Battletech: Shell Games: A BattleTech Novella, page 9
18 MARCH 3149
The whole way back to San Martin, Liz Getty kept her comms open to the battalion channel. She felt like a fool taking a third of the battalion’s strength away, but orders were orders. From the way the Bravo Company ’Mechs moved, she didn’t think she was the only one listening in.
The booster rockets that pushed the cruise missiles out of their box launcher had put a pillar of smoke above the DropShip Oberon’s nose that could be seen for kilometers. She homed in on that, ignoring her nav system when she had an easy landmark.
Eventually she ran up against the Tenth Triarii Protectors’ pickets.
“Bravo Company, Tenth Hastati,” she sent to the sentry commander.
“Told me to send you to Oberon, Captain,” the Triarii said.
“Oberon it is, then.”
A couple minutes later, she marched her company into the drop pit that Oberon occupied. It was hard, even for her, to conceive the actual size of the massive vessel. A collection of BattleMechs stood outside. One, an 80-ton Doloire, turned to face her Lament.
“Welcome, Captain Getty,” Paladin Max Ergen said.
“Paladin,” she replied.
“In a couple minutes, I want you to board ship, Captain. Your whole company. I’m attaching you to me as my bodyguard company for the next little while.”
Getty stared. “Sir…”
“I’ve already cleared it with Major Benton.”
Getty giggled. “Sir, you’re the Paladin. You can order anything you want. But you already have a headquarters—”
“I don’t usually get this much arguing, Captain,” Ergen said. She could hear the humor in his voice, but at the same time the ingrained respect for rank—especially the galactically high rank of a Paladin of the Republic—made her brace against her seat restraints.
“Sir, no sir. We’ll wait here for ground guides.”
“Very good.”
The Doloire turned and leaned back. Getty figured the Paladin was looking at the smoke plume from the cruise missile launchers.
“You and your company were in the first fight on Dieron,” Ergen said, somewhat absentmindedly. Getty didn’t even know if he realized he was still transmitting.
“It’s only fitting you be in on the last as well.”
12
FORTRESS DIERON
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
The bay doors to the outside world scrolled slowly open in front of Yuki Tanaka’s Centurion. The bay itself was black, to avoid backlighting the ’Mechs as they exited, but the light outside was stroboscopic in the freshening daylight. The ten remaining ’Mechs of the Red Ring Stalkers were queued up behind him.
“Remember,” Sakura said on the general push, “out the door, then left. Then shoot at anything with a Republic transponder.”
“What if we go right?” Mogami asked.
“You go right, Mogami,” Tanaka replied, “and you’re back in the Legion. If you live.”
“Left it is,” the young MechWarrior said.
Tanaka rolled his eyes.
The bay doors cleared wide enough for his Centurion to fit. He nudged the throttle forward, heavy PPC raised, and turned the ’Mech left as soon as he’d cleared the door. Once turned, he pushed the throttle all the way to the stops, and the 50-ton OmniMech loped into a lumbering run. It was the best defense he had at the moment.
His HUD was a riot of contrasts. To the side and behind him, the sky was lit up with weapons fire going both ways. The side of the mountain facing the Reps was aflame. Smoke swirled and hung everywhere.
Ahead it was clear. The dead defense sector the sho-sa had told him about.
The sector a whole bunch of Reps were sprinting for.
His sensors were washed out with all the fire. Tanaka would have to do most of this with his eyes, he knew.
“Great dragon’s scales, that’s a lot of fire,” Chu-i Koto shouted.
“At least the cruise missiles have stopped,” Respeth added.
“Look alive,” Tanaka sent. There was an outcropping they needed to get around, and then they’d be into the dead sector. “Remember, shoot anything that looks Republic.”
A few seconds later he was around the outcropping and into the shadow. His sensors, blocked for the moment from drowning in the avalanche of fire behind him, refocused forward. Enemy icons sprang up across his HUD.
“Found them!” He laid his PPC over a halted hover APC and fired. The coruscating burst of ions ate through the thin side armor of the vehicle in an instant, exploding it like a toy. Two more were in line with it. Antipersonnel turrets atop the squat vehicles spun to face him. The twin miniguns there sprayed fire, but the small rounds weren’t a threat to his ’Mech.
The rest of the Stalkers followed him around and charged forward. A splay-legged Roadrunner burst out of the darkness, but Hal Respeth brought his new Wendigo into line and blew the near-unarmored ’Mech to scrap before it could get up to speed.
More and more APCs burst into flame. It looked like the transport for a whole infantry battalion.
Do you see infantry? his mother’s voice asked.
“It’s a turkey shoot!” Mogami cheered.
Tanaka blasted another APC and looked around. There was no infantry in sight. But the APCs wouldn’t have come in empty…
…they hadn’t…
Tanaka looked up the side of the mountain. It slithered.
It was covered in battlesuit infantry. More types and groups than he could count by eye. Hundreds, at least. Some were clawing at the turf, climbing. Some were leaping ever higher on jump jets.
Some were vanishing.
Tunneling?
His mother’s memory laughed at him.
Without power, the battlesuits had nothing to stop them from just climbing right in through the bunker’s firing slits—or clawing their way in, more accurately. Soil and rebar and concrete were no match for tungsten-edged battle claws designed to rip through ’Mech armor.
“Up the hill!” he shouted.
“Sir?”
“The infantry is up the hill!” He twisted the Centurion’s torso that way even as he jerked the ’Mech’s line of march around. He triggered a shot from his PPC but it went wide, exploding a two-meter-wide patch of mountainside near a Simian-class battlesuit. The suit turned away from the bunker it was demolishing, appeared to glare at him, then dove inside.
“Shit!”
The Stalkers turned and started blasting weapons fire up the hill, but Tanaka already saw it was too little too late. He slapped his comm board for the emergency Combine channel.
“Stalker Six to all stations! Republic infantry is inside the Fortress!” He read the coordinates from his nav screen in a flat voice, willing his PPC to recharge faster.
Confused voices overrode each other. He ignored them.
“Tai-i!” Sakura’s voice was insistent. “Look!”
Tanaka looked at the kashira’s Black Hawk, then where it pointed. It was behind him. He halted the Centurion and turned it around, focusing the more powerful sensors that way.
Republic BattleMechs and heavy fighting vehicles were queuing up in the dead zone created by the unpowered defense sector. They were already marching forward. A secondary screen was attempting to catalog them, but Tanaka only glanced at the number scrolling up before his mother’s voice summarized.
A whole shit-pot of them.
He toggled for the Second Dieron’s command channel.
“Sho-sa,” he sent, in the clear because he didn’t care, “we’re going to need more help out here.
“A lot of it.”
DRAGON’S ROOST
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
“It is confirmed,” Sho-sho Hijana said. “Republic infantry has breached Fortress Dieron’s defenses. Tai-sho Gonzalez reports his internal security teams are already repelling them. He expects to have the mountain clear of Republic forces within hours.”
“Hours,” Okamoto said.
“That was his report, Tai-shu.”
Okamoto shook his head. “When will the First Dieron Regulars be ready for march?”
“The outriders have already departed,” the sho-sho said. “Tai-sa Watanabe has held First Battalion to be your escort.”
“Very well.” Okamoto looked around his office and through the glass walls at the larger ops center in general. “Order the staff to their ’Mechs. We depart for Iznakki in thirty minutes.” He stood. “And when we get there, we will crush the Republic forces against the anvil of the Fortress.”
“Hai, Tai-shu!”
OO-SUZUMEBACHI-CLASS ASSAULT SHIP RSS DOYLE
LOW ORBIT, DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
“There they go,” said the technician on the scopes.
Across the small control room aboard Doyle, an RAF lieutenant seconded to the navy mirrored the technician’s screen. He squinted, eyeing the moving units, before he nodded. “Confirmed, Skipper,” he told the raven-haired woman in the captain’s seat.
Doyle was a captured Combine Oo-Suzumebachi, taken in one of the intelligence raids that preceded the Wall coming down. It was a small interplanetary craft, 170 tons, designed to deliver powered-armor infantry from orbit. The RAF had stripped out two of its infantry compartments and replaced it with look-down reconnaissance equipment, turning it into a hide-in-plain-sight orbital recon platform.
Lieutenant Commander Hattie Moore nodded at the army officer and looked at the tac section. “Anything close?”
The sensor operator shook her head. “We’re clear.”
Moore nodded. “Then let’s tell the Paladin it’s time.”
DUAT-CLASS DROPSHIP OBERON
SAN MARTIN
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
“Signal from orbit, Paladin,” a technician called.
Max Ergen looked up from the strategic plot at the call. “Feed it here, please.”
The message was text-only and short: First Dieron Regulars in movement to Iznakki Spaceport. The time stamp was less than ten minutes earlier.
And a second line: Looks like you were right—Stane.
Ergen forwarded it to the whole room. “Anyone want to argue?”
Silence.
“Anyone think they’re running for the DropShips to escape?”
Silence.
Ergen smiled. “Then I guess we should get going. Signal the Triarii. It’s time to boost.” He stood. “I’ll be in the ’Mech bay.” He stepped to the hatch, but then stopped and turned.
“Captain Moreau?”
The young officer spun around from his console and braced to his feet. “Sir?”
“You were right, Captain,” Ergen said, grinning. “Keep it up.”
Then he stepped through the hatch, leaving the beaming officer who’d first predicted Okamoto’s actions behind him.
FORTRESS DIERON
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
Maria Sampson spun around the corner, back to the wall, and slumped down until her bottom was against the backs of her boots. She yanked the empty drum magazine from her combat shotgun and replaced it with a new one—the last one—from her harness. Her throat was coated with smoke and dust, and her nostrils stank with the smell of burned pork.
She wasn’t anywhere near a mess hall.
The Rep battle armor had come in right through the gun port. Ramirez had been at the port, eyeing the lay of the gun for the next shot. A burst of machine gun fire had nearly torn the gunner in half. The trio of loaders—cowards—had run at the first shot. She had snatched up her shotgun and held the trigger down while the action cycled all twenty rounds of heavy slug into the battlesuit. She hadn’t braced the butt right; the recoil had hammered the breath out of her.
So she’d been gasping as she struggled out of the firing compartment. Parker had made it out of the compartment with her, but he’d run the other way. And none of the Fortress Dieron personnel she’d seen so far were armed for combat.
“Shit,” she whispered.
She leaned enough to peer around the corner. The far end was dark—they were on emergency lighting after all—but nothing was moving in the red light. She heard a noise from the other end of the corridor and swung around, but jerked her muzzle up. A pair of soldiers in battle dress were crouched low, rifles level, moving toward her.
“What’s the situation?” the leading trooper asked. The nametape on his body armor read morita. The following trooper halted with him, but spun around to cover the way they’d come.
“Armored infantry,” she said, hating the way adrenaline made her voice break. “I only saw one.”
“One’s enough,” Morita said. He leaned forward and peeked around the corner. “Coming this way?”
“Fifty-fifty,” Sampson told him. “Only two ways out of my gun bay.”
“Anyone else down there?”
“One of my crew, Parker,” Sampson said. “We were the only two who made it out. He went the other way down the corridor.” She didn’t bother mentioning Hamada and other two loaders. She didn’t care if they got fragged. They’d run without firing a shot. If she saw them again, she’d shoot them herself for running away.
Her hands were shaking now.
It was adrenaline.
She tasted it in her throat.
But damned if she wanted these two to see her shaking.
“Okay,” Morita said. “Our orders are to hold this point. The rest of the platoon is coming. We’ll turn this hallway into a strong point.”
“How long?” she asked.
“Not long,” he said.
There was a squeak from around the corner. It was quiet but loud enough to carry. Sampson closed her eyes for a second. Her hands squeezed the shotgun’s grips.
“Okay,” Morita whispered. “Gimme the launcher, Hackney.”
The other infantryman rolled the sling of a long, thick-tubed weapon off his shoulder and pushed it back along the floor. Sampson looked down as Morita picked it up. Her eyes widened.
“You can’t shoot that in here,” she said. It was a single-shot short-range missile launcher, an anti-’Mech weapon. The warhead, depending on type, was powerful enough to penetrate a battlesuit’s armor, but the back blast of the motor firing would burn them all.
And the warhead’s explosion…
“You may want to get back, yeah,” Morita said. He slung his assault rifle and grunted as he took the heavy tube off the floor. “Hackney, in and out, got it?” Then he lay down, as if he were using the launcher as a pillow.
Sampson stared.
The other trooper slung his rifle and slid past her. “Scoot back, Miss,” he said. Then he set himself, gripping Morita’s boots. “Ready?”
Sampson scrambled back, trying to get away and watch at the same time.
“Go,” Morita said.
Hackney shoved. Morita—and the missile launcher—slid out just enough that the tube and Morita’s head were around the corner. Morita clenched, realigning the tube, and squeezed the firing trip.
The corridor exploded.
Sampson dropped her shotgun and clapped her hands over her ears. The wall of sound that shook her was physical. It felt like being near an artillery piece as it fired. Her ears popped as the rocket motor quickly changed the air pressure in the corridor. Light burned through her squeezed-shut eyes to dazzle her retinas.
She clutched her head and screamed.
13
FORTRESS DIERON
DIERON
DRACONIS COMBINE
18 MARCH 3149
When Sampson opened her eyes, they burned with smoke. Her ears rang so badly she didn’t know if she could even hear. She tried to rub her eyes, but they stung with grit. It hung in the air. She blinked, praying for tears to clear the dust away so she could see.
Something moved against her boot.
She yelped and drew her leg back. She sort of heard the yelp; not just the dull sound of bone conduction, but as if it were an echo as well. She risked wiping at her eyes again and blinked into the darkness. She kicked at whatever had touched it. It felt like an acoustic tile from the ceiling.
Hackney was coughing and slapping at flames on Morita’s battledress. Morita looked unconscious. The launcher, empty now, was blackened with soot and lay out in the corridor junction.
“Did you get it?” Sampson’s voice was a croak.
Hackney ignored her.
She struggled to her knees and crawled toward him. Even the little bit of movement helped clear the funk from her brain. By the time she reached the infantrymen she felt almost human again.
If feeling human meant helpless and in incredible pain.
She slid a bit of debris past the two men. She was afraid to touch Hackney directly, given how she’d reacted to whatever had nudged her. Hackney looked down at the movement, then back at her. His eyes were bright, even though his face was covered in soot.
She raised her hands in a question, nodding toward the corridor.
Hackney nodded. Then he looked away.
She climbed to her feet. The heavy weight of her shotgun nearly made her topple over, but she gripped it nonetheless. She walked with her shoulder leaning against the wall until she was certain. At the corner she stopped. She raised the shotgun, made sure it was off safe, then stepped around.
The end of the corridor had partially collapsed. Or rather, the thin wall and ceiling material that usually hid the bare rock had collapsed. A battlesuit, one whose model she didn’t recognize, lay sprawled at the end.
They could be unconscious.
Sampson stepped out into the hall. She strode toward the suit, shotgun up.
The missile had taken the armor in the chest. A gaping hole was blown clean through. When she shined the light attached to her shotgun, she could see the inside of the back of the armor. The edges were wet, and red.
