slope that would take her after the others, mentally noting that the blue fighter group was directly under her.
"Gladys take the stick, I need to talk to our passengers."
She waited until she felt the light shake her copilot gave the stick before lifting her hand away before keying the channel to the mech bays.
"Attention passengers, this is the Captain speaking. We are encountering some slight turbulence caused by energy weapon fire in our vicinity ionizing the air. You will also no doubt experience some jostling from the enemy fire that is striking us. This is nothing to be worried about and should be considered normal under the circumstances. I ask that all passengers return to their seats and strap themselves in. Seat should be upright and tray tables in their stowed and locked positions as there may be further wild maneuvering. I thank you all for flying Cav-Air, and wish you a pleasant day."
Communication Center, CW Dire Wolf
Clan Wolf Occupation Zone
Rasalhague System
Ulric Kerensky stared at the mechs fighting around his knees, a battle reduced in size to something that could be watched without the need of sensors or by staring at a flat tactical map. It was not the first time he had watched this battle, or even the second. He had spent long hours in the holo-tank replaying aspects of it over and over again. He had chosen to have it waged again now to make a point.
He looked up as a Marauder finished tearing apart a Clan Wolf Gargoyle. SaKhan Garth Radick could not have looked more unlike a Clan Warrior. He was short, stout, with the kind of bland face that reminded Ulric of the scientist who had explained to his sibko how OmniMech sensors really worked. "Your analysis?" he asked.
Radick ran a hand through his hair. "I screwed up," he said bluntly.
Ulric nodded. His fellow Khan was a staunch crusader and given to forming needlessly complex battle-plans, two things that Ulric had a hard time forgiving. However, he was honest to a fault and was able to recognize his mistakes, if only after the fact, the latter something depressingly rare in the Clans.
Was it something genetic that we bred out of ourselves, or is it a product of our training and the sibkos and the culture that created both? He wondered. Or is it even deeper than that? Something that makes us…human? After a moment he gave a mental shrug, likely part of all three. Natural, I suppose, when a mistake on one's part can be passed away as superior skill on an opponent's.
"Those tracked vehicles they fielded are far more mobile than they have any right to be for the amount of armor and weapons they carry," his fellow Khan went on. "We were unable to keep any of the battlefield salvage, but we did get a chance to look them over. They have a new kind of engine, even lighter than ours, and it looks like it uses no rad-shielding at all."
"I find that…hard to believe," Ulric said. Hydrogen fusing was a cheap, practical, and in contrast to other methods of energy production, extremely efficient. But it also produced a large number of free neutrons. Radiation shielding had to be built into the engine lest it damage sensitive electronics and the persons who operated such plants or anything said plants were attached to. Apparently the Inner Sphere had a real problem with the last one, and neutron fatigue limited fusion power to mostly the exo-atmospheric and military sectors. Monitoring the induced radioactivity of the rad-shielding components, and, if necessary, replacing them, was part of the maintenance cycle any fusion reactor required.
Much of those components were actually inside the fusion chamber. In this way they could intercept the radiation before it struck the reactor housing itself as the magnetic fields used to contain and shape the actual fusion field would not stop a neutron the way they could charged particles. Without a need for those components, and the systems that kept them from melting in the extreme temperatures of a live fusion core, the effects on the warriors assigned to a vehicle or 'mech with such a reactor would be…unpleasant.
"Believe it," Garth said flatly.
"Unless they have gone to some form of aneutronic fusion…"
"That is exactly what they use."
The problems with such reactions were immense, Ulric knew. Deuterium side-reactions made several fuel choices useless, there were no convenient sources of helium-three, lithium-six suffered from an inherently low cross-section and not particularly high thermal plasma, and the proton/boron-eleven cycle just could not overcome the power density advantages of conventional fusion.
"We had no scientists in the field to look it over, but we took a look at their fuel source," the saKhan paused. No doubt, Ulric thought, to put added emphasis on whatever he was about to reveal. "Helium-three."
Ulric nodded slowly. "All of them?" The advantages of Helium-Three fusion had been identified even before the first working fusion reactor had been built. Not only was it aneutronic and lacked the problem of side-fusing deuterium, it also made for much more efficient energy harvesting. It also required a higher working temperature and a much fickler confinement field, the latter not something desirable in military hardware. Most problematic was that terra-type planets usually only had trace amounts of the gas. Water, which many planets had in abundance if not always something a person would care to drink, could always be broken down into its component hydrogen and oxygen atoms for fuel.
"All of those that still had intact fuel pods," Garth replied.
"All?" Ulric queried, then waved his hand. "No, it would be all. There is no reason hydrogen could not be fused in such a reactor, but it would quickly become hopelessly irradiated and lethal to its crew."
"The expense to mine regolith in sufficient quantity must be immense."
"That is why we never did it," Ulric commented. "Do you think we were wrong?"
"You would do better to consult a scientist," Garth replied angrily. He ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. "I do not know. Certainly, it made their machines more effective than we anticipated. Between the cost and scarcity—if necessary we can refuel from a comet, but without access to regolith in quantities our Mechs would be worth so much scrap…"
"Gas giant farming," Ulric offered. Several of the Clans had experimented with gas giant mining, but all had set it aside. The expenses were just too great and the estimated return was too small. After all, hydrogen fusion had worked just fine for centuries and new breakthroughs in shielding materials had promised ever smaller and lighter reactors.
"That would be even more expensive," Garth groused.
"The tanks had a very unusual gun system," he went on after a moment. "I have sent you the specs, as far as we could ascertain in the field. Somehow, they have combined a PPC with a launcher for a lightweight artillery missile, and still have it capable of firing full-power cannon rounds. It is a huge installation, fifteen-twenty tons, say a third of the total mass of the tank. It cannot fire very quickly and it seems that switching between firing modes takes fifteen or twenty seconds, perhaps a little longer." He looked down at the battlefield.
"A flexible system nonetheless," Ulric noted. "Do you think it is adaptable?" Even if it could not be made to work for mechs a fully-developed weapon that was purpose-made for conventional armor could still be used in the few second-line forces that used tanks. Barring that, it could be sold to Clan Hell's Horses or Blood Spirit, both of which used armor in their front-line units. Horses, he told himself.
"Perhaps, but I am not sure that it is worth the bother. We have little need for such a missile."
"Forward your notes and observations to the Scientists," Ulric decided. "They are the experts in this kind of thing, quiaff? I am interested in hearing their opinions before we make any conclusions."
"Aff, Khan," Garth said.
"Now, what about their leadership?"
"They were competently led," the saKhan admitted grudgingly. "That flank wheeling while under fire and in the middle of a rout was as nice a maneuver as anything I have ever seen out of the spheroids."
Ulric said nothing. He would not have characterized the retreat from the canal zone as a 'rout', but everything else was factual enough. "And the secondary drop?"
"We still do not know what destroyed the Third Battle Cluster's striker trinary save for the confused declarations of Star Commander Blada Neely that they encountered battle armor. Personally, I am more inclined to believe Star Captain Ancil Radick's report of mine-launched torpedoes. With the amount of ECM they cluttered the battlefield with, plus all the debris from the drop, the radar and sonar returns could have easily been interpreted as battle armor. The torpedo-mines, those water-launched Arrow missiles, and the ECM-pods Star Captain Dale Carns reported, would account for the dropped material aside from the Mechs."
Ulric nodded slowly. One or the other was possible from the number of tracked objects in the drop. Both were not. Not for useful quantities anyway.
"They know us. They know how to provoke us," Garth said.
Ulric looked up at him sharply. "What do you mean?"
"You have seen the recording of the bidding?" Garth asked. "He played me. He opened his bid at nothing less than Strana Mechty itself! And from there he named things he knew I could not provide.
"And it was reasonable too, damn him. The Honor Road demands we risk something of equal value. Oh, no Clan has ever demanded as much as another planet before, but to the best of my memory no Clan has ever waged a Trial of Possession for an entire planet before either! How much value does an agri-world have to our supply situation?" he asked rhetorically. "I shall tell you, five stars of OmniMechs, a fighter binary, seven points of Elemental armor save one suit, and three DropShips."
A steep cost, Ulric acknowledged. Very steep. Possibly steep enough to affect the planning for Wave 5.
"I dismissed them," the junior Khan went on. "I treated them as an after thought. Half of them were medium and light BattleMechs. Two trinaries should have been more than sufficient. But Dale walked his trinary into what was obviously a trap. This…Major Roland Talbot kept his BattleMechs clear but let Dale walk right into a mine-field—"
"Or battle armor."
"—or battle armor," Garth said. "Of which there is no evidence, mind you. Why only underwater? Why have we not seen it before or since?"
"We developed the Elemental Armor from a deep-sea mining suit designed by the Goliath Scorpions," Ulric observed.
Garth scowled for a moment before nodding. "A point. You think this is the same? They had deep-sea mining suits available and someone modified them as…as marines?"
"A possibility, nothing more," Ulric said mildly.
"A point, I suppose. Odd world to release it on, and I am not at all certain something like that could be deployed from orbit, but something I suppose we need to bear in mind in the future."
He grumped for a moment longer before shaking his head as a horse would to rid itself of a bothersome fly. "And then they tricked someone in Ancil Radick's trinary, I am not certain who yet but I will find out soon, into abandoning zellbrigen. The provocation could not have been more perfectly planned and executed. And with those improvements to the engines they were as well armed, or better, as some OmniMechs!"
"How much do you think the new engines weigh?" Ulric said.
"As much as our lightweight models for a given energy production," Garth said instantly. "Perhaps less? We never did see a battlemech version, most of their mech forces were in the secondary drop and they took the time to thoroughly destroy the handful we rendered hors de combat before we could examine them. They probably save quite a bit of volume as well, though again I cannot begin to estimate how much. The scientists can only guess at what a combat-ready helium-three fusion plant would look like.
"I put a Warrior who was abtaka from Clan Hell's Horses and was passing familiar with that Clan's armored vehicles, on it. He said that the big tanks can get approximately a hundred-thirty klicks per hour on good terrain—open fields and the like—perhaps a little better on roads, and that the engine takes up little less than a quarter of its total mass."
Garth Radick looked down and Ulric wondered what he saw at his feet. Was he in a field-capable holo-tank being transmitted to his flagship, or was he in a ship-borne holo-tank with something in the imager beneath him. Was it possible that he was watching the same thing that Ulric was?
"I would probably have had them if I had only had four hours more," Garth said conversationally. "They were crumbling, Ulric. The opening running ambushes were excellent, and if those tanks had not retreated into the city and continued they could have rendered my entire galaxy non-combat-capable. Oh, they would not have won, but neither would have we. But they did go into the city, and I was going to make them pay for it. And then I dismissed their mech forces.
"No. The only ones who acted appropriately are Star Captain Sumner Johns, who is missing in action, and Star Captain Latharn Fetladral. His final defense of the StarPort was brilliant in design and execution. Normally I would argue that customizing the weapon load-out of a Naga—of any artillery—would be a waste, but in this case Latharn thought it out well and his execution was excellent. Ancil Radick and the aerospace force had inflicted enough damage that he could have likely finished them off short of the grounded DropShips. But he could not have stopped both them and the remaining artillery tracks. Not unless he threw away all of the DropShips."
"Has the weapon used been identified yet?"
"Neg," Garth said. "Latharn had little time to examine the burning warehouses before he was forced to send to orbit with the DropShips that could make movement. They secured our people inside the hangers until the runways were sufficiently rebuilt to launch the aerodynes. He did make a guess, some kind of artillery-deployed thermobaric weapon, but that would not account for the sharp temperature declines detected in each just before they exploded."
"And once they had isolated you on the planet you had little choice but to accept their offer," Ulric said.
"Aff," Garth said angrily.
Ulric nodded. Information from the Planting campaign was already being disseminated throughout Clan Wolf. The next time they encountered these people his warriors would be prepared. Garth's information about the fusion plants and the combination weapon system employed by their armor would be passed on to the scientists for analysis, speculation, and possible development. Which left the most important issue of all.
"Are you on schedule to hit your next target?"
"Yes," Garth said. "The supplies we lost, aside from the forfeit, were mostly meant for the garrison force. Their loss means little since we will not be putting in a garrison. The equipment we have to turn over will cost us dear, but we still have the stocks intended for Engadin. Ramon Sander should be able to hit that world in the third week of August. That should be plenty of time for the technicians to repair any battle damage. As soon as the 352nd has rejoined I can hit Kandis. That drop is scheduled for the beginning of September.
"I will need replacements transferred forward to make up for losses, of course. And the 3rd Battle Cluster has been gutted…again. It will take more time to rebuild and without it I have lost my strategic reserve."
Ulric hid a smile. A 'strategic reserve' was not the kind of thing Garth—or the vast majority of other Clan Warriors—would have worried about three years ago, except, perhaps, so far as such a term applied to forces defending critical Clan infrastructure from Dark Caste raids and Trials of Possession from other Clans. "I could have Anton shift the Dorbeng Garrison Cluster over to Beta Galaxy long enough for replacement warriors to come forth. It should not take more than a month or two to bring the 3rd Battle Cluster up to its full strength, although training, I admit, may take longer."
"A premier front-line cluster has been shattered and you want to replace them with Freebirths, old men, and decrepit equipment?"
"Dornberg Garrison has successfully conquered three planets," Ulric said mildly. "Their operations on New Oslo were as fine as any cluster in all of the Clans could have performed, quiaff?"
"Aff," Garth said sullenly.
"Besides," Ulric went on. "The Inner Sphere armies field heavy compliments of fighters. The garrison cluster's multiple fighter stars will make a useful addition to your galaxy, and the Sphere's armor troops have trouble with our elementals."
"That is true," the saKhan said unwillingly. "The Founder knows that they were more effective against this new kind of tank than my mechs were. What of Hainfeld?"
"What of it?" Ulric replied. "By then you will have restored the 3rd Battle Cluster—at least materially—and can release the Dornberg back to its original duties, or you can add Hainfeld to the list of planets you need to hit."