BattleTech: Hector, page 2
Most of the Dragoon ’Mechs.
Kenner slammed his feet down against the foot pedals. Massive plasma jets roared to life and lifted all 100 tons of the Marauder II from Hesperus’ embrace and carried it up to alight on the ridge a little under a hundred meters behind the fleeing Lyran ’Mechs. Kenner paused, letting the Marauder’s Dalban targeting system sweep and process, and then started after the two ’Mechs. The Dragon had already spun to face him, putting its heaver frontal armor toward the threat. The Zeus accelerated, trying to flee out of the Dragoon’s firing range before his thinner rear armor could be breached.
Kenner ignored the Dragon. The Hellstars blazed again, both shots blasting great glowing rents in the Zeus’ back. The eighty-ton ’Mech staggered and collapsed on its face, overbalanced by the run and the furious power of the PPC strikes. Kenner’s follow-on laser shot missed high again, tracing a glowing weal across a rock face a half-kilometer distant. He snarled into his neurohelmet and stalked the Marauder forward, trying to close the distance. There was roaring behind him and he checked his 360 degree vision strip. The angular shape of Kerri Tennler’s Grasshopper touched down sixty meters behind him, lasers flashing.
“More ’Mechs!” Foster reported. “Another lance, heavies.”
“You got them?” he asked.
“Hush,” she said, and cut the connection.
Kenner chuckled and checked his readouts. The Marauder II had been designed nine years earlier to correct a few of the feared Marauder’s flaws… the most serious of which had been lack of armor and heat dissipation. The Marauder II, aside from being a full twenty-five tons heavier, was more heavily armored and carried enough heat sinks to keep up an insane rate of fire. Kenner let his face climb into a grin as he though about that. Rate of fire, he thought. He fired again.
The Zeus managed to get to one knee before the brace of PPCs took it in the back again, this time coring through the armor to smash the ferro-titanium bones of the ’Mech. A blossom on his thermal readout announced the destruction of part of the Zeus’ fusion engine shielding, and Kenner triumphantly triggered his large laser. This time the shot didn’t miss, instead stabbing deep into the ravaged cavity in the Zeus’ back. A series of small explosions erupted and quickly cascaded into a hellish torrent that threw the eighty-ton ’Mech back onto its face before it disappeared in the ruckus of a runaway ammunition explosion. Kenner shouted in victory, riding out the Dragon’s fire, trusting the Marauder II’s heavy armor to hold against the autocannon and missiles. Tennler leapt past him, charging hard, lasers flashing, melting armor from the Snake machine’s arms and legs.
“Zeus down,” he said.
“Another one here,” Dumphries reported. “Also a Crusader and I think what used to be an Orion. It’s all little pieces now.”
The Dragon abandoned its shooting and spun and charged away in full retreat. Tennler kept up her pursuit until the Dragon darted into a cut in the rock face and then throttled back. The sounds of combat lessened from ahead, but picked up from behind.
“Ari?”
“We could use a little help,” Foster admitted.
“Jennings, get back and support Foster,” Kenner ordered. “I’ll keep Tennler with me.”
“Copy,” the lieutenant said.
“Do we pursue?” Kerri Tennler asked, bringing her Grasshopper to stand beside the Marauder II. Kenner was motionless, letting the Marauder’s excellent heat sinks bleed off the last of the waste heat from the skirmish. Her ’Mech pointed back toward where the Dragon disappeared. “We could probably catch him.”
Kenner laughed. “You might,” he said. “Not me. I can’t stump through these hills that fast.” He called up a topographical map on the lower-left quadrant of his HUD and studied it for a moment. “We’re about two klicks from where the scouts bought it,” he said.
“They won’t stand here much longer,” Tennler guessed.
“Even engaging was a mistake,” Kenner agreed. “We’re Dragoons, and we’re heavier. Even the Sixth Lyran couldn’t be that stupid.” He looked at the map again, tracing elevation lines and marked obstacles. The scouts had been sending back regular reports, and the techs on Chieftain had been steadily updating the radar survey the DropShip had made before landing. Sure they’d gotten the scouts, but those were armored vehicles and light ’Mechs. Why even strike an assault company, except to prove something?
Or slow us down.
“What if they’re hiding something?” he mused.
“It’s Hesperus, Captain,” Tennler said. She moved her Grasshopper around behind Kenner and directed her sensors that way. “They’re pissed as hell we’re even here, and they’re not thinking straight. The first battles of any landing are like this.”
“This isn’t my first drop, Sergeant,” Kenner snapped.
“Respectfully, sir, it is with us.”
Kenner opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut at the last moment. She was right. He’d only been in command for a few days, and this was his first engagement as a company commander. So far he’d fought as a lance leader, looking to see for himself what was going on before looking at the rest of the company.
“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Leading the Grasshopper back to where they’d jumped up, Kenner used his jump jets again to drop down to the ravine floor and started back toward the sound of fighting. He heard the sounds of battle played over the radio when he switched to the Command Lance frequency, but he didn’t speak. He wasn’t fighting—he’d only be a distraction to his troops without actually being there, and distractions got Dragoons killed.
I’ll have to remember that.
By the time he reached his lance the skirmish was over. Two more Lyran ’Mechs were scattered in pieces across the landscape, victims of ammunition explosions from the looks of them. Kenner shivered despite the heat. He often had that reaction, and thanked the Unity again that his Marauder had only energy weapons.
“Two got away,” Foster reported when she saw him. From the looks of her Atlas, it had been a serious fight. “A pair of Quickdraws—they used their jets and went over the hills.” Kenner acknowledged her report and looked at the rest of his company.
The Attack Lance ’Mechs were pristine, having come into the battle in time to only help chase the Lyrans off. The three Command Lance ’Mechs were more battered. Foster’s Atlas was scarred with laser burns and PPC strikes, and Barrows’ Awesome was limping where melted armor had clogged his knee actuator.
“So,” he said after a moment. “Was this the troop that got the scouts?”
“Our boys were already hurt,” Foster said. “I checked. That Thunderbolt,” she beckoned to a still-smoking pile of debris, “had some fresh laser scars. Maybe some short-range missile pocks, too… I’ll have to look at the ROMs when we get back to be sure.”
“I didn’t get a look at ours,” Tennler said.
“It’ll be on the ROMs,” Kenner said. “Dumphries?”
“Nothing to report,” came the immediate reply. “We’re holding a half-klick ahead of you, but there’s nothing on scanners.” The Heavy Lance commander’s voice was devoid of emotion, which made the edges of Kenner’s awareness tingle. For Dumphries to be calm was not right. He wondered about it for a moment before reminding himself that the time to wonder was later. He was in the middle of the assault.
“Hold your position until we rejoin,” Kenner ordered Dumphries. The he switched frequencies. “Tennler, I want you to scout the high road. See where those ’Mechs were going. Watch out for the Dragon. You’re doing a recon, not an assault.” The Grasshopper raised a hand in salute and moved off, using its jump jets to ascend to the cliff face again.
“The rest of you, sweep forward. There might be wounded Dragoons out there, and we need to find out how far the Lyrans have advanced in the defense.” He suited action to words, moving the Marauder II to the head of the column and keeping a close eye on his sensors. Tennler’s IFF pulsed by itself, even though her ’Mech was out of sight, but no sign of the enemy was found.
“Anyone see a way to get up there?” he asked a kilometer later.
“Not without jets,” Dumphries said.
“We could go back for jump packs,” Foster suggested.
“They’d just send one of the other companies,” Kenner said. “Keep an eye out.”
“How much farther do we go?” Foster asked on a discrete channel.
“Until we make contact again,” Kenner said. “We need to know how far forward the defense is.”
“That’s a job for a recon lance, Luke,” she said.
“It’s our job,” he said. “We’re out here.”
“If we make contact with a heavy unit,” she said, after a moment, “you know we won’t be able to disengage without killing them first. We’re too slow.” The Atlas stumped along stolidly in Kenner’s vision strip, its gait confident and fearless. There was no trace in the ’Mech’s appearance of the doubts its pilot was espousing.
“Then we’ll fight it out,” he said.
“Spoken like a true assault ’Mech pilot,” Foster said with a chuckle.
“Zeta’s always looking for a few good men,” he said back. The ravine bent around to the right a dozen meters ahead, and he slowed the Marauder. There hadn’t been anything at any of the last dozen doglegs, but he hadn’t survived this long by trusting past practice. He ordered the rest of the company to halt and then edged around the rock face, sensors open and watchful.
The Lyran Atlas doing the same thing reacted first, stepping in close and slamming a solid right jab into the Marauder II’s center-mass. Kenner rocked with the blow and let inertia carry him back a few steps, away from the Lyran ’Mech. He clutched at his yokes, adjusting his aim.
“Contact!” he screamed, and fired. It was too close for his PPCs to focus so he ignored them, instead firing the paired medium lasers mounted beneath the heavy Hellstars and the big laser on his upper hull. All three shots hit, melting at the thick armor over the Atlas’ heart, but not doing any appreciable damage. The Atlas’s return fire, however, was just as accurate and more damaging.
Six short-range missiles raced across the space between the two ’Mechs and scattered explosions across the face of Kenner’s ’Mech. The 100-ton monster shook the damage off, however, and straightened, only to be blasted back by the hail of autocannon fire that chewed through more than half the armor over the Marauder II’s left leg. Kenner yelped and fought to keep his ’Mech on its feet. He was too busy to try and aim again.
Yelling filled his cockpit as the other Dragoons of Able First charged forward. Foster was there first, matching the Lyran Atlas’ with her own ’Mech’s firepower, blasting with lasers and autocannon. She skipped her missiles, instead concentrating on the potential cutting damage of her lasers. She sidestepped around Kenner’s Marauder II and then sidestepped again. Kenner frowned.
Barrows’ Awesome took two steps closer until the range between his ’Mech and the Lyran Atlas was just over 100 meters and then cut loose, three coruscating cyan torches that annihilated armor wherever they touched the Lyran ’Mech. Kenner blinked at the backscatter from the PPCs and tried to move left, to clear the lane of fire.
“More ’Mechs behind it!” Dumphries called. “It’s a full company.”
Kenner snarled at himself and brought his ’Mech back under control. He kept the machine moving backward, trying to get the range necessary to bring his PPCs into play. The Atlas that had met him retreated around the rock face, but two more Lyran ’Mechs stepped forward to fill the hole. The largest, a Banshee, fired its autocannon and PPC at him, but only the autocannon hit, spraying damage across his right arm. Kenner brought the arm back into line and triggered his own PPCs, blasting armor from the ninety-five ton ’Mech’s chest. Florence Milhaus’ BattleMaster stalked forward, torso-mounted lasers flashing while its armor drank the ineffectual damage from the Lyran Rifleman’s autocannons. Kenner let the Heavy Lance jock wade in close—her ’Mech was built for it—and concentrated on his gunnery. For the next minute or so, this was going to be a slugging match.
And the Lyran Commonwealth, whatever else its flaws, lived and died in the slugging match.
More Lyran assault ’Mechs waded around the corner, common Lyran machines like the Zeus and the Atlas, and Kenner felt a trickle of sweat defy the heat in his cockpit and slip down between his shoulder blades. Able First was an assault company, the finest in the Dragoons, the equal of any comparable company in the Inner Sphere. It fielded some of the heaviest ’Mechs and had the hottest jocks in the regiment. If anyone could smash this Lyran company, it would be them.
But they’d get killed doing it, and being in refit for the rest of the Hesperus campaign didn’t appeal to Lucas Kenner on his first day of combat command.
“Able First,” he shouted, cueing the company push, “concentrated fire, by lance. Let’s bring these bastards down quick and get out of here.”
“Heavy, confirmed,” Dumphries said. “You heard the man, kids… let’s get the Banshee.”
“Attack, roger that,” Jennings said. “We’ve got the Rifleman.”
“And us?” Foster asked. Her Atlas had retreated to beside Kenner’s Marauder II. “Who are we killing today, sir?”
“That one,” Kenner said, selecting a target. He fired.
His PPCs took the Lyran Atlas high in the chest, both discharges spending themselves on the Atlas’s bulbous shoulder housings. It was the same ’Mech from earlier, and the damage Kenner and Foster had done was prominent. Foster fired a half-second later, a full spread of twenty long-range missiles. The Atlas was just inside the missiles’ minimum arming distance but that didn’t matter—at that short range the unspent rocket fuel made up the difference in high explosive. The other two Command Lance ’Mechs fired again as well, and the Atlas flapped over onto its back, its desultory autocannon barrage destroying the rock face behind Kenner’s ’Mech.
The Lyrans were masters of the long line of steel, at standing and taking the damage necessary to inflict the maximum damage back upon the enemy. The Dragoons had plenty of experience with that strategy, from three years of cattle raiding along the border. It was an effective strategy, one the Mariks and Kuritas had been expending themselves against for decades, centuries. The Dragoons had chosen a simple tactic in retaliation, and it involved two stages at the company level.
First, keep moving. Kenner led his lance on an arcing course past the main line of battle, near the edge of the rock face. It would only be moments before the Lyrans extended their line past the mouth of the dogleg and turned the entire short distance back to the previous turn into a killing field. Moving the Dragoons was a more difficult target. Which led to the second half of the tactic.
Shoot to kill.
The only way through an assault ’Mech’s armor was overwhelming firepower. Dragoons were superior gunners, and while their ’Mechs’ armor was just as susceptible to fire as the Lyrans’, the other side was usually too busy trying to get away or dying to concentrate their fire in return.
Kenner hit the Atlas again as it was rising, knocking its forearm out from under it. Foster’s missiles scattered explosions across the tough armor of its back, and Barrows hit it with another triple-PPC barrage. The Atlas fell again, this time missing its left arm at the shoulder and bleeding smoke and fire from its shattered torso armor.
Dumphries and her lance hit the Banshee again even as it fired back. The Banshee hit Milhaus’ BattleMaster with its PPC and cannon, but its fire was nothing compared to what it received. After the smoke cleared the Banshee was sitting on its rump, missing its left leg at the knee and armless.
After Jennings and his lance fired again, the Rifleman was gone.
“Start backing up,” Kenner said.
“We can hold them here,” Dumphries protested. “The dogleg is a natural obstacle. We can bring the whole company against them one or two at a time.” Her ’Mech stamped its foot and speared the Banshee again, destroying more of its torso armor.
“Yes, we can,” Kenner said. “And we can be here an hour doing it while they just keep moving more and more ’Mechs up behind them.”
“Then we’ll kick their asses, too!” she shouted.
“You have your orders!”
“Unity, Captain,” Dumphries swore. But her ’Mech began moving backward.
“We’ll fight again,” he said. But the taste of it was sour in his mouth. You’re doing a captain’s job, he told himself. A captain’s job is to preserve his company.
CHAPTER TWO
Alpha Regiment Landing Zone
Harkspur Mountains, Hesperus II
Lyran Commonwealth
6 June 3019
The landing zone was abuzz with activity when Able First returned to laager and refit and resupply. Kenner led his company out of the ravine and formed them in ranks in front of the field repair area behind Chieftain and then released them to their lance commanders. Dumphries immediately claimed first cycle through the repair field and marched her ’Mechs forward. Kenner signaled Foster to take the last slot and then decoupled his neurohelmet. He left his Marauder II where it stood and walked toward the DropShip. Techs and field engineers passed him going the other way, all of them laden with tools and parts or leading small carts. With the battle shaping up already, it would be crucial to keep as many ’Mechs battle-ready as possible. The Lyrans had the techs and facilities of mighty Defiance Industries herself to draw on—it would only be Dragoon ingenuity that saved them, if anything could.
“Captain Kenner,” a tech said as he passed. The man was young, maybe twenty-five, and nondescript in his blue Dragoons coveralls. He carried a bundle of myomer fibers in a shoulder harness; Kenner had to stop and stare as the man walked by. He looked like he was being consumed by gray spaghetti.
“Good job out there, sir,” the technician said without stopping.
“We’ll see,” Kenner replied, watching the man go. The myomers trailed to the ground, dragging along behind the man like dead snakes. A shiver went up Kenner’s spine at the sight. And they say MechWarriors do some weird things.
