Operation Excalibur, page 31
part #31 of BattleTech Series
"How do we know he didn't?"
"We don't. Still, it's not likely he'd risk putting a major strain on the station's life support and expendables for an indefinite but long period of time, just on the chance of a raid like this one. I don't think we have much to worry about."
"Hope you know what the hell you're talking about, Colonel."
Grayson paused for dramatic effect, then nodded sagely. "So do I."
Gerard laughed, and Grayson and some of the other commandos near enough to overhear joined in. They were good people, Grayson thought. High morale. Well trained. Eager. Confident.
He tried not to think about the fact that some of them were about to die, or the even more disturbing idea that he might have misjudged the situation completely and be about to lead them all into a bloody slaughter.
"Five minutes, Colonel," Longo called over the intercom from the bridge. "Better start getting ready."
Grayson exchanged glances, grins, and winks with Gerard and with Lieutenant MacGiver. "We're all set down here, Captain," he replied. "Just make it look like you're a crip."
"You got it, Colonel. Just call me ol' gimpy...."
Grayson looked down at his chest, checking the readouts on the small display implanted inside the ring connector for his helmet. He was at full power, and ready to boost, jets on safe, environment settings go.
A few years before, the Gray Death Legion had become the very first Inner Sphere mercenary unit to be equipped with the new power armor suits, blatant copies, in most respects, of the battle armor worn by Clan elementals. The Legion used two different types—an infantry suit that bore weapon hardpoints and thick armor, and a reconnaissance suit that carried less armor and had no built-in weapons but was lighter and easier to use, less like riding a small BattleMech, more like wearing a space suit.
It was the second type of suit that Grayson had ordered prepared for this operation, Mark I reconnaissance suits, equipped with jump packs that would serve as propulsion units in microgravity. He'd had seventy of them broken out and prepped for this operation, each one tuned and balanced to serve both as combat armor and as spacesuits. They were finely tooled, intricate, and very expensive mechanisms—Davis McCall referred to them as his "wee bairns"—purchased from the FedCom NAIS in New Avalon.
Grayson wondered how much longer the Legion would be able to get parts for the things, now that the Lyrans had split off from the FedCom once more.
But this wasn't the moment to worry about that. He disconnected his helmet from the tether he'd used to tie it to his equipment harness, settled the thick metal bowl over his head, and clicked it into place with a half turn. All around him, the rest of Carlyle's Commandos were doing the same.
"This is it, people!" Grayson called to the waiting cadre of armored men and women. "Everybody check yourself and then check your neighbor. Weapons. Connectors. Valve settings. Then turn around and check the guy behind you." For the next few moments, the team busied itself with its precombat checks. The idea was to stay too busy to think much about what was coming up.
Grayson was carrying a gyrojet carbine. About half of the commandos were packing either gyrojet carbines or the larger g-jet rifles, while the rest were packing lasers. The gyrojet was an ancient design, first experimented with over a thousand years before, back in the mid-twentieth century, but abandoned because the rocket-powered rounds simply couldn't build up thrust enough to carry much stopping power at short ranges. Modern gyrojets had more efficient rockets coupled with explosive warheads; the design was ideal, in fact, for combat in microgravity. The recoil from a conventional rifle or pistol would kick the firer backward in a vivid demonstration of Newton's third law, and likely impart a vicious spin as well. A gyrojet kicked the rocket round clear of the firing chamber with almost no recoil; by the time the round was a meter or two clear of the muzzle, however, it had already accelerated to about one hundred meters per second, fast enough to do some serious damage to whatever it hit, even without the warhead's explosive charge. Grayson's Star King carbine packed twenty rockets into a banana clip magazine in a bullpup receiver; he had three more loaded mags packed into various pockets in his suit's combat harness. He also carried a bangbomb, a small grenade designed to explode with a series of deafening reports and eye-dazzling flashes. That weapon, too, was a very old one.
"Okay, Colonel," Longo's voice said in his helmet's earphones. "We're coming up on the Caliban, forward docking ring. We've received permission to dock, but I get the feeling that this lady doesn't like us."
"Can't really blame her," Grayson replied. "Give me a count-off on the distance, will you?"
"Affirmative. We're at fifty meters now. Thirty. Twenty. Ten meters." There was a thump and a nudge of acceleration as Longo cut the Io's speed by another fraction. "Five meters. Three ... two ... one ..."
A loud clang sounded through the DropShip, accompanied by a gentle surge of deceleration that sent the entire group of armored men and women drifting toward the hatch. "Contact!" Longo cried over the tacnet, needlessly.
"Everybody set?" Gerard asked them. He was answered by a chorus of shouts and calls. "Good. Let's just have Squad One up here. Line up by the numbers, right here in front of the hatch."
The lo was now docked with the Caliban. DropShip passengers normally remained in the rider vessel rather than venturing aboard the JumpShip. However, docking tunnels could be rigged to permit passenger transfer; since this rendezvous was being set up specifically to allow technicians to come aboard from the Caliban, the tunnel was being extruded now from the Caliban's spine to the DropShip's aft dorsal hatch.
"Tunnel is secure," Longo announced. "Pressurizing ... Tunnel pressure matched and equalized. You are free to crack the hatch."
Captain Gerard slapped a control on the bulkhead beside him, and the hatch door cycled open. He motioned to the waiting boarders. "Squad One only! Let's go!"
"Follow me!" Grayson cried, launching himself headfirst into the opening. He sailed through and down the short tunnel beyond, just as the hatchway on the Jump-Ship Caliban began cycling open. As he sailed along the tunnel, he armed the bangbomb by pressing a trigger plate with his thumb, then launched it forward toward the yawning hatch. It sailed through; seconds later, the circle of darkness beyond the hatch lit up in a dazzling, blue-white strobe effect, accompanied by a rippling pattern of blasts that would have been ear-splitting if the attackers hadn't been wearing helmets with noise-suppression circuits in their external mike electronics.
His trajectory was off a hair, and he slammed into the ring of metal encircling the Caliban's hatch. He was able to push free and crowd his way inside, however, before the next Legion trooper in line collided with him. Inside, a dozen men and women were adrift in a large passageway. Grayson tucked and rolled, bringing his feet up against the bulkhead opposite the hatch and absorbing the impact on flexing knees. Most of the people gathered there, he saw, were civilians in shipboard jumpsuits and coveralls; floating alongside one was a brand new QVW-280, still in its clear plastic factory wrappings.
Two of the people, though, were in armor—lighter weight than Grayson's and painted jet black. They were helmeted and they were armed, and their helmets had protected them from the bangbomb's effects.
Still, the suddenness of the attack had taken them by surprise. They were only now beginning to react to Grayson's precipitous arrival, bringing their laser rifles to bear. Grayson triggered his gyrojet carbine from the hip. There was a shrill hiss and a slight kick to his weapon, followed an instant later by the ragged sound of tearing cloth. His target was floating in mid-air only about four meters away. The round was approaching the sound barrier by the time it reached the man, striking him high in the chest and exploding with a sharp crack of the projectile's detonation.
The second man fired his laser from a range of three meters. The beam struck Grayson in the side of his helmet, but the suit's optics cut out the sudden, blinding glare and the armor ablated most of the heat. Grayson felt his head growing suddenly quite warm, but the armor held. He had his weapon ready when his visor cleared, but by the time he had a target again, the man was dead, cut down by the next couple of Legion troopers in line who'd just sailed through the hatch.
It wasn't until that moment that Grayson realized that he'd been the first one through that hatch, that he'd deliberately taken the number one slot with an arrogant assumption of prerogative. Damn, colonels weren't supposed to lead crazy-assed frontal charges!
No time to think of that now. They had no idea how many of Gareth's troops might be aboard the JumpShip, and they needed to find and take them all down before they could communicate with the Olympus.
After taking a moment to orient themselves, the assault squad turned and headed up the main corridor toward the bridge. Along the way, they encountered two more black-armored soldiers wearing the sword-in-hand device of the new Free Star Republic, both of whom surrendered immediately rather than trying to put up a fight. One Legionnaire stayed behind to watch them while the rest kept moving. Ahead, the main bridge hatch waited. If the enemy had managed to barricade himself in there, it was already too late.
The hatch slid open and Grayson pulled himself through. A tall, slender woman with short-cut blond hair floated just inside the entrance, watching him narrowly.
"Captain Cain?" he said, reading the merchant rank badge on her collar. "How many more of Gareth's people are on board? We've accounted for four."
"Then you got 'em all, fella."
He felt an inward sag of relief. "Good." He nodded. "I'm Grayson Carlyle."
"Well, the Carlyle in person," the woman replied, eyes widening. "I suppose I should thank you for rescuing my ship."
"No thanks necessary."
"Wasn't planning on giving you any. Damn it, you people could have breached my hull! What kind of a harebrained rescue was this, anyway?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, ma'am," he told her with a wry smile, "it wasn't a rescue."
"Oh? What do you call it, then?"
"How about impressment? We need to borrow your ship for a few moments."
The woman closed her eyes. "Oh, no! Not again!"
* * *
"Go, men! Go now!"
Captain Michael Kaminski turned the upper torso of his 95-ton Banshee to the left, waving his 'Mechs forward. Behind him, partially hidden among the war-shattered ruin of the factory, a dozen more heavy and assault 'Mechs began lumbering forward, breaking cover for a last, desperate attempt to force their way into the bloody mountain.
Their surroundings were a tumble-down shambles of twisted steel and burned-out buildings. The main structure was little more than a shell now, parts of it collapsed and still smoking, other parts standing, a forest of steel beams and sheet metal, of gantries, traveling cranes, and towers. This part of the Defiance factory complex was in the open air, outside the mountain, with a broad ramp leading up to Gate One. That ramp, some fifty meters long and thirty broad, had been a killing field for the hidden Legion 'Mechs inside the mountain for the past three days, and now it was going to be a killing field again. Frontal charges were rarely worth the cost, no matter how vital the prize at the end.
Still, Field Marshal Gareth seemed to have hit on a good idea here, one that had a fair chance of carrying the day. He'd rounded up the heaviest 'Mechs available in the Ironhands, most from the old Third Davion Guards, but a few too from the Fifteenth Lyran Guards and even the Catamounts, whose MechWarriors had thrown in with Gareth because he'd told them only that Hesperus II was in danger, and that no matter whether they loved the Lyran Alliance or the Federated Commonwealth, they would fight the invaders to save their world.
And, amazingly, there'd been no shortage of volunteers. The men loved Gareth, Kaminski knew, and would follow him into hell itself if he gave them the word. The idea was appallingly simple. Six heavy BattleMechs— Kaminski's Banshee, an ungainly 90-ton Cyclops, two 80-ton Victors, a 75-ton Orion, and a Catapult—would line up side by side and advance up that ramp. There was no way the enemy could miss, but those six 'Mechs possessed one hell of a lot of armor and would take some killing. Sometimes, Kaminski thought, modern Battle-Mech warfare seemed to be a throwback to the eighteenth century, when troops lined up facing one another in parallel rows and just blazed away until something broke. The assault line would close with the Legion barricades, firing constantly, trading damage for damage, forcing the defenders back from the gate by sheer mass and firepower.
It ought to work. The Legion was keeping two and sometimes three 'Mechs behind the crude barricade at the top of the ramp, and other Legion 'Mechs had made occasional forays into the near portions of the factory, harassing and raiding. They'd been taking a lot of damage over the past three days, however, and must be getting pretty ragged by this time. One good, last push, and the heavies would have the way open. More 'Mechs were waiting, then, to rush the gate as soon as the heavies had seized it, pushing past and into the depths of Mount Defiance.
And that would be the end of the Legion forces holding the factory complex.
Cannon fire cracked; lasers sizzled among the ruins. Kaminski's Banshee took a laser hit in the arm, but he shrugged it off and kept moving. He reached the foot of the ramp, pausing a moment as the others joined him. The fire from above redoubled, sweeping down the ramp, striking the assault 'Mechs, gouging pieces from their armor but doing no serious damage. "All right, men!" Kaminski called. "Quicktime ... march!"
With a clanking as loud as the trumpet announcing the Final Judgment, the six 'Mechs broke into a lumbering trot, charging up that fire-swept ramp toward the factory gate.
25
Defiance Industries Complex, Maria's Elegy
Hesperus II, Rahneshire,
Lyran Alliance
1415 hours (local), 21 December 3057
Lori had been forced back by the fierce heat of the fire in the forging bay, but after several minutes, the blaze had dwindled, too hot, too intense to support itself for long with no fuel better than steel and the carcass of a wrecked BattleMech. As the heat died away in wavering curtains of air turned translucent and shimmery, she was able to edge past the spill, where the liquid metal, puddled on the floor now with a much larger surface area than it had had in the bucket, was already cooling enough to form a glowing, orange-brown crust. Once she was into the passageway beyond, the air temperature had fallen swiftly, and with it her 'Mech's heat indicator had begun falling as well. It had been a literal furnace in there, with an air temperature reaching hundreds of degrees near the fire, and her Zeus could not have survived much more exposure to that kind of heat.
Thirty meters from that flame-seared doorway, the corridor opened into a broad anteroom just behind what had been a massive set of eighteen-meter gates, identical to those across the facility at Gate Two. Second Company, under the able and experienced command of Captain Guillaume Henri Villiers, had set up their command post there, scant meters behind the barricades at the blast-shattered gate. His 75-ton Marauder, missing its left arm, was standing by a stairway leading to the factory's upper levels, shouting commands over the company's tac frequency to his troops. The scene was one of organized chaos, with dozens of foot infantry, several badly damaged 'Mechs undergoing emergency repairs, and a J27 transport offloading missiles for Legion 'Mechs in need of a reload. If that Defiance had managed to smash its way through and open fire in this crowded area ...
"Colonel Kalmar!" Villiers called, recognizing the markings on her Zeus. He spoke with a rich, Gallic accent. "What in the hell happened to you?"
"A run-in with an angry creditor, Henri. What's the sit?"
'They are coming, mon cher colonel. They are coming and they are coming in hot!"
Lori moved toward the barricade, where an Apollo, a JagerMech, and an Enforcer were standing practically shoulder to shoulder behind a pile of wrecked 'Mechs and vehicles five meters tall—waist high for a BattleMech— firing all of their weapons as rapidly as they could. The Apollo was firing flights of missiles, providing long-range fire support, while theother two rattled away with their autocannons, laying down a savage curtain of fire.
When she peered past the defenders' shoulders, she was greeted by an awesome sight—two heavy and four assault BattleMechs, lined up as though on parade, advancing side by side up the broad ramp leading to Gate One. As the ramp narrowed, the line of six was squeezed down to a line of four followed by a line of two, the Orion and the Catapult—the heavies—following the Cyclops, the two Victors, and the savage-looking Banshee.
That Banshee was the leader's 'Mech, the body paint and decoration giving it away. While 'Mech pilots tended to be an individualistic bunch who often decorated their machines with unauthorized nose art, paint designs, and war trophies, it was usually the company commanders who took particular pains to dress up their 'Mechs for full psychological effect.
The Banshee was already an anthropoid design, and this one's head had been crafted to look like an angular, sharp-cornered skull. The pilot had enhanced that image by applying paint and tack-on plate armor; the head was painted bone white in the image of a screaming skull, while the rest of the machine was painted death-black in startling contrast.
As a professional, though, Lori was more concerned by the clues in design and weapons mounts that indicated this Banshee was a BNC-S, a House Steiner variant of a machine that originally had been ludicrously over-armored and under-gunned. One of the oldest of all BattleMech designs, the original Banshee had carried only one PPC, an autocannon, and a Magna Mark I light laser. The Steiner variant, however, had swapped out the original heavy GM 380 fusion power plant and replaced it with the smaller Pitban 285, freeing up space and mass enough to add a second PPC and a second small laser, four medium lasers, and a short-range missile launcher. The new version was slow and it tended to overheat rapidly in combat, especially if its pilot got too free with those twin Magna Hellstar PPCs.
