BattleTech: Blood Will Tell, page 1
BattleTech: Blood Will Tell
Jason Schmetzer
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Battletech Glossary
BattleTech Eras
The BattleTech Fiction Series
I was never a soldier.
I try to do them justice, however I can.
While we remember, they endure.
Sergeant Harry James Austin, Seventh Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, KIA 9 April 1917, and Stoker First Class William Robert Austin, HMS Glasgow, KIA 22 March 1941.
Lest we forget.
1
SASO
NEW SYRTIS
FEDERATED SUNS
30 AUGUST 3148
The snow began while Danai Liao-Centrella was inside the building. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and shrugged her shoulders, pulling the high collar of her overcoat even higher. The movement made pain shoot through her broken arm where the sling rubbed. She ground her teeth together, but made no other outward sign of discomfort.
“Sang-shao…”
Danai turned toward the speaker. The man was tall and pale, with close-cropped white hair and bags under his eyes. He wore the duty battledress of a MechWarrior of the Second McCarron’s Armored Cavalry regiment. Sang-wei—the rank other realms called a captain—Noah Capshaw had served in her command lance for the last year and a half. He was a solid MechWarrior and a good strategist, but he was young, and sometimes didn’t seem to realize he was a janshi—a warrior—of the Capellan Confederation.
Teaching him that he was janshi every moment was one of the duties she took seriously. Which was why he was in her command lance and not running a recon lance in the boondocks of Third Battalion.
“Pass the word to Zhong-shao Wu,” she told him. “I want the regiment off this planet in twenty-four hours. Less, if he can manage it.”
Capshaw frowned. “Of course, Sang-shao,” he said, but didn’t move.
Danai sighed. “What, Noah?”
“It’s nothing, Sang-shao.”
“Noah.” The cool New Syrtis air slid down her collar, giving her a chill between her shoulder blades. It shook her whole body, which made her arm twinge in pain again. “Spit it out.”
Capshaw’s face worked for a few seconds, then he glanced down. “I wanted to ask how it went in there,” he said. He looked up, met her eyes, and grinned shyly. “You met Julian Davion again, right?”
Danai controlled the eye roll she felt coming on. “I did,” she told him. “He looked terrible.”
“Terrible?”
“In a wheelchair,” Danai replied. She looked down the street, where a platoon of Davion infantry was screening her APC through a checkpoint. Access to the building was tightly controlled; in addition to herself, most of the senior leadership of the Federated Suns military on New Syrtis was inside, including—as Capshaw had pointed out—First Prince Julian Davion.
The star nations of the Federated Suns and the Capellan Confederation had been enemies for centuries, going all the way back to before even the great Star League unified the Inner Sphere Great Houses into one homogenous realm. The destruction of that Star League had precipitated the centuries of warfare known as the Succession Wars, long decades of battle where Capellan and Suns soldiers and citizens alike learned to hate each other.
That hatred was in their blood. For many, it was all they knew.
As the APC lifted on its plenum chamber, its fans drove loose snow, dust, and street debris down the boulevard toward them. From long habit, both Capshaw and Danai turned their back and slitted their eyes until the gust of artificial wind passed, only then turning back. Danai used her good hand to pull her cap off and shield her face. The noise made it too loud to speak, which she was grateful for.
She didn’t want to talk to Capshaw about Julian Davion, or anything else.
It all felt so useless.
This was not the first time she had negotiated a cease-fire with Julian Davion. Two years earlier, on Marlette, she had agreed with the Davion First Prince that the two realms would fight no more, only for Julian to abrogate the agreement and attack a swath of worlds on the way to this one, New Syrtis.
If she was honest with herself, Danai understood. New Syrtis was sacred to House Davion; for centuries it had been the capital of the Capellan March, the region of the Federated Suns that faced the Capellan Confederation. Thousands of attacks against Capellan people and property had been launched from this world. And just as many Capellan attacks had been launched toward this world.
Sniffing in the cold air, feeling her nostrils threaten to freeze shut, Danai wondered why.
She hated New Syrtis.
Inside the APC, she settled along one of the port side infantry benches and leaned back against the webbing. Her arm was throbbing, and now that there was no chance of an outsider seeing it, she let her facade slip and groaned.
Capshaw stepped inside the bay just as the hatch whined up to seal against the rear of the APC. A combat vehicle-helmeted head leaned back and raised a hand. Danai looked at the tanker and made a rally signal with her finger that meant “back to base.” The tanker nodded and slid back into the driver’s compartment. A moment later, the pitch of the vibrations running through the APC’s frame changed as the driver lifted them off the ground. Loose bits of rock and metal danced across the floor, but the seat padding dampened most of it.
Capshaw sat down next to her, put on a headset, and handed her its twin. Danai looked at his outstretched hand for just a second longer than necessary, then put it on.
“Davion accepted your offer, then, Sang-shao?” Capshaw’s voice was flatter across the intercom, but it really was too loud in the APC bay to talk without it.
“Yes,” she told him. “Though he was the one who actually made it.”
Capshaw snorted. “Of course he did, ma’am. He made it because we’ve pounded his regiments into the snowbank, and knew if he didn’t sue for peace, he’d be taking your terms from the inside of a prison cell.”
Danai closed her eyes. She wanted so badly to lean her head back against the hull, but she knew that would feel like putting her brains in a blender. In a limo she could have stared out the window, but she hadn’t chosen a limo, despite what people expected.
A limo would have been appropriate. She was the third-ranking Liao in the entire Confederation. She could have come in the finest car on New Syrtis, with shining BattleMechs for escorts and Fa Shih battlesuits for bodyguards, and no one would have blinked an eye. In fact, that was what most of the people in whose orbit she was moving would have expected.
Instead, she had come in battledress, in a common infantry hover APC, and alone except for Sang-wei Capshaw.
Well, not quite alone. Some of the rest of her staff had come, a couple of the other regimental commanders, and of course two Death Commando “bodyguards,” but she’d ordered them to wait in the lobby until she was away.
She wanted the APC. She wanted the clear, unmodified statement that she was coming and going as a soldier. She wanted Julian Davion and all of his officers and nobles to know that she, a common soldier and not the third-ranking Liao, had forced them to sue for peace.
Never mind that the peace would be better for the Confederation than Davion’s realm.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
Danai opened her eyes. Capshaw was leaning toward her, earnest young face twisted in concern. She smiled faintly and nodded. “Davion gave me everything I wanted,” she told Capshaw. Except for his death, she didn’t say.
It had been a near thing, two weeks earlier at Cilitren, where she’d come so close to killing the Davion ruler. She had caught the First Prince on the battlefield in his BattleMech, and had crushed him in an ambush of artillery and aerospace fighters. Davion’s Templar III had been on the ground, broken and lame, beneath her hatchet.
Danai clenched the fist of her broken arm, this time savoring the pain.
Until that damned Flamberge had intercepted her, just in time to save the Davion prince. It was a lucky missile strike against her ’Mech’s cockpit armor that had broken her arm.
“I wish we could have carried it through to outright victory,” Capshaw said wistfully.
Danai glanced at him. The young MechWarrior was looking at the APC’s dirty floor, but his expression showed his attention was somewhere else…probably remembering his own taste of combat. Probably imagining what his life would be like if he could go home and say he had been there, on the field, when his regiment had killed or captured the First Prince of the Federated Suns.
He was right. It would have been glorious.
And unnecessary.
Because for all that hi
That particular honor fell to the Republic of the Sphere.
The APC swayed as it negotiated the roadblock at the end of the street. Danai let her head sway with it. Once past, the fans rose in pitch again as the driver accelerated past the obstruction.
“What do we do next?” Capshaw asked.
“We pack up and board ship,” Danai said.
“Yes ma’am.”
Danai could hear the hesitation in his voice. She looked at him until he looked back, then raised her eyebrows in question.
“Where are we going, ma’am?”
Danai met his stare, then shrugged.
“Toward the fight that matters,” she told him.
By the time the APC rattled to a halt back at the Second’s cantonment, Danai’s head throbbed from the fans’ vibration. The cut on her forehead was already mostly healed, but she would have sworn the edges were starting to pull apart again as her skull exploded with pain. When Capshaw stood and slapped the knob that dropped the APC’s hatch to the ground with a clang, she glared at him.
“Sang-shao?”
“You should be mindful of your colonel’s headache, Noah,” she told him. Danai pulled the headset off and hung it back on its hooks, then stood. Her back and legs were stiff from holding her in place against the APC’s turns, and the wash of cold air that had filled the compartment as soon as Capshaw slammed the ramp down didn’t help.
Capshaw looked like she’d killed his favorite kitten. “Sang-shao, I’m—” he gulped, but she cut him off.
“It’s nothing, Noah.” She gestured outside. “Let’s go.”
Outside, the sun was shining and reflecting off the fresh snow. Danai pulled sunglasses from the hip pocket of her battledress and put them on as a pair of officers stepped closer from where they’d retreated from the APC’s fan blast.
“Sang-shao,” said the senior of them, ducking his chin as he stepped closer. “I got your message. We can be off-world within twenty-four hours, but it means abandoning a great deal of matériel.”
Zhong-shao—lieutenant colonel—Wu Feng was short, about 1.7 meters, and thickly built. Though he was a MechWarrior, he was routinely found in the infantry’s gym, challenging the ground-pounders to weightlifting competitions. As her executive officer, it was his job to know everything about the regiment.
“Anything we need to worry about?” Danai asked.
“No,” Wu said. He grinned. “It’s mostly foodstuffs and basic maintenance materials for the armor regiment. We can replace it almost anywhere if we need to.” He raised an eyebrow. “That being said, if we can delay three days, we can get it all aboard ship.”
Danai rolled the idea around in her head, then shook it. “No; time is precious. I want you all in space and outbound at the earliest possible moment.”
Wu ducked his chin in again. “Then we go. We can be in orbit in twenty hours, barring something unforeseen.”
Danai nodded. She looked at the other officer, a tall woman of Slavic descent who’d waited patiently. “Sao-shao Maranov. How can I help you?”
Anya Maranov commanded the Second ’Mech Battalion. She braced, and then frowned. “I’m afraid I’ve got new orders, Sang-shao.”
“From whom?” Danai asked, icily. There was not another officer on New Syrtis, aside from Zhong-shao Wu, who could give the sao-shao—major—orders. If one of the other regimental commanders was stepping out of line…
“From Menke, ma’am.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, ma’am. Came in on the last supply DropShip. From McCarron himself.”
Danai ground her teeth. “And where did the sang-shao send you, Anya?”
“I’m the new XO of the Fifth Regiment,” Maranov replied.
Danai held her tongue while her mind raced. Sang-shao Xavier McCarron was the commander of all McCarron’s Armored Cavalry units. Though the Armored Cavalry had given up its mercenary status a century ago to become regular units of the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces, the Strategios—the Capellan High Command—still gave the brigade significant latitude. One of those areas of latitude was personnel assignments.
She looked at Wu. “Did you know about this?”
“I got a copy of the orders when Anya did,” Wu told her.
“Did I?”
“When was the last time you checked your queue?”
“It’s been a couple days,” Danai admitted.
“The orders came yesterday. It’s probably in your mail.”
Danai shook her head. “Well, as much as I hate to lose you, Anya, you deserve it.” She looked at the two of them, then at Capshaw. “Can we go inside now?”
“Of course,” Wu said, and gestured her to precede them.
A few minutes later, they were in what passed for a common room inside the heated building. Capshaw helped Danai get her coat off, being careful of the sling, and then sat down just outside the circle of senior officers.
“You’re going to Liao,” she told them.
Liao was the birth world of the Liao dynasty, former capital of a commonality in the Confederation, and the headquarters for military operations against the Republic of the Sphere. It had been a Republic world for decades, ever since it was stolen from the Confederation at the Republic’s founding in the 3080s.
Wu slid a noteputer from his thigh pocket, touched the screen, and tapped a query. “Looks like about four months’ journey.”
Danai nodded. “That’s what I figured. You should get there in early December.”
“Forgive me,” Sao-shao Maranov said, “but you said ‘you’re’ going to Liao. Not ‘we’?”
“I’m going to Sian.” She sat back in her plush seat and grimaced. “Noah, can you send for Doctor Mitchell? I think it’s time to get a new cast on.” She gently waved her broken arm in its sling.
“Right away, Sang-shao,” Capshaw said. He leaped to his feet like an eager puppy and strode out of the room.
“Sian?” Wu prompted.
“I need to explain to the Chancellor why we’re letting Julian Davion keep New Syrtis.”
“Then the rumors are true,” Wu said. “It’s just our regiment leaving.”
“No,” Danai told them. “Everyone is leaving. This is a sideshow. We’re going toward the real battle.”
“Against the Republic,” Maranov said. Her blue eyes glared at Danai from beneath furrowed brows. “Now?”
Danai breathed deep as the bones in her arm moved and ached.
“It’s past time,” she told them.
2
LUNG WANG-CLASS DROPSHIP GLADIATOR
NADIR JUMP POINT, IMALDA
CAPELLAN CONFEDERATION
2 OCTOBER 3148
The woman staring at Danai Liao-Centrella in the mirror was a stranger.
She stood in the small head attached to her DropShip quarters, hair still wet from the shower, and tried to imagine how she’d become this woman.
The face was familiar enough. She saw the same strong cheekbones, the same almond shape to her eyes, the same lips that always chapped too quickly. Her skin was still soft. The cut on her forehead was almost totally healed; just a small pink scar the surgeons assured her would be almost unnoticeable.
Danai frowned, looking at the lines around her mouth when she did that.
She knew what that said.
In her youth, she’d been a ’Mech fighter on Solaris VII, the game world. She’d followed in her illustrious cousins’ examples and fought for the title of champion in the gladiatorial games still fought there. No one rose to any sense of prominence in that environment without the attentions of publicists, make-up artists, agents, and all the other grease that made the holovid-bound world of the games work.
