LE5760 - Ghost of Winter, page 2
Sturm nodded. He understood.
Krenner now moved over to the console next to the pod and punched up the training logs of Sturm’s session. He ran them through to a point, then froze the image.
"All right, then. Let’s start with how you handled the Uller."
"What was wrong with that?" Sturm protested. "I thought I handled it fine. I took it down, didn’t I?"
"Yeah, you did, but you were sloppy. The charge maneuver was pretty well executed, and it would have worked perfectly against an Inner Sphere ’Mech. But you forgot that Clan LRMs don’t suffer the same close-range limitations that ours do. By closing with the Uller, you didn’t give yourself as much of an advantage as you thought. The Uller pilot took advantage of it and destroyed your missile launcher in the process. You got lucky, but you might not next time. Know your enemy, MechWarrior."
Sturm nodded. Damn, he’d forgotten about that property of Clan missile launchers. He’d been surprised when the Uller managed to get a hit in at such close range.
"As for the Mad Cat, trying to make an end-run around it was damn foolish."
"What should I have done?" Sturm asked. "Just let it pound me into the dirt?"
"No. You should have turned your tail and run, right there and then, the moment you saw it."
Sturm’s face must have hardened, because Krenner seemed to know exactly what he was thinking.
"That’s right, you heard me. I said run. There’s no shame in that, Sturm. Only an idiot stays and fights when he knows he can’t win. You said yourself that a Mad Cat versus a Centurion isn’t all that fair, so you know what I’m talking about. That Clan ’Mech outweighed you by more than twenty tons. It had more armor, more weapons, and it was faster than you. There was no way you could win. The second you saw it, your first thought should have been how to get the hell out of there in close to one piece."
"I didn’t think a MechWarrior was supposed to bail when things got tough," Sturm said.
"You’re not. A MechWarrior is expected to lay his life on the line for his unit, when and if the situation calls for it. A MechWarrior is also expected to know when he can serve himself and his unit better by retreating. A warrior who knows when it’s time to fight to the death and is willing to do so is courageous. A warrior who’s unwilling to retreat is just stupid, and probably a dead man. You had the option to pull back in that situation. You should have taken it."
Sturm looked into Krenner’s dark eyes for a moment, an unspoken question forming in his mind. He stood silent for a bit, then nodded.
"I understand, Sarge."
Krenner nodded back and turned to the display.
"All right then, let’s look at some of the ways you could have pulled out of there and kept your ’Mech in one piece, maybe even turned the tables a little and done some damage on the way out." He pointed that out, using the downed Uller as cover from the Mad Cat’s weapons, and emphasized once again the importance of studying Clan tactics and way of thinking in order to know the enemy as well as you knew yourself.
Sturm listened to Krenner’s advice and critiques, thinking about other ways he could have handled the situation. He also thought about what Krenner had said. Sooner or later, he thought, a MechWarrior can’t retreat anymore. Mom had found-that out. Sometimes you’ve got to stand your ground, even if you know you’re not going to get out alive.
The debriefing was over fairly quickly, and Sturm had a bit of time before he was to be on duty for the arrival of the DropShip Tammuz. He hit the showers to get cleaned up and changed, replaying the analysis of the training exercise over and over again in his mind.
Krenner was right. Hell, the Master Sergeant was always right. Sturm may have completed his apprenticeship and become a full-fledged MechWarrior of the Kore Lancers, but he still had a lot to learn, and he was just starting to understand just how much.
Sturm had always wanted to be a MechWarrior, for as long as he could remember. At first, it was just a childish dream. Every kid in known space probably wanted to pilot a ’Mech and played with toy BattleMechs like Sturm did as a child. Later, it was the dream of a boy who idolized his mother. Jenna Kintaro, commander of the Kore Lancers. Dashing mercenary MechWarrior. Hardly the image most people associated with motherhood, but Jenna loved her son and always took good care of him.
Sturm had fond memories of his mother bringing him to the command base of the Lancers, showing him the awesome BattleMechs, towering ten and twelve meters tall, like silent meal giants standing among the repair gantries. Sturm recalled watching the combat exercises and maneuvers from afar, seeing the giant ’Mechs given life by the men and women piloting them, including his mother. From the moment he’d seen a ’Mech in action, Sturm wanted to pilot one himself. Jenna always encouraged his interest, bringing him games and ’Mech toys. For young Sturm, that’s what BattleMechs were—giant toys to play with.
For centuries, the BattleMech was the ultimate war machine in all of human space. Across hundreds of worlds, BattleMechs fought for the supremacy of the various Successor States, the inheritors of the old Star League, which collapsed into endless war as one faction or another sought control of the whole of humanity, a vast sphere of stars hundreds of light years across. Although fortunes and borders shifted and battles were won and lost, the Succession Wars went on, and on, for centuries. Mech Warriors were the new knights of the modern battlefield, riding their mechanized steeds. There was a certain romance to the image of the heroic Mech Warrior, especially for a young boy living on the edge of known space, a boy who’d never witnessed the horrors of war firsthand. That is, not until the Clans came.
When the Star League fell and the various Inner Sphere leaders began to fight for dominion over the others, the Star League military had to choose sides. Human space was being carved up between the squabbling Successor States, and the powerful BattleMechs and military forces of the Star League would not be allowed to stand idle. Rather than choose a side to support, or be torn apart by conflicting loyalties, many of the Star League regulars chose a different option. Under the command of General Aleksandr Kerensky, the Star League Defense Forces formed a massive armada of JumpShips carrying their BattleMechs and military equipment. Then they jumped outward, toward uncharted space, beyond the Periphery of human-settled worlds.
Nothing was heard about them for hundreds of years. The Exodus became shrouded in myth and legend. People in the Inner Sphere talked about how General Kerensky and his Star League forces would return one day, when human civilization needed them most. They had no idea how that prophecy would actually turn out.
Ten years ago, mysterious BattleMechs suddenly appeared from beyond the Periphery. They struck without warning at worlds along the border, capturing them and moving quickly onward to the next. No one know who these attackers with their strange new ’Mech designs were, only that they were ruthless and efficient and that their BattleMechs were far superior to anything seen in the Inner Sphere since the days of the Star League. They were the children of Kerensky, the descendants of the military forces that had left the Inner Sphere centuries before. Forged in generations of war and conflict, shaped into the ultimate warrior culture that existed only to conquer. They had returned, like the stories promised, not to aid the Inner Sphere, but to conquer it and reclaim the heritage they’d left behind. They called themselves the Clans.
Kore, which lay some ten parsecs from the edge of the Lyran Alliance, was on the outer fringes of the massive wedge Clan forces drove into the Inner Sphere. It was an isolated world, of little interest to any would-be conqueror, valuable only for its mineral resources and mining operations. Still, that was of no concern to the Clans. Their forces seized whatever territory they came upon and moved on to the next world. Clan BattleMechs came to Kore to take the world as their own, with only the Kore Lancers standing in their way.
Sturm didn’t get to see much of the battle they fought out on the frozen tundra. He was only eleven years old at the time, hiding with his father in a shelter, packed in with dozens of other civilians as the sounds of battle roared outside. Sturm knew that his mother and the Lancers would stop the invaders. After all, there was nothing she couldn’t do. He wasn’t worried, although the sounds of battle frightened him. His father looked pale and sick the whole time. He told Sturm that everything would be all right, but Sturm knew his father was lying to him. That was when Sturm started to worry. He never saw his mother again.
He knew now that the battle was over before it began. The forces of the Lancers were no match for the superior Clan ’Mechs.
"A warrior who knows when it’s time to fight to the death and is willing to do it is courageous. A warrior who’s unwilling to retreat is just stupid," Krenner had said. What did that make mom? Sturm wondered, scrubbing the last of the sweat from his skin. Was Jenna Kintaro a brave woman who’d sacrificed herself defending her home and her family against overwhelming odds or was she just too damn stubborn to know she couldn’t win? Maybe it was a little of both. Sturm stuck his head under the hot spray of the shower, allowing it to wash away his troubled thoughts. He preferred to think of his mother as courageous. It was her courage that had solidified his desire to become a MechWarrior.
The Clan ’Mechs didn’t remain on Kore for long, only a few months. They were on a mission of conquest, and a single, isolated world in the Periphery was of little interest to them. After pacifying the local population and securing their position, the bulk of the Clan forces left Kore, continuing their march toward the heart of the Inner Sphere. They left behind only a token force of ’Mechs and warriors wearing powered armor, whom they called Elementals, to watch over the conquered populace of Kore.
Sturm remembered seeing the Clansmen in the streets of Niffelheim and hating them. The Elementals were particularly frightening. Genetically bred to handle the demands of piloting Clan power armor, they stood some 2.7 meters tall and were heavily muscled, like mythical ogres or giants. The Clan warriors were so aloof, so superior, looking down on the people they conquered, likes wolves among sheep.
Sturm hated their cold arrogance. How he’d wanted to just take a rock and smash in one of those leering faces. But his good sense prevailed. There was nothing to be gained by an eleven-year-old boy against a trained soldier and killer. Maybe that was my first lesson in the better part of valor, Sturm thought as he turned off the shower. He padded across the cool tile floor, grabbed a towel from the rack and started drying off.
Eventually, the battle lines had shifted. Kore was owned by the Alfin Mining Corporation, not controlled by one of the ruling dynasties of the Inner Sphere. Ironically, while the powerful star nations were struggling, even with their vast military forces, to oppose the Clans, Alfin was able to call on the mercenaries in their employ to avenge the deaths of their comrades in the Lancers and to liberate Kore. The Storm Riders company had worked with the corporation for more than fifteen years by then, and they fully intended to make the Clans pay for what they had taken.
The Storm Riders attacked Kore in force. This time, it was the Clan Steel Viper forces who were outmatched, isolated from their front lines and faced with an overwhelming enemy force. The Clan warriors fought fiercely to the death to defend what they’d taken, but the Storm Riders prevailed. Kore was liberated, and a new group of Kore Lancers was installed to protect the plant. The ’Riders took some heavy losses from the capture and liberation of Kore and they were allowed by Alfin to recruit from the population of the Kore colony. Sturm Kintaro was one of those recruits, now a full-fledged MechWarrior and member of the Storm Riders company, of the Kore Lancers.
Tossing the towel aside, he picked up the thin leather cord that lay coiled on the countertop. From it hung a small piece of metal, burned around the edges and pierced with a hole for the cord. Reverently, he replaced the fragment of his mother’s BattleMech around his neck. The new commander of the Lancers had presented it to Sturm after the liberation of Kore, and he’d kept it with him all through his training and whenever he was on duty. It was a reminder to him of what had brought him here.
He stood in the steam-filled room, holding the cool metal for a moment. Then he put on a clean uniform and ran a comb through his hair. There was just enough time for him to stop off at home before heading over to the command base. There would be time for wool-gathering later.
Duty calls, Sturm thought, and he headed for home.
3
Niffelheim, Kore
The Periphery
11 April 3060
Sturm took a Lancer jeep from the training center to the small house near the Alfin geosciences research center where his father worked. It was late in the afternoon, and the streets of Niffelheim were busy with people going about their business, moving briskly through the cold air in the brittle light of day. Kore’s pale sun shed a watery light over the frozen planet. Even at its closest to the star, Kore’s surface temperature only warmed into the teens. For the vast majority of its year, the planet was locked in perpetual winter. Sturm had heard stories about planets with seasons, and greenery. He hoped to see some of them someday. With luck, working with the Lancers would be his eventual ticket off Kore and into the Inner Sphere. He hardly noticed the chill of the air through his company-issue jacket with the patches and rank insignia of a Lancer MechWarrior on the shoulders and collar. He was used to it. Cold didn’t bother him. Like other native Korans, Sturm had "thick blood," even if he did lack the tall, blond Nordic features of most of the colonists.
Kore had been settled by people from worlds on the edges of the Lyran Alliance, which had only recently seceded from the larger Federated Commonwealth. Many Lyran worlds held people of Germano-European stock. Sturm’s mother Jenna was one such: tall, blond-haired, and blue-eyed, with a strong, rugged build. Sturm’s father, however, was nearly pure-blood Japanese. His family was from a world on the edge of Draconis Combine space, and Hidoshi Kintaro was quite proud of his heritage.
Sturm didn’t quite share his father’s pride. It was difficult growing up different on a colony world as small and isolated as Kore. Sturm was one of the few mixed-race or non-European kids, although they were becoming more common as the corporation settled additional colonists on the planet.
Sturm was taller than most Japanese, and some thought his Eurasian features made him look exotic among the pale, blond- and brown-haired populace of Kore. He had his father’s dark hair, almost raven-black. Sturm often tied the longer hair at his crown into a topknot, similar to the style of the samurai of old.
His eyes were his mother’s, however, pale, icy blue, like the depths of a frozen tarn in the heights of the Jotun Mountains. They had slight epicanthic folds and thin, slightly arched brows. His face was somewhat thin and pointed, with a sharp chin and a narrow mouth. Sturm glanced up at himself in the jeep’s rear-view mirror and smiled. He liked the way he looked in his fatigues, and he still hadn’t quite gotten used to seeing himself in them, especially with the thunderbolt emblem of the Storm Riders on his shoulder. He’d only been a full member of the company for a few months.
He was planning to move into the barracks on the command base shortly, now that there was room. As it was, Sturm practically lived at the base or the training center, often grabbing a spare bunk at the base to sleep between duty shifts and training sessions. He only visited home occasionally, to pick up some needed things or to grab a quick bite to eat, since the house lay between the base and some of his other haunts in Niffelheim. And he usually made sure to stop by during the day, like now.
He pulled the jeep into a spot in front of the collection of row-houses that was home to some of Alfin’s researchers and senior staff. They were very functional; dull gray ferrocrete exterior with tall, thin windows intended to let in pale sunlight but trap in as much heat as possible. Sturm often thought they looked like military bunkers, which wasn’t far from the truth. During the Clan invasion of Kore, most of the buildings of Niffelheim survived completely intact. They might not be pretty to look at, but they’d been built to last.
Besides, nobody spent much time outside, anyway, so there was little point in beautifying the exterior of buildings. That effort was generally saved for the interiors. Sturm knew homes in the colony that looked like frozen gray rocks on the outside, but were warm and homey inside. Of course, that didn’t really describe his house.
The place was as cluttered as usual. Various print-outs and transparencies were scattered over the kitchen table and counters, weighed down with heavier objects, usually computer datachips and various electronic tools. They contained geological survey maps of the planet’s surface, gathered by small satellites in orbit designed to ferret out the largest concentrations of valuable metals and minerals for mining. Kore had little to offer apart from its rich deposits. The whole planet was a mineralogical treasure trove, guaranteed to keep the Alfin Corporation supplied with saleable ores and materials for decades to come. Once the planet’s resources were tapped out, it was entirely likely that the colony would have to be abandoned. Maybe by then Kore would have other industries. In another hundred years the colony could encompass most of the planet. It didn’t matter much to Sturm. He wasn’t planning to stick around and watch, anyway.
He went directly to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. Training exercises caused Sturm to sweat buckets, given the extreme heat inside a ’Mech cockpit during combat. He was always thirsty right after a training session. He would have preferred a beer, but he was going on duty and his father never drank beer himself, so there was none to be had.
Taking a long, deep swallow of the cold water directly from the bottle, Sturm closed the refrigerator door and nearly choked in surprise on the mouthful of water. He managed to lower the bottle without spilling it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Sturm," the figure standing in the doorway of the kitchen said.
