Chapter 11
Na na na naa, na na na naa, heyyy hey-eyy, goodbye~
SEAL THE RIVER AT ITS MOUTH...
Eleven days after my big talk with Archon Katrina, I got a phone call, one of Katrina's personal LCAF minions asking me to 'please hold for conference call'.
Flat on my back in a hospital bed with the third-worst hangover I'd ever had and a nasty tendency to go into seizures if I moved too quickly - such as falling over in one of my dizzy spells - all I could do was set the phone to AUDIO ONLY and wait.
"You all know each other by now," Katrina's voice opened the call.
I mumbled assent with the others. The voices were blurred, but I was pretty sure I recognized every mech regiment commander on Solaris.
"Ten minutes ago, LIC handed me a report that Wolf's Dragoons have jumped into the Amity system, in full strength. They estimate, and I agree, that Marik has assigned the Dragoons to an objective raid to capture or destroy the Helm Cache.
"We, in turn, will have two objectives. The preservation of the Cache materiel, and the destruction of the Dragoons as a fighting force useful to the Free Worlds League. Give me your initial impressions."
"We have the forces needed, but the cost will be astronomical," was the comment from Oberst Kapoor, the head of the Gladiators. Unlike her men, she was regular LCAF and the oldest person on the call, but that was because she'd come up from the ranks after being born in Solaris City's slums.
"The Dragoons aren't bad, but most of what's impressive about them is their size - and we'll have them outnumbered," argued Oberst Kohler, the 9th's CO. He didn't have time for me in any sense of the phrase, so I couldn't say I knew him to speak of even with the exercise schedule our people were sharing.
"It would be unwise to wager the survival of the Cache on that," Generalmajor Oberst - I could only imagine the confusion that that surname had caused while he was a colonel! - was a large, slow-speaking man, but when he did order the 2nd Winfield into motion in exercises I'd found that I tended to end up wondering what the hell had just happened. "We should begin dispersing and hiding its contents immediately."
"Including offworld," Kapoor said.
"There will be difficulty transporting a useful fraction in the time available, but yes," Oberst agreed.
"There are about thirty artillery vehicles in the cache list," I said, trying to ignore my stomach's sudden rebellion. "Arrow missiles and tubes, and I know that we brought the ammo for the former, too. If we can get them into some kind of service in a week…"
"We have the force to stop them," Lewiston said. "And with the amount of aero support we have, we can probably keep them from lifting again. But Wolf is an aggressive commander, not a fool. Will he stick his head in for us to bite off?"
"...I think I may have an idea," said Generalmajor O'Rourke, the 10th Skye's commander. Despite his regiment's reputation, I'd found him easy to work with and not inclined to make difficulties.
"Oh?" Katrina prompted.
I wasn't actually hungover, of course, though in a lot of ways it felt like it. As far as most people were concerned, I'd had a bad reaction to a painkiller taken after a fall in the mechbay. That was a little embarrassing, but slipping off of ladders and things was a well-known part of the business, so no one should question it.
What that story was covering was, of course, the downside of L-Stoff, the drug cocktail that LIC usually avoided using to amplify memory for interrogations or agent debriefings. Even standard length sessions - and mine hadn't been, once they discovered that I could reel off the books and other material I'd seen verbatim - left the victim feeling thoroughly debauched for days. I wouldn't be ready to fight again until a couple of days before we expected the Wolves to land, and this early in the process, I was stuck trying not to pout - or hurl - as Sophitia hauled me around in a wheelchair.
We were standing, or sitting, respectively, in the shade cast by one of the two Battlemasters we'd pulled and repainted out of their camo for this duty, their parade paint glittering back and throwing the blue sashes across their chests and angel moons on their left shoulders into vivid relief. To our right, the crowd waited in great ranks, held back by chest-high concrete barriers and the security troops on the far size. To our left, a pair of mechs from the next most senior regiment, the Solaris Gladiators, loomed over Oberst Kapoor. Her crisply perfect LCAF uniform was a dramatic contrast to the vivid flame-job on the Wolverine behind her and the four-tone dazzle pattern of the Orion on the far side of the cleared street.
Beyond her were the matched Black Knights of the 2nd Regiment of Winfield's Guards, then the massive King Crabs of the 9th Arcturan, Zeuses from the 32nd Lyran Guards, the brilliant scarlet mismatch of Quickdraw and Ostroc from the 10th Skye Rangers, and only last the paired Griffins of the 1st Royal Guards.
The royal motorcade rolled by at a walking pace, flying cordons of dress-uniformed LCAF infantry on hoverbikes surrounding the leading lance of freakin' Devastators, good grief. The sheer attention to detail that went into the protection detail's maintenance was obvious in the sound of their passage - a well tuned fusion engine was always almost silent, but tank tracks squealed and rattled, metal sliding across heavy metal.
But not these. The only sound of their passage was a faint cruch-cruch-cruch as each individual link of track settled to the pavement and seated itself in a milimetric shifting of road grit. I wasn't sure how they'd done it, but I knew it couldn't have been easy.
The hover-limo sliding in their wake was if anything even quieter, only a hiss of air under its skirts and a faint whine of lift fans, and it looked substantially smaller - but I'd have been surprised if it wasn't carrying at least as much armor despite its gracefully timeless lines.
As the Commonwealth flags fluttering from the limo's two front corners came even with my wheelchair, I straightened as best I could and carefully lifted my arm into the salute I'd practiced with Sasagawa's help. The Alliance Military Corps used a completely different gesture from either of the versions Older-me remembered, with the right arm horizontal in front of the chest, level with the heart, hand flat and palm down.
I could have learned the Commonwealth version, instead - it was pretty much the same as the SLDF and the now-long-gone United States had used, and it wasn't like there weren't plenty of LCAF types around to borrow - but despite the kerfluffle around my leaving, there were things about the Outworlds Alliance that were worth being proud of. I didn't intend to forget my origin there, or to hide it.
The protocol types were clear; the salute started exactly when the front fender flags passed, and ended when the rear ones did. In the middle, I could clearly see Katrina Steiner in the armored limousine's back seat, looking back out through the thing's windows. They'd be the same polarizing sandwich composites as mech cockpits, of course, but deliberately designed to let the onlookers see their Archon in person.
That was important to the theater, both political and otherwise.
Katrina nodded to me, and then I lost sight of her as the limo slid onwards, dropping my own salute on schedule, only a few moments before I could see Kapoor render her own out of the corner of my eye.
In front of me, the rest of the guard company was rolling by, equally silent - a lance of brand new Sturmfeur assault tanks, basically heavy-duty equivalents of the classic LRM Carrier and only just into production, and then a lance of Von Luckner heavies.
Once they, and the last of the infantry, had passed, there was a whine and thump as the paired mechs of the Royal Guards advanced onto the road, turned sharply, and followed the procession, then more thudding of feet as the 10th Skye's did the same.
The crowds, and their police cordon, stayed put as the rest of the assembled mechs started to filter away through safely cleared streets for the nearest 'subway' station.
I call it the subway, but what it really was was Solaris City's answer to the real problem of moving the masses of battlemechs that were its main industry around, without stepping on anyone or blocking traffic. A series of passages, bored out of the rock and earth below the streets, so that mechs could be gotten between the arenas and various workshops without squishing something whose relatives might sue. There were entrances all over the damned city, and not a few in the suburbs and other various outskirts.
If I'd been feeling better, I'd have been satisfied with the way the day had gone, and helped Sophitia - or rather, the pair of infantry guys who picked me up from either side and just lifted me into the APC we'd come in - with managing the wheelchair. But as it was, all I could do was close my eyes and fight desperately to hang onto the excessive blandness that I'd had for breakfast.
Fortunately, someone shoved a bag into my hands before I finished failing.
I was distracted enough I barely even noticed the thunder of the dropships lifting.
Solaris City was located in a floodplain valley around the namesake river, at a point where a number of different terrain types - plains upstream, intermittent swamps and lakes downstream, and just about every form of rugged in the uplands that hemmed the valley in from north and south. The city suburbs, including both Xolara proper and its usual attachments, sprawled up the hillsides and out to the east to the start of the real farmlands, while nothing but destitute Reaches lay west of the International District and its starport, along the lakesides.
Combined with the fact that the main warehouses where the Cache gear had ended up in Silesia, where they could be at least nominally better guarded, and it was obvious that the Dragoons would be landing somewhere east of Solaris City, upstream and on the north bank of the river, as the warehouses were.
That still left a considerable stretch of territory where the dropships could set down, including the smaller offchances that they'd choose to ford the Solaris River at some point, or to try an orbital drop. The lack of solid ground immediately west of the City meant that there was pretty much no chance of the Dragoons choosing to land in that direction - not and slog through first the swamp, then a city fight.
We had a plan for that, of course. With two weeks to prepare, there was no reason not to. But in the event, we didn't need it; the Dragoons came down at the second of the five sites we'd estimated as most likely, having jumped into system only hours after the jumpships of the 1st Royals and 10th Skye had jumped out.
Sitting in No. 2's powered-down cockpit, free of distractions and able to suck down both power and information from landline connections, I was able to follow the battle fairly closely. It wasn't surprising that, having landed where we expected, the Dragoons followed more or less what we'd anticipated of them - they unloaded completely, pushed scout companies out in front, and started advancing, and without wasting any time about any of it.
On my display, the advance plotted in starts and jumps, company-icons vanishing from one position and ghosting into existence in another as the shakier infantrymen who'd been dispersed into attics and hidey-holes called in reports to the command bunker in South Silesia, letting the ratings there update the big board and matching database that was mirrored to me.
Out the window, soft-skinned hauler trucks and prime movers were warming up and starting to filter out of the laager, the imposing spikes of the Long Toms on their trailers waving dangerously as they got under way. They'd probably need all the time it would take the Dragoons to cover the ground to the city to reach their final firing station on the twisty hill-country lane-and-a-half roads.
When the Dragoon scouts hit the edge of Xolara East, they found the place empty. We hadn't been able to start evacuating the district until after they'd jumped into the system, but with a bit of forewarning for planning, the seven days between jump point and planetside were enough to clear out all but the suicidally stubborn - and even most of them. The Commonwealth was more than willing to have such persons tossed over the shoulders of the infantry teams and carried off, if need be.
Anyway. Important part, the area was empty, and as the scout companies filtered in, we got our first good looks at the strength the Dragoons were bringing to the party. The sensor repeaters, and our own scout mechs, were able to get a more definite and more constant contact on them, and the full battalions advancing behind them.
Well.
I say 'full' battalions, but in point of fact, they were anything but. The Dragoons had done fairly well by their current contract with Marik, buying and salvaging mechs from their raids across the border into the Commonwealth, but only a couple years before they'd been betrayed while working for one of the Free Worlds League's recurrent rebellions, and taken heavy losses. How heavy had been hard to figure out, and LIC only had good estimates of what they'd taken - enough to reconstitute an entire regiment, possibly one and a half given the ridiculous amount of support their factory station gave them.
That made the fact that the forces advancing on us seemed to be missing at least one mech from any given lance - and sometimes, were short entire lances - all the more significant. When the final count added up, despite the fact that they were still organized as five regiments… The Wolf Dragoons were down to less than three quarters of their nominal strength, short more than a regiment of mechs.
If they'd been any other unit, I'd have been licking my figurative chops, anticipating the results of being on the good end of a three-to-two advantage in frontline units - and that was just what they knew about. But despite Kohler's confidence weeks before, and since then, I knew that the Dragoons had come by their reputation for hard fighting and hard survival honestly.
Still. There was nothing for it but to play the business out.
Sewers and water pipes weren't lostech. Solaris City manufactured much of the piping used across the entire planet, in Montenegro district, and with a relatively modest donative to the city coffers, could easily make good any damage that might plausibly be done.
Such as, for instance, stuffing a fifty-centimeter culvert with military explosives, linked by over a hundred meters of wire to a clever but not all that nervy infantryman in a concrete-topped foxhole.
With the sonic insulation built into a Marauder's cockpit, I couldn't hear the distant crack as it went off, miles away, but the rising mushroom cloud was visible as a smudge down in the valley, and the icon of one of the Dragoon Riflemen winked out.
Seconds later, the entire advancing wavefront of Marik-purple dots stopped in place for nearly a full minute, and when they started moving forward, it was at a pace noticeably slower than before.
With that sluggish advance, it took several more minutes before the next mine went off, this time without generating a casualty. But that was all right. If we could take out their air defense mechs, all to the good. If not - having the possibility in their minds, gnawing on their nerves and constraining their choices was more than enough.
The mines weren't set up very far in advance of the defensive line anyway. Before too long, the Dragoon advance reached into range of the tanks Suzuki had set up hull-down around the major road that was the most likely route. In the distance, the threaded lightning of PPC fire from the Pumas and several companies of Manticores was easy to make out, and the sparkle and strobe of the icons representing them on my display detailed the fire of other weapon systems, both inbound and outbound.
I stayed off the comm. Still barely twenty one, Suzuki was incredibly young to be holding a regimental command in a battle like this - and I was well aware of the hypocrisy there, thank you - but that was one reason among several that our armor regiment had drawn the posting it had. 'Stand and hold' was about as simple as combat orders got, after all, and my yammering from a distance wouldn't help matters.
Watching the first couple of mechs to reach short range of the tank cordon just up and vanish as the handful of Demolishers we'd managed to get ahold of opened up reassured me, though, even though I knew that things could go very terribly wrong.
But not quite yet. The Dragoons pulled back, rather than press the first hard contact they'd had since landing, and on the maps I could see the firefly ranks of the other regiments swing wide and start to advance instead, looking to find out if they could flank around the fixed positions.
I doubted that they expected any success, which was fortunate given that Clair's mechs were south of Suzuki's people and the 32nd Guards were waiting to the north.
The question we hadn't been able to answer ahead of time, the branching point in the plan, was whether Jaime Wolf would expand the line further to the sides, trying to find a flank to turn, or if he'd concentrate and try to punch through. The professional military consensus, IE, pretty much everybody but me, had expected that he'd go for the former, seeking to hook around and create a two-to-one fight somewhere without concentrating so much his people were tripping over each other.
I'd agreed happily that that would be the smart thing to do, but breaking the line would be more glorious and dramatic, and I wasn't sure that the clan warrior lurking not far under the surface of the famous Colonel Wolf would be able to resist the drama of smashing through the opposition before him.
Still, it was easy enough to plan for both, so we had.
In the end, the old hands were right, and I was wrong. The last two regiments of Dragoons peeled out and swung around, trying to curl around the edges of the line they knew about… and found Winfield's and the Arcturans waiting for them, as they would have been waiting to close in from the sides if Wolf had decided to go through.
There was a rhythm to large battlemech actions. Forces tended to clash intensely, then break apart again, both sides figuring that they had more to gain by rearming and applying new armor panels over the worst holes than by pushing their luck, and trying to find advantage by being done first and pressing in while the other was still fixing things. It was a less risky way of gaining advantage, repeated cyclically, than trying to attack without repairs.
But at this battle, there were still other cards to play, for both sides.
When the lull ended, it was with the Wolves coming in with a will, and Central Command Authority released the Gladiators to lunge forward out of their position in reserve behind Suzuki's tanks, hurdling forwards, through and over the dug-in positions, and diving in amongst the central Dragoon regiment with a wild abandon that was very different from what I - or, we'd confirmed in practice runs, anybody else - had seen from a Lyran unit.
One of the standing orders for our people, regardless of regiment, had been to concentrate fire on any Riflemen or other air defense mechs in the Dragoon ranks, and almost as soon as the second full clash started, the code-word releasing our ASF forces for ground attack work came from the command bunker, streaks of motion rising from the LCAF compound, and my base on the far side of the city, and the spaceport all three.
"Joker, Pirate," my radio - or the landline, rather - said, and I sat up straight.
"Joker, here," I replied.
"We've sighted Zeta Battalion. They're heading north, apparently Wolf's committed them to try to turn the flank on the 9th. Take your force and intercept. You'll have first priority on Ramrod."
With two companies of random odds-and-ends from both the Winfields and the 9th, I'd need that.
"Understood, activate and proceed south to intercept Zeta Battalion. Pirate, we can delay them, but probably not for that long."
"You underestimate yourself," she replied. "But if it takes long enough we'll pull an airstrike for you."
Well, it was nice that somebody had faith, I guessed.
"Understood, we're on our way. Joker, out," I said, then flipped channels to the detachment channel. "All right, boys and girls, wake 'em up. Wolf has sent Zeta Battalion to try and turn a flank, and we're nominated to stop them.
I hit the switch. "Panzers on Russian soil, a thunder in the east," the cockpit voice address Vocaloided.
"One million men at war," I replied, hoping the robot's random choice of song was a good omen, "the Soviet wrath unleashed."
The displays lit up in a flash. "Reactor, Online," the computer said. "Sensors, Online. Communications systems, Online. Weapon Systems, Online. All functioning systems, nominal."
Marauder No. 2 lunged into motion as I threw the throttle all the way forwards. It would take several seconds for the two companies with me to process their orders, power up, and fall into formation, but from our vantage just over the last hill before the floodplain, we had at least a ten minute run…
At sixty-five kph, anyway. Which was the all-out best No. 2 could manage, and there were literally only two mechs in the rest of the team that couldn't cruise at least that fast. (Fireflies, for the record.) They'd need to push up to their own max to catch up, but with a twenty-kph advantage over me, they wouldn't have much trouble doing that. The limiting factor on our ability to get into position as needed would be my mobility, so I needed to move as efficiently as possible.
Which wasn't ideal from the perspective of trying to organize and command, but you did the best you could with what you had.
It wasn't ten minutes before we ran into Zeta, though. It was three, and they'd been running radio silent and passive only, delaying our ability to pick them up until we were - figuratively speaking - right on top of them.
The pointman of our little column copied his comlink to the artillery parks set up behind the lines onto our force channel. "Ramrod, this is Joker 20, adjust fire, over."
The few mechs that hadn't already passed me kicked their speed up and bolted by, ECM-equipped cover mechs tucking themselves in next to the TAG carriers just like we'd coached them to do in planning.
"Joker 20, this is Ramrod 7, adjust fire, over."
The repetition of each stage of the process of calling for artillery support by both sides was a feature, not an annoyance. It made sure that both sides of the conversation were saying and hearing the same things.
"Grid Baker-X-ray 100, over."
The military reference coordinate system for Solaris started with the Solaris City spaceport, so we were still very low in the sequence.
"Grid Baker-X-ray 100, over."
The average building height out here in the surburbs was low, one and a half or two stories at most. When I turned the corner of the big-box store, I could see the heads and upper shoulders of Zeta Battalion a kilometer or two away, already turning towards us.
"Battlemechs, 23 assault, 10 medium, in the open, over."
Despite the battle going on, they looked almost pristine, the only damage to their armor the distinctive vertical slashes of a strafing pass. Had Wolf held Zeta back completely until now? It'd explain why they'd made it all the way here, to the far end of the line, so quickly, despite being slowed by things like Atlases and Awesomes. They'd done the entire distance at a run, without stopping to fight anybody.
I didn't see any of the Dragoons' signature Annihilators, though. Small blessings.
"23 assault mechs and 10 medium mechs, in the open, out."
Despite Zeta's reputation as a purely assault-weight formation, they did field mechs that weren't in the eighty-to-one-hundred ton bracket - a company of lighter, faster designs that could serve as scouting forces for the battalion's main hitting power.
"Ranging Arrow X-ray in effect, total four, over."
Of course, any of those 'scouts' were still heavier and harder-hitting than any mech in our force but mine, but the plan had been to just hang out, dancing outside their weapons' effective range but close enough to observe the fall of artillery.
"Ranging Arrow X-ray in effect, total four, out."
'X-ray' - a phonetic translation of the letter X, for high-eXplosive - was the basic ammunition type the SLDF had used for their Arrow IV launchers, which meant that we had found plenty of it in the Helm cache, and in turn that it was a good choice for the ranging shots the artillery battery would use to determine if they were hitting the right post-code.
"Shot, over."
Naturally, that plan didn't work out. A lot of assault mech designs carried long-range missiles, and Zeta was happy to demonstrate that, in the terrain we had, it was hard to stay in sight but out of range of those - and their escorts were spreading out and bounding forward, eager to either push us out of sight of their heavier friends or to mix it up directly.
Besides, several of our mechs, not counting me, had no speed advantage on the Dragoon mediums.
"Shot, out."
The distance artillery shots could travel meant that, no matter how fast a shell or missile was going, flight time was going to be a real factor. Even though Ramrod's batteries were set up a relatively short distance behind the lines, there was still a perceptible pause between the announcement that the shots had been fired and the five-second warning before they landed.
"Splash, over."
Several of the Dragoon mediums were trying to concentrate their fire on a Phoenix Hawk from the 2nd. I lumbered into range of the nearest, drew a bead, and connected with one of the PPCs on the first salvo.
The Wolverine I was firing at - I guessed that the pilot was a Spheroid recruit rather than an original Dragoon that would have refused to accept the thing based on its name - recoiled and sprayed a burst of autocannon fire in my general direction - and then another.
"Splash, out."
I fired again myself, right arm, then left, but focused on the Griffin next to him. Neither of the PPC bolts hit, but the mech turned towards me anyway, which was good.
My job was to tank the aggro, not to kill them.
A moment later, the four dark darts of the Arrow missiles themselves flashed in from our right and landed a block or so away from the main central body of the Zetas. The explosions shattered glass around me, and raised a great pall of dust and smoke into the air, and I could see one taller assault mech, closer to the blasts than the rest, stagger slightly.
"Direction twelve hundred, left seventy five, drop two hundred and fire for effect."
Our artillery-whisperer's voice was grimly satisfied as he read the direction out.
I put most of my attention on the slow swing of my targeting controls across the enemy lance, hitting the Wolverine and missing the Griffin again, and raking the autocannon burst that went with those blasts across the chest of the Dervish that had just turned the corner.
"Any TAGs, Joker 20?"
Despite the professionalism, I could tell that that question from the artillery director was one he wasn't used to asking. Which was only to be expected; after all, until we'd pulled some from the Helm cache, the only Target Acquisition Gear sets in the Inner Sphere had been in Comstar's hands, far out of the reach of the Lyran military.
"Count seven."
On the other hand, one of the two criteria used to select mechs for this little raiding party I'd been put in charge of was that they had built-in TAG capability - and the other was the ECM gear that could disrupt Dragoon sensors to let them get into range.
And they did need to be closer than you'd think; while modern battlemechs had lost the ability, Star League hardware had been able to identify and disrupt simple laser guidance, forcing TAG systems to use synchronized multi-modal guidance that needed to be within a fixed distance to stay synchronized.
Overall, definitely a system with room for improvement, but also better than what anybody else had right now.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen. Serving Arrow X-ray in effect, total twenty-six, over."
Each TAG set could guide in one Homing Arrow at a time, so there could only be that many in the air in each wave. Since we'd found twenty Arrow platforms, that left thirteen high explosive missiles coming down at the same time. Two waves of missiles would be… well, we'd see.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, fourteen. Arrow X-ray, twenty-six, out."
My tactical map display was getting all the data fed from the rest of the flying companies, of course. I could see the LRM carriers in Zeta's remaining assault companies fall silent, and I was willing to bet money that the only reason they'd do that would be to synchronize their fire, focusing it on particular targets.
That wouldn't do.
"Shot, over."
Unfortunately, I didn't have line of sight on them - the way the street plan was laid out, there was a row of houses between me and them, and the Marauder's design had been created with the intent of aiming its PPCs at armor or the like in an open field, not firing over things. I probably could have lifted the arms up, but it was easier to...
"Shot, out."
Heavy industrial buildings in the thirty-first century were built to stand up to mechs, often by mechs - thick, massive walls, reinforced roofs that could support the weight of a jump-jet mech landing on them, and the like. Homes, like the ones around me… Not so much.
I swerved left and swung one arm up in front of my cockpit, then just waded straight through the row of brick and wood-frame houses, letting masonry and ruined splinters cascade off. The state of their exteriors made me think they hadn't been inhabited even before the district was evacuated.
"Splash, over."
On the far side, I could see the first cluster of LRM mechs I was looking for - an Atlas, an Imp, and a pair of Awesomes, both -8T models with missile racks in their shoulders and 8cm lasers in their arms.
They reacted, as far as I could tell, instantly to my Kool Aid Man impression, lashing out at me with PPCs and lasers from the Imp and Awesomes. All four mechs flushed their missiles, but it was obvious even from the moment of launch that the LRMs weren't tracking, just arching towards a fixed point like unguided rockets. I advanced under them, firing back at the three mechs whose energy weapons could reach me. The Atlas I ignored, though the way it was starting to lumber forward made it clear I couldn't forever.
"Splash, out."
The Atlas tried again with its missiles; the other three didn't, and I jinked back into the houses to make it harder for them to try laying their guns by eye, taking out three in a long sideswipe and stepping out before firing back again. I didn't hit a damned thing, of course - I didn't really expect to, after missing two of my shots against them earlier - but then again, I didn't need to, did I?
I was lining up to fire again when the first missile landed, off to my left yet again, then another out of sight somewhere ahead. More fell, like the climax of a fireworks display, and then two, towards the end of the first barrage, landed short enough to see directly. The first fell in a building behind the advancing Atlas, making the assault mech stagger forward one step as a spray of disintegrating shards of wood and plastic and masonry rained past it.
The second landed on the Imp, flashing in from above and knocking the walking stormtrooper helmet forward and clean off its feet with a smash. The Awesomes, standing literally next to the thing in the relatively tight confines of the street, flinched back from the blast but were definitely still combat capable.
I dropped my crosshairs onto the fallen Imp, the armor across its top surfaces both stripped away and exposed by the way it had fallen face down, and poured all three big guns into it. Moments later, my HUD carats winked out as the pilot or automatic systems put the reactor into crash shutdown.
In the split second between waves of missiles, I glanced at my map display. All but one of the hostile icons were flashing to indicate they were taking fire, and as I watched several winked out, including six of the mediums.
This was really closer to arriving artillery than I wanted to be, to be honest, but there was nothing I could do about it either way now.
I throttled up, in time with the Atlas breaking out into an all out run towards me and away from the place the artillery had already hit, and fired past the skull-faced monster at the Awesomes as they turned and waded through the same row of houses I'd already assaulted, either trying to find the mechs that had called fire on their medium-weight friends or just to get away themselves without having to show their rear armor to me.
More artillery missiles started arriving, and the Atlas cut loose with its autocannon and arm-mounted lasers, streams of Marik-purple tracer light and flashing shell illuminators visible outside my cockpit and missing entirely as I angled a little to the right, but held my fire. I didn't want to ram a freakin' Atlas, after all, and in just a moment, we'd pass each other and…
The Atlas driver realized what I was trying and tried to turn himself, twisting his machine at the waist to pull his back away from me… But at this range, I could make a ninety-degree swerve, No 2's clawed feet ripping chunks from the pavement for traction, and get ahead of his turn, twisting myself to unload a full alpha strike into the rear armor that had already been ravaged by that artillery blast.
"Hold X-rays, repeat Hotels, over."
The Atlas pilot didn't stick around to see if I could repeat the salvo and finish him off; a blast panel on top of the skull-dome of its head went flipping away and an ejection seat rocketed into the air after it. I turned back south and checked my map again. The second wave of missiles had been noticeably more effective; the rest of the mediums were dark, and what looked at a glance like about four of the assaults had followed suit - besides the two I'd scavenged.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen, over."
A Sling, a 25-ton light and one of our TAG carriers, hurdled the line of half-ruined houses on my right with screaming jump jets, followed by others. A glance confirmed that the Awesomes that had headed that way had succumbed to homing rounds, so I turned left as I advanced.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen, out."
Closer to the center of the Zetas' formation, where the High Explosive blasts had overlapped, there wasn't much in the way of even visual cover left. I could easily see several wrecked assault mechs slumped in the cratered ground or between the shattered shells of homes, and the movements of a nearly stripped Battlemaster trying to pick itself back up attracted attention from more than just me.
"Shot, over."
The crossfire of damage types ripped away at what protection it had left, and all but immobile, its pilot could do nothing to dodge. The Sling's LRMs landed in the gaps and set off a massive orange fireball as the Battlemaster's SRM ammo brewed up and blew half its torso apart.
"Shot, out."
Another Awesome, this one the standard -8Q with three PPCs and basically nothing else, swung around to face us - and then paused visibly as it oriented on me. I said hello with a pair of lightning blasts of my own. That made the Dragoon pilot fire back, but he missed to both sides of me, even the center shot of the barrage going high.
"Splash, over."
My second salvo ripped the last of the Awesome's torso glacis away even with one of my PPCs missing; I moved on to another target and left it for the missile carriers. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the contrails starting to reach for it.
"Splash, out."
A Zeus, its left arm and the autocannon mounted there hanging limp and useless, volunteered itself with a blaze of laser fire and roar of missiles at one of my lights. Aiming at a target faster and more agile than the Awesome even though it was the same weight, this time I missed with the cannon as well as one of the PPCs, but the shot that did hit amputated the crippled arm and made the mech stagger as its pilot tried to recover.
From off to one side, a pair of PPC bolts streaked by me. I ignored them; their owner was shooting at me rather than the vulnerable lights I was supposed to protect, that meant I didn't need to do anything to adjust his behavior.
(Inside my skull, a not-so-tiny part of my mind screamed.)
I fired again, this time missing with the cannon and hitting with both PPCs, ripping open the rest of the Zeus's torso and most of the matching armor. Behind it, and out of my peripheral vision, I could see the first wave of incoming seeker missiles arrive, a Stalker dropping like a string-cut puppet as a missile landed squarely on its cockpit from above and a Banshee reeling and starting to turn, raising its arms in a protective gesture as another slammed into its rear armor.
A third salvo into the Zeus dropped it, a cannon shell reflecting off of the now wrecked housing of its 8cm laser and piercing into the spinning gyroscope assembly.
Nine left, including, still, that Awesome I'd fired at earlier.
One pilot, smarter or at least less brave than his fellows, punched out, his Highlander crumpling behind him.
I picked one of the remaining two Battlemasters and opened up on it as the missiles came in again. This time, I had the angle to see five of the battered survivors fall under the seeking hammerblows. More beams than just mine reached out for the Battlemaster, and it took three steps into the rain of fire, its PPC reaching back and for the first time in the engagement managing to actually hit me before it succumbed to the fusillade.
Two left - and then, shortly, none, as first one, then the other, bailed out.
"Ramrod, Joker 20. End of mission. Thirty-three mechs destroyed. Thanks for the backscratchers, over."
I slowed Marauder No. 2 to a halt and sighed, letting the tension flood out of my body as I reached for a water bottle.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Joker. End of mission, thirty-three mechs destroyed, out."
I took a pull of the bottle and keyed up a medium-priority channel to command. "Pirate, Joker. Zeta Battalion destroyed."
The line opened immediately, though at first just to the static hash a firing PPC made of a radio transmission. "-ker, Pirate. Losses?"
I was already looking at the displays. "Average State 9, one at 3. You were right and I was wrong, Boss. Where next?"
"Landing site Baker." The signal vanished into static again, then came back. "They'll be Charlie-Love-George-" Combat Loss Grouping, State 0, where all the armor ran out and it was run or die, "-by the time they break through Force Bruno, but they're doing it and we're not going to stop them. I didn't think it was possible."
"Understood," I said, and opened an additional channel, letting Pirate hear when I gave the order. "Joker 13, I want you to detach your company and get eyes on Site Baker as soon as humanly possible. I'll follow with the rest as we can."
"Yessir, detach Company Two and head to Baker. Should we call fire when we get there?" When we'd set this scout wing up, the slower mechs had been dropped in with me in the first company, and the faster ones pushed over to the second.
"Joker 13, Pirate Actual. Report to me by direct line at that point." Her voice was iron with authority and focus, despite the fact that I knew she was engaged in combat at that moment.
"...Understood!" the man's voice sounded almost overwhelmed, but it was obvious he'd do it or die trying. "Joker 13, out."
The subchannel closed, and Pirate went on, "That was a good thought." Static. "Back them up. Pirate, out."
And we were off to the races, me with half my attention on the strategic maps as we crashed through the remaining suburbs and out into the open farmlands. Company 2 was already almost out of sight ahead of us by the time we were free of the city, and I came very close to telling the rest of 1 to leave me behind, too.
But in the end, it wouldn't have changed anything, so I didn't.
There were a horrifying number of missing or red-ringed icons for the infantry teams, but it was obvious from the shape of the battle that they'd done their job while I was focused down on Zeta.
The plan had been for them to reveal themselves and start pouring shoulder-fired SRMs and other support weapons into the Dragoons at the same moment that the aero arm's bombs and strafing attacks went in, and for the mechs to push simultaneously. The more different kinds of threats they had to deal with, the worse they'd be at dealing with any given one of them - and the more likely that even elites like the Wolf Dragoons would succumb to the simple panic of confusion. In the center of the battle front, Suzuki's tanks would have added yet another point of stress to that list, and so would the lighter tube artillery set up behind the lines.
Once the Dragoons started to break in the center, or so the theory had went, the tanks would pull out of cover and start sweeping outwards to the sides, while Force Bruno emerged from where its mechs had been hunkered in the underground passages that Solaris City had extended all the way to the edge of the farmland - behind where the main battle line had been drawn - or sitting waiting in the Solaris River itself.
But, while the Dragoons were broken and running, the fact that the plan hadn't worked completely was obvious in the infantry's casualties, in the low armor state for the mechs of Force Anton, and in the fact that most of the tanks that should have been scuttling underfoot were instead right in their starting positions, ringed in the red or yellow of crippling and immobilizing combat damage. They weren't dark, so the crews were alive and almost all of them would be repairable, but…
Bruno, obviously including Pirate herself, were square in the path of the retreating Dragoons, and reaping a toll on every mech that tried to pass them, but the number of mechs that just broke past them and kept going, even at the price of any kind of cohesion or organization, made it clear that they weren't going to stop anything without actually killing it.
The Dragoon landing site was east and north of the battle site; they'd hooked around the hills to reach the city, and our course was the most direct possible beeline. With the shorter distance, it was possible that I'd beat most of them to the dropships…
And certain that the second company would.
I figured that that would be the end of my direct contributions to the battle, but before too much longer a call from one of Pirate's bunker'd staff members had us angling to the east instead, moving into the path of the shattered deluge and taking occasional potshots at the faster-moving ones.
Soon enough, though, the key hallmarks of the particular company we'd been diverted to intercept, based on aero recon, were visible. Kerensky's signature black Warhammer, badly battered but still ready to fight. Two Phoenix Hawks, one… odd-looking, and limping as it moved. A Stinger, miraculously untouched. A Cyclops that looked like it had already had enough for the day, thank you.
And two Archers, one of them missing an arm.
Best guess - all that was left of both the Black Widow Company and Wolf's command element was right in front of me.
I upped the display zoom and took a closer look at the intact Archer, and didn't find any Alpha Regiment markings. So I dropped the comlaser on the damaged one, and opened the channel.
"Hello, Colonel Wolf," I said.
"...Blackwing, isn't it?" he answered after a moment, the scratch 'company' around him spread out for battle.
"Speaking," I confirmed. "If you'll hold a moment, I've been asked to connect you to the top of our chain." I knew that Pirate was already waiting for the call, after all.
"By all means," he said, just as though his day wasn't already one of the military disasters of at least the decade.
The way his mech twitched at the next voice he heard, though, made it clear that his cool wasn't complete.
"Colonel Jaime, this is Archon Katrina Steiner. Your forces are badly damaged and in rout, and mine hold complete air superiority. Our artillery commands the positions of your dropships and all of their approaches. You cannot prevail, and you cannot escape. Regardless of your decisions now, your service to House Marik - or any other enemy of the Commonwealth - is ended."
Wolf's voice was full of realization; I could almost imagine him following the entire logic chain of just how - and how badly - he'd been set up. "You never left Solaris at all. The dropships were empty." The dropships were empty, the mechs present the entire time. Landing sites calculated and planned for in advance, the battle site chosen with care and utterly malicious aforethought. Infantry, and armor, and artillery, and air support, all waiting and ready.
"Yes, Colonel. They were no more than a diversion, to convince you to move forward after our agents detected your arrival in Amity." Despite the fact that she had to - had to - be feeling smug as hell, Katrina's voice was gentle, sympathetic.
"You will not escape. You will not thwart House Marik's enemies. You will not report again to Clan Wolf. All you can do, is decide what is left to your men."
There were several seconds of silence as Wolf processed the revelation in that statement - that Katrina knew everything. "And what options have you left us, then?"
"You may choose to die, if that is your wish. You may choose to surrender into quiet retirement, subject to certain questions within the laws of war and guarantees that you remain retired. Or, if you prefer, you may wear two strands in the service of the Lyran Commonwealth. In fifteen years, those of your men who survive that service will be Lyran heroes, and acclaimed and rewarded as such."
"Colonel Blackwing learned nothing at all from SAFE, did she," Wolf said, his voice too certain to be a guess. Katrina had shown too many cards for the Free Worlds League's intelligence service to have caught without completely turning someone in the Dragoons' inner circle - and he would likely have known already if that happened.
"We have other sources," Katrina agreed. But she also added, "In other circumstances, I would prefer to allow you to consider matters, and make your peace with them in your own time. But the battle remains in progress. I must have your answer, Colonel Jamie."
"...You even know what a Bloodname is, don't you." A second, two, of more silence. "Very well, Archon. Your victory is complete."
"NEG! Neg, dammit! 'Those who break faith with the Unity shall go down to the darkness!'" Natasha Kerensky's voice snarled - or sobbed. It was hard to tell which was more prominent, grief or rage, but either way it didn't interfere with her aim. She turned and put her Warhammer's full battery into Wolf's Archer, dropping the already damaged machine in its tracks.
"Fuck!" I yelped, and opened fire on her, followed seconds later by the rest of my company.
Kerensky dodged, of course, but compared to what I'd seen from her on Fianna it seemed stilted, almost pro-forma. Like she wasn't actually thinking about it, wasn't working at it, just letting her instincts process the need automatically. With her Warhammer running hot from the alpha strike, she couldn't use either of her PPCs safely - but the shorter-ranged battery lashed out at Wolf's fallen mech again, ripping half the torso open.
One of the Dragoon mechs, the normal Phoenix Hawk, fired at her, moments before my own weapons could finish cycling again.
I had time to start wondering if the black mech would ever go down before the Cyclops that had been at the back of the Dragoon party finished swinging around and brought its 165mm to bear, and then, finally, under the hammer of those heavy shells, Kerensky fell.
"What the hell just happened?" Katrina was snapping as my focus widened away from the fight again.
"Kerensky wasn't the surrendering kind," I answered. "Colonel Wolf, are you there?"
"Captain William Cameron here, Colonel, Archon." The Cyclops lifted an arm, almost waving. "My readouts show that the Colonel is still alive. I am his communications officer. With your permission, I will pass on the surrender order."
"Please do, Captain. There have been enough lost for one day. And Kerensky?"
I zoomed in on the fallen Warhammer. "I doubt anyone could survive that," I said.
Later, I would kick myself for that choice of words.
...TAKE THE WATER PRISONER...
SEAL THE RIVER AT ITS MOUTH...
Tell The World That We Tried
A Battletech Fanfiction, inspired by Fitzgerald's CYOA at https://imgur.com/gallery/M41mI
By Valles
A Battletech Fanfiction, inspired by Fitzgerald's CYOA at https://imgur.com/gallery/M41mI
By Valles
Eleven days after my big talk with Archon Katrina, I got a phone call, one of Katrina's personal LCAF minions asking me to 'please hold for conference call'.
Flat on my back in a hospital bed with the third-worst hangover I'd ever had and a nasty tendency to go into seizures if I moved too quickly - such as falling over in one of my dizzy spells - all I could do was set the phone to AUDIO ONLY and wait.
"You all know each other by now," Katrina's voice opened the call.
I mumbled assent with the others. The voices were blurred, but I was pretty sure I recognized every mech regiment commander on Solaris.
"Ten minutes ago, LIC handed me a report that Wolf's Dragoons have jumped into the Amity system, in full strength. They estimate, and I agree, that Marik has assigned the Dragoons to an objective raid to capture or destroy the Helm Cache.
"We, in turn, will have two objectives. The preservation of the Cache materiel, and the destruction of the Dragoons as a fighting force useful to the Free Worlds League. Give me your initial impressions."
"We have the forces needed, but the cost will be astronomical," was the comment from Oberst Kapoor, the head of the Gladiators. Unlike her men, she was regular LCAF and the oldest person on the call, but that was because she'd come up from the ranks after being born in Solaris City's slums.
"The Dragoons aren't bad, but most of what's impressive about them is their size - and we'll have them outnumbered," argued Oberst Kohler, the 9th's CO. He didn't have time for me in any sense of the phrase, so I couldn't say I knew him to speak of even with the exercise schedule our people were sharing.
"It would be unwise to wager the survival of the Cache on that," Generalmajor Oberst - I could only imagine the confusion that that surname had caused while he was a colonel! - was a large, slow-speaking man, but when he did order the 2nd Winfield into motion in exercises I'd found that I tended to end up wondering what the hell had just happened. "We should begin dispersing and hiding its contents immediately."
"Including offworld," Kapoor said.
"There will be difficulty transporting a useful fraction in the time available, but yes," Oberst agreed.
"There are about thirty artillery vehicles in the cache list," I said, trying to ignore my stomach's sudden rebellion. "Arrow missiles and tubes, and I know that we brought the ammo for the former, too. If we can get them into some kind of service in a week…"
"We have the force to stop them," Lewiston said. "And with the amount of aero support we have, we can probably keep them from lifting again. But Wolf is an aggressive commander, not a fool. Will he stick his head in for us to bite off?"
"...I think I may have an idea," said Generalmajor O'Rourke, the 10th Skye's commander. Despite his regiment's reputation, I'd found him easy to work with and not inclined to make difficulties.
"Oh?" Katrina prompted.
***
I wasn't actually hungover, of course, though in a lot of ways it felt like it. As far as most people were concerned, I'd had a bad reaction to a painkiller taken after a fall in the mechbay. That was a little embarrassing, but slipping off of ladders and things was a well-known part of the business, so no one should question it.
What that story was covering was, of course, the downside of L-Stoff, the drug cocktail that LIC usually avoided using to amplify memory for interrogations or agent debriefings. Even standard length sessions - and mine hadn't been, once they discovered that I could reel off the books and other material I'd seen verbatim - left the victim feeling thoroughly debauched for days. I wouldn't be ready to fight again until a couple of days before we expected the Wolves to land, and this early in the process, I was stuck trying not to pout - or hurl - as Sophitia hauled me around in a wheelchair.
We were standing, or sitting, respectively, in the shade cast by one of the two Battlemasters we'd pulled and repainted out of their camo for this duty, their parade paint glittering back and throwing the blue sashes across their chests and angel moons on their left shoulders into vivid relief. To our right, the crowd waited in great ranks, held back by chest-high concrete barriers and the security troops on the far size. To our left, a pair of mechs from the next most senior regiment, the Solaris Gladiators, loomed over Oberst Kapoor. Her crisply perfect LCAF uniform was a dramatic contrast to the vivid flame-job on the Wolverine behind her and the four-tone dazzle pattern of the Orion on the far side of the cleared street.
Beyond her were the matched Black Knights of the 2nd Regiment of Winfield's Guards, then the massive King Crabs of the 9th Arcturan, Zeuses from the 32nd Lyran Guards, the brilliant scarlet mismatch of Quickdraw and Ostroc from the 10th Skye Rangers, and only last the paired Griffins of the 1st Royal Guards.
The royal motorcade rolled by at a walking pace, flying cordons of dress-uniformed LCAF infantry on hoverbikes surrounding the leading lance of freakin' Devastators, good grief. The sheer attention to detail that went into the protection detail's maintenance was obvious in the sound of their passage - a well tuned fusion engine was always almost silent, but tank tracks squealed and rattled, metal sliding across heavy metal.
But not these. The only sound of their passage was a faint cruch-cruch-cruch as each individual link of track settled to the pavement and seated itself in a milimetric shifting of road grit. I wasn't sure how they'd done it, but I knew it couldn't have been easy.
The hover-limo sliding in their wake was if anything even quieter, only a hiss of air under its skirts and a faint whine of lift fans, and it looked substantially smaller - but I'd have been surprised if it wasn't carrying at least as much armor despite its gracefully timeless lines.
As the Commonwealth flags fluttering from the limo's two front corners came even with my wheelchair, I straightened as best I could and carefully lifted my arm into the salute I'd practiced with Sasagawa's help. The Alliance Military Corps used a completely different gesture from either of the versions Older-me remembered, with the right arm horizontal in front of the chest, level with the heart, hand flat and palm down.
I could have learned the Commonwealth version, instead - it was pretty much the same as the SLDF and the now-long-gone United States had used, and it wasn't like there weren't plenty of LCAF types around to borrow - but despite the kerfluffle around my leaving, there were things about the Outworlds Alliance that were worth being proud of. I didn't intend to forget my origin there, or to hide it.
The protocol types were clear; the salute started exactly when the front fender flags passed, and ended when the rear ones did. In the middle, I could clearly see Katrina Steiner in the armored limousine's back seat, looking back out through the thing's windows. They'd be the same polarizing sandwich composites as mech cockpits, of course, but deliberately designed to let the onlookers see their Archon in person.
That was important to the theater, both political and otherwise.
Katrina nodded to me, and then I lost sight of her as the limo slid onwards, dropping my own salute on schedule, only a few moments before I could see Kapoor render her own out of the corner of my eye.
In front of me, the rest of the guard company was rolling by, equally silent - a lance of brand new Sturmfeur assault tanks, basically heavy-duty equivalents of the classic LRM Carrier and only just into production, and then a lance of Von Luckner heavies.
Once they, and the last of the infantry, had passed, there was a whine and thump as the paired mechs of the Royal Guards advanced onto the road, turned sharply, and followed the procession, then more thudding of feet as the 10th Skye's did the same.
The crowds, and their police cordon, stayed put as the rest of the assembled mechs started to filter away through safely cleared streets for the nearest 'subway' station.
I call it the subway, but what it really was was Solaris City's answer to the real problem of moving the masses of battlemechs that were its main industry around, without stepping on anyone or blocking traffic. A series of passages, bored out of the rock and earth below the streets, so that mechs could be gotten between the arenas and various workshops without squishing something whose relatives might sue. There were entrances all over the damned city, and not a few in the suburbs and other various outskirts.
If I'd been feeling better, I'd have been satisfied with the way the day had gone, and helped Sophitia - or rather, the pair of infantry guys who picked me up from either side and just lifted me into the APC we'd come in - with managing the wheelchair. But as it was, all I could do was close my eyes and fight desperately to hang onto the excessive blandness that I'd had for breakfast.
Fortunately, someone shoved a bag into my hands before I finished failing.
I was distracted enough I barely even noticed the thunder of the dropships lifting.
***
Solaris City was located in a floodplain valley around the namesake river, at a point where a number of different terrain types - plains upstream, intermittent swamps and lakes downstream, and just about every form of rugged in the uplands that hemmed the valley in from north and south. The city suburbs, including both Xolara proper and its usual attachments, sprawled up the hillsides and out to the east to the start of the real farmlands, while nothing but destitute Reaches lay west of the International District and its starport, along the lakesides.
Combined with the fact that the main warehouses where the Cache gear had ended up in Silesia, where they could be at least nominally better guarded, and it was obvious that the Dragoons would be landing somewhere east of Solaris City, upstream and on the north bank of the river, as the warehouses were.
That still left a considerable stretch of territory where the dropships could set down, including the smaller offchances that they'd choose to ford the Solaris River at some point, or to try an orbital drop. The lack of solid ground immediately west of the City meant that there was pretty much no chance of the Dragoons choosing to land in that direction - not and slog through first the swamp, then a city fight.
We had a plan for that, of course. With two weeks to prepare, there was no reason not to. But in the event, we didn't need it; the Dragoons came down at the second of the five sites we'd estimated as most likely, having jumped into system only hours after the jumpships of the 1st Royals and 10th Skye had jumped out.
Sitting in No. 2's powered-down cockpit, free of distractions and able to suck down both power and information from landline connections, I was able to follow the battle fairly closely. It wasn't surprising that, having landed where we expected, the Dragoons followed more or less what we'd anticipated of them - they unloaded completely, pushed scout companies out in front, and started advancing, and without wasting any time about any of it.
On my display, the advance plotted in starts and jumps, company-icons vanishing from one position and ghosting into existence in another as the shakier infantrymen who'd been dispersed into attics and hidey-holes called in reports to the command bunker in South Silesia, letting the ratings there update the big board and matching database that was mirrored to me.
Out the window, soft-skinned hauler trucks and prime movers were warming up and starting to filter out of the laager, the imposing spikes of the Long Toms on their trailers waving dangerously as they got under way. They'd probably need all the time it would take the Dragoons to cover the ground to the city to reach their final firing station on the twisty hill-country lane-and-a-half roads.
When the Dragoon scouts hit the edge of Xolara East, they found the place empty. We hadn't been able to start evacuating the district until after they'd jumped into the system, but with a bit of forewarning for planning, the seven days between jump point and planetside were enough to clear out all but the suicidally stubborn - and even most of them. The Commonwealth was more than willing to have such persons tossed over the shoulders of the infantry teams and carried off, if need be.
Anyway. Important part, the area was empty, and as the scout companies filtered in, we got our first good looks at the strength the Dragoons were bringing to the party. The sensor repeaters, and our own scout mechs, were able to get a more definite and more constant contact on them, and the full battalions advancing behind them.
Well.
I say 'full' battalions, but in point of fact, they were anything but. The Dragoons had done fairly well by their current contract with Marik, buying and salvaging mechs from their raids across the border into the Commonwealth, but only a couple years before they'd been betrayed while working for one of the Free Worlds League's recurrent rebellions, and taken heavy losses. How heavy had been hard to figure out, and LIC only had good estimates of what they'd taken - enough to reconstitute an entire regiment, possibly one and a half given the ridiculous amount of support their factory station gave them.
That made the fact that the forces advancing on us seemed to be missing at least one mech from any given lance - and sometimes, were short entire lances - all the more significant. When the final count added up, despite the fact that they were still organized as five regiments… The Wolf Dragoons were down to less than three quarters of their nominal strength, short more than a regiment of mechs.
If they'd been any other unit, I'd have been licking my figurative chops, anticipating the results of being on the good end of a three-to-two advantage in frontline units - and that was just what they knew about. But despite Kohler's confidence weeks before, and since then, I knew that the Dragoons had come by their reputation for hard fighting and hard survival honestly.
Still. There was nothing for it but to play the business out.
Sewers and water pipes weren't lostech. Solaris City manufactured much of the piping used across the entire planet, in Montenegro district, and with a relatively modest donative to the city coffers, could easily make good any damage that might plausibly be done.
Such as, for instance, stuffing a fifty-centimeter culvert with military explosives, linked by over a hundred meters of wire to a clever but not all that nervy infantryman in a concrete-topped foxhole.
With the sonic insulation built into a Marauder's cockpit, I couldn't hear the distant crack as it went off, miles away, but the rising mushroom cloud was visible as a smudge down in the valley, and the icon of one of the Dragoon Riflemen winked out.
Seconds later, the entire advancing wavefront of Marik-purple dots stopped in place for nearly a full minute, and when they started moving forward, it was at a pace noticeably slower than before.
With that sluggish advance, it took several more minutes before the next mine went off, this time without generating a casualty. But that was all right. If we could take out their air defense mechs, all to the good. If not - having the possibility in their minds, gnawing on their nerves and constraining their choices was more than enough.
The mines weren't set up very far in advance of the defensive line anyway. Before too long, the Dragoon advance reached into range of the tanks Suzuki had set up hull-down around the major road that was the most likely route. In the distance, the threaded lightning of PPC fire from the Pumas and several companies of Manticores was easy to make out, and the sparkle and strobe of the icons representing them on my display detailed the fire of other weapon systems, both inbound and outbound.
I stayed off the comm. Still barely twenty one, Suzuki was incredibly young to be holding a regimental command in a battle like this - and I was well aware of the hypocrisy there, thank you - but that was one reason among several that our armor regiment had drawn the posting it had. 'Stand and hold' was about as simple as combat orders got, after all, and my yammering from a distance wouldn't help matters.
Watching the first couple of mechs to reach short range of the tank cordon just up and vanish as the handful of Demolishers we'd managed to get ahold of opened up reassured me, though, even though I knew that things could go very terribly wrong.
But not quite yet. The Dragoons pulled back, rather than press the first hard contact they'd had since landing, and on the maps I could see the firefly ranks of the other regiments swing wide and start to advance instead, looking to find out if they could flank around the fixed positions.
I doubted that they expected any success, which was fortunate given that Clair's mechs were south of Suzuki's people and the 32nd Guards were waiting to the north.
The question we hadn't been able to answer ahead of time, the branching point in the plan, was whether Jaime Wolf would expand the line further to the sides, trying to find a flank to turn, or if he'd concentrate and try to punch through. The professional military consensus, IE, pretty much everybody but me, had expected that he'd go for the former, seeking to hook around and create a two-to-one fight somewhere without concentrating so much his people were tripping over each other.
I'd agreed happily that that would be the smart thing to do, but breaking the line would be more glorious and dramatic, and I wasn't sure that the clan warrior lurking not far under the surface of the famous Colonel Wolf would be able to resist the drama of smashing through the opposition before him.
Still, it was easy enough to plan for both, so we had.
In the end, the old hands were right, and I was wrong. The last two regiments of Dragoons peeled out and swung around, trying to curl around the edges of the line they knew about… and found Winfield's and the Arcturans waiting for them, as they would have been waiting to close in from the sides if Wolf had decided to go through.
There was a rhythm to large battlemech actions. Forces tended to clash intensely, then break apart again, both sides figuring that they had more to gain by rearming and applying new armor panels over the worst holes than by pushing their luck, and trying to find advantage by being done first and pressing in while the other was still fixing things. It was a less risky way of gaining advantage, repeated cyclically, than trying to attack without repairs.
But at this battle, there were still other cards to play, for both sides.
When the lull ended, it was with the Wolves coming in with a will, and Central Command Authority released the Gladiators to lunge forward out of their position in reserve behind Suzuki's tanks, hurdling forwards, through and over the dug-in positions, and diving in amongst the central Dragoon regiment with a wild abandon that was very different from what I - or, we'd confirmed in practice runs, anybody else - had seen from a Lyran unit.
One of the standing orders for our people, regardless of regiment, had been to concentrate fire on any Riflemen or other air defense mechs in the Dragoon ranks, and almost as soon as the second full clash started, the code-word releasing our ASF forces for ground attack work came from the command bunker, streaks of motion rising from the LCAF compound, and my base on the far side of the city, and the spaceport all three.
"Joker, Pirate," my radio - or the landline, rather - said, and I sat up straight.
"Joker, here," I replied.
"We've sighted Zeta Battalion. They're heading north, apparently Wolf's committed them to try to turn the flank on the 9th. Take your force and intercept. You'll have first priority on Ramrod."
With two companies of random odds-and-ends from both the Winfields and the 9th, I'd need that.
"Understood, activate and proceed south to intercept Zeta Battalion. Pirate, we can delay them, but probably not for that long."
"You underestimate yourself," she replied. "But if it takes long enough we'll pull an airstrike for you."
Well, it was nice that somebody had faith, I guessed.
"Understood, we're on our way. Joker, out," I said, then flipped channels to the detachment channel. "All right, boys and girls, wake 'em up. Wolf has sent Zeta Battalion to try and turn a flank, and we're nominated to stop them.
I hit the switch. "Panzers on Russian soil, a thunder in the east," the cockpit voice address Vocaloided.
"One million men at war," I replied, hoping the robot's random choice of song was a good omen, "the Soviet wrath unleashed."
The displays lit up in a flash. "Reactor, Online," the computer said. "Sensors, Online. Communications systems, Online. Weapon Systems, Online. All functioning systems, nominal."
Marauder No. 2 lunged into motion as I threw the throttle all the way forwards. It would take several seconds for the two companies with me to process their orders, power up, and fall into formation, but from our vantage just over the last hill before the floodplain, we had at least a ten minute run…
At sixty-five kph, anyway. Which was the all-out best No. 2 could manage, and there were literally only two mechs in the rest of the team that couldn't cruise at least that fast. (Fireflies, for the record.) They'd need to push up to their own max to catch up, but with a twenty-kph advantage over me, they wouldn't have much trouble doing that. The limiting factor on our ability to get into position as needed would be my mobility, so I needed to move as efficiently as possible.
Which wasn't ideal from the perspective of trying to organize and command, but you did the best you could with what you had.
It wasn't ten minutes before we ran into Zeta, though. It was three, and they'd been running radio silent and passive only, delaying our ability to pick them up until we were - figuratively speaking - right on top of them.
The pointman of our little column copied his comlink to the artillery parks set up behind the lines onto our force channel. "Ramrod, this is Joker 20, adjust fire, over."
The few mechs that hadn't already passed me kicked their speed up and bolted by, ECM-equipped cover mechs tucking themselves in next to the TAG carriers just like we'd coached them to do in planning.
"Joker 20, this is Ramrod 7, adjust fire, over."
The repetition of each stage of the process of calling for artillery support by both sides was a feature, not an annoyance. It made sure that both sides of the conversation were saying and hearing the same things.
"Grid Baker-X-ray 100, over."
The military reference coordinate system for Solaris started with the Solaris City spaceport, so we were still very low in the sequence.
"Grid Baker-X-ray 100, over."
The average building height out here in the surburbs was low, one and a half or two stories at most. When I turned the corner of the big-box store, I could see the heads and upper shoulders of Zeta Battalion a kilometer or two away, already turning towards us.
"Battlemechs, 23 assault, 10 medium, in the open, over."
Despite the battle going on, they looked almost pristine, the only damage to their armor the distinctive vertical slashes of a strafing pass. Had Wolf held Zeta back completely until now? It'd explain why they'd made it all the way here, to the far end of the line, so quickly, despite being slowed by things like Atlases and Awesomes. They'd done the entire distance at a run, without stopping to fight anybody.
I didn't see any of the Dragoons' signature Annihilators, though. Small blessings.
"23 assault mechs and 10 medium mechs, in the open, out."
Despite Zeta's reputation as a purely assault-weight formation, they did field mechs that weren't in the eighty-to-one-hundred ton bracket - a company of lighter, faster designs that could serve as scouting forces for the battalion's main hitting power.
"Ranging Arrow X-ray in effect, total four, over."
Of course, any of those 'scouts' were still heavier and harder-hitting than any mech in our force but mine, but the plan had been to just hang out, dancing outside their weapons' effective range but close enough to observe the fall of artillery.
"Ranging Arrow X-ray in effect, total four, out."
'X-ray' - a phonetic translation of the letter X, for high-eXplosive - was the basic ammunition type the SLDF had used for their Arrow IV launchers, which meant that we had found plenty of it in the Helm cache, and in turn that it was a good choice for the ranging shots the artillery battery would use to determine if they were hitting the right post-code.
"Shot, over."
Naturally, that plan didn't work out. A lot of assault mech designs carried long-range missiles, and Zeta was happy to demonstrate that, in the terrain we had, it was hard to stay in sight but out of range of those - and their escorts were spreading out and bounding forward, eager to either push us out of sight of their heavier friends or to mix it up directly.
Besides, several of our mechs, not counting me, had no speed advantage on the Dragoon mediums.
"Shot, out."
The distance artillery shots could travel meant that, no matter how fast a shell or missile was going, flight time was going to be a real factor. Even though Ramrod's batteries were set up a relatively short distance behind the lines, there was still a perceptible pause between the announcement that the shots had been fired and the five-second warning before they landed.
"Splash, over."
Several of the Dragoon mediums were trying to concentrate their fire on a Phoenix Hawk from the 2nd. I lumbered into range of the nearest, drew a bead, and connected with one of the PPCs on the first salvo.
The Wolverine I was firing at - I guessed that the pilot was a Spheroid recruit rather than an original Dragoon that would have refused to accept the thing based on its name - recoiled and sprayed a burst of autocannon fire in my general direction - and then another.
"Splash, out."
I fired again myself, right arm, then left, but focused on the Griffin next to him. Neither of the PPC bolts hit, but the mech turned towards me anyway, which was good.
My job was to tank the aggro, not to kill them.
A moment later, the four dark darts of the Arrow missiles themselves flashed in from our right and landed a block or so away from the main central body of the Zetas. The explosions shattered glass around me, and raised a great pall of dust and smoke into the air, and I could see one taller assault mech, closer to the blasts than the rest, stagger slightly.
"Direction twelve hundred, left seventy five, drop two hundred and fire for effect."
Our artillery-whisperer's voice was grimly satisfied as he read the direction out.
I put most of my attention on the slow swing of my targeting controls across the enemy lance, hitting the Wolverine and missing the Griffin again, and raking the autocannon burst that went with those blasts across the chest of the Dervish that had just turned the corner.
"Any TAGs, Joker 20?"
Despite the professionalism, I could tell that that question from the artillery director was one he wasn't used to asking. Which was only to be expected; after all, until we'd pulled some from the Helm cache, the only Target Acquisition Gear sets in the Inner Sphere had been in Comstar's hands, far out of the reach of the Lyran military.
"Count seven."
On the other hand, one of the two criteria used to select mechs for this little raiding party I'd been put in charge of was that they had built-in TAG capability - and the other was the ECM gear that could disrupt Dragoon sensors to let them get into range.
And they did need to be closer than you'd think; while modern battlemechs had lost the ability, Star League hardware had been able to identify and disrupt simple laser guidance, forcing TAG systems to use synchronized multi-modal guidance that needed to be within a fixed distance to stay synchronized.
Overall, definitely a system with room for improvement, but also better than what anybody else had right now.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen. Serving Arrow X-ray in effect, total twenty-six, over."
Each TAG set could guide in one Homing Arrow at a time, so there could only be that many in the air in each wave. Since we'd found twenty Arrow platforms, that left thirteen high explosive missiles coming down at the same time. Two waves of missiles would be… well, we'd see.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, fourteen. Arrow X-ray, twenty-six, out."
My tactical map display was getting all the data fed from the rest of the flying companies, of course. I could see the LRM carriers in Zeta's remaining assault companies fall silent, and I was willing to bet money that the only reason they'd do that would be to synchronize their fire, focusing it on particular targets.
That wouldn't do.
"Shot, over."
Unfortunately, I didn't have line of sight on them - the way the street plan was laid out, there was a row of houses between me and them, and the Marauder's design had been created with the intent of aiming its PPCs at armor or the like in an open field, not firing over things. I probably could have lifted the arms up, but it was easier to...
"Shot, out."
Heavy industrial buildings in the thirty-first century were built to stand up to mechs, often by mechs - thick, massive walls, reinforced roofs that could support the weight of a jump-jet mech landing on them, and the like. Homes, like the ones around me… Not so much.
I swerved left and swung one arm up in front of my cockpit, then just waded straight through the row of brick and wood-frame houses, letting masonry and ruined splinters cascade off. The state of their exteriors made me think they hadn't been inhabited even before the district was evacuated.
"Splash, over."
On the far side, I could see the first cluster of LRM mechs I was looking for - an Atlas, an Imp, and a pair of Awesomes, both -8T models with missile racks in their shoulders and 8cm lasers in their arms.
They reacted, as far as I could tell, instantly to my Kool Aid Man impression, lashing out at me with PPCs and lasers from the Imp and Awesomes. All four mechs flushed their missiles, but it was obvious even from the moment of launch that the LRMs weren't tracking, just arching towards a fixed point like unguided rockets. I advanced under them, firing back at the three mechs whose energy weapons could reach me. The Atlas I ignored, though the way it was starting to lumber forward made it clear I couldn't forever.
"Splash, out."
The Atlas tried again with its missiles; the other three didn't, and I jinked back into the houses to make it harder for them to try laying their guns by eye, taking out three in a long sideswipe and stepping out before firing back again. I didn't hit a damned thing, of course - I didn't really expect to, after missing two of my shots against them earlier - but then again, I didn't need to, did I?
I was lining up to fire again when the first missile landed, off to my left yet again, then another out of sight somewhere ahead. More fell, like the climax of a fireworks display, and then two, towards the end of the first barrage, landed short enough to see directly. The first fell in a building behind the advancing Atlas, making the assault mech stagger forward one step as a spray of disintegrating shards of wood and plastic and masonry rained past it.
The second landed on the Imp, flashing in from above and knocking the walking stormtrooper helmet forward and clean off its feet with a smash. The Awesomes, standing literally next to the thing in the relatively tight confines of the street, flinched back from the blast but were definitely still combat capable.
I dropped my crosshairs onto the fallen Imp, the armor across its top surfaces both stripped away and exposed by the way it had fallen face down, and poured all three big guns into it. Moments later, my HUD carats winked out as the pilot or automatic systems put the reactor into crash shutdown.
In the split second between waves of missiles, I glanced at my map display. All but one of the hostile icons were flashing to indicate they were taking fire, and as I watched several winked out, including six of the mediums.
This was really closer to arriving artillery than I wanted to be, to be honest, but there was nothing I could do about it either way now.
I throttled up, in time with the Atlas breaking out into an all out run towards me and away from the place the artillery had already hit, and fired past the skull-faced monster at the Awesomes as they turned and waded through the same row of houses I'd already assaulted, either trying to find the mechs that had called fire on their medium-weight friends or just to get away themselves without having to show their rear armor to me.
More artillery missiles started arriving, and the Atlas cut loose with its autocannon and arm-mounted lasers, streams of Marik-purple tracer light and flashing shell illuminators visible outside my cockpit and missing entirely as I angled a little to the right, but held my fire. I didn't want to ram a freakin' Atlas, after all, and in just a moment, we'd pass each other and…
The Atlas driver realized what I was trying and tried to turn himself, twisting his machine at the waist to pull his back away from me… But at this range, I could make a ninety-degree swerve, No 2's clawed feet ripping chunks from the pavement for traction, and get ahead of his turn, twisting myself to unload a full alpha strike into the rear armor that had already been ravaged by that artillery blast.
"Hold X-rays, repeat Hotels, over."
The Atlas pilot didn't stick around to see if I could repeat the salvo and finish him off; a blast panel on top of the skull-dome of its head went flipping away and an ejection seat rocketed into the air after it. I turned back south and checked my map again. The second wave of missiles had been noticeably more effective; the rest of the mediums were dark, and what looked at a glance like about four of the assaults had followed suit - besides the two I'd scavenged.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen, over."
A Sling, a 25-ton light and one of our TAG carriers, hurdled the line of half-ruined houses on my right with screaming jump jets, followed by others. A glance confirmed that the Awesomes that had headed that way had succumbed to homing rounds, so I turned left as I advanced.
"Serving Arrow Hotel in effect, total fourteen, out."
Closer to the center of the Zetas' formation, where the High Explosive blasts had overlapped, there wasn't much in the way of even visual cover left. I could easily see several wrecked assault mechs slumped in the cratered ground or between the shattered shells of homes, and the movements of a nearly stripped Battlemaster trying to pick itself back up attracted attention from more than just me.
"Shot, over."
The crossfire of damage types ripped away at what protection it had left, and all but immobile, its pilot could do nothing to dodge. The Sling's LRMs landed in the gaps and set off a massive orange fireball as the Battlemaster's SRM ammo brewed up and blew half its torso apart.
"Shot, out."
Another Awesome, this one the standard -8Q with three PPCs and basically nothing else, swung around to face us - and then paused visibly as it oriented on me. I said hello with a pair of lightning blasts of my own. That made the Dragoon pilot fire back, but he missed to both sides of me, even the center shot of the barrage going high.
"Splash, over."
My second salvo ripped the last of the Awesome's torso glacis away even with one of my PPCs missing; I moved on to another target and left it for the missile carriers. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the contrails starting to reach for it.
"Splash, out."
A Zeus, its left arm and the autocannon mounted there hanging limp and useless, volunteered itself with a blaze of laser fire and roar of missiles at one of my lights. Aiming at a target faster and more agile than the Awesome even though it was the same weight, this time I missed with the cannon as well as one of the PPCs, but the shot that did hit amputated the crippled arm and made the mech stagger as its pilot tried to recover.
From off to one side, a pair of PPC bolts streaked by me. I ignored them; their owner was shooting at me rather than the vulnerable lights I was supposed to protect, that meant I didn't need to do anything to adjust his behavior.
(Inside my skull, a not-so-tiny part of my mind screamed.)
I fired again, this time missing with the cannon and hitting with both PPCs, ripping open the rest of the Zeus's torso and most of the matching armor. Behind it, and out of my peripheral vision, I could see the first wave of incoming seeker missiles arrive, a Stalker dropping like a string-cut puppet as a missile landed squarely on its cockpit from above and a Banshee reeling and starting to turn, raising its arms in a protective gesture as another slammed into its rear armor.
A third salvo into the Zeus dropped it, a cannon shell reflecting off of the now wrecked housing of its 8cm laser and piercing into the spinning gyroscope assembly.
Nine left, including, still, that Awesome I'd fired at earlier.
One pilot, smarter or at least less brave than his fellows, punched out, his Highlander crumpling behind him.
I picked one of the remaining two Battlemasters and opened up on it as the missiles came in again. This time, I had the angle to see five of the battered survivors fall under the seeking hammerblows. More beams than just mine reached out for the Battlemaster, and it took three steps into the rain of fire, its PPC reaching back and for the first time in the engagement managing to actually hit me before it succumbed to the fusillade.
Two left - and then, shortly, none, as first one, then the other, bailed out.
"Ramrod, Joker 20. End of mission. Thirty-three mechs destroyed. Thanks for the backscratchers, over."
I slowed Marauder No. 2 to a halt and sighed, letting the tension flood out of my body as I reached for a water bottle.
"Pleasure doing business with you, Joker. End of mission, thirty-three mechs destroyed, out."
I took a pull of the bottle and keyed up a medium-priority channel to command. "Pirate, Joker. Zeta Battalion destroyed."
The line opened immediately, though at first just to the static hash a firing PPC made of a radio transmission. "-ker, Pirate. Losses?"
I was already looking at the displays. "Average State 9, one at 3. You were right and I was wrong, Boss. Where next?"
"Landing site Baker." The signal vanished into static again, then came back. "They'll be Charlie-Love-George-" Combat Loss Grouping, State 0, where all the armor ran out and it was run or die, "-by the time they break through Force Bruno, but they're doing it and we're not going to stop them. I didn't think it was possible."
"Understood," I said, and opened an additional channel, letting Pirate hear when I gave the order. "Joker 13, I want you to detach your company and get eyes on Site Baker as soon as humanly possible. I'll follow with the rest as we can."
"Yessir, detach Company Two and head to Baker. Should we call fire when we get there?" When we'd set this scout wing up, the slower mechs had been dropped in with me in the first company, and the faster ones pushed over to the second.
"Joker 13, Pirate Actual. Report to me by direct line at that point." Her voice was iron with authority and focus, despite the fact that I knew she was engaged in combat at that moment.
"...Understood!" the man's voice sounded almost overwhelmed, but it was obvious he'd do it or die trying. "Joker 13, out."
The subchannel closed, and Pirate went on, "That was a good thought." Static. "Back them up. Pirate, out."
And we were off to the races, me with half my attention on the strategic maps as we crashed through the remaining suburbs and out into the open farmlands. Company 2 was already almost out of sight ahead of us by the time we were free of the city, and I came very close to telling the rest of 1 to leave me behind, too.
But in the end, it wouldn't have changed anything, so I didn't.
There were a horrifying number of missing or red-ringed icons for the infantry teams, but it was obvious from the shape of the battle that they'd done their job while I was focused down on Zeta.
The plan had been for them to reveal themselves and start pouring shoulder-fired SRMs and other support weapons into the Dragoons at the same moment that the aero arm's bombs and strafing attacks went in, and for the mechs to push simultaneously. The more different kinds of threats they had to deal with, the worse they'd be at dealing with any given one of them - and the more likely that even elites like the Wolf Dragoons would succumb to the simple panic of confusion. In the center of the battle front, Suzuki's tanks would have added yet another point of stress to that list, and so would the lighter tube artillery set up behind the lines.
Once the Dragoons started to break in the center, or so the theory had went, the tanks would pull out of cover and start sweeping outwards to the sides, while Force Bruno emerged from where its mechs had been hunkered in the underground passages that Solaris City had extended all the way to the edge of the farmland - behind where the main battle line had been drawn - or sitting waiting in the Solaris River itself.
But, while the Dragoons were broken and running, the fact that the plan hadn't worked completely was obvious in the infantry's casualties, in the low armor state for the mechs of Force Anton, and in the fact that most of the tanks that should have been scuttling underfoot were instead right in their starting positions, ringed in the red or yellow of crippling and immobilizing combat damage. They weren't dark, so the crews were alive and almost all of them would be repairable, but…
Bruno, obviously including Pirate herself, were square in the path of the retreating Dragoons, and reaping a toll on every mech that tried to pass them, but the number of mechs that just broke past them and kept going, even at the price of any kind of cohesion or organization, made it clear that they weren't going to stop anything without actually killing it.
The Dragoon landing site was east and north of the battle site; they'd hooked around the hills to reach the city, and our course was the most direct possible beeline. With the shorter distance, it was possible that I'd beat most of them to the dropships…
And certain that the second company would.
I figured that that would be the end of my direct contributions to the battle, but before too much longer a call from one of Pirate's bunker'd staff members had us angling to the east instead, moving into the path of the shattered deluge and taking occasional potshots at the faster-moving ones.
Soon enough, though, the key hallmarks of the particular company we'd been diverted to intercept, based on aero recon, were visible. Kerensky's signature black Warhammer, badly battered but still ready to fight. Two Phoenix Hawks, one… odd-looking, and limping as it moved. A Stinger, miraculously untouched. A Cyclops that looked like it had already had enough for the day, thank you.
And two Archers, one of them missing an arm.
Best guess - all that was left of both the Black Widow Company and Wolf's command element was right in front of me.
I upped the display zoom and took a closer look at the intact Archer, and didn't find any Alpha Regiment markings. So I dropped the comlaser on the damaged one, and opened the channel.
"Hello, Colonel Wolf," I said.
"...Blackwing, isn't it?" he answered after a moment, the scratch 'company' around him spread out for battle.
"Speaking," I confirmed. "If you'll hold a moment, I've been asked to connect you to the top of our chain." I knew that Pirate was already waiting for the call, after all.
"By all means," he said, just as though his day wasn't already one of the military disasters of at least the decade.
The way his mech twitched at the next voice he heard, though, made it clear that his cool wasn't complete.
"Colonel Jaime, this is Archon Katrina Steiner. Your forces are badly damaged and in rout, and mine hold complete air superiority. Our artillery commands the positions of your dropships and all of their approaches. You cannot prevail, and you cannot escape. Regardless of your decisions now, your service to House Marik - or any other enemy of the Commonwealth - is ended."
Wolf's voice was full of realization; I could almost imagine him following the entire logic chain of just how - and how badly - he'd been set up. "You never left Solaris at all. The dropships were empty." The dropships were empty, the mechs present the entire time. Landing sites calculated and planned for in advance, the battle site chosen with care and utterly malicious aforethought. Infantry, and armor, and artillery, and air support, all waiting and ready.
"Yes, Colonel. They were no more than a diversion, to convince you to move forward after our agents detected your arrival in Amity." Despite the fact that she had to - had to - be feeling smug as hell, Katrina's voice was gentle, sympathetic.
"You will not escape. You will not thwart House Marik's enemies. You will not report again to Clan Wolf. All you can do, is decide what is left to your men."
There were several seconds of silence as Wolf processed the revelation in that statement - that Katrina knew everything. "And what options have you left us, then?"
"You may choose to die, if that is your wish. You may choose to surrender into quiet retirement, subject to certain questions within the laws of war and guarantees that you remain retired. Or, if you prefer, you may wear two strands in the service of the Lyran Commonwealth. In fifteen years, those of your men who survive that service will be Lyran heroes, and acclaimed and rewarded as such."
"Colonel Blackwing learned nothing at all from SAFE, did she," Wolf said, his voice too certain to be a guess. Katrina had shown too many cards for the Free Worlds League's intelligence service to have caught without completely turning someone in the Dragoons' inner circle - and he would likely have known already if that happened.
"We have other sources," Katrina agreed. But she also added, "In other circumstances, I would prefer to allow you to consider matters, and make your peace with them in your own time. But the battle remains in progress. I must have your answer, Colonel Jamie."
"...You even know what a Bloodname is, don't you." A second, two, of more silence. "Very well, Archon. Your victory is complete."
"NEG! Neg, dammit! 'Those who break faith with the Unity shall go down to the darkness!'" Natasha Kerensky's voice snarled - or sobbed. It was hard to tell which was more prominent, grief or rage, but either way it didn't interfere with her aim. She turned and put her Warhammer's full battery into Wolf's Archer, dropping the already damaged machine in its tracks.
"Fuck!" I yelped, and opened fire on her, followed seconds later by the rest of my company.
Kerensky dodged, of course, but compared to what I'd seen from her on Fianna it seemed stilted, almost pro-forma. Like she wasn't actually thinking about it, wasn't working at it, just letting her instincts process the need automatically. With her Warhammer running hot from the alpha strike, she couldn't use either of her PPCs safely - but the shorter-ranged battery lashed out at Wolf's fallen mech again, ripping half the torso open.
One of the Dragoon mechs, the normal Phoenix Hawk, fired at her, moments before my own weapons could finish cycling again.
I had time to start wondering if the black mech would ever go down before the Cyclops that had been at the back of the Dragoon party finished swinging around and brought its 165mm to bear, and then, finally, under the hammer of those heavy shells, Kerensky fell.
"What the hell just happened?" Katrina was snapping as my focus widened away from the fight again.
"Kerensky wasn't the surrendering kind," I answered. "Colonel Wolf, are you there?"
"Captain William Cameron here, Colonel, Archon." The Cyclops lifted an arm, almost waving. "My readouts show that the Colonel is still alive. I am his communications officer. With your permission, I will pass on the surrender order."
"Please do, Captain. There have been enough lost for one day. And Kerensky?"
I zoomed in on the fallen Warhammer. "I doubt anyone could survive that," I said.
Later, I would kick myself for that choice of words.
...TAKE THE WATER PRISONER...
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