Battletech: Shell Games: A BattleTech Novella, page 8
But none of it really mattered.
Aside from lucky strikes on small defensive positions, none of the Fortress’s actual defensive power had been threatened. Some trees and ground cover were aflame. The landscape had some new craters. Mines would have to be replaced.
But the Republic was no closer to breaching the defenses.
Which they must know.
Gonzalez frowned.
He was missing something.
The Republic of the Sphere had owned Fortress Dieron for a long time. It hadn’t built it. Not even the Draconis Combine, who now occupied it, could claim that. The ancient Star League had built it centuries before, and the Fortress had never given all of its secrets up to any owner. Not the Combine, not even the Word of Blake jihadi, who’d been masters of teasing the secrets out of places. It was and remained a cipher to everyone.
But the Republic was also a master of secrets. It had to be. It had defeated the Word of Blake.
And so, while it owned Fortress Dieron, it had installed many of its own secrets.
Secrets like the alcove Master Sergeant Eve and her squad crouched in now.
They’d had to exit their armor in the foyer. The four empty suits stood sentinel in the dark, powered down. The human-sized door to the alcove would permit them to pass.
Eve and McCann faced the door, dismount weapons held ready. Behind them, Simmons and Fletcher worked at consoles set into the wall.
“How long?” McCann asked.
“Three minutes less than last time you asked,” Fletcher growled.
“McCann,” Eve said, shaking her head. “Let them work.”
The alcove, the whole little bunker, wasn’t on any plans for Fortress Dieron the Combine knew about. It didn’t physically connect to any Snake sections of the Fortress. You couldn’t get there from here, unless you went overland and found the right rock to lift. Or spent your time using ground-penetrating radar in random spots.
Instead, its connection was hair-thin and electronic. A wired connection ran into the Fortress’s computer mainframes. The original mainframes, built by the Star League and only updated and adapted by the Combine. Even the Word of Blake had only pirated their own way into the system.
Masters of secrets, the Word of Blake.
They left back doors into everything.
And the Republic had defeated the Blakists.
Taken much of their technology for their own.
Even some of their tactics.
It would be ludicrous to believe an ancient backdoor code could still work. Legacy systems were all well and good, but the various rebuilds of the Fortress from year to year would have meant those old codes were no longer connected to anything. They opened to bricked-over walls, in other words.
So did the Blakist codes.
But the Republic had learned much.
RAF override codes to things like weapons turrets were long gone. The weapons themselves had been replaced or suborned by newer Combine technology.
But in some cases, the power plants were original.
And those were protected.
“I’m in,” Fletcher said suddenly.
“Power or air?” Eve asked.
“Power.”
But the systems controlling the relays…
“I’m still working on air,” Simmons put in.
“Power is enough,” Eve told him. “Switch to the evac protocols.” She lowered her weapon and raised her communicator. She texted a short code, waited for the receipt acknowledgment, then put the device away.
Her weapon, an automatic shotgun, came back up.
Nadine knelt atop the hover APC’s top armor, sensors focused on the mountain. Her comm system chirped with a retransmitted signal, and she clanged the gauntlet of her armor against the metal beneath her. The hovercraft’s fans screamed into high as the driver brought the power up. The APC skittered like hot butter in a pan as it picked up speed.
Behind her, enough APCs for a battalion screamed to life.
All of them charged into the teeth of the Fortress’s defenses.
Tanaka and his officers—the whole company now, really, since the MechWarriors and several of the techs had clustered around behind them—watched the battle on the repeater display. By now they’d gotten used to the booms and shaken dust. It seemed like nothing could penetrate the mountain.
“Look at that,” someone said.
Tanaka focused his eyes on one part of the moving wave of Rep icons.
“Are those APCs?” Mogami asked.
“I think that’s what that code means.”
“That’s suicide.”
“Look, I’m just reading what it says.”
Tanaka shook his head. He didn’t know. But his eye was drawn to a small red light blinking furiously in the upper corner of the display. He pointed at it, getting Sakura’s attention.
“Does anyone know what that means?”
In the command center, Tai-sho Gonzalez glared at the flashing red lights, ignoring the klaxon still whining beneath the roar of a command center in crisis. He strode out into the center of the room and shouted. “Report!”
Heads turned all throughout the room. The tai-sho rarely raised his voice.
“Power failure, sector nineteen,” said a technician.
“That’s not possible,” a tai-i snarled.
“Explain,” Gonzalez commanded.
“Sir, I’m looking at the repeaters from the fusion plants in that sector. They’re all green. In fact, it doesn’t look like they’re drawing any power at all!”
“The weapons and sensors in that section aren’t firing.”
“Get the sector commander on the line,” Gonzalez ordered.
A tech bent to a console. He touched the headset over his left ear. “Tai-sho, no response.”
Chu-sa Ikigawa stepped to the tai-sho’s side. “Sir.”
“Speak.”
“There is a battalion or so of Republic hovercraft headed for sector nineteen.”
The skin on the back of Gonzalez’s neck turned cold. He looked at the screens, the flashing lights, then at Ikigawa. His fingertips tingled. He tasted copper at the back of his throat. Drawing in a deep breath, he nodded once at Ikigawa, then looked around the room.
“Turn off the alarm,” he ordered.
The flashing light and noise stopped immediately.
“Send the command to all sectors. Intruder alert.”
“Sir—” Ikigawa began, but Gonzalez cut him off.
“There’s no way that is a coincidence.” He turned to the tai-i who’d spoke about the fusion engines. “Get down there. If the reactors are running but there’s no power, it’s a transmission problem.”
“Hai, Tai-sho!”
Gonzalez looked around. “Get me the ISF liaison.”
“Sir?” Ikigawa asked.
“Either the Republic has penetrated our perimeter and sabotaged that sector,” Gonzalez told him, “or else we have a fifth column of traitors in here with us.”
“I don’t believe it,” the chu-sa said.
Gonzalez pointed to the tactical repeater. “Believe that.”
The wave of Republic hovercraft swept closer. They were too light to set off the mines keyed for the heavy mass of BattleMechs, and too heavy to be damaged by the antipersonnel mines even now going off beneath their skirts.
Gonzalez ground his teeth.
“And get me the Second Dieron commander!” he shouted.
11
FORTRESS DIERON
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
The alarm screaming to life above the display made almost everyone flinch, Tanaka not least of all. The whole company froze, staring at the display. A few pairs of eyes looked toward Tanaka.
“Are you deaf? Get to your ’Mechs!” Sakura screamed.
The MechWarriors bolted for their machines.
Tanaka walked. He had no idea what was going on, but it would look good to his Stalkers. They needed to see that their commander had confidence when they felt helpless and confused.
Kashira Heruzu walked alongside him. The rest of the techs had bolted for the arms locker in the corner of the bay. Their duty station when the ’Mechs were out was to defend the bay. They weren’t infantry, but they were still soldiers.
“Think it’s time to go out and get them?” the senior tech asked.
“I’ll find out once I mount up,” Tanaka said. He didn’t add, I hope.
“Bring my baby back safe, you hear?”
Tanaka smiled. “It’s a rental.”
Heruzu clapped his shoulder and jogged toward the rest of her techs. They were already donning heavy body armor from the lockers. Two of the techs were unlatching TK assault rifles and distributing them.
Tanaka reached his Centurion and climbed the ladder quickly. He was the last Stalker through their ’Mech hatch, and by the time he had the machine warmed up and his neurohelmet on, he’d already heard ready calls from all the operational ’Mechs.
An incoming call blinked on his HUD. He toggled the channel open. “Stalker Six, go.”
“There’s a sector down,” Sho-sa Detwiller said without preamble.
“I don’t know what that means,” Tanaka told her. “The Reps have breached the mountain?”
“The current thinking is infiltrators.”
“Damn.”
“That’s the word.”
“Orders?”
“Hold for now. But be ready to sally. We may have to go out and break up an attack.” The battalion commander disconnected without signing off.
“A sally,” Tanaka muttered. “Great.”
Major Nadine crouched low on the roof of the APC. It was going fast enough that the windstream rocked her Simian battle armor every time it shifted direction. The battalion was in a rough line-ahead formation, with blowers laden with armored infantry spaced back a quarter kilometer. Fire flicked down both sides of the column, but it was like they’d blacked out one hour of a clock: the dead sector didn’t fire.
A new rush of air knocked her to one knee. A First Fides Roadrunner sprinted past, the ultralight ’Mech actually moving faster than the hovercraft. Its puny lasers had no real chance of threatening the Fortress, but she appreciated the ’Mech’s presence.
Any defender who did get a gun into commission would shoot at the ’Mech before they shot at a tiny, jinking hovercraft.
Heishi Parker slapped the controls of the autocannon turret hard enough that the metal rang. “There’s no power!” he shouted.
Go-cho Maria Sampson glared at him from her post at the fire control station. “You still have manual traverse, Parker. Get cranking!”
Parker stared at her. “It’s an eleven-ton weapon, Go-cho!”
“Then crank hard.”
Sampson ignored the profanity as Parker bent to his task. Her squad manned this turret, a 90-millimeter automatic cannon. Normally it was automated; powered hoists brought the ammunition cassettes up from the magazines, robotic arms loaded them, and the turret rolled on magnetic bearings.
With no power, it was all a lot of cold, heavy metal.
That didn’t change their duty.
“What’s the load?” she asked the gunner, Heishi Ramirez.
“Standard HE,” Ramirez said. “We were going to switch to cluster when they got closer.”
Sampson nodded, then turned to the three loaders standing against the wall. The gun was an LB 10-X autocannon, the same weapon carried in BattleMechs. It could fire either standard high-explosive autocannon rounds or discarding-sabot cluster munitions. But in either case, it ate ammunition like a hungry boar. “Get the manual lift going. Cluster until you hear different.”
“Miss—” began Hamada, but she cut him off.
“Go-cho.”
“Go-cho, that’s a long chain hoist. It’s sixty meters down to the magazine, and who even knows if the crew is there to load the escalator.”
Sampson stood. She turned to face them, careful to make sure her right hand rested on the butt of the Nambu pistol on her hip. “That’s someone else’s job. You’re the loaders. It’s your job to load the gun.”
“But the power—”
“It’s not your job to push the button. It’s your job to load the gun.” She unsnapped her holster. “Now load the gun.”
“Hai, Go-cho,” said Heishi Prentice. The young woman grabbed her two compatriots and moved toward the manual hoist wheels.
Sampson watched them go. Then she walked forward, along the recessed cannon barrel, until she stood at the manual aiming point. It was hard to see individual vehicles, but the dust cloud of the approaching Republic troops was impossible to miss even in the early morning light. She looked up to eye the lay of the gun, then back down at the cloud. Then back up, judging the rate at which Parker’s frantic cranking on the manual traverse was moving the heavy barrel. Then back down, judging speed.
“Parker!” She read off the angle and azimuth.
“Hai, Go-cho!”
Sampson nodded and walked back to the fire-control station. She looked at Ramirez and repeated the angle and azimuth. “Fire when the gun bears.”
“Hai, Go-cho!”
Sampson looked back at her loaders. They were spinning the large metal wheel that raised the ammunition escalator. Gears broke most of the weight down, so all they were fighting was inertia and their own laziness, but they would do the job. Not fast, but eventually.
Sampson snapped the cover on her sidearm holster closed.
Barely three in ten of the turrets in her sector were autocannons. Most of the rest were PPCs or Gauss rifles—both weapons that required the full and direct output of the fusion reactors scattered throughout the mountain. Without that, the crews were reduced to their sidearms and personal weapons.
Her position would fire.
And keep firing, as long as she could get ammunition.
It was her duty.
But in her heart, she knew it wouldn’t matter.
Nothing was going to stop that tidal wave of Republic infantry from reaching the mountain.
The gun shivered to a halt.
“Fire in the hole!” Ramirez screamed.
Sampson adjusted the chin straps of her helmet, making sure it—and her hearing protection—was secure against her ears, as the gun bucked flame.
A burst of fire raked across the ground and obliterated the APC screaming just behind the vehicle Major Nadine rode. She ducked her head enough to look back, then twisted back around to stare at the mountain. Someone manning an autocannon mount inside the Fortress knew their job. But there was no more fire coming, and she knew from experience—the Fides trained for everything—that it took long minutes to reload a ’Mech-scale weapon by hand without power.
Still, if there was one autocannon…there could be more.
She banged the roof of her APC with her armor’s gauntlet, urging more speed. She had to get her battalion inside the perimeter before someone discovered the power lockout and restored it. If that happened, her APCs would be torn apart.
Static cut through the signal from the engineering officer. Tai-sho Gonzalez bit his lip, frowning, trying to hear. The fact that embedded landline comms had static meant the pounding the mountain was taking was starting to take a toll.
“—it’s not the power plants!” the tai-i was shouting. “It must be in the relays!”
“How many relays are we talking about?” Gonzalez asked.
“Dozens, perhaps more than a hundred.”
“Get looking,” the tai-sho ordered. He chopped a hand at a technician to cut the transmission, then looked at Chu-sa Ikigawa. “If it’s that many, we’re not looking at sabotage. Not physical. That has to be systems.”
Ikigawa nodded.
“Sho-sa Magruder!”
The officer in charge of electronic systems looked up from his console. He was a small man, slender, with a receding hairline but the bright disc of the Bushido Blade on his uniform. That award wasn’t earned for service behind a console. “Sir?”
“Assume this is a penetration attack,” Gonzalez ordered. “What do we do?”
“I have been assuming that since the sector went dark, Tai-sho,” Magruder said. He stepped away from his console and straightened to attention. “There is no sign of outside penetration to our firewalls.”
“Then explain the breach.”
“I heard it is the power relays?”
“Hai!”
“Then it is a hardline connection directly into that sector’s subsystems.”
Gonzalez frowned. “A hardline…”
“Nothing else makes sense,” Magruder insisted. “Physical sabotage would have been detected by now. Bombs, cut cables, something.” He gestured behind him, to where a cluster of technicians still worked. “If it was coming from outside, we’d have seen it.”
“So a traitor,” Gonzalez said.
“Yes, Tai-sho. Or a wired connection we don’t know about.”
“What do we do?”
Magruder shook his head. “What we are doing, sir. Keep looking. Send out patrols to look for infiltrators on the face of the mountain. Strengthen our internal patrolling in case it is a spy.”
Gonzalez pointed toward the ceiling. Almost like clockwork, the trio of hollow booms announced the arrival of another barrage of cruise missiles. “You want to send men out into that.”
“It is that,” said the holder of one of the Combine’s highest awards for service, “or we just let the sector stay dark.”
Gonzalez said nothing. Then he spun. “Get me the Second Dieron commander again!”
SAN MARTIN SPACEPORT
SAN MARTIN
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
