12 - The Field of Battle

Shuttlecraft Hecate, Inbound Vector 261-Alpha
New Exford System, Lyran Commonwealth
29 July 3053

    “If the estimates are correct… the Jaguars should be on the ground right about now,” Toshiro Matsunaka says.
    Anna nods. “We will know the results of the Trial soon enough.”
    She can see that he is having trouble staying still for any length of time. He wants to be down there, in a ’Mech, taking part. That is a sentiment she can understand; after all, it is the particular purpose for her existence. Instead, he is stuck aboard this shuttle, still days out from New Exford, unable to have any more effect upon the outcome of the battle that is about to commence.

    The choice of ’Mechs to fight this ‘Trial’ had been wholly automatic. Brigitte hadn’t even really thought about it. The machines that took part in the Parakoila operation are heading out to the exercise ranges to meet the Jaguar Dragoons.
    Marcus, Krysta, and the rest of the Militia jockeys that had signed aboard hadn’t liked it. Neither had Dawn Kester, Stephen Billings, or Malky Duncan. There just hasn’t been enough time for any of them to get up to speed with their machines, either the rebuilt ’Mechs from Parakoila, or the ‘new’ models assigned to Dawn, Stephen, or Malky.
    Brigitte rolls her eyes as her Axeman reaches the gatehouse leading onto the Caldwell Combat Range. If only complaints and protests were all she had to contend with! She checks her tactical display to make sure that the rest of the company is accounted for. Not that it’s necessary; if there were a problem, Michael Holznecht back in the DropShip’s CIC would notify her. Still, it’s become an ingrained habit for her.
    The tactical plan she had sketched out quickly on the CIC’s big map tablet has been loaded into each BattleMech’s computer. She didn’t have time to come up with anything complicated, and she’s always been a big believer in keeping battle plans as simple as possible. Complex all too often becomes impossible once the bullets and beams start flying.
    The Jaguars want Katsumi. Fine. She becomes the lure, hanging back at the centre of the Norns’ formation. The rest of the mercenary ’Mechs spread out north and south of her, and engage the Clanners as they close in. Brigitte’s orders are plain: two, three, or more ’Mechs will focus fire on each Smoke Jaguar machine. Throw enough fire at them and they’ll go down.
    The area that she, Ben, and Tyler have picked out is just north of a small lake. Rolling hills and patches of dense trees will limit line-of-sight and manoeuvrability. Several small streams feeding down into the lake have created regions of soft, waterlogged ground that can affect a ’Mech’s foot speed. Taken all together, these factors will neutralise the devastating range advantages enjoyed by the Clan OmniMechs.
    She hopes.
    Olafsdottír realises that this will be the first time she faces a Clan OmniMech force since… Skandia. The Steel Vipers on Parakoila don’t really count; their Naga artillery ’Mechs were highly specialised designs that were not suited to ’Mech-on-’Mech fighting. Hopefully I’ve learned something since Skandia, she says to herself.
    “Skipper?” Ben Gleason’s voice cuts into her thoughts. “You say something?”
    Brigitte blinks, annoyed. She didn’t realise that she’d muttered that loudly enough for her neurohelmet’s inset microphone to pick up. She opens a private link to Gleason’s Clint on the command channel. “Nothing, Ben. Just wondering if I’ve picked the right ’Mechs for the job.”
    “I’d say you have,” is his reply. “Respectfully, Marc and the others need some more time to get fully comfortable with their rides, and you’d be worrying about them if you brought them into this fight, maybe even getting distracted at the wrong moment. You can’t afford that… and neither can the rest of us.”
    “Thanks, Sergeant. I was starting to second-guess myself there.”
    The Clint pivots its head module slightly to the side, as if the machine were throwing her Axeman a wink. “That’s the mark of a good commander,” Ben tells her. “Captain Patrick always stopped to check that he’d made the right call. Just a damned shame he didn’t make it back from the Antares frack-fest.”
    “You’ll have to show me just what went wrong there. So that we won’t end up in the same mess.”
    “I’ve still got the battle footage. So have Tammy and Rainy. We’ll talk it over in the CIC over a few beers.” The Clint raises its left arm – the one with the hand – and points. “That’s gotta wait. Company’s coming.”
    The feed relayed from Lodestar confirms it: a small DropShip, roughly the size and shape of a standard Leopard, is descending a few kilometres away, to the west of the Norns’ combat force.
    “Got it.” Brigitte switches over to the company channel. “Okay, boys and girls, it’s show time. Spread out. Cover each other… and don’t give these bastards so much as half a chance.”
    The overlapping confirmations from the other ’Mechs fill her earphones.

    As the bay doors slide up out of her way, Juno gets her first sight of New Exford. All right, it is through the armoured canopy of her Nova, but the vista is far more appealing than the dreary region of Asgard to which she had been posted.
    So very different from Huntress, she reflects as she throttles up and steers the Omni out of the Snow Leopard’s nose bay. None of the raw-edged mountain ridges or sweltering jungles in which she and her sibs had struggled and strained…
    Juno checks her display to make sure that her Starmates are deploying properly. She feels slightly out of balance, and she is not sure why. As soon as she had realised that she was letting her exercise regimen slip, she had resumed and redoubled it. She had ordered extra simulator time for all of them, and the Techs had given each of their machines a complete overhaul.
    So why does she still feel uneasy?
    It is probably down to the nagging suspicion that this Brigitte has outwitted her, she decides. That a lowly Spheroid freebirth would dare to…
    Monique is a freebirth…
    Juno winces behind her visor. Since that night spent with the Scientist, Juno has done all she can to avoid Monique. Not at all easy, aboard a DropShip as small as the Snow Leopard. Once or twice, she has almost taken Silver to one side and told her all about the encounter… but she has not. Silver would not understand. Stravag, but Juno does not understand it herself!
    Waking up with Monique in her arms, so warm and soft, Juno had spent maybe an hour doing nothing but drift there in micro-gravity, her cheek pressed to the woman’s bare shoulder, listening to her breathing. It had been far more intimate, more personal, than their coupling. How that could ever be, the Warrior cannot fathom.
    How could she explain this to Silver? She cannot.
    “Check in,” she says over the Star channel. “Any malfunctions?”
    She gets a chorus of negs, and feels herself relax. Slightly.
    “Form up. The Trial awaits us, Warriors. Today we serve the Founder’s will.”

    Heat blooms. Seismic readings. Here they come…
    Katsumi Kuramoto is glad no one is there in the cockpit to see just how scared she is, or how much her palms are sweating. At least this time she remembered to use the heads before she saddled up.
    She catches a glimpse of some angular shape, painted a pale grey, moving at speed past a stand of trees. The holographic display floating before her flashes, and creates a complete computerised outline around the half-seen ’Mech. In a flash, the Dragon’s computer has identified it and brought the basic operating specs up on her secondary screen. It’s a Ryoken, a medium OmniMech much favoured by the Smoke Jaguars. It can move faster than her own ’Mech, and can match the foot speed of Ben Gleason’s team of machines.
    Another grey shape appears. Flash. A slightly smaller Omni, a Black Hawk. Almost as fast as the Ryoken… and loaded with advanced lasers and jump jets.
    Katsumi really, really hopes that Brigitte’s plan will work.

    “Here we go,” says Sergeant Gleason in her earphones. Amber Tyler casts one last look at her status display and prepares to fight. Blackie’s snout lowers to maintain his balance as she turns him to the left. There’s a steep slope directly ahead of her, with a number of tall saplings populating it. She hops Blackie to the left, then the right, as the first few salvos of missiles streak out from the machines belonging to Sharyl and her Dad.
    Okay… Smashing and crashing its way through the undergrowth, swatting aside a tree, is one of the Jaguar Omnis. A Ryoken. It starts blasting away with a monster-sized autocannon built into its left arm, the rounds tracking past Amber, aiming at Olds’ Commando. A string of small explosions tear up the ground behind the fast-moving scout ’Mech. Cluster rounds. Some of them hit.
    Amber brings Blackie to a full stop, lines up her crosshairs, and fires. Sparks and smoke erupt from the Jaguar ’Mech’s thigh as her lasers hit, a moment before her first flight of SRMs arrives. Chunks of armour are blown clean off the OmniMech’s frame.
    Even as the pilot turns to address this attack, Olds exploits the opening. Ducking and turning to his right, he gets a clear shot at the Ryoken’s right flank. He unloads his entire armoury at a range of less than one hundred metres. The damage is extensive.
    “Welcome to the Inner Sphere!” It sounds like Rainy’s voice on the company channel as the Omni reels like a drunkard hitting fresh air, a moment before the spindly bird-legged machine crashes down in a heap.

    Juno marks the target… a Dragon… a moment before something smashes into the side of her Nova like the blow from some angry god. She struggles to maintain control, and manages it… just barely. The gyro systems flash a warning for an instant before they can compensate.
    She glances at the tactical display and snarls in anger. Her formation has come unravelled, broken up by the terrain. She has no clear line of sight to either Carson or Kyle, and only Silver’s Nova is still within effective distance to lend her covering fire.
    Juno reduces speed and turns to face her foe. A jolt of adrenaline fires into her system as she recognises the massive Spheroid machine striding towards her. It is an Axeman, taller and heavier than her Nova, and armed with a massive array of close-range weapons… not least of which is the hatchet in its right hand.
    She opens fire, careful not to overdo the lasers. The Nova, in its primary configuration, can overheat very quickly if it fires all of its lasers. Inexperienced pilots have literally got themselves killed by shutting themselves down in the midst of battle and becoming a stationary target for their foes.
    Her lasers lash out and catch the oncoming Axeman, cutting white-hot scars across its chest and along its arms. The ’Mech seems not to notice, shrugging off the hits as if they were rainfall. A flash of insight tells Juno that this is the leader’s machine an eye blink before the shoulder-mounted autocannon fires.
    For a terrible moment, she is back at Dinju Pass. Her Nova is halted in mid-step and flung to the ground, jagged bits of armour plating flying off in all directions. Her head slams into the brackets on the left side of her command couch and stars explode inside her mind. If not for the protection of her neurohelmet, she is groggily sure that her brains would have been dashed out.

    “You okay, Skipper?”
    “I’m good, Tyler. Just some paper cuts. Keep on at that fracker up there on the slope.”
    “Got it,” he replies. Tyler’s feeling a little uneasy, and it’s all to do with the reattached leg on his third-hand Crusader. Delaney has gone over the whole machine a centimetre at a time, checking for any more stress fractures or signs of fatigue in the Crusader’s skeletal structure, but Tyler’s still not quite sure he can trust the ’Mech.
    The Black Hawk he and Horst have engaged seems to be unsure which one of them to fire at first. Probably all upset that we both shot at him, Tyler notes. He snorts. That sort of honour-code shit works fine in the holovids. Not in the real world.
    He gets a weapons lock and launches. The range is a bit close for his ’Mech’s big LRM packs, but it’s just within effective distance for his Streak SRM racks. A green light and a steady tone in his ear tell him they’ve acquired the battered Omni as well.
    “There you go,” he breathes as he thumbs the firing button for the hip-mounted Streak tubes. All four warheads augur in and detonate against the Black Hawk’s hull, one of them cracking open the side of the cockpit canopy.
    The machine misses a step and stumbles, crashing head over heels down the slope towards the Norns ’Mechs. A laser misfires, torching some undergrowth as the Clan OmniMech reaches level ground with a tooth-rattling slam.

    “Olds! You all right?”
    “Yeah, Sarge, just a couple holes. No big deal. Watch yourself…”
    “No shit,” Ben mutters as the Ryoken recovers its footing. The Omni starts hosing laser and autocannon fire at his oncoming ’Mech. He grimaces as a hail of anti-’Mech cluster rounds rips away at Woody’s reinforced hull. The venerable medium machine weathers the attack well, and he locks onto the Jaguar with the Clint’s main gun.
    Say what you like about the Free Worlds League, but they do know how to make lasers. The Tronel large pulse laser blasts a storm of energy into the Ryoken’s main torso, just behind and to the right of the Omni’s cockpit. A flash of white-hot coolant erupting from the molten breach tells Ben he’s hit something vital.
    “Thanks!” Olds’ Commando braces its feet wide apart, raises its arms, and launches again. Four short-ranged missiles from the right forearm, a laser blast from the left, and six more SRMs from the chest-mounted rack. The results are nothing short of devastating for the Jaguar ’Mech. Four SRMs explode across the cockpit, three more rip open the centre torso, and the laser strike gouges deep into the heart of the OmniMech. The machine reels as if it’s trying to run on ice, before falling again. The head section crashes against a rock outcrop, smashing what little remains of the canopy.
    Amber’s Raven finishes it off with near-surgical precision. Her medium lasers slice into the tangle of metal and wiring exposed by Olds’ SRM volley and there is a sudden outpouring of smoke from the open wound. Woody’s scanners confirm what Ben’s experienced eye has already told him: the Ryoken’s engine core and gyro systems have both been turned into glowing slag. The machine’s dead. One down.
    That still leaves the rest of his pals to contend with, and Gleason has no illusions about it being a walkover, even with strength of numbers on their side.

    A warning tone from her primary display tells Juno that one of her Star’s ’Mechs is down with enough damage to render it totally inoperable. She has no time to see which one it is.
    She swallows; tasting blood as she does so, and concentrates on bringing her Nova back onto its feet.
    She succeeds just in time to meet the descending edge of the Axeman’s hatchet. Almost a ton of armour shatters on the side of the OmniMech, and it’s all Juno can do to keep the machine from going down again. As it is, the Nova lurches unsteadily sideways away from the bigger ’Mech, with splintered segments of armour flaking and clattering loose in its wake.
    “Carson! Silver! Report!” She barely recognises her own voice; she has almost bitten clean through her tongue.
    “Kyle is down! I do not know how bad–!” An explosion swallows Silver’s voice. When the link resumes, Silver sounds concussed. “Oh… I am…”
    Juno looks around, and sees her sib’s Nova is down, minus an arm. Sparks flash and spit from several rents torn in its squat hull. The remaining arm is waving uncertainly.
    Another warning tone sounds. Accusingly. Oliver’s Nova has been brought down, its fusion engine snuffed out by missile strikes. Collapsed in on itself, the Omni is huddled before the Spheroid machine that scored the killing hit, a Dervish.
    “Star Commander Juno,” booms a woman’s voice over a ’Mech’s external speakers. “This is Brigitte Olafsdottír.” The Axeman raises its left arm and points directly at Juno’s machine.
    Something inside her breaks at that moment. “Aff, Brigitte of the Norns?”
    “Stand down your ’Mechs. No more of your people need suffer today. The Trial is concluded.”
    Juno coughs. There are passages in the Clan’s Remembrance that speak of Smoke Jaguars that have refused to accept defeat, that have fought on in the face of inescapable destruction. They forced their victors to kill them.
    She realises that she does not want to be one of them.
    She opens the Star’s voice channel. “Stand down. Shut down your systems.”
    “Commander…”
    She is very tired suddenly. “Carson, just… do it. She is right. The Trial is fought and done.” Juno switches back over to the open frequency. “Captain Brigitte, I, Juno of Clan Smoke Jaguar, do stand by the terms of our bargain. I surrender my command, my ’Mechs, and my DropShip to you as isorla.”

    Adele Crayford wrinkles her nose at the acrid, stinging bouquet of smells that greets her as the skimmer sets down close by the blackened heap of mangled metal that Jerry tells her is a Jaguar OmniMech. Soot. Burnt composite. Ozone and expended propellants. She lifts the mask hanging on a strap around her neck and fits it over her nose and mouth before she climbs out of the skimmer’s passenger seat.
    Looming over the downed Clan machine is Tammy’s Wolfhound. Standing guard in case of any funny business. Adele shoulders her medical bag and picks her way around the ’Mech-sized footprints stomped into the ground surface. Jerry Bishop finishes shutting down the skimmer and follows her.
    “What a mess,” Adele says as she hauls herself up onto the side of the ruined Omni and peers into the cockpit. Jerry, still at ground level, shades his eyes as he looks up.
    “What’s the word? Backboard or a black bag, Doc?”
    “Backboard,” Adele calls down, reaching in to check for a pulse. She finds one. Just. “This guy’s pretty messed up, but he’s still breathing.” She debates taking off his neurohelmet, and decides against. Better to get him into a medical bay and see if he’s taken a skull or neck fracture there. Gonna have to type him for plasma and make sure his airway’s clear…
    She taps her earpiece transceiver. “Val? Adele. Can those Clanners who took some knocks wait? This one’s gonna need all my attention for the moment. And can you ask Tammy to lend a hand in a minute? I’ll need to get this guy – what’s left of him – out.”
    “Okay, Doc. Gimme a minute on all of that.”
    Adele ducks her head underneath the buckled canopy framework and squeezes into the tilted-over cockpit. Every last screen, button, and display is deader than Stefan the Usurper. She ignores all of that, focusing instead on her patient as she snaps on a pair of gloves.
    She swiftly establishes that most of the problem is above his waistline. Unresponsive… thready pulse…airway seems fine… loss of blood from all these lacerations. He needs saline…
    “November Actual to Crayford. Doc, you there?”
    “What do you want, Skipper? Sort of busy.”
    “Tyler told me what you need. I’ve got a medevac chopper on its way from Woodborough. ETA fifteen minutes. Is that any help to you?”
    Adele grins, even though she knows Brigitte can’t see her. “That’s great, I should have him ready to move by then.”