BattleTech: Counterattack (BattleCorps Anthology Vol. 5), page 1
FOREWORD
By Jason Schmetzer
Welcome to the counterattack.
The stories in this volume are taken from the fifth year of publication on BattleCorps, a time when the site and the new stable of authors it had grown were continuing to really push the boundaries of what BattleTech fiction was and could be. It was a year of exciting firsts and triumphal returns, and it demonstrated that whatever else was happening, BattleTech fiction was going in surprising and unexpected ways.
A number of exciting returns happened on the site, but the first thing you’ll likely notice about this collection compared to volumes one through four is fewer authors and fewer stories. There are several reasons for this, but the most obvious—and most telling—is that during 2008 BattleCorps published more and longer stories than ever before.
In fact, we serialized and published several novels!
Chris Hartford’s excellent Fall from Grace finally saw serial publication in English—it had been previously published in German—in the latter part of the year, offering readers an in-depth look at the Star League-era Free Worlds League and Magistracy of Canopus. Also in 2008 were two parts of Randall N. Bills’ heretofore-unseen Founding of the Clans novels. As exciting as those two projects were, however, they were far from the only exciting returns.
Fan-favorite mercenary regiments saw significant attention during this year, with new stories appearing about the Jihad-era Crescent Hawks as well as the Succession Wars-era Wolf’s Dragoons. Popular writers like Steven Mohan, Jr., and Phaedra Weldon continued to turn in stories that could only be described as tours de force; indeed, in this collection you’ll find Weldon’s “With Carrion Men,” which returns readers to the popular character Aris Sung while he’s in more danger than ever before!
Powerful as those stories are, though, there was one story that was just too large to include here, but which appeared in 2008 and must be mentioned: “Not the Way the Smart Money Bets,” marked the first short fiction New York Times Best Selling author Michael A. Stackpole had written for BattleTech in years. In it, Stackpole took readers back to the foundations of one of his most compelling and cherished characters: Morgan Kell, and the Kell Hounds.
We opened this foreward by saying “welcome to the counterattack,” and while what we’ve told you so far is certainly powerful, we don’t want you to think you’ve already heard about the best. There are other, smaller stories included here that simply demand your attention, written by both new and familiar authors. They range across centuries of the thousand-year BattleTech fictional history.
These stories tell the tales of infantrymen and vacuum marines; of mighty MechWarriors and lowly tankers. These stories present the horror of the Word of Blake’s Jihad and the soul-wrenching betrayals of the fall of the first Star League. They are stories that put relatable, interesting characters into terrible stress and watch how they react. They are stories that demonstrate to readers the best and worst of the BattleTech universe, the events and battles and heartbreak of that thousand-year history.
We said “welcome to the counterattack,” and we meant it. Welcome to the stories that, by theme and nature and simple storyline, demonstrated the resolve of BattleTech characters fighting back against oppression, against defeat, and against each other.
Walk the deck of a gunboat in “Blue Water,” and trace the machinations of the Word of Blake in “Office Politics.” See the bonds between common soldiers in “Godfather,” and the deep bond of loyalty between charismatic leaders and their men in “Feral.” Witness the double-crosses of merciless pirates in “Unholy Union.”
Welcome, again, to the counterattack.
AN ILL-MADE HOUSE
Jason Schmetzer
PART ONE
Hasse Plateau
New Vandenburg
Taurian Concordat
4 April 2765
The sound of groans and catcalls limped through the gap between the floor and the door panel. Captain Aaron Dane stood at attention before the major’s desk, waiting for the field-grade officer to acknowledge him. Major Talbert was studiously engrossed in his paperwork. At the noise he looked up, his eyes focused past Aaron at the door.
“They must be playing it again,” he murmured, and went back to his requisitions.
Aaron clenched his jaw but made no other move or sound. He’d been standing motionless for two hours. The backs of his thighs and his forearms were burning, but that was pain he could deal with. He’d once spent twenty straight hours at attention in Aphros. He was a Gunslinger. He wouldn’t give in to discomfort.
“All right, Captain, you can sit,” Talbert said, without looking up. The major was a spare man, a centimeter or so over two meters. His dark hair stood up in the front. His mouth, although supple, was perpetually frowning. In effect, as Aaron saw it, he was the perfect superior: condescending; supercilious.
Distasteful. Aaron sat down.
“We stand on enemy soil, Captain,” Talbert said. “New Vandenburg,” he gestured at the walls with his free hand, “has decided it can manage its own affairs without us. So they announce to the galaxy with that broadcast they keep airing.”
Aaron said nothing. If the major wanted to monologue, he wasn’t going to stop him.
“The General’s at Fort Gorki right now, trying to get things figured out.” Talbert looked up then, as if to see whether or not Aaron would react to the presence of General Kerensky, Commanding General of the Star League Defense Force. When he didn’t react, Talbert blinked and kept talking.
“Which is what we’re doing here,” he said. “Do you understand?”
“Sir?”
“I asked if you understand, Captain.”
“Sir, yes sir. I heard you. I understand that some rebels have decided they have a death wish. I understand that the General is on the other side of the planet, trying to calm them down. I understand that we’re out here on the ass end of nowhere, instead of being where we matter.”
Talbert set down his requisitions. The papers settled loosely on the cluttered composite desk. Aaron felt a breeze as a small electric fan washed air across him. He smelled Talbert’s sweat, carried on the air.
“Free-thinking people who decide they don’t want people a thousand light years away making their decisions for them don’t have a death wish, Captain.” He folded his hands on the desk in front of him before leaning over them. “And as for your assessment of our position, I think you need some perspective. Why don’t you take your company out on patrol?”
Aaron blinked, held it. “Is that an order, sir?”
Talbert smiled. “It is, Captain.”
Aaron sighed. “Sir, yes sir,” he said, and stood. He drew himself to attention and waited until Talbert waved a dismissal at him. The door opened in instead of out. When he released the flimsy panel, the breeze from the fan was enough to slam the door against the frame after he left.
He didn’t look back.
The Thug’s sensor console beeped negative again. Aaron ground his teeth and tried not to imagine Major Talbert’s smug grin again. Instead, he guided his Thug back around to the north, toward the Bridge Pass. The rest of the company followed.
“Still nothing, Captain?” Lieutenant Brake asked. His olive-painted Thug shadowed Aaron’s. The eighty-ton machines were identical, save for the crossed six-shooters painted on Aaron’s ’Mech. Those pistols had bought him a lot of drinks in Haganau over the last few months.
“What do you expect?”
“The news from Fort Gorki doesn’t sound good,” Brake said. “I don’t want to see that sort of thing here, is all.”
Aaron sighed. He was on the wrong side of the world. After Petain’s screwup outside Fort Gorki, the Taurians had pulled a whole battalion from between the sheets and thrown it at General Kerensky himself. He was a Gunslinger. He should have been with the General.
His sensor board pinged again, a more strident note than before. Aaron looked down through his neurohelmet’s visor. He frowned.
“Contacts on the other side of the river,” he said.
“Three Lance, break right,” Brake ordered, not bothering to acknowledge the transmission. As company XO, it was his job to move the other two lances around. “IDs? My screen isn’t painting anything.”
Aaron slowed his Thug’s walk and turned it east, toward the river that separated the Hasse Plateau from the Haganau Plains. Fort James Miller, the newly-built SLDF outpost on the Plateau, overlooked the city itself. There was a Taurian militia base in Haganau. His HUD painted three light hovertanks cruising along the riverbank. Schematics and other data flickered across the lower-right corner of his display. They mounted short-range missiles only. They were no threat to him or his ’Mechs.
“Little toys,” Aaron said. He brought his Thug back around to the north. The rest of the company followed suit, falling into a rough triangle formation, with each lance diamond-shaped in its position. Brake ordered the transition without Aaron noticing. He was a good troop, too good to be stuck out here with Talbert as a CO.
It was six kilometers up the River Road to Bridge Pass. It was named because the single bridge across the Elbe River faced the only pass that led onto the Plateau. Star League planners had laid claim to the mesa as soon as they’d seen it, although Fort James Miller had only been constructed a year ago. Aaron looked down at his map display, noting the dozen green icons representin
“Captain Dane?” Brake asked. A red icon burned to life on Aaron’s communication board, signaling that the lieutenant was on a discrete channel.
“Lieutenant?”
“I just wanted to say that no one misses Captain White. All of the troopers, sir, they’re behind you.” The lieutenant’s Thug shifted its torso slightly until it was facing Aaron’s. He saw it in his HUD. “It’s an honor to have a Gunslinger as our CO.”
“That’s good to know,” Aaron said, before severing the connection. The weight of his neurohelmet pressed even more heavily on his head as the Thug’s wide-legged gait rocked him in his cockpit. White was not someone he wanted to think about.
White had been relieved for cause. White was the reason he was out in this backwater. When the previous company commander was arrested for conspiring to turn over SLDF materiel to pro-Taurian rebels, Aaron had been the only supernumerary company-grade officer on-planet. The orders had been cut and signed before Aaron even had a chance to talk to the division commander.
White reminded him that he was out here with people who valued money more than loyalty. The Star League deserved better. Aaron clicked his com system to the company frequency. Several of the company’s troopers were talking.
The first voice he identified was from Blakely, in B Lance. “We should be pounding these Tauries back into the Stone Age,” he said.
“Enlightenment from the Sphere, Blakely?” asked Hernandez, who ranked as the best gunner in B Lance. He was also from the Outworlds Alliance. “And people wonder why we didn’t want to join.”
We? Aaron made a mental note to look more deeply into Hernandez’s record.
“We’ve done it once,” Blakely said.
“And it took twenty years and a million or so casualties,” a woman put in. Aaron searched his three-sixty HUD until he found Sergeant Grover’s Thug. She was the only woman from Rim Worlds space in the company. “You want to be here for twenty years, Blakely?”
There was long break in the conversation after that. Aaron turned the volume of his helmet speakers down and let himself go. His hands knew how to keep the Thug on course, and his eyes were aware enough to make the marked turns. He could march his Thug for hours like that, another trick learned on Venus.
“Contact!” Brake called. An alarm pinged on Aaron’s console. He jerked himself aware and scanned his boards. All of his weapons were hot: the Tiegart PPCs charged and ready, and missiles in the tubes of his Bical racks. The threat board on his tactical display was clear; the alarm had come from Brake, cross-loading across the company channel.
“Report!” he said.
“Multiple bogeys north,” Brake said. His voice was even, but taut. Aaron squeezed his control yokes. Bogeys, not contacts. Which meant the young lieutenant had some idea of what he had.
“IDs?”
“’Mechs,” Brake said. “And they’re not ours.”
The Thug’s computer finally stopped flashing through BattleMech schematics and displayed a high-resolution image of the leading ’Mech of the Taurian company. Aaron glanced at it and immediately sent it flashing to the rest of his Thugs.
“Where the hell did they get that?” Blakely asked.
A reinforced company of Taurian BattleMechs stood a hundred meters from the mouth of Bridge Pass. The trailing lance—the lightest lance, from what Aaron saw—was still near the bridge itself. Most of the ’Mechs were heavy designs, older models that the Star League had been phasing out in favor of newer machines. Aaron bet there wasn’t a single one of the designs still represented today in any of the Royal divisions.
Except for the lead ’Mech.
“It’s an Emperor,” Blakely said.
“No kidding,” Hernandez said. “I saw one on New Earth. I thought those only went to the Royals.”
“Apparently not,” Aaron said, cutting into the chatter. “Damp it.”
At ninety tons, the Emperor outmassed Aaron’s Thug by ten tons. It was far more heavily armed and armored. In a straight-up contest, Aaron’s Thug wouldn’t last more than a minute.
Gunslingers didn’t believe in straight-up contests.
Aaron tapped his com system. “Brake. Right now, get through the Pass and report to the major. Taurian BattleMechs at the Bridge.” He kept his eyes on the Emperor, but his peripheral vision kept watch for motion.
“You’re going to need me here, Captain,” Brake said.
“I gave you an order, Lieutenant,” Aaron said. “Carry it out!” He toggled the microphone off and waited. A few heartbeats later Brake’s Thug moved, stepping around its lancemates and starting toward the Pass. None of the Taurian ’Mechs moved. Aaron toggled his radio back on.
“Watch them,” he said on the company channel. “If they’re going to do something, it will be before we have a chance to warn the Fort.”
“Why aren’t we just radioing the report?” Blakely asked.
Aaron flicked his eyes to his ECM screen. “Look at your ECM, Sergeant.” The long-range communications were jammed.
“Do we fire?” asked Hernandez.
“Not first,” Aaron said softly. He stepped his Thug forward, moving it away from the rest of the company. Brake’s Thug disappeared into the Pass. Aaron took a deep breath, held it. He exhaled. A finger opened the general channel.
“I am Aaron Dane,” he said. “Captain of the Star League, commander of these ’Mechs.” He drew in another breath. “I am a Gunslinger.”
An amber light burned on his HUD. “And I am not,” a scratchy voice said, “and yet I am here.” The Thug’s computer painted a caret over the Emperor, identifying it as the sending unit.
Aaron smiled. “So you are.” He waited, but nothing further came across the airwaves.
“I have to ask your intentions,” he ventured.
The Emperor shifted, moving a step backward and turning to face Aaron’s Thug head-on. Aaron held very still, his fingers light on his controls. The instructors at Aphros had pounded this into the trainees. The moment before battle was joined was electrical, tangible. You could feel it in the wind, in the air. Even in the cockpit. On the back of your neck, the small of your back. Taste it in your sweat.
Anticipation.
“The Elbe is the boundary,” Aaron said. “No Taurian military unit is to cross the river without escort and permission.” He risked a glance down, judging the position of the rest of his company. Gunslingers learned to fight alone, to duel. To trust themselves and their ’Mechs.
No one moved. On either side.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the HV,” Aaron said.
Nothing.
“The Star League is not your enemy,” he whispered, just loud enough for the microphone to pick up.
Sound sparked to life in his helmet speakers. Static hissed and popped across the open line, punctuated by short crackles. The other man had his microphone engaged, but didn’t speak. Aaron waited, tense.
“You would ignore Fort Gorki?” The scratchy voice was soft, filled with emotion.
“Gorki was a mistake.”
A short bout of harsh, pain-filled laughter echoed across the empty space between the two ’Mechs. “Tell that to my daughter.”
“You have my sympathies,” Aaron said, sincerely. “Consider that Star League troopers died too.” He swallowed and spread the Thug’s arms wide. “We’ve already had blood for blood.”
The light lance near the bridge burst into motion, sprinting forward. The Emperor’s arms rose, spilling raw light deeply into the maws of the huge autocannons mounted there. The Thug’s sensors screamed for attention as targeting systems swept across the ’Mech. Every Taurian BattleMech on the field shifted, bringing weapons to bear.
Aaron triggered the PPCs filling the Thug’s bulky forearms. Crackling whips of artificial lightning flailed the horizon. Fresh static washed across the radio, and the burning scent of ozone crept between the Thug’s parts to trickle into the cockpit.
“Challenge!” he shouted.
“I am no samurai,” the Taurian said.
“And you’re no soldier,” Aaron spat, his attempts at diplomacy abandoned. “I challenge you for that ’Mech. Somewhere a Royal is without his ’Mech because of you.”
