Impetus of War Page 6

  6

  DropShip Claymore

  Nadir Jump Point, Gravenhage

  Draconis Combine

  2 June 3058

  The DropShip Claymore was already beginning to feel cramped and claustrophobic by the time the JumpShip carrying the Fusilier task force arrived at the Gravenhage jump point on the farthest border of the Draconis Combine. Their three Overlord Class ships, each carrying a full battalion of BattleMechs and support crew, had been making steady progress over the past few weeks. Compliments of a command circuit of Combine JumpShips strung into position across the Draconis Combine, the Fusilier task force had traveled the hundreds of light years from Northwind to the far edge of the Inner Sphere. Where DropShips traveled to and from the surface of planets, JumpShips were the vessels by which humankind traversed the vast distances between stars. Over the past few days the Claymore had ridden along the spines of a number of those faster-than-light vessels.

  Such a command circuit was a rare enough phenomenon; few but the leaders of the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere had enough starships to spare for such duty. But using a command circuit saved the week to ten days a JumpShip had to wait while recharging the solar batteries that would let it make its next jump through hyperspace. At each new jump point, the Fusilier DropShips would unlock from their docking grapples and shuttle to another ship waiting to take them on the next leg of their long journey.

  The trip from Northwind just to its nadir jump point had taken twelve precious days. Loren had made good use of the time, however, spending many hours reviewing the various operational plans, training in the portable simulators they'd brought, and studying the map of Wayside V until it was as familiar as the Highlanders' own beloved world of Northwind.

  Gravenhage was almost 500 light years from Northwind, but it couldn't have seemed any further to Loren right now had it been on the other side of the galaxy. Who knew how long before any of them again saw the tall, silent peaks of the Rockspire Mountains or walked the ancient byways of Tara?

  As he sat in the small crew mess hall, Loren remembered the pomp and circumstance of their send-off—the elaborate parade, complete with dancers and the wailing of bagpipes. And the many parties, too, which helped the troops burn off some of the tension surrounding the start of any mission. No matter how well this operation went, in their hearts everyone knew that some of the Fusiliers would never return to Northwind.

  Loren had remained somewhat detached from the flurry of activity, his mind focused on the mission. He couldn't help remembering the one truth that kept every commander's senses sharp—no plan survives contact with the enemy. He glanced out the Claymore's viewport and contemplated what was to come.

  Sitting on the very tip of the Draconis Combine, the Gravenhage system wasn't just a recharge point for the Fusiliers, but the place where they would rendezvous with their PSL, Major Elden Parkensen, and a company of Combine troops. Sho-sa, Loren corrected himself, remembering the Combine word for the rank of major.

  The Professional Soldiery Liaison was the branch of the Combine military responsible for coordinating mercenary units with the regular DCMS and making sure a merc unit lived up to its contract. The PSL rep could make recommendations and participate in decision-making, but Loren knew Cat Stirling would never yield ultimate command to anyone else. The mission was a sensitive one and the Fusiliers would be operating with a great deal of independence. No one in the Inner Sphere had tried to do what they were tasked with doing—attack and seize a Clan holding beyond the borders of human-occupied space.

  What they knew about the PSL was limited. Early in his career, Parkensen had served with several units during the Clan invasion. He'd been on Tarnby with the Fourth Pesht Regulars in the early days of the invasion when the true origins of the invaders were still unknown. His unit was almost entirely overrun by the Sixth Jaguar Dragoons in the battle of Diver's Grotto, and he was one of only a handful of survivors evacuated.

  He returned to Luthien for medical treatment and was still there almost a year later when the Smoke Jaguars and the Nova Cats made their ill-fated attack on the Combine's capital world. Parkensen volunteered to fight again even though he was still not fully healed, but wasn't in the fray more than a few minutes before his patchwork Grand Dragon was swarmed and destroyed by the Nova Cats. Honored and promoted by Theodore Kurita himself, Elden Parkensen was given a new posting to the Fourth Alshain Regulars on Rubigen, which was hit by Clan Ghost Bear just weeks after his arrival. Somehow fate managed to preserve Parkensen once more, and he was lifted off planet with some of the last wounded who managed to get out of the system.

  Since then he'd been posted to minor defense garrisons along the Clan border but had seen no further action. Studying Parkensen's record, Loren couldn't tell whether the man was an inept MechWarrior who got by on sheer luck or an excellent MechWarrior plagued, with being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between. That, at least, was Loren's hope.

  Loren was shaken from his reverie by the arrival of Colonel Stirling, her flight jumpsuit marked with the black regalia showing her rank and position as CO of Stirling's Fusiliers. Trailing after her came Majors Craig and Blakadar. The small mess room boasted not much more than a table and two benches of ten seats each. It was cramped, uncomfortable, and positioned over the gently throbbing fusion reactor engines of the Claymore. This evening, however, a cloth as well as china and silverware had been laid over the carbon-fiber table top. Meager enough, but the best they could do. "Captain Spillman tells me our guest's shuttle should be docking about now."

  "And their JumpShip charge status?"

  "Equipped with lithium-fusion batteries, just like ours. Apparently they're carrying enough of a charge to make the jump when we do in a few minutes." From this point forward, the two ships would travel together.

  "Theodore Kurita spared no expense on this mission."

  Stirling nodded. "I have no doubt the Coordinator takes this seriously. Our PSL's seen a lot of action. He must be pretty good to get assigned this mission."

  Loren nodded while checking to make sure his jumpsuit was in order. He did not voice his concerns regarding Sho-sa Parkensen. Time would tell. "I've detached an honor guard to escort him here, sir."

  "Good, what's the fare?"

  "Ground steak, potatoes, and summer corn," Loren replied.

  Stirling made a sour face. "We've got to remember to pack more real food next time. And we should make sure that what we do pack is better than this meal."

  Loren smiled. "I wanted to bring more, but Mitch Fraser has filled every nook and cranny of this ship with tools and repair parts. Our KP complained today that there were a hundred liters of 'Mech coolant in the food freezer unit."

  "That monkey-wrench has been as busy as a drunkard in a brewery," Major Blakadar put in, running a hand through his dark hair. "Fraser's rigged one of those old J-27 ammo haulers into some sort of bastardized mobile repair unit. He's got that monstrosity of his in parts all over the cargo-hold floor reconfiguring it." Blakadar gave a small laugh. "I told him he'd better have that tinker-toy put back together by the time we burn in or I'm using it as a scooter for my 'Mech on the way out the door."

  Stirling laughed along with him. "If anything, Mitch is creative." There was a knock at the door and both she and Loren rose to a more formal stance. "Well, then, it's time to meet our partner in this endeavor." She motioned to the door and Loren went to open it.

  The figure standing there was of medium height and dressed in the tan flight jumpsuit of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery. Sho-sa Parkensen's hair was an oily black, his features classically oriental, his expression a polite mask. Stepping into the cramped room, he bowed his head slightly. "Greetings, Officers of Stirling's Fusiliers of the Northwind Highlanders. I am Sho-sa Elden Parkensen, your PSL. I bring you a welcome to the Draconis Combine and the heartfelt wish for success from the Coordinator himself." He then bowed to Colonel Stirling.

  Stirling returned
the bow with one of her own. "Konnichi-wa, Sho-sa Parkensen-san," she said in practiced yet strained Japanese. "I am Colonel Andrea Stirling and these are my officers." One by one she introduced them, and they too exchanged bows, though Loren thought everyone but Parkensen looked a little uncomfortable with the Combine tradition.

  Parkensen lowered himself into a chair while the two officers who'd escorted him shut the mess door behind them. The Sho-sa was silent for a long pair of minutes as he opened his battered leather case and pulled out some hardcopy. Then he looked back up at the Highlander officers and put his hands on the table. "It is my understanding that we jump within the hour?"

  "That's right," Colonel Stirling replied evenly. Parkensen's rank was the equivalent of Loren's, and he could tell that she was setting the tone for her relationship with the PSL as if it were part of some odd ritual mating dance. "Our next hop will take us right into the Periphery."

  "Yes, I am keenly aware of that, Colonel," Parkensen replied. "I have brought with me the latest intelligence updates and jump-point data for Clan operations in the area. We have confirmed the pirate-point calculations for our arrival, but have nothing new on the Wayside system itself.

  The pirate point we recommend is very close, requiring only a two-day burn insystem."

  Jump points were those coordinates in a system where a starship could instantly materialize in space from another point up to thirty light years distant. The two most commonly used points in every system were the zenith and nadir points, above and below the plane of the orbiting planets and their star, and usually days, if not weeks, from the planets themselves. Pirate points were different. They were nonstandard points that permitted JumpShips to arrive much closer to the planet and without as much risk of detection by the planetary defenders. Even the slightest error in the calibrations could result in a misjump, and the various attendant disasters.

  "Major Jaffray, perhaps you'd like to show our associate what we've put together?" the Colonel said.

  Loren placed a small circular device on the table. It was six centimeters thick, black and roughly the size of a plate, with several obvious control surfaces. He took out a handheld remote control, pointed it at the holographic display unit, and turned it on. Above the projection device a light came into being in front of them, taking the form of Wayside V spinning slowly for the entire room to see. It was not a gridline construction, but appeared just like a very large globe almost a meter in size.

  Parkensen stared at the globe and then looked at his notes. "I notice you've given names to the geography." His dry tone made it hard to tell what he thought of that, but it wasn't hard to imagine.

  Wayside had three bodies of water, labeled as seas. Loren had given them names his people could easily remember, borrowing the surnames of former Highlander colonels. He'd done the same with the three former continents. The large C-shaped one in the southern hemisphere he'd named Kurita Prime. In the middle of the "C," where the ocean floor had once been, was the intended Fusilier landing zone.

  The largest continent, tagged as New Scotland, was mostly in the northern hemisphere and was covered with mountains and petrified forests. It was shaped almost like a hand with four twisted and contorted fingers reaching for the McCormack Sea just west of it. To the east of New Scotland was the Kearny Sea. On its southern shore, in land that had once been kilometers under the long-lost oceans of Wayside V, was the Smoke Jaguar base. Just southwest of that was the aerospace strip that had been under construction at the time the last surveillance was made.

  Below the Kearny Sea in the southern hemisphere was the continent Loren had named New Northwind. It looked like a malformed starfish, with seven uneven arms stretching outward. One of the arms reached toward New Scotland, forming a tight corridor he'd named the Isthmus of Bannockburn, commemorating the infamous Scottish battle. The isthmus was a steep and jagged valley, with sharp drop-offs from the airless continents to the rocky terrain below. South of it, between New Northwind and Kurita Prime was all that was left of a once-mighty ocean, now nothing more than a shallow sea. On the Highlander map it was labeled the Marion Sea, commemorating the Highlander Colonel who'd commanded MacLeod's Regiment decades before.

  "Colonel Stirling suggested that naming the terrain features would make them easier for our people to identify."

  "I assume you do not expect these names to remain after we take the planet from the Jaguars?"

  "Not unless you want them to," Stirling said coolly.

  Parkensen ignored the comment. "I looked over the preliminary report you transmitted and have a grasp of your proposed plan, but the distance we'll have to move from our LZ to the attack point is considerable."

  "That's true," Stirling said, "but if we end up facing anything more than a second-line Clan garrison Cluster, that distance will buy us the time we need to weather their assault.

  "During the drop, our ships will deploy a number of satellites with both active and passive sensory gear. The active sats will give us the best picture of what we're facing, but if the Clan garrison has reinforced aerospace elements, the sats will most likely be the first thing taken out. However, just a few minutes after landing, our regimental intelligence boys and girls should be able to paint us an accurate picture of what's down there. We'll also issue a batchall in hopes they'll tell us their defense."

  Parkensen shook his head. "You must have misinterpreted some of our data. The Jaguars are no longer responding to batchalls by us. They believe we lack honor and are corrupting their traditions to our own advantage." The batchall was the Clan ritual by which an attacker issued his challenge of combat to an enemy.

  Loren thought that made sense. On the Combine planet of Wolcott the Jaguars had lost the planet in an ambush based on deceptive information given them by the Combine force in the course of the batchall.

  "The Clans will not respond, but your own intel shows that they respect such challenges from warriors a lot more than from those they consider nothing more than worthless bandits," Loren noted.

  He paused the rotating holographic image and pressed another control button. The landing zone in the middle of the massive lagoon of Kurita Prime lit up bright red on the map.

  "Our primary plan of attack calls for us to move along the northern shores of the Marion Sea," Colonel Stirling said. A red arrow traced the path the Fusiliers would follow. "This is the tough part because the old ocean bed we'll be traveling over is a jumble of rocks with pits of sand. And don't be deceived by these straits over here. They look wide on the map—maybe some forty or fifty kilometers across—but the only area we can actually maneuver through is a corridor of steep rock formations that's barely two or three kilometers wide.

  "The rest of the isthmus is virtually impassible. We can end up pinched in there very quickly, but this is where I hope to engage the Jaguars first. We hit them hard, then circle around them and move up onto New Northwind continent, traverse the peninsula that forms the isthmus, then climb back down into the old seabed again to hit them in their rear and flank. Then we press on to their base and lay seige to it."

  Eldensen was shaking his head as he looked at the map. "You would move your regiment up onto the continental surface? According to the data I've seen, the air up there is so thin it's not even breathable. And it's bitter cold. Your vehicles and infantry wouldn't last five minutes."

  "Your assessment is correct, Sho-sa," Stirling continued. "I'm counting on our vehicles to hold the isthmus on the ground while we cross the peninsula with our BattleMech forces. After that phase, we'll split our forces to strike at the aerodrome and the Jag base."

  Loren shut off the image of the globe and replaced it with that of the Smoke Jaguar base. The base sat at the bottom of a massive basin that flowed into the salt waters of the Kearny Sea, which offered it protection from that direction. Surrounding it on its other three sides were steep hills that would be difficult to maneuver. Every time Loren looked at the map he cursed how easy the site was to defend. Anyone who hoped to rush
the base would be totally exposed, while the defenders had the advantage of natural defenses. Fortunately, that wasn't the plan.

  "We will use primarily a two-pronged approach against the base. The Jags have dug themselves into a hole, more or less, by having their base butt up to the sea. Despite the apparent advantages, that weakens their defenses. The natural fortification offers them protection, but they're literally blind to any activity outside the basin."

  "Your plan is full of risks," Parkensen replied.

  "That it is, Sho-sa. It's the bloody nature of the business we're in," Stirling said.

  7

  Wildcat Station

  Wayside V (Wildcat)

  Deep Periphery

  2 June 3058

  Galaxy Commander Devon Osis stood at the top of the DropShip exit ramp, taking his first look at Wildcat, the planet where Tau Galaxy was currently based. The only things of note in the desolate scene were the sickly green of the sky and how much thinner the air was here than the recycled atmosphere he'd been breathing on the trip to this remote outpost. Standing at attention at the foot of the ramp, framed by the surrounding warehouses and buildings of Wildcat Station, were the officers of the new Galaxy, his Galaxy. He felt a rush of pride.

  Descending the ramp slowly, he examined the faces and crisp gray dress uniforms of his command staff. A chill breeze buffeted him as he approached the first warrior standing at attention below. As befitting a Jaguar warrior, Devon Osis also wore his gray dress uniform proudly, and held his back straight and head high. The light from the orange sun shimmered hazily on the surface of the nearby sea, reminding him how little he'd learned that was pleasing about this world of Wildcat. From what he knew and could see, the place offered only one advantage—isolation. From here, he could plan the destruction of the Nova Cats once and for all.

  And Tau Galaxy was the perfect instrument of that destruction. It consisted of three Clusters of OmniMech forces. Two of those, the 101st Attack Cluster and the 250th Assault Cluster, were full Clusters; the other was the much smaller 25th Strike Cluster. He knew them by their true names: the Bloodied Claws, the Mist Pouncers, and the Deathstrike Cluster.