BattleTech: Redemption Rites, page 13
“We do,” Hack allowed.
“Still doesn’t feel real, you know?” Crews frowned. “You and me, all us oldsters, we came up fighting the Jade Falcons. All those years, all those battles. And now there aren’t enough of them left to bury their own dead.” He coughed. “We did that. I did that, all my people did.”
“Yes, you did.”
Something in Hack’s voice must have caught Crews’ attention, because the other man’s tone shifted abruptly. “And that’s not enough for you,” he snapped. “The cost was too high?”
Hack shook his head. “Tom already answered for Terra,” he said. “I didn’t come here to ask you about Malvina Hazen. I came to ask you why that was worth killing Dragoons.”
“It was a battle—”
“I mean on Parma.”
Hack hadn’t been on Parma, when Marotta Kerensky had first arrived to seduce the Dragoons. He hadn’t learned of the mutiny there, of the fighting that had claimed Dragoons lives, Dragoons killing each other, until it was far too late. It had enraged him. He couldn’t understand how Tom had gone along with it. But that was all in the past now…
Crews shut up. He rubbed the stump of his leg, frowning. When he spoke, his voice was more subdued. “I saw an opportunity and I took it,” he said. “We had to take this chance, don’t you see? If Malvina had taken Terra…”
Hack closed his eyes. It was always the same. On the recharge station, in the court-martial, any time anyone opened their mouth around Crews, it was always “if Malvina had taken Terra…” as if that excused everything.
He opened his eyes. “You led a mutiny, Nick.” He felt the hardness in his chest turning hot. “You turned Dragoon against Dragoon because you thought a thing needed to be done, yes. But you disobeyed orders to do it. You sent Dragoons against your own general, and then you blackmailed him into going along with your scheme.” He squeezed his biceps so hard it hurt. He let go and dropped balled fists to his sides.
“Eight in ten Dragoons are dead. Your Gammas, my Spider’s Web, Alpha, Beta, all the others. Dead. And yeah, Malvina Hazen is in a shallow grave next to them. But I don’t care. You had to betray everything that makes us Dragoons to get her there in the first place.”
“You don’t understand. You weren’t there—”
Hack stepped away from the wall. “On Parma? You’re damned straight I wasn’t, because I’d have put you against the wall and shot you right between the eyes for what you did.”
“So you’ll do it now, instead?” Crews lurched upright, one hand clasping a stanchion so he could balance on his one leg. “Go ahead, Hack. You already shot Tom. If it’ll make you feel better, put a bullet in me. I don’t care. I did what I went to Terra to do. Malvina is dead. And if I betrayed my oaths to get that done, so be it. History will remember me for stopping her.”
Hack shook his head. “I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Come on!” Crews pounded his chest with his free hand. “I did what none of you could do. I killed the Jade Falcons.”
Hack half-turned and banged twice on the hatch with his fist. “You’ll be shot tomorrow, by firing squad,” he said. “I came to tell you. The families, they wanted to space you, but I said no. We have rules. Discipline. That’s what you broke on Parma. Discipline. It’s all we have. It’s what makes us who we are. Hell, it’s why all those poor Dragoons followed you to Terra and died killing the Jade Falcons for you.”
Crews collapsed back down on the bunk. “Blindly following orders doesn’t make you right, Hack.”
Hack barked a bitter laugh. “If there’s a hell, you can talk it over with all the good Dragoons you and Sheridan killed.”
The guard outside opened the hatch and Hack stepped through it, not waiting for a reply.
CHAPTER 12
CATAMARCA
SHASTA
WOLF EMPIRE
15 SEPTEMBER 3151
It is working.
Othar stood with Star Captain Radu in the cramped compartment of a mobile headquarters vehicle, watching the icons and broadcast footage of a Supernova Binary of Wolf ’Mechs and Elementals crush the last of the mercenary company that had attempted to raid Shasta for information. Or at least, that was the intention Othar, Radu, and the new Star Colonel Leap had deduced from the mercenaries’ actions. They had not been allowed to proceed; Leap and his warriors, gathered here on Shasta as the core of a new Cluster, had made sure.
Not one moment of the past few months had been easy for Othar or any of the other Wolf warriors he gathered around himself. It had been a frantic rush to try and rebuild a touman when all the experienced, core components of the logistical machine that built the ilClan’s army were removed. The factories were still there, the sibkos still there, but the core at the center of the puzzle was the warriors and logisticians that made all that effort unify. Those assets had gone to Terra with the ilKhan. Now Othar and the others had to rebuild that core that made the whole machine work.
It had not been easy, but it was starting to work.
Armament shipments were being centralized. The Empire’s scant JumpShip assets were being brought under control by Hilde and the other merchant factors. ’Mechs, tanks, battlesuits, even the odd new DropShip were being delivered to Gienah and the other worlds where Othar had his warriors rebuilding new Clusters. It was slow, and tedious, and only a fraction of the immense ingathering that built the armada for Terra, but it was working.
Standing here now, watching one of Leap’s Binaries crush the mercenary raiders, Othar felt a rush of pride for what he and the others had done. It really is working.
His pride morphed to predatory glee. It had only worked because the Lyran Commonwealth and the Free Worlds League had allowed him this precious time. The fighting spinward near Stewart was concerning, and he’d have to move himself in that direction shortly, but for now…if he ever met Trillian Steiner or Nikol Marik, he’d thank them for keeping a leash on their militaries long enough for him to rebuild the bones of his own.
Next to him, Radu grunted. Othar brought his attention back to the MHQ and the screens. It looked as though Leap’s Binary was just about finished. A Wolf Jupiter stood over the carcass of a mercenary Zeus, pouring fire into the wreckage.
Othar frowned. “Something has that one vexed, quiaff?”
“The Zeus pretended to surrender, then fired into the Jupiter’s rear,” Radu said. “That would be enough, aff.”
Othar shook his head. “I will have to speak to the trainer again. I understand why they focus so much on zellbrigen, but out here…” he shrugged. “It has so little utility in this world.”
“It is the way of the Clans,” Radu said.
“It is history,” Othar said, but without rancor. He had more important things to do than fight with Radu again. “Where is Leap?”
Radu opened his mouth to reply, but before he could the hatch of the MHQ slammed open and Leap climbed inside. The Star Colonel was young for his rank, as they all were—save Othar—and big. Broad across the shoulders, narrow at the waist, with a shock of blond hair that contrasted harshly with his black skin.
He stalked into the bay with an aggressive stride, grinning the whole way. “The mercenaries are defeated, Star Colonel.”
“So I have seen,” Othar said. “My congratulations to your warriors, Star Colonel. They have served the Empire well today. Even the ilKhan could ask for no more.”
“And at what a bid, eh?” Leap asked. He was a loud, boisterous man by default. His presence filled the whole of the small compartment. It was enough to make several of the techs at the consoles, look up briefly. “A Binary of just-Blooded sibs against a whole company?”
“Indeed,” Othar said. He gestured past Leap at the door. “A bit of air, Star Colonel?” When the big man spun and preceded him out the hatch, Othar rolled his eyes. Leap in the small space was too much to deal with. Radu’s quiet snort was too low for anyone else to hear.
“What is the state of your Cluster?” Othar asked, as soon as the three were outside.
“Four Binaries are ready, Star Colonel,” Leap said, without hesitation. “I am informed there is sufficient equipment en route to bring two of them up to Trinaries as soon as we have available warriors.”
Othar nodded. His plan called for ten Clusters organized into two Galaxies, Rufus and Lupus. Half would be front-line Clusters, intended to fight any opponent, with sufficient DropShip and JumpShip assets to ensure they could respond at need anywhere within reach. The other half would be garrison Clusters, intended to pin an attacker in place long enough for one of the other Clusters to respond.
How those Clusters would know to respond, in the absence of significant HPG assets, Othar preferred not to think about. Merchant JumpShips were rare, to be sure, but they would have to serve, along with the handful of functioning HPGs in the Empire.
Radu had castigated him for the plan as soon as he’d heard it, accusing him of resurrecting a failed defense concept from the Capellan Confederation of all places, called elastic defense. Ricard and his other trainers had taught Radu, but Othar had to look it up.
In late years of the twenty-ninth century, the Capellans, hard-pressed by the Mariks and the Davions, had enacted elastic defense: a system of “fortress worlds” with nodal forces that could respond at need to incursions against planets that were not heavily defended. On paper, it had seemed like a solid defensive plan. In practice…
In practice it had lasted for more than a century—and the near-constant tempo of operations had ground the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces nearly to mush. Units—machines and people both—wore out from being on constant alert status, or rushing from fight to fight. Elastic defense relied on the near-instantaneous communications of the ComStar hyperpulse network to notify the reaction forces they were needed, and plentiful JumpShip assets to move them. The current Wolf Empire had none of that. In the long term, the plan was doomed to fail for the same reason the Capellan version had failed.
But Othar was only concerned about the short term. In the long term, if the ilKhan did not return with the touman of the ilClan, all of this would be for nothing anyway, and Othar would be dead. He wasn’t building a new, systemic, Empire-wide defense plan. He was buying time. Alaric Ward would not forget the Empire.
“Four Binaries,” Othar repeated, coming back to his conversation. “That is good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a datacard, offering it to Leap. “You shall be the Ninety-Second Wolf Guards.”
Leap took the card, and his grin widened. “We will not fail you, Star Colonel.”
“Do not fail the Empire,” Othar told him. “More, do not fail the ilKhan.”
“This is not enough,” Radu said.
Othar looked away from the noteputer. “What is not enough?”
“What we are doing.” Radu held up his own noteputer. “You have seen this, quineg?”
“The latest reports from Stewart?”
“Aff.”
“I have not.” Othar sat up. He and Radu were in a crew lounge in the Catamarca spaceport, waiting to board their DropShip with the rest of the Den Keshik and head for the jump point. Othar judged Leap capable of handling the remaining duties here, and he had plenty of other fires to put out.
Chiefly among them, Stewart and the Free Worlds League.
“First, these reports are a month old.” Radu quickly stood and handed the noteputer to Othar. “Anything could have happened since they were sent.”
“News takes time to travel,” Othar told him. Inside, he hid a frown. Radu was too young to remember a time before the HPG network went down. He’d never known a world where information was transmitted in hours instead of days. I barely remember the days before the Blackout. He had been in sibko, preparing for his own Trial of Position, when the HPG network collapsed. Either Radu’s frustration was from ignorance, or else the former student was getting a dose of the reality of poor communication across interstellar distances.
“I do not understand how we are to coordinate the defense of the entire Empire when we have no idea what is happening across it,” Radu spat. “You task me to keep in touch with Conners’ lapdog at the Watch, to keep you informed, but the information I get is so stale it may as well be useless.”
Now Othar did chuckle. “It is not as easy as tactics, is it?”
Radu was an excellent MechWarrior and a decent leader. His earning of Star Captain’s rank in his Trial of Position was proof. What he lacked was what almost all of Othar’s touman lacked: seasoning, but also a sense of strategy. Their trainers, rightly so, had trained them to be excellent warriors so they would win their Trial of Position, earn a place in the touman, and grow into proper warriors of the ilClan.
The things they would learn in their first Stars would teach them reality. They would come to understand the reality of logistics, of strategy, of the decisions that go into when and how the ilClan chooses to fight, not just how to win the fight after it had started. They would learn the critical role of intelligence, no matter how much the sibkos decried the Watch’s very existence.
Star Colonel Spurlock Conners, head of the Wolf Clan Watch, had gone to Terra with Alaric Ward, as had much of Conners’ organization. What remained was the lowest echelon of information sources: local informants, stringers embedded in constabularies and other planetary organizations, and the many Free Guild members who would share information for the right price.
It was an analogue of the warrior caste Othar had to work with, people struggling to work far outside their nominal competence. He’d found the senior Watch member left on Gienah, a former aerospace pilot named Cowan, and set her to rebuilding the Empire’s intelligence apparatus. Her point of contact with him was Radu, much to Radu’s annoyance.
Othar looked at the noteputer he’d just taken, scanned the high points, and set it down on the seat next to him.
The report was unsurprising. Some months back, units of the Silver Hawk Irregulars, one of the myriad factions of the Free Worlds League, had jumped the Empire border and occupied Stewart, near their ancestral homeworlds. It hadn’t taken much; like almost every Empire world, Stewart was naked. The Irregulars had settled in, called for mercenaries, and generally done nothing.
Shortly thereafter, the Watch reported, renegade forces from the Clan Protectorate—a mishmash polity built out of Republic of the Sphere expatriates, a handful of Nova Cats who refused to believe their Clan was dead, and Clan Sea Fox—had landed and fought the Silver Hawk forces.
And now, according to this report, mercenaries had landed on Stewart. It was secondhand, an intercept of standard message traffic carried out of the system on the JumpShip hired to transport the mercenaries, but Cowan’s analysts were confident.
So, par to form, months after taking a world of the Empire, a world Othar was only now able to consider devoting strength toward, the Mariks had done nothing but fight among themselves.
“It does not appear much has changed,” he said to Radu.
“What has changed is our enemies now hold one of our worlds more strongly,” Radu said stubbornly. “And we are here, on the opposite end of the Empire, watching Leap fend off the weakest mercenary raid in history.”
Othar smiled. He sat forward, absently running the back of his hand across the thin beard he’d grown, but before he could speak, a chime sounded. He glanced at the entrance, his smile fading, as Radu got up to open the door. It slid open at his touch, but whatever Othar expected to see, it wasn’t Radu bracing suddenly to attention.
The man who stepped inside the small room wore a simple gray-blue skinsuit with the hood thrown back. On the skinsuit’s breast was the leaping insignia of Clan Sea Fox and the rank insignia for a saKhan, leader of one of the nomad Clan’s khanates. The right side of the man’s face was hideously disfigured; his head was completely bald. Which makes him—
“SaKhan Kalasa,” Othar said, standing. “Welcome to Shasta.”
Petr Kalasa, saKhan of the Spina Khanate, arguably the most recognizable and, some would say, powerful, Sea Fox in this region of space, smiled with half his face and stepped forward. “You are Othar, quiaff?”
“Aff,” Othar replied.
“The man of myth and legend,” Kalasa said. “Viceroy in all but name of the Wolf Empire, the right hand of the ilKhan himself. I have heard it said in system after system.”
“Sit, please,” Othar said, gesturing. Inside, he bit down the instinctive flare of anger at mention of the ilKhan. The ilKhan hasn’t done a single thing to tell me he even remembers my name. He looked at Radu and motioned for him to sit as well. “This is Star Captain Radu.”
“Of the Den Keshik,” Kalasa said. He glanced between the two Wolves, ducked his chin at Radu, then turned back to Othar. He opened his mouth, closed it, then chuckled. “I have had weeks to rehearse this moment, Star Colonel. And now I find myself without words.”
“Perhaps you can begin with how you knew I was here?” Othar asked. His travel plans weren’t exactly secret, but they were also not publicly broadcast.
“We Sea Foxes make it our business to know such things,” Kalasa said, with a small waving-off gesture of the fingers folded in his lap. “In this age of slow communications, there is little of more value than prompt and timely information.”
Othar nodded, carefully avoiding glancing at Radu. The boy, to his credit, was sitting quietly with a blank face, just listening. The haughtiness of his natural expression was there, but little else.
“It is information I bring,” Kalasa went on. “Information freely given, so you may make an informed decision as to the bargain to follow.” He leaned back, face calm, and waited.
“Go on,” Othar said.
“You are aware of the invasion of Stewart?”
