BattleTech, page 21
Nikol stared at it in amazement. Was this some personal message from her mother, some note from beyond the grave? And why did it weigh so much?
Sharise inhaled and stood, gathering her attaché. “In any case, I will leave you to it. We will be in touch.”
She wandered over to the door and knocked. A loud electronic gronk sounded from the security system, and the magnetic bolt shot aside with a resounding clack. The door opened, and Sharise slid through before the exit secured itself once more.
Nikol turned back to the folio. What message from her mother would be so important that it had to arrive like this, under lock and biometric key, released only if she perished?
She inhaled, savored the moment, then held her thumb against the verigraph scanner. The verigraph chirped and illuminated a green light. The lock opened with a quiet snick, and she dove inside.
The case contained the thickest folder she had ever seen. The official seal of SAFE emblazoned its cover: the Marik eagle in profile on a circular field, with stylized wings protruding from either side. Below the seal, larger than any other feature, the words classified: eyes only were stamped in crimson.
There was no note from her mother in the case, nothing to explain why this classified document had been entrusted to her.
With more than a mild sense of worry, she opened the folder. Inside were countless paper documents, some typed, some handwritten. Embedded between each sheaf were hardcopy photographs of various people and places, some she recognized, some she did not, and diagrams of buildings and devices, some drawn by hand, some done with drafting software.
Even a casual perusal of the contents intimated what this was: a treasure trove of black-ops mission reports. Assassinations. Deep-cover intel missions. Sabotage. Arson. None of them bore executive signatures, but they did not need them. All of them had been approved by her mother.
Nikol blanched at this realization. The folder had come with no note, but Jessica’s message from beyond the grave was clear: I need you to see the things that must be done to keep this nation alive, to keep it from being devoured by those who wish to destroy our democracy.
As she ranged through the contents, trying to not read every single page or absorb every concrete secret, she caught a glimpse of an architectural drawing, one she recognized instantly. It was the Chateau de Leon, a destroyed mountainside resort in the Julon Range on Clipperton. The tourist attraction had been bombed by an alleged Word of Blake cell twelve years ago, which sent the whole resort tumbling down the mountainside, killing a confirmed total of 10,642 souls. The diagram displayed a red X in a specific location on the resort—the precise spot where a blast of sufficient magnitude would knock out enough of the anchoring supports to send the whole thing crashing down the mountain.
Nikol recalled learning of this attack back then, and her heart had gone out to the Regulan people, despite Oriente’s state of antagonism with Lester Cameron-Jones. She would have sent foreign aid to the people of Clipperton, had she been allowed, had Oriente and Regulus not been at each other’s throats. But the knowledge that Jessica had approved such a punitive measure against the Regulan people stilled Nikol’s heart.
Mother…how could you?
She flipped to the next page in the sheaf, a note written in what she recognized as her mother’s own hand.
My Dearest Nikol,
If you learn nothing else from me before I am gone, write this on the stone tablets of your heart:
For everything there is a cost.
I authored the aim of this plan but did not define its shape, and blinded myself to its foreseeable consequences. But in my heart of hearts, I believed then that this would lead to a greater security for the future of our people and for my children.
And this vanity and shortsightedness cost me a son, and ultimately a daughter, to a knife in the dark.
A momentary distraction, in exchange for a line on a map and two of my own children. Was it worth the cost?
I still do not know the answer.
—15 December 3141
In stunned silence, Nikol closed the folio, so that she no longer needed to see the awful photo showing the aftermath of the Chateau de Leon’s destruction.
This was why Janos had been murdered. This was why Julietta had nearly died and then denounced the family. Is this why Father died as well?
It didn’t matter that her mother hadn’t foreseen the consequences or known how devastating the actual attack she authorized would be. Condemning any number of civilians to death simply because they had the misfortune of living on the other side of the lines on a star map was unconscionable. This was worlds different from choosing to send troops off to a war they might not come back from.
She leaned back in her seat, staring at the sheaf of secrets as though willing them to spontaneously catch on fire.
I cannot be this, she vowed.
I will not be this.
31
ARAWAK MARSHLANDS
TRINIDAD
REGULAN FIEFS
23 MARCH 3148
Rocketing along at nap-of-the-earth altitude—only sixty meters above the Arawak landscape—Captain Allison “Absinthe” Atwood held the stick of her LX-3 Lancer in a deathgrip to keep her flight path steady alongside her wingman. Normally this bird was an utter dream to fly in atmosphere, but an NOE flight like this made for a bumpy ride. The maneuver threatened to rattle the teeth right out of her skull.
Her mission was simple, in theory: she and her wingman would come in under the radar, take out the known AA guns, and eliminate the Fifteenth Regulan Hussars’ defenses in the area, all to pave the way for her groundpounder siblings in the Sixth Oriente Hussars to reach the Hero Training Institute.
Commander Bernard’s mission briefing had stressed how tough it would be to keep a level stick at such a dangerously low altitude, where a single mismanagement could be fatal, but Atwood and her wingman, Jazmin Qadir, had volunteered without hesitation. Years ago, the two of them would regularly pull off risky daredevil maneuvers as members of the FWLM Air Demonstration Squadron—better known among aviation aficionados as the Golden Eagles—for the adulation of assembled crowds at airshows and patriotic events.
It took nerves of steel to be an aerofighter pilot, regardless of whether you flew in atmosphere or in space, but you had to have nerves of titanium to make it in the Golden Eagles. And they didn’t do any of that pilot-ego nonsense, no ma’am. Deviate from your training or your orders, when your wingtips are screaming less than half a meter from your neighbors at a max of 1,100 kph, and you got folks killed, plain and simple. You got your wings taken away, assuming you lived through the ordeal.
There was, ironically, no room for error or showboating when it came to stunt flying.
Atwood checked her instruments and made subtle adjustments on her flight stick to get a better feel for how the bird would handle at this altitude. The turbulence from such a low flightpath rattled her Lancer as though something on the outside of the fuselage was in danger of coming loose. She could feel the tremors all the way through her stick. Such a situation would’ve bothered any pilot with nerves of steel, but not her. Titanium nerves indeed. She knew her lead tech would never let anything come loose from her bird that wasn’t supposed to come loose—such as the small payload of bombs mounted under either wing. Those, while important for this mission, further wrecked her Lancer’s already troublesome aerodynamic profile at NOE flight—but once she let those drop, she’d be long past the need for NOE maneuvers anyway.
The worst part of this op wasn’t the narrow river valley or even the turbulence. It was the standard flight stick in this Lancer. Flying this low and this close to terrain that could shear off a wingtip meant precision flying mattered more than any other concern. She missed her old stick. It took a full sixteen kilograms of force to move the flight stick on a Golden Eagles fighter in any direction, which meant you couldn’t accidentally jerk the stick or move in an unexpected direction. Your maneuvers were deliberate because they had to be, or people would die.
Qadir’s Lancer hovered about two meters off Atwood’s nine o’clock. Not quite a stunt-flying distance, but any measure of proximity in this ravine could be dangerous.
As Atwood glanced to her wingman in her peripheral vision, she caught a noticeable wobble in Qadir’s attitude.
She opened the tightbeam channel the two shared for this mission. “Oro Two, this is Oro One. You okay over there?”
“Affirmative, One,” came Qadir’s reply. “Just not used to this chop.”
“C’mon, Two.” Atwood chuckled—a laugh fueled by memory. “We’ve flown through far worse than this. We can handle it.”
“Yeah, but that was in Stingrays. Lancers aren’t built for this.”
“Can’t be helped. Would you rather have let someone else do this? They’d have already crashed into the sides of this ravine.”
“Touché.”
“Just keep a level head and a light touch, and focus on the mission.”
“Trying to. I just…I just hope this works.”
“Think of it this way,” Atwood said, smoothing out her own sudden wobble. “Remember that time we flew at Jessica Marik’s coronation, back in—what, almost ten years ago?”
“For the thousandth time, it wasn’t a coronation,” Qadir insisted in a humorous lilt. “‘Captain-General’ is a military title, so they don’t get crowns.”
“Semantics. Regardless, the Eagles all flew to honor her and the reborn Free Worlds League. And now we’re getting a stab at the bastards who probably killed her.”
Qadir flew in level silence for a few moments before the commline clicked back on. “Do you think the Regulans were really behind it?”
Atwood would’ve shrugged, but the subtle movement might’ve jostled her Lancer’s flight stick too much, and she couldn’t take that chance. “Does it matter? We still have a job to do. And speaking of which…” She checked her instruments and mission clock. “We’re coming up on the target site. Stay sharp. Just a few more of these curves, and it’s showtime.”
Right as she clicked off the commline, her flight couch rattled hard enough against the turbulence that she had to clamp her jaw shut beneath her O2 mask to keep her teeth from clacking together. Her right wing edged dangerously close to the mossy side of the ravine—only two meters of separation, according the rangefinder in her neurohelmet’s HUD—but she couldn’t slide back to the left without risking collision with Qadir. And there was a bend in the ravine coming up…
She held her pole steady, willing it to stay where it was. Then she held her breath, focusing, and eased the stick where it needed to go. She matched signals with Qadir and slowly banked to the left alongside her, riding the outside of the too-tight bend—
A few small tree branches thwacked the very tip of her right wing, but the Lancer was moving so fast that they sheared straight off, the wingtip scything through them like ripened wheat.
She and Qadir leveled back out simultaneously, a visual poetry like synchronized swimmers, that same two-meter separation between wingtips.
“Coming up on another bend,” she radioed. “Ease back on the throttle. Bank right in five…four…three…two…”
Atwood eased the flight stick to the right, angling her Lancer’s starboard wing toward the bottom of the ravine.
But the angle, the speed—all wrong. The slope of the ravine was approaching faster than anticipated. Maps could only tell a part of the story. And the turbulence returned.
With a clenched jaw, she called out her reactions to Qadir: “Okay, ease back the throttle bar… Adjust attitude to perpendicular…”
The two-meter separation between them shrank to one meter as they rocketed around the turn.
Half a meter.
Less.
The G-forces climbed, crushing Atwood into her flight couch.
If they leveled out now, their wings would overlap and incite disaster.
Atwood white-knuckled her stick and yelled all of her rage and frustration through the turn. Foliage swished against her nearly sideways canopy this time—
But they passed through the crucible with nothing but leaf stains on their paint.
As though sparrows evading a hawk, they pulled out of the turn in disarray—no more of the poetic synchronicity they were famed for. This wasn’t about stunt flying anymore. This mission boiled down to survival.
Now with enough room to spread out, the pair leveled out and renewed that familiar two-meter distance. Qadir’s Lancer wobbled again, only this time it persisted.
Atwood spared a single split-second glance in her wingman’s direction. “Oro Two, you still with me?”
“Still…here…” Qadir replied. “Something’s not right.”
“Do we need to abort?”
“Negative. We abort, and we ruin this whole op. A lot riding on us for this one.”
“Can you handle it?”
Qadir leveled out for a five-count. The tremor returned for about two more seconds, then her fighter steadied. “Affirmative. I can handle it.” Her sigh of resignation was loud enough for the O2 mask’s mic to pick up. “Let’s just get this done.”
“Agreed. Coming up on this last turn, then it’s showtime. You ready?”
“I was born ready.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear. Stay sharp.” Atwood inhaled to center herself. “This last pass is too narrow for us to fly abreast, so we’ll have to pull a vertical Tailgater on this one.”
“Just like old times,” Qadir radioed with a laugh. “You want me to take point?”
Memories of bygone airshows came flooding back: all the Tailgaters they’d performed flawlessly, the Beak Drops, the Chicken Runs, and the Spread Eagles, the squadron’s signature maneuver. Either of them could fly any position in those tricks, but Qadir always excelled at being the lead in a Tailgater formation. “Go right ahead,” Atwood acknowledged.
Qadir’s Lancer pumped on its afterburners and edged ahead of Atwood’s like a racehorse overtaking the leader in the final stretch. Qadir put just enough distance between them that the heat and jetwash from her primary thruster wouldn’t strip Atwood’s nose paint or worsen her already-worrisome turbulence. The Lancer and the bright torch of its afterburner filled most of Atwood’s view, but not only did she trust Qadir’s stick skill, her neurohelmet’s HUD gave her a wireframe overlay of the upcoming terrain, which meant she could nearly see straight through her wingman’s bird.
And the terrain ahead abruptly narrowed—far, far too much for her liking.
Perhaps her nerves were not as strong as she’d thought.
Nerves of titanium, she reminded herself.
“Oro One, we’re coming up on the turn,” Qadir announced. “Let’s thread this needle. Rolling to port in five, four, three, two, one…”
At the exact same time, both Lancers rolled to the left so that Atwood’s cockpit was perpendicular to the ground. Both fighters squeezed through the tight space, the terrain shooting past them in a blur of greens and browns. If not for her ferroglass canopy, Atwood believed she could have reached out and touched the mossy walls, but she knew it to be a trick of perspective.
“Coming to the bend,” Qadir radioed. “Follow my lead.”
Qadir weaved laterally above the ground, and Atwood adjusted her flight stick to keep Oro Two’s fusion torch centered right in the middle of her reticle. As long as she tailgated her wingman, she’d make it…
“Almost to the target zone,” Qadir called out. “Thirty seconds…”
“All right, let’s do this. Good hunting, Two.”
“Likewise.”
Atwood watched the mission clock tick down the seconds, kept her bead on Qadir while hurtling sideways down the narrow passage—until the wobble returned, worse than ever, increasing drag to dangerous levels.
Emergency-protocol reactions kicked in. To prevent a collision, she broke off from the Tailgater formation just as the turbulence pushed Qadir’s Lancer off course. She braced herself for the worst, but they were both fully out of the ravine now, surging along at blistering speeds into a widening swampland.
Except Qadir fighting her controls made her quite an attractive target.
Several bright-orange asterisks of autocannon muzzle flashes announced the presence of a platoon of Partisan tanks haunting the patches of dry land below—the anti-air group this whole mission was about, farther afield than intel had reported.
The air filled with tracer rounds that blitzed past with bright streaks slicing across the sky. Countless rounds from one of the Partisans’ quartet of small-bore autocannons zinged past Atwood’s canopy, missing her entirely due to her small lateral profile as she’d shot out of the narrow ravine. But Qadir’s wobble presented a much larger silhouette.
Atwood lost count of how many rounds punched through Oro Two like a nail gun through tinfoil. Armor plates tore up and out like a confetti popper. Then came the smoke.
“I’m hit,” Qadir radioed, irrationally calm despite how her Lancer had nearly disintegrated around her.
Those were nerves of titanium.
“Punch out,” Atwood replied.
“Too low. Gonna take out as many as I can—”
Oro Two’s wing-mounted variable-speed pulse lasers tagged one of the Partisans and melted a deep wound down the tank’s flank. Tank tracks sheared clean off. But the return fire nearly chopped Qadir’s Lancer in half.
As Atwood banked around for a good bead on one of the anti-aircraft tanks, Qadir’s burning and smoking Lancer angled down and yawed in flight around the path of more incoming fire. A Sultan’s Scimitar, they called the maneuver back in the Golden Eagles. Except it wasn’t intended to collide with the ground and erupt into an orange and pale-blue fireball of detonated bomb accelerant and ignited hydrogen fuel that caught most of the Partisan platoon in its blast radius.
Atwood blinked away tears and readjusted her intended shot to exploit Qadir’s sacrifice. If her wingman hadn’t pulled a Sultan’s Scimitar, she would’ve been shot down without mercy, and her wrecked Lancer would’ve landed somewhere inconsequential in the swamp. But Jazmin Qadir had known more than enough to be dangerous, even in her last moments.
