Surrender Your Dreams Read online

  Beyond The Walls . . . .

  They are the Fidelis, a brotherhood of warriors whose devotion to honor and courage on the battlefield is unmatched. Their existence known only to a former exarch, they are a fighting force to be reckoned with—a force three knights must consider as they undertake missions that could save the Republic...or cripple it.

  Lady Synd embodies the vision of the knight-errant. Devoted wholeheartedly to the Republic and its citizens, she believes in her mission. But what she must do to accomplish it will test her mettle as a knight—and as a human being.

  Hunter Mannheim is descended from a long line of military leaders and feels he must continue the tradition of excellence in service and sacrifice in battle. But what he must sacrifice in the name of duty may be more than he can bear.

  Kristoff Erbe is a man burdened by shame. His grandfather was a collaborator who served as commander of a "re-education camp" for those who defied the fanatical Word of Blake. To this day Kristoff searches for a way to redeem his family honor. Three knights. Three dreams. For each, one chance lies outside the walls of the FortressRepublic....

  Surrender Your Dreams

  Greetings, Damien, my dear friend. If you've received this message, you are still alive and The Republic is in deep trouble.

  If you've received this message, the current exarch has accessed the files known as FortressRepublic. If he is considering this option, then The Republic needs you more than ever.

  The Fortress plan calls for an organized collapse of The Republic to a defense zone centered on Prefecture X. It will create an impenetrable barrier between the core of The Republic and the rest of the Inner Sphere. You will soon become aware of the means by which this will be enforced, so I won't waste time here outlining that.

  Outside the Fortress walls, The Republic will face unprecedented perils. Our enemies will smell blood and strike; your task will be to help organize the knights and ghost knights to undertake missions necessary for the long-term survival of The Republic. These missions will stretch dangerously thin the loyalty and obedience of the knights; but these missions are vital. The Fortress files contain the operational details of suggested targets and projected mission parameters. Many require your discretion in terms of timing.

  There is no one I trust more to do what needs to be done.

  SURRENDER YOUR DREAMS

  A BATTLETECH NOVEL

  Blaine Lee Pardoe

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

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  First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  First Printing, December 2006

  10 987654321

  Copyright © WizKids, Inc.. 2006 All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REG1STRADA

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER'S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  This book is dedicated to my family, who have always supported this insane hobby of mine: Cyndi, Alex, Victoria and Sandy (The Wonder Dog).

  To my editor, Sharon, who didn't cringe when I asked, "Have you ever seen the movie Pulp Fiction?" and who engages me in debates about how many people I'm allowed to kill in a novel. When I told her I wanted to bring them back (read this book, you'll figure it out), she didn't even flinch. In fact, she said, "Cool!"

  To the other MechWarrior™ writers—Loren, Mike, Randall, Kevin, Ilsa and the rest.

  I also want to thank my alma mater, CentralMichiganUniversity. Other great places that deserve mention include the Von Luckner Society, the Mariner's Museum in Newport News, Virginia, the U.S. National Archives, the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, and the National Maritime Historical Society.

  To Harry Turtledove—my favorite non-MechWarrior writer.

  Finally, to the BattleTech™ fans out there who are looking for new twists and turns to the storyline: Gotcha!

  BOOK 1

  Greetings, Damien, my dear friend. If you've received this message, you are still alive and The Republic is in deep trouble.

  If you've received this message, the current exarch has accessed the files known as FortressRepublic. If he is considering this option, then The Republic needs you more than ever.

  The Fortress plan calls for an organized collapse of The Republic to a defense zone centered on Prefecture X. It will create an impenetrable barrier between the core of The Republic and the rest of the Inner Sphere. You will soon become aware of the means by which this will be enforced, so I won't waste time here outlining that.

  Outside the Fortress walls, The Republic will face unprecedented perils. Our enemies will smell blood and strike; your task will be to help organize the knights and ghost knights to undertake missions necessary for the long-term survival of The Republic. These missions will stretch dangerously thin the loyalty and obedience of the knights, but these missions are vital. The Fortress files contain the operational details of suggested targets and projected mission parameters. Many require your discretion in terms of timing.

  There is no one I trust more to do what needs to be done.

  You must personally coordinate a number of these missions. One such is Callison: This world is not what it appears and will play a key role in events that unfold in the future. Callison offers us hope in the dark times to come.

  A second is on Kwamashu. My greatest advantage as exarch was that, in the rubble of the war, I had access to everyone's secrets. On Kwamashu, th
e Duchy of An- durien is hiding a secret that they cannot afford anyone to even suspect. There, they are morally weak; there, a fuse must be lit to keep relations strained between House Liao and the Duchy.

  Other operations are covert in nature. Some involve assassinations, some require efforts to keep the enemies of The Republic off-balance and at each other's throats. You know some of the secrets I kept, and one of those you now must bring to bear. The Fidelis have been waiting. Use them. Let them fulfill their destiny and help deliver The Republic.

  Know this: I trust you as I would a son. I know you will put The Republic first. That is why I have chosen you to carry this message.

  Good luck and Godspeed, old friend.

  Price of Service 8

  Nadir Jump Point

  Kwamashu, Duchy of Andurien

  Fortress Republic (+886 days)

  Hunter Mannheim stared at the newscast being beamed from Kwamashu and fought the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. A raw mix of fury, frustration, self-doubt and loathing all fought to control him, like a hurricane of emotion with him at the eye. Events were still unfolding down on Kwamashu. The ramifications of their actions became more serious every day.

  He had ordered the JumpShip to hold station. No one noticed them in the flurry of ships arriving in-system; they still were painted to look like a Duchy military unit, so no one questioned their presence. The recriminations battering his mind forced Mannheim to stay and watch, to fully grasp the extent of the devastation he had wrought.

  He, Sir Hunter Mannheim, Knight of the Sphere, had ordered the detonation of the charges that destroyed the industrial facility in Breezewood. The plan had been to stage a mock disaster for the media to play up that would give the Duchy of Andurien a reason to go to war with the Oriente Protectorate—and keep their minds off trying to poach former Republic worlds. Now the media had a real disaster to deal with, a disaster on a planetary scale. Now, the dead and dying provided the reason to go to war.

  What he had not known was that the abandoned facility he had rigged with explosive charges for their mock disaster had been used since the end of the Jihad as an illegal storage site for industrial and chemical wastes and by-products. Tens of thousands of barrels of unstable chemicals and biohazard waste that the good people of Kwamashu didn't want to deal with had been dumped there, many buried underground, others stored in the supposedly empty fuel- tank farm nearby. Added to this toxic cocktail were radioactive industrial wastes. The nearby dumping ground explained why so few people lived in Breezewood to begin with, which was a small blessing.

  When the Oriente Protectorate had raided the plant under the assumption that it was a new 'Mech assembly plant and therefore posed a threat to the Protectorate, he and his Fidelis troops—disguised as a Duchy unit— had put up a good fight. The plan would have worked if the plant hadn't been a ticking time bomb to begin with—and if the Protectorate hadn't come to Kwamashu in such force as to seize the world. The handful of surviving raiders had managed to make it to their JumpShip and leave the system before anyone thought to intercept them.

  He bowed his head, on the verge of crying for the hundredth time in the past week. The explosion at the plant had set off a blast that could be measured on the scale of a tactical nuclear weapon. A firestorm had swept up a significant part of Breezewood, then efficiently devoured the city in an inferno as hot as a blast furnace.

  The mushroom cloud from the explosion had risen seven thousand, six hundred and twenty meters into the air and been caught in the jet stream over Kwamashu. Laden with a lethal mix of toxic chemicals and radioactive waste, the cloud spread in two different directions. During the week it took to reach their JumpShip, Hunter had tracked its progress. The "cloud of death," or "death shroud," as it was described by the press, contaminated everything in its path. By the time they had arrived at the nadir jump point, three-quarters of the world had been dosed with a mix of carcinogens, toxic waste and radioactive chemicals, brought down by rain and gravity.

  The initial death count from the firestorm had been in the hundreds, but almost immediately people all around the world began to fall sick. The very old and the very young were the first to succumb. Hundreds of thousands of acres of crops had to be destroyed because the soil was contaminated. The government evacuated entire cities, but there was nowhere safe for the refugees to go. Twin killers common to all disasters, cholera and dysentery, took their toll on the millions of refugees. Rioting and looting broke out as panic took over.

  Colonel Daum, the planetary garrison commander, had miraculously survived the initial explosion. He sent out a plea for help for Kwamashu to the rest of the Duchy via JumpShips, but it was too late for him. He had been hospitalized almost immediately with lung problems.

  Aid was trickling in. JumpShips and DropShips were arriving regularly at the zenith and nadir jump points, sending in transports filled with medical supplies and returning with evacuees. The Duchy military had redirected units to organize disaster relief, but there were millions of people who needed assistance. It was a logistical nightmare. As one commentator put it, it was a catastrophe on the scale of the Tharkad fusion plant meltdown at the outbreak of the Jihad—times a hundred. Another newscaster compared it to the nuking of Outreach. Mannheim found both comparisons heart- wrenching.

  The cost in human lives was compounded by the damage to the Duchy's economy. Kwamashu was a total loss; not only had the Duchy lost its production capability, but the cost to rescue those who could be saved would be astronomical. Even the most extensive relief efforts would never be enough. The lucky ones would leave the planet. The rest of the population would always wonder about the air they breathed or the ground under their feet, wondering what death it might hold for them—if not immediately, then in years to come.

  The Duchy's media machine had turned the disaster into a public relations coup. Public cries of "Remember Kwamashu!" rang on every Duchy planet. All-out war with the Oriente Protectorate seemed inevitable. The war planned by Devlin Stone had found fertile soil on the death fields of Kwamashu. War. More deaths. More names added to his list of sins.

  The counter on the screen showed the death toll in the thousands. Hunter knew the grim reality. The deaths on Kwamashu were just beginning. There would be thousands more, tens of thousands. He straightened up and shut off the monitor. All that blood is on my head. Hunter thought of his wife and children. What will they think of me? The shame was almost unbearable. Mannheim already had considered and rejected suicide, afraid to leave even more unanswered questions for his children when the Fortress walls came down.

  Thinking of his children prompted him to look for Jeremy Chin, the ghost knight he had worked with on Kwamashu. Jeremy was young enough to be Mannheim's son, and he did not appear to be dealing well with their actions either. Mannheim unfastened the straps holding him to his chair, engaged his magnetic slippers and walked to the corridor, then kicked off from the floor. Chin had lost his impish attitude and confident cockiness. His habit of mumbling to himself that Hunter had noticed developing during the mission had seemed to take on more character. Hunter wondered if the stress had cracked the younger man. It's hard to know your capacity for guilt until it's too late.

  * * *

  Jeremy Chin pushed off the wall of the cargo bay with all of his might. Halfway across he tucked his chin and bent at the waist, flipping over in mid-flight to land on his feet. He curled and kicked off again. He had been repeating this motion for two hours, and was wet with sweat from the exertion. He ignored the ache in his legs. In microgravity, you needed the exercise. Jeremy also needed it for another reason.

  He looked at the box tucked into the corner. Standing next to it, nearly hidden in the shadows, was a man with his arms crossed. His face was half-hidden by a mask— the kind of mask used to hide deformities. The man wore a mocking, arrogant grin emphasized by the twist in his lip, more damage from the near-fatal blast years before. His hair swept messily off his forehead. Chin wanted to look away
from the man's insolent grin, but it took all his effort. The man's voice taunted him.

  "All that sweat doesn't change what you did."

  Jeremy kicked off again, but this time when he landed he didn't immediately kick off. "Go away!"

  Thomas Marik chuckled. "Admit it-—you found killing those people all too easy. You're a ghost knight; you've killed before. Taking one life is hard. Much easier to kill an entire population, don't you think? Much like you, I prefer the weapons of mass destruction. If you're going to do the job, use the right tool."

  "I didn't kill those people. I was—" His voice broke when he realized the words he wanted to say.

  "Just following orders? Oh, please—remember who you're talking to. You could have tossed those orders at any time, but you didn't. I'm particularly glad that you followed your orders, especially your instructions to get me out of that damned hole. But my favorite part still is when you laid waste to the planet. That took me back to the good old days."

  His anger swelled. He kicked off again, this time flipping twice in the air before making a hard landing and another stop. "You need to leave."

  "I don't think so. Thanks to you, I'm back in the game. I really have missed the carnage so necessary to create a new order. It's gratifying to see The Republic willing to take a lesson from a professional like me."

  "Shut up."

  "Stone would have been proud of you. Especially the part where everyone will die a slow death. You know. Sir Chin, I could have really used someone like you in the Blake Guard. A person willing to go that extra mile, to take a little pleasure in his work. You would have been a fine member of my order."

  He caught movement from the corner of his eye; Jeremy glanced at the doorway to the bay and saw another person step hesitantly into the opening. Hunter. He closed his eyes and kicked off again. He was avoiding Hunter's eyes. Looking into his eyes hurt almost as much as the words Thomas was leveling at him. No—it hurt much worse.