BattleTech: Mercenary's Star (A Gray Death Legion Novella), page 1
MERCENARY’S HONOR
A GRAY DEATH LEGION STORY
BATTLETECH NOVELLA
BOOK 29
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
More BattleTech Fiction by Jason Schmetzer
Battletech Glossary
The BattleTech Fiction Series
CHAPTER 1
CONDOR
CRIMOND
TAMAR PACT
21 JANUARY 3152
Curtain didn’t wait for the skiff to bump the dock. He had his pack in hand and stood, arm ready, to let the momentum of the boat give him an extra-long step across the distance. He shouldered the pack as soon as his feet were settled on the rough ferrocrete, turned, and sketched a loose salute, really just a finger to his temple, to the boatman. “A favor is owed,” he said in one of the tongues of the Emberá people.
“Pardon?” Curtain repeated it in English. “Not if your coin is good,” the boatman replied. He turned the wheel, thrusters pushing the skiff back away from the dock and spinning the bow around at the same time.
Curtain nodded and turned away, toward the shore. A favor is owed, he thought, no matter the coin. He had paid the boatman’s master, the captain of the oceanic fishing ship, for passage, sure. But he hadn’t paid the boatman himself. And the passage from the ship to the shore had been skillful; the reefs on this side of Condor were difficult to see in the dark, not marked with buoys as they were on the Fort Beaufort side.
Curtain chuckled as he stepped off the dock onto the soft soil; it was unlikely he’d ever see the boatman again, so the favor likely had no cost. Which had no effect on the burden Curtain put on himself. He wasn’t so juvenile as to believe in fairness, but he understood reciprocity.
“What’s so funny?” a woman’s quiet voice asked.
And loyalty, he understood that too.
“I keep accepting burdens,” he told her. “How is it, Andy?”
“I think you’re supposed to tell me that,” Andrea—Andy—Ishikawa said. Andy stood about a meter-eight, not tall but not remarkably short. She kept her black hair cut short, tight across her light brown skin in a skullcap. Her clothes were pure Condor jungle: thick-fabric fatigue pants with sealed boots and a jacket loose enough to not catch on the holster on her right thigh. The handle of a machete stuck over her left shoulder.
“Later,” he said. “I don’t want to tell it twice.” He reset his pack on his shoulder and gestured for her to precede him down the path. She rolled her eyes and did so. It was a short walk to the jeep. The dirt roads through the Darien were impassable to the hovercraft they preferred on the big continents, and maintenance on tracks away from the Fort was hopeless, so they made do with wheels and tires.
“We’ll have to lay over at Paulo’s outpost,” Andy told him. “We can’t make it tonight.”
“Fine,” Curtain said. He hefted his pack into the rear seat and climbed aboard. He breathed deeply, drinking in the fragrant, wet scents of the jungle. He got a couple of the local insects, of course, but that was habit as well. He spit them out without crunching the chitin; in the high jungle, the bugs were thick, but none of the native Crimond insects found humans palatable. “I miss Paulo’s wife’s cooking.” You always miss home, when you choose it, he knew. Even the bugs.
“Paulo’s wife,” Andy said, climbing aboard, “doesn’t like you.”
Curtain chuckled. “Everyone likes me.”
“Not the woman who has to cook—you eat more than three other people combined.”
“I have a high metabolism.”
“You may as well be an Elemental.”
“Founder forfend,” Curtain said, affecting a shudder. He waved a few more bugs out of his face. “Are we going?”
“We are,” Andy said. She pressed the button to start the jeep, and the fuel cell engine fired right up. The headlights were bright LEDs, brilliant in the darkening air even though there was plenty of light left. Clouds of insects swirled in the beams. Curtain chuckled again.
“Top’s going up, I’m not having those things crawling in my hair,” Andy said. Curtain said nothing, just spread his hands. The jeep’s top came up out of the rear and settled over them quickly, then the vehicle jerked into motion. The top also cut off enough of the engine noise that they could speak without shouting.
“Give me the short version,” Andy said.
“The rumors are true.”
“Invaders?”
“Liberators, they call themselves,” Curtain said. “From Arcturus. But not the Commonwealth.”
“Not from the Commonwealth—like, mercenaries?”
“No, not like mercenaries.”
Andy drove in silence for a moment, bumping over the rain-soaked track. “Curtain?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t make me leave you out here.”
“I don’t want to tell it twice.”
“Tell me,” she commanded.
“There is, if the newcomers are to be believed, a new Tamar Pact,” Curtain told her. The grin fell away as he recalled all he had learned, all he had heard. “The constabulary in Sol City folded right away, so by the old laws, I guess we’re now citizens of the Tamar Pact.”
“The old laws.”
“Before the Clans came here, custom was if the invader defeated the defender, the planet was theirs.” Curtain shifted in his seat; he was too big to really be comfortable in a jeep, and none of the accommodations on the ship had been to his size, either.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“History rarely does.”
“Why would the people back then go for that?”
“To avoid fighting in the cities,” Curtain said absently. His memory was reciting facts he’d learned in the sibko while his mind cycled again through his last few weeks. “To avoid total war, and reprisals, and the final dark age the Inner Sphere so narrowly avoided in the Succession Wars.”
“Sounds like a bunch of cowards,” Andy said.
“We weren’t there.”
“They expect us to hew to these old laws?”
“I didn’t ask,” Curtain said. “But you’ve been to the mainlands. What do you think?”
Andy snorted. “I bet the miners are already measuring their fuses.”
Curtain chuckled. “I suspect you are right.”
“Will they come here?” Andy asked a few moments later.
“Unless we are luckier than we’ve earned,” Curtain said.
They drove the rest of the way in silence.
CHAPTER 2
SOL CITY
CRIMOND
TAMAR PACT
2 FEBRUARY 3152
“A car race.”
“That’s right.”
Isobel Carlyle frowned. She couldn’t be hearing what she thought she was hearing. “They surrendered the whole planet. After a car race.”
“Yes.” Her brother Ronan, tall, sandy-haired, earnest as any two second sons, rolled his eyes.
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“I know.”
“What is wrong with these people?”
“Ask louder—I’m sure some of them will want to answer you.”
Bel frowned and looked around. She and Ronan sat in an open-air cafe along the banks of the River James in Sol City, capital of the planet Crimond, newest member of the reborn Tamar Pact, a collection of worlds abandoned by the Lyran Commonwealth, abandoned by Clan Jade Falcon, pretty much abandoned by everyone. It was a young nation, less than a year old, but strong. And it was the employer of record for the Gray Death Legion, commanded by one Major Ronan Carlyle, also employing Captain Bel Carlyle, commander of scouts. A good number of the other patrons wore battledress, though the Carlyles were the only ones in Legion gray. The rest wore the green shade known as “field gray” of the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces, though none of them served that organization any longer.
“So the whole thing is over?”
“Pretty much,” Ronan said. He sipped his latte and looked across the river. “Be nice to have some downtime, I guess.”
Bel looked around. “Then why did we even tag along?”
Ronan shrugged. “Orders.”
The Legion had come to Crimond along with a battalion of the Third Tamar Jaegers—which, as far as Bel and Ronan were concerned, was really just Third Battalion, Twenty-Sixth Arcturan Guards, with some attachments. The Carlyles had been expelled from the Twenty-Six about six months earlier, when they refused to join the regiment in rebellion against the Archon. The Tamar Pact shipped them to Garrison as Lyran loyalists, where the local Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces had promptly cashiered them as Tamar traitors.
And so the Gray Death Legion was reborn as a mercenary battalion. And, absurdly, hired by the group of people who’d kicked them out in the first place: the Tamar Pact.
The Jade Falcons had abandoned their occupation zone in a frenzy to race Clan Wolf to Terra. No one Bel trusted had yet come back with an answer of what had happened on Terra, or if the fighting was even over, but what was true was that the Falcons were gone. And worlds like Crimond needed protection. Or liberation. Or conquering. She wasn’t one hundred percent clear on their exact role here.
Crimond, historically a Lyran Commonwealth world, had been conquered first by Clan Wolf, and then the Jade Falcons across recent decades. It was a sparse world, barely a billion people, spread across two continents, Metallerz and Chromastich. The majority of the planet’s industry had been mining; both continents were dotted with abandoned “boom towns” where surface deposits were mined out before people moved on. It made for a population of fiercely independent people, all of them out for their own self-interest, who barely tolerated the so-called planetary government here in Sol City. Bel had no idea how the Jade Falcons had administered the world, but if whoever they left in charge wanted to surrender the whole planet a kilometer at a time…
“I don’t understand—” Bel said, before the restaurant’s kitchen exploded.
She didn’t put together what had happened until she blinked herself back to awareness on the ground, crushed beneath Ronan against the stone railing, with the detritus of chairs, food, and drink splashed across her. Her leg was bent painfully beneath her and she felt the arm of a chair driving into her side, but Ronan shifted and the pressure eased. Her skin felt hot and prickly; her nose and sinuses were on fire, and her ears rang so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else. There was grit in her eyes; they burned, and her arm hurt when she reached up a hand to rub at them.
Her whole body hurt.
She finally got her eyes clear and looked around. People were down all over. Some were moving, slowly like she was. Most were not. Ronan had gotten shakily to his feet, but was bracing himself with one hand on the railing. Bel watched him look around, then down at her. His mouth moved, as if he were talking, but all she heard was ringing.
“What?” she asked, or tried to. She couldn’t hear herself.
He pointed at her with two fingers, then made a thumbs up and a questioning face. He wants to know if I’m okay. She shrugged and rolled to her hands and knees. They way her body felt, she didn’t want to rush getting to her feet. She put her hand in something warm and wet; it was red when she lifted it.
That’s blood.
Bel struggled to her feet, looking around. Muffled sounds were starting to penetrate the ringing, as if they were far away and deep underwater. Her head swam, but she found her balance. Ronan gripped her upper arm, stared into her eyes. She blinked and tried to focus.
“Okay?” he yelled. It sounded like he was across a football pitch. She blinked, then opened her mouth wide, trying to pop her ears. Maybe that would help. It didn’t, but she nodded anyway, then looked past him, got a good look at the building.
The cafe had been on the raised porch of a restaurant housed in the cupola of a government building. The facade was wood painted to look like stone, between two native stone pillars. The facade was gone, the edges jagged and blackened.
It was a miracle they were alive.
Bel looked around, behind her, across the street and the square, toward the other buildings. She could see broken windows and people picking themselves up, and men and women in both military uniforms and the gray utilities of the local constabulary running toward them.
She looked back at where the kitchen had been.
“I got blown up,” she whispered, or tried to.
* * *
SOL CITY
CRIMOND
TAMAR PACT
3 FEBRUARY 3152
The sentries outside the temporary Tamar command center at the Sol City spaceport were armored today, Bel saw, a pair of black-painted Infiltrator Mk II battlesuits with MagShots mounted and rounds in the feed tube. There was an unarmored infantry staff sergeant checking IDs against a noteputer, but the line was moving rapidly. He checked Bel and Ronan’s IDs, frowned at their grays, and then motioned them inside with his chin.
The command center was a commandeered secure aircraft hangar on the spaceport’s edge, where the civilian airport was attached. The hangar was probably where some noble kept his puddle-jumper, but the Tamar Jaegers had evicted him and installed what looked like the guts of two mobile headquarters vehicles. There was a section off to the side with chairs set up for the briefing they’d come to attend, but the crowd was still milling around. It was a little unsettling, seeing so many soldiers in Lyran battledress without the Steiner fist on their shoulders.
“Nice guy,” Bel said. “The guy at the door.”
“Just doing his job,” Ronan said. He was standing a little stiffly, looking around. Bel looked around, resisting the urge to knuckle her still-humming ears.
“What are you looking at?”
Ronan flinched. “Nothing.”
“You’re looking for people you know,” Bel said.
“We served in the Twenty-Sixth for a while,” he said. “We were officers. We’re going to know people.”
“Far as I’m concerned, these people are all strangers,” Bel said. “They kicked us out.”
Ronan grunted. “Yet here we are.”
Bel rolled her eyes. She still had moments where the sheer absurdity of the past six months shocked her. Seven months ago they’d all been aboard DropShips, headed for Arcturus from Kandersteg, all loyal soldiers of the Commonwealth doing their duty for Archon and nation. And then they’d been ejected from the family of their regiment, sent to Garrison, where the LCAF, the organization they had renounced their traitorous brethren to serve, rejected them.
And now here they were, working for their traitorous former comrades as mercenaries.
Home is the regiment, she’d always heard around her family growing up. An old saying, but one the Carlyles kept alive. The nascent Gray Death Legion had been formed out of that core of loyal LCAF soldiers who’d been cashiered on the order of Hauptmann-General Timofey Bondayehr. Fat Timmy, as his troops called him, soon repeated his mistake by ejecting the core of a Lyran recon battalion that had attempted to go rogue and, you know, free Commonwealth worlds from invaders. A lot of those recon troopers had joined the Legion after their forced discharges.
A handful of other former Lyran soldiers had applied and been accepted, too. Ronan was always careful to say that one successful battle was not a tradition of victory, but with the unrest along the former Jade Falcon border, Bel understood the need to feel like you were somewhere safe.
And even more after yesterday. In fact…
“Somebody gets a bomb in here,” she said, leaning close to Ronan, “like yesterday? Whole liberation is over.”
“One hopes not,” Ronan said dryly.
The crowd began moving toward the briefing area, and Bel and Ronan drifted that way. Bel made for the last row of chairs, but Ronan touched her shoulder and shook his head. She frowned, but then remembered. Scowling, she looked toward the front of the briefing area, but didn’t recognize any of the officers.
The regiment’s operations shop would be in charge of putting on the briefing. In the LCAF, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the rank-conscious Lyran officer corps to play favorites by inviting more officers and senior enlisted than they set up chairs for, so those of junior stature could be shown their place in the pecking order. It was petty, but life was petty.
Bel looked around, seeing a couple of collar flashes for kommandants—battalion commanders—and more hauptmanns—company commanders—looking around and eyeing chair. There was already a mass of leutnants—lance and platoon leaders—standing along the sides and back.
Bel and Ronan, she knew, as attached mercenaries, were lucky to even be in the room. The Legion had only landed two days before, and they were still waiting on their liaison officer to appear. Even though Ronan held the rank of major, equivalent to the Tamar kommandants, she knew it wasn’t at all the same thing.
“ACHTUNG!” You could take the soldier out of the Commonwealth, it seemed, but you couldn’t take the German out of the soldier.
