PROLOGUE

Grady Plateau

Somerset

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

13 June 3071

I thought it would have been Wolves.

Star Captain Greta Hazen was warrior enough to admire the clean lines of the enemy formation. She’d seen enough parade formations; trained enough fledgling warriors. She knew the purpose of drill and discipline, knew the value of that discipline on the battlefield.

The ten white Clan OmniMechs standing in a line abreast across the soft lowlands of the Grady Plateau were light and fast. None was heavier than forty tons; it would take two of them to equal the mass of her own sixty-five ton Hellbringer. But she had still always thought she would meet her death against Clan Wolf. I fought on Tukayyid. I fought in REVIVAL.

I did not survive these twenty years to die against an Ice Hellion.

The 452nd Garrison Binary was Greta’s last command. She had known that when she accepted the post. It was a step up from solahma duty, but not even the horrific losses the Clan had taken in the last twenty years could overcome the sheer remorseless advance of time and age. She was too old for a frontline Cluster. The Jade Falcons were not the Inner Sphere, and there would be no glorious death in the throes of decrepitude for Greta, as there had been for the Black Widow. She would earn her death here.

The chronometer advanced down to the agreed-upon time and passed it. She held her Hellbringer steady, certain that the other four ’Mechs of her Star would be doing the same. The Hellions’ rushing attacks were always swift and sudden—the slaps of children throwing tantrums—but they’d soon sort themselves out. The Hellions had a disgusting view of zellbrigen, allowing their warriors simultaneous attacks in the first round. The warrior who struck the first blow against an enemy was allowed the honor of engaging them, but until that first blow was struck Greta could expect fire from as many as five Ice Hellion ’Mechs. 

Not that she was worried. The Hellbringer’s armor would take the first shot, and then she’d have her target. It irked her sense of propriety to allow the Hellions that first shot, but to do otherwise chanced removing the dueling rules of zellbrigen and opening the Trial to a general melee. In that arena, the lighter, faster Hellion Stars would win. Individually, her solahma warriors had a chance against their opponents; with the Hellions working as a pack, they’d have little hope. Not that it matters. If we win this Trial, another Star will just challenge us. There is no way my ten ’Mechs are holding Somerset. Not with an entire Cluster in orbit.

In a way she felt impotent, and the incongruity of the emotion made her smile. A BattleMech like her Hellbringer knew no equal save another ’Mech. Fusion-powered, with missiles, lasers, and high-speed autocannons, it could level an entire world, given enough time and ammunition. It could annihilate a city block in moments. ’Mechs were the pinnacle of mankind’s ground-based warmaking, and she controlled sixty-five tons of one.

The Hellions have so many more tons. And they are younger. In the age-obsessed Clans, younger warriors were more fierce. Few Clansmen lived long enough to accrue the experience that made older warriors wily and dangerous. 

Few lived as long as Greta had.

Three of the Hellion ’Mechs appeared to be targeting her. She let her heads-up display settle over the leading ’Mech, a twenty-five-ton Mist Lynx. She set the Hellbringer’s feet, wondering if it would be missiles or beams. Either way, the Mist Lynx was out in front, and if the stupid Hellion wanted to bet twenty-five tons against sixty-five, Greta was not going to dissuade her. A corner of her eye, long-accustomed to the observation necessary in a successful Star Captain, gauged the rest of the Hellions’ intentions. It appeared as if she and MechWarrior Harald, in the decrepit, twice-rebuilt Conjurer, were the initial targets. That was all right; Harald was a skilled gunner, and his ’Mech’s pulse lasers would give him an edge in targeting the speeding Hellions.

Her radio crackled to life. “Star Captain Greta Hazen.” She looked down. The signal was coming from the Mist Lynx in the lead. “I am Star Commander Julius of the Taneys. I challenge you to a duel of warriors.”

Greta considered. She had no qualms about fighting the Mist Lynx, of course, but she was wary. Why would Julius abrogate his peoples’ own rituals? Zellbrigen certainly allowed him to challenge her, but the Hellions were famous for their charges. Many other Clansmen—sometimes even Greta, if she thought about it—assumed the Ice Hellions, who favored lighter, faster ’Mechs than most Clans, used the charge as an excuse to break zellbrigen. Dueling rarely favored the lighter machine, unless the terrain was somehow in the lighter ’Mech’s favor. Forcing the melee let the Hellions work as a team.

And that let them win.

It does not matter. Greta keyed her com. There is no way I am going to keep this world anyway. “I accept,” she said, and cut the channel. The Mist Lynx kept coming, running flat-out, but its companions slowed. The range fell to just over a kilometer. Greta squeezed her controls again, waiting. She started the Hellbringer walking forward, not so much anxious to begin combat, but just to get the sixty-five tons moving.

A part of her mind ignored the coming Trial. She knew how to fight a ’Mech. The duel would take her entire concentration in a moment, but until just then she could think, and her eyes were seeing not only the HUD and the landscape and the blue-painted Ice Hellion OmniMech, but also a map of the Falcon occupation zone. If the Hellions had struck here, at Somerset, then they were most likely trying to carve out an occupation zone of their own from the worlds the Falcons had taken and held from the Federated Commonwealth, the Lyran Alliance, and the Steel Viper Clan. A kernel of anger burned to life in Greta’s gut.

She had fought to earn those worlds. In blood and tears and sibmates, Greta Hazen had paid for Somerset and the other worlds. That the Hellions—perhaps not the weakest of Kerensky’s Clans, but among that number—wanted to take those worlds was an affront to her honor. Not the Clan’s honor—Turkina feared no Hellion—but to Greta’s.

The PPC-tipped arms of the Hellbringer came up as the Mist Lynx hurtled into range. She brought her awareness into the cockpit, focusing on the speeding ’Mech and the coming combat. To live or die the next few minutes were all that mattered.

But still, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind, the Khan will make them pay. They will not hold Somerset for long. She remembered a Watch report she’d seen, as senior Falcon officer on Somerset, some weeks ago, claiming the Ice Hellions were coming. She’d dismissed it, and that dismissal marked Greta’s shame. But the Falcon would recover, and the next generation of trueborn warriors would reap the Falcon’s revenge.

Because ready or not, the Falcons had known the Hellions were coming.

The distance between the two ’Mechs dipped beneath the PPC’s maximum range. Greta squeezed her primary triggers. Both PPCs flared into coruscating blue-white hell-beams.

Greta Hazen knew she was defeated.

She smiled.

CHAPTER ONE

Overlord C-class DropShip Rapacious

Close Orbit, Bone Norman

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

14 June 3071

Connor Rood did not believe in his mission.

But that did not mean he wouldn’t carry it out to the best of his ability. 

“My Khan?”

Connor turned from the strategic display he’d been studying. It showed the Periphery-edge holdings of Clan Jade Falcon in the Inner Sphere.

Star Captain Ephraim Cage, Rapacious’ captain, stood in the hatchway, one hand on the frame. The other was held behind his back. “The Falcons have accepted our communications.” He brought his hand out from behind his back and gestured. “You can send your batchall.” The small man stepped back out of the hatch, clearing the way.

Rood followed him. He stood almost fifteen centimeters taller than the Star Captain, though Connor was not a big man. Ephraim Cage was not one of the aerospace fighter pilot’s phenotype, with that group’s withered limbs and overlarge heads. He had been born in a MechWarrior sibko on Hector but tested into the aerospace corps early. He had the pilot’s build from ancient Terran times, small and wiry and bound with surprising strength. His promotion to command of Rapacious, the DropShip of the Lithe Kill Keshik, command Cluster of Clan Ice Hellion’s Beta Galaxy, marked his favor with the Clan’s leadership.

Connor smiled as Ephraim turned to lead him toward the bridge. It marks his favor with me. Unlike most Clan warriors, but very much like his saKhan, Ephraim Cage was one of the uncanny few Clansmen who could remove their honor from the equation when pressed. Who saw combat for the task that it was, and practiced it with a craftsman’s care. Connor Rood had made his reputation and gained his rank approaching combat like a craftsman, unClanlike as that attitude might have been.

Rapacious’ bridge was a hive of activity as the DropShip settled into a low, powered orbit. Connor could never have walked in without the pseudo gravity provided by constant acceleration. The Overlord C was only one of many Ice Hellion DropShips falling into orbit, though Rapacious was the only one that mattered. Bone Norman would fall to the 200th Attack Cluster—to the Lithe Kill—and to saKhan Connor Rood.

Connor stepped into the DropShip’s small holotank and signaled the technician manning the console. The air around him shimmered for a moment. A man in Jade Falcon green appeared before him, younger than Connor had expected to find on such a backwater planet. The hologram flickered for a moment, no doubt the work of a stray meteor or cosmic ray, but Connor ignored it. He let the Falcon’s eyes adjust, watched as the Star Colonel’s eyes went to the insignia on Rood’s lapels. Connor waited until the Falcon’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly. 

“I am Khan Connor Rood of Clan Ice Hellion,” Connor announced.

The Star Colonel met his stare. He was tall, a centimeter or two below two meters, and fit, with a strength-trainer’s shoulders. His brown hair was trimmed short and he wore a moustache-less beard. “Star Colonel Idris,” the Falcon said, “of the Eleventh Provisional Garrison Cluster.” The Falcon crossed his arms. “I see the Watch was correct.”

“The Watch?”

The Falcon nodded. “We heard your fledglings were coming this way,” Idris said. “I see I have the honor of speaking to their saKhan.” He waited, but Connor said nothing. “Do you require assistance, Khan Rood?”

“I require Bone Norman,” was all Rood said.

“Pardon?”

Now Rood grinned. “Clan Ice Hellion claims the world of Bone Norman,” he said. “I and the 200th Attack Cluster challenge you to a Trial of Possession for this world.” The Hellion Watch had little information on the Inner Sphere, despite years of diligent effort, but Rood was confident the Eleventh PGC was the only Cluster on the planet. He’d come here himself, with his entire Cluster, because the Eleventh was the only formed Cluster in one garrison station in the back-beyond of the Falcon OZ. The rest were spread across worlds penny-ante, in Binaries or even single Stars. “With what forces will you defend it, Star Colonel?”

“You have named your bid already,” Idris said.

Rood inclined his head. A normal batchall simply stated the challenge and asked the defenses, before bidding took place. Rood had bid for the assault with the Lithe Kill months ago, during the long transit from Nouveaux Paris to Bone Norman. “With. What. Forces?”

Idris straightened and dropped his arms to his sides. Anger filled his eyes. “The Eleventh PGC holds Bone Norman for Turkina,” he said. “I will not dishonor any of my warriors by denying them a chance to kill upstart Hellions.”

“Very good, Star Colonel,” Rood said. “And the Circle?”

Idris smiled. “No doubt you will want room to run your little toy ’Mechs around, Khan Rood. We will name the continent of Hapsburg our circle, and grant you safcon to the surface.”

Rood fought to keep his expression even. Safcon was safe conduct to the surface; Idris had just bid away an aerial defense and allowed the Hellions a safe landing. He worried little for the cast-off equipment a provisional garrison Cluster could put in the air, but he hadn’t hoped to avoid combat altogether.

“I will claim your defeated warriors as bondsmen,” Rood said. “Your equipment—and any military equipment—will become my isorla.”

Idris laughed. “Will you also be using BattleMechs and shooting at us, Khan Rood? I am familiar with the Trial of Possession, being so much closer to the sibko than one of your advanced age.” He sketched a half bow. “Well-bargained, sir.”

Rood inclined his head. “Well-bargained and done, Star Colonel,” he said. “We will see you on the ground.” He gestured to the technician, who cut the signal. An instant later Rood was alone in the holotank. He stood still for a moment, replaying the conversation in his head. The young Falcon’s bravado was commendable; it showed he wasn’t afraid, despite the radar returns of enough Hellion DropShips in orbit to destroy his garrison Cluster several times over.

I see the Watch was correct.

Rood closed his eyes, remembering the exact inflection in the Star Colonel’s voice. If the Jade Falcon Watch—what passed for intelligence services among the Clans—had known of the pending Hellion assault, why had they not reinforced the planetary garrisons along the Periphery border? But they had known—the Star Colonel had admitted it.

Rood opened his eyes and stepped out of the holotank. He stopped at the entrance and looked to the technician sitting at the console. “Your name?”

The technician looked startled. “K-Kelton, sir.” He glanced around the bridge, and then back at the Ice Hellion Khan’s face.

“Kelton. That was fine work.” He ducked his chin in a nod and stepped away, the technician’s name and face filed away. Several of the watchstanders across the bridge glanced at him, no doubt surreptitiously, they hoped. 

Rood ignored them. It cost him nothing to learn the technician’s name, but that technician would remember that he took the time. There might be a time when he needed a communications technician to step a centimeter or two beyond the bounds of his duty. That small action would be enough for Rood to secure that centimeter, and it would plant the seed of trust in Kelton’s companions.

“Success, my Khan?” Ephraim Cage asked.

Rood looked up. The Star Captain stood near the bridge commander’s shock frame, the enclosure that would hold him secure during high-g combat maneuvers. Most of the displays were folded down near the deck while not in use. Cage looked like a large child next to the contraption, but Rood knew from experience that once ensconced in his frame, Cage had few peers. He felt his eyebrows draw together at a sudden thought; might Cage be wasted on a DropShip?

“Do you like Rapacious, Ephraim?”

Cage frowned. “I am completely satisfied with the crew,” he said. “And the ship itself—“ he held up his hands, palms upward. “—has never given me cause to complain.”

Rood grinned. “Do you not wish a greater command?”

It was Cage’s turn to smile. “A JumpShip, my Khan?” He looked around the bridge, as if cataloging each station. “I prefer a ship with guns. Rapacious is enough for me, I think. She flies to the sound of guns.”

“So she does,” Rood said. He looked at the forward display, which showed the upper quadrant of Bone Norman’s atmosphere. “So she does,” he whispered. Then he blinked. “To answer your earlier question, Star Captain, aff. Success. The Falcons have granted us safcon to the surface. Plot a descent on Hapsburg, if you please.”

Cage inclined his head. When he looked up, he met Rood’s eyes. “Helm: plot descent Taney-Four.” He spoke without looking away from Rood. “We’ll begin our deorbit in approximately two hours, my Khan.”

Rood nodded back. Cage raised an eyebrow in question, but Rood made a small gesture. He needed to think. There was much to be examined, evaluated. The Falcons had known they were coming. What did that bode for their defense in the coming Trial? He grunted to himself. What does that mean for the invasion?

A lift took Rood to the small stateroom that was his aboard ship. It was larger than most shipboard cabins, but still austere. Space was always at a premium aboard a warship. As the primary transport for the Lithe Kill, Rapacious often hosted the Hellion saKhan. Before Connor Rood, this cabin had belonged to Sellen Cage, and she’d been even less impressed with decoration than Rood was. The walls were bare, painted an off-gray with stain-resistant paint. The desk was steel, the chair uncomfortable. The bunk even more so. 

A datacard on the desk bore nothing but the snarling Ice Hellion crest. Rood knew what was on it without loading it into the slot on the desktop. My orders. The thought made his mouth turn down in disgust, but he was far too much a warrior to let the snarl do more than whisper. He didn’t need to see the holo again. He knew the imagery by heart—every incautious, glory-hounding syllable of it.

Khan Raina Montose’s plan to carve out an Ice Hellion Occupation Zone from the one the Jade Falcon’s had claimed from the Inner Sphere was certainly audacious. Rood knew most of his sibmates—most Ice Hellions—were solidly behind the plan. It appealed to the sensibilities that made Ice Hellions what they were: swift strikers, dangerous coursers, and above all, decisive warriors. He knew Montose had conceived of the plan and implemented it without discussion; he hadn’t been privy to her thoughts until it was far too long along to fight. So he agreed, and threw his entire effort behind making the invasion a success.

In public, he supported the Khan’s position. The Ice Hellions would expand or die; that was the way of the Clans. There were few opportunities left among the Clan homeworlds, and what was there paled in comparison to the rich, open planets of the Inner Sphere. The Clans that had secured Inner Sphere occupation zones—the so-called Invader Clans—were strong beyond belief. If the Ice Hellions were to undo the last twenty years of reversals, they would need new possessions to do it.

In public, saKhan Connor Rood was an Ice Hellion born and bred, and utterly devoted to his Khan’s plan. As second-in-command of the entire Clan, he could do no less.

Here, in the private, austere cabin granted him on Rapacious, the man Connor Rood doubted.

Here, Connor Rood was afraid.

Red Stone Palace

Hapsburg, Bone Norman

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

14 June 3071

Star Colonel Idris of Clan Jade Falcon looked up as the Star Commander entered his small office. Bentley snapped to attention and saluted. He was young, seventeen years or so. His hairline was full, his muscles taut, his eyes haughty. Every centimeter the trueborn Clan warrior. Idris grimaced and waved at him to relax. “The message is sent, quiaff?”

“Aff, Star Colonel.” Bentley held out a noteputer. “The HPG confirmation is here. The Galaxy Commander has been appraised of the Ice Hellions’ presence.”

Idris took the ‘puter, but set it down without looking at it. “And the other preparations?” He leaned over his left desk drawer, reaching toward the back for a stack of datacards. He hadn’t thought he was ever going to need them, but he thanked Turkina’s foresight that he’d made them.

Bentley frowned. “They proceed, Star Colonel.”

Idris looked up at him. “You are uneasy?”

“It seems unClanlike, Star Colonel,” Bentley said, after a moment. “We are Jade Falcons. We should meet the Ice Hellions and crush them, not go to ground.” His brow was furrowed, but it was with confusion, not disrespect. Bentley was young, in his first posting after his Trial of Position. He had defeated two opponents, earning his Star Commander’s rank, but his inexperience and adherence to the ironclad precepts of the falconers were the reasons he’d been posted here, to the Eleventh PGC, rather than directly to a frontline Cluster.

Idris, unlike many Jade Falcons, did not dislike command of the PGC. He was young for Star Colonel’s rank, and a good performance here would put him firmly on the ristar path. He motioned the young officer to sit, gesturing at the steel folding chair in front of his desk.

“You have reviewed the codex of the Lithe Kill?” Idris asked, once Bentley had sat.

“Aff, Star Colonel,” Bentley replied. “As soon as I heard the bid.” He paused. “A good Cluster, if the appellation can be applied to Ice Hellions.”

Idris nodded. “And saKhan Connor Rood?”

“He is young for his rank. He replaces Sellen Cage, just as Raina Montose replaces Asa Taney.” Bentley shifted in his seat. “The Watch reports on them are not open to warriors of my clearance—all I have found are their public codexes as heads of the Clan.”

Idris picked up the noteputer. He manipulated the touchscreen until he found what he wanted, then pressed his thumbprint to the authorization panel. “You are now cleared for all Watch reports regarding the 200th Attack Cluster,” he said. “As is every member of this Cluster with a Bloodname, or at least Star Commander’s rank.”

Bentley sat up straighter. “Thank you, sir.”

“Do not thank me, Star Commander.” Idris set the ‘puter down and folded his hands on the desktop. “Tell me why my orders are unClanlike.”

“Star Colonel…”

“I am not challenging you to a Trial of Grievance, Bentley,” Idris said calmly. He kept his voice level, affecting what he knew was the falconer’s tone. The younger warrior responded, pursing his lips.

“We run before them,” he said simply.

Idris smiled. That was the Jade Falcon way; the direct way. Instead of couching his disagreement in rhetoric, or judging the orders themselves, Bentley struck right at the heart of the issue. His own personal honor.

“You do not retreat?”

“Not without first fighting,” the Star Commander said.

“Because it is not Clanlike?”

“Jade Falcons do not run.” He spoke the falconer’s precept without hesitation.

Idris smiled again. “What is our duty here?”

“To serve the Clan.” Another precept.

“And what duty does our Clan demand of us?”

“That we hold Bone Norman for Turkina.”

“And if we face the Ice Hellions here, below us on the plains beneath Red Stone Palace where we once won this world from the Lyrans, and are defeated, how does that serve the Clan?”

Bentley frowned. “But, Star Captain—we would not be defeated.”

“That is the personal Cluster of a Khan,” Idris said, gesturing with his chin toward the ceiling. “The keshik of a Galaxy, and perhaps the premier attack Cluster of the Ice Hellions.” He sat back, placing his hands in his lap. “Trust me—were we to face them openly, no doubt as Khan Rood expects us to—we would be destroyed.”

Bentley sputtered. “We are Jade Falcons—“

Idris cut him off. “We are a provisional garrison Cluster. We count three Bloodnames among us. Half of our equipment is second-line, and one Beak Star in the Third Trinary is comprised of Star League-era machines. We. Would. Lose.”

“But—”

“But nothing. There is no dishonor in stating fact.”

“It is not fact. We are Jade Falcon.” The stubbornness in Bentley’s voice was palpable. This one will fight well, Idris thought, if only I can direct him.

“Our duty is to hold the world,” Idris said. “We are agreed on that?”

“Aff, Star Colonel.”

“The Khans expected this Ice Hellion attack, Star Commander Bentley,” Idris said. “Perhaps not so soon, but it was expected. Gamma and Delta Galaxies are in the process of redeploying. When they do, they will return and push the Ice Hellions off Bone Norman. Our task—if we are strong enough—is to hold the Hellions here. Bone Norman cannot be the only world they hope to take, and it is imperative that the Hellions still be here, where our Khans know where to find them, when the final claw strike is positioned.”

He stopped, watching. Bentley’s face was still set, but Idris had watched enough young warriors go through this line of thought to see the beginnings.

“We hold Bone Norman,” he said finally, “because it is our duty to do so.” A man in the green coveralls of the technician caste stepped into the doorway. Idris held up a hand to stop him. “And we extend the length of time we hold the Hellions here, because that is our duty also.” He kept his hand up.

“I…” Bentley stopped.

Idris nodded and held out his hand to the technician. The man stepped in far enough to slip Idris a piece of yellow message paper before backing out of the room. Idris unfolded the paper, read the few words, and folded the paper again. He set it on the desk between them, then looked up to meet the Star Commander’s eyes.

“I will do my duty, Star Colonel,” Bentley said. His young face, pale skin and day-old stubble all, was set and determined. “I am Jade Falcon.”

“Then lead your Star to the location indicated and do as you see fit to hold the Hellions here.” He nodded to the Star Commander, watching as the young man stood. “Our traditions do us honor,” Idris said softly. Bentley waited. “But our honor is second to the Clan’s.”

Bentley frowned. “That is not what I was taught on Ironhold.”

Idris looked up at him with a wry grin. “Nor I.” He leaned forward and slid the message form across the desk. “But it is what I have learned here, in the Inner Sphere.” He waited until Bentley had picked the slip of folded paper up, but spoke before the young man could open it.

“The Hellions are coming down.”

Bentley crushed the paper without reading it. “Then we must make sure there is nothing here for them to find.”

CHAPTER TWO

Plains of Red Stone

Bone Norman

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

27 June 3071

Not even combat could raise Connor Rood’s spirits.

The rolling gait of his Kit Fox was as familiar as his skin by now, and he piloted the thirty-ton OmniMech around obstacles and over the broken ground without paying attention. His eyes took in the HUD, compared it with what the gestalt that controlled his hands and feet wanted, and reacted accordingly. Soon his attention would be required for combat, but for now Connor Rood had time to think.

Two weeks. The Lithe Kill had been stalking the Eleventh PGC for two weeks, and all they had to prove it were four destroyed OmniMechs, nineteen dead Elementals and barely a Trinary’s worth of the Jade Falcons captured or dealt with. It was perhaps the most un-Jade Falcon-like Trial he’d ever fought in, and it made him uneasy. These were the tactics of Inner Sphere guerilla fighters, or sometimes Ghost Bears. They made no sense for the honor-bound Falcons. Had he been in Star Colonel Idris’ position, he might have done the same, but he was not in the Star Colonel’s position. He was in the opposite position, and it made his head hurt.

Shaking his head, Rood punched his com panel. “Report.”

The voice of his XO, Star Captain Lira, came back instantly. “It worked, my Khan.”

Rood looked at his tactical screen. “How many?”

“Thirteen ’Mechs,” Lira said. “It is not known whether the two missing Points are Elementals, or perhaps some of the ’Mechs we have already destroyed.”

“Time?”

“Two minutes.”

“Excellent.” He keyed the microphone off and allowed himself a quiet grin.

Two weeks of cat-and-mouse—or hellion-and-falcon—had led to this moment. It had been clear to Rood and the other 200th officers that the Falcons were refusing battle. By naming the entire continent of Hapsburg as the Circle of Equals, they could make tactical engagements wherever they wished, in whatever strength they wished, without breaking the bounds of zellbrigen. So far they had ambushed Ice Hellion Points on patrol, or led Stars into carefully-orchestrated fire zones where heavier, more powerful Jade Falcon units waited to challenge them. It had taken the better part of four days of this—of parading the saKhan himself around the countryside—to lure a significant force of Falcons out of hiding. Rood keyed a query into his battle computer and watched the results.

The thirteen Jade Falcon ’Mechs were uniformly heavier than the Ice Hellions, and Rood had only a Binary—nine other OmniMechs—with him. All nine of the Hellion ’Mechs were frontline OmniMechs, but only one of the Falcons’ machines—probably the Trinary commander—was of the same class, a sixty-five ton Hellbringer. Given the usual breakdown of forces in a provisional garrison Cluster, that might even be Idris himself. The Falcons probably believed they had the Hellions in a vise: two weeks without a major contact, and now a full Trinary, or near enough, accepting battle.

They will expect us to come rushing in, Rood knew. It was what Ice Hellions did—had always done—and not even Rood was immune to the lure of a swift, slashing attack. His MechWarriors felt the same way. He’d heard the inter-Star banter as they predicted his order to attack. But Connor Rood had not become saKhan by being a traditional Ice Hellion warrior.

He touched a second key on his com panel. “Star Captain Adam.”

The response was instantaneous. The channel was encrypted, of course, but with the appropriate ciphers there was no delay. “My Khan.”

“You are receiving?”

“Perhaps just after the first batchalls,” Adam said.

Rood smiled. Good subordinates are such a treasure. “My thought exactly, Star Captain. I do not want any of these Falcons to escape.”

“Neg, my Khan.”

Rood cut the channel. He directed his computer to signal the Jade Falcon Hellbringer. “I am Khan Connor Rood of the Ice Hellions, and I challenge the pilot of the Hellbringer to a duel of warriors.” He held the Kit Fox’s course, waiting. The range had fallen to three kilometers, far out of range for ’Mech combat, but visible and nothing to radio. A familiar voice came back a moment later.

“Khan of the fledglings,” Star Colonel Idris said. “How is your stay on Bone Norman?”

Rood smiled. He expected bravado, and he got it. The Falcons outnumbered and outmassed him; ever since the first Mackie had smashed the Merkava tanks on Terra all those centuries ago, that had been the winning formula for BattleMech combat. Idris could afford—even burdened as he was with second-line and solahma warriors—to be brave. 

“Relaxing,” Rood replied. “Some of the avian life is irksome, but nothing we cannot deal with.” His console lit up as the rest of his Binary signaled their own challenges. If they held to zellbrigen, three of the Falcons would have to wait until one of their number fell to enter combat.

If they hold to zellbrigen.

“Perhaps I should send you back to Hector,” Idris said. “Unless you would prefer rather to remain here as my bondsman, and learn of Bone Norman’s fiercest predators?”

“Well-bargained, Star Colonel,” Rood said. He keyed the lock into his targeting computer. “You will make a very talented Ice Hellion, I think.”

“A middling Jade Falcon is your best hope, I fear, Khan Rood,” Idris said. Then he cut the channel.

Rood’s smile turned into a grin.      

Finally.

As the PPCs in the Hellbringer’s bulky forearms charged, Idris regarded the Ice Hellion line. The Hellion Khan’s Kit Fox was in the vanguard, of course, and the other OmniMechs were all the lighter, faster machines that Clan favored. Two of them were their namesake Hellion ’Mechs. One idiot in a dainty Fire Moth was even charging toward Baxter’s plodding Matador, as if speed would protect him against that ’Mech’s incredible arsenal of close-in weaponry. Idris stifled the reflexive sneer that came with his dismissive mental snort of Hellions, but there was still something off in his head.

I expected to be more displeased, he realized. I am very likely about to lose all that I’ve gained in the Jade Falcon Clan. Unlike so many of his peers, Idris prided himself on his pragmatism,. He was about to face a Khan of one of the Clans in that Khan’s chosen arena—in flatlands large enough to give the Ice Hellions room to run their little toy ’Mechs around. Even if his plan worked, it was likely that Khan Rood would disable his ’Mech before the trap could be sprung.

Idris surprised himself. If that happens, and I am taken bondsman, he told himself, at least I will be spared the Trials of Grievance over my tactics.

He touched a control on the Hellbringer’s com console and then directed his attention toward the Kit Fox charging across the blue-hued fields. The rakish grin that appeared on his face would have been familiar to a crocodile on Terra.

Think of the honor if I win.

The range fell below a kilometer. Connor Rood opened the encrypted com channel again. “After the first kill, Star Captain Adam,” he said.

“Aff, my Khan.”

Rood closed the channel and gripped his controls. His Kit Fox’s configuration was based on the F model; like all OmniMechs, his ’Mech could have much of its weapons and equipment switched out between battles, making repair and rearmament quite simple. Unlike the standard BattleMech, which mounted only one platform of weapons for its entire deployment, OmniMechs offered unprecedented flexibility. The same ’Mech that carried a brace of long-range missiles to bombard a city’s defenses could mount a fearsome battery of machine guns the next day to clear the city itself.

Today Rood’s Kit Fox carried the usual main weapon for the F configuration, a hyper-assault Gauss rifle. Although only the smallest caliber of HAGs, Rood’s was an old and familiar companion. The difference between Rood’s Kit Fox and other F models was that where they usually carried a pair of medium pulse lasers, Rood had replaced them with four extended-range medium lasers. Although they were less accurate, they presented nearly double the damage potential.

To a Clan that routinely used lighter, less well-armed machines to attack heavier Clans, more powerful damage was as much lifeblood as speed.

Rood held his targeting reticle steady over the Hellbringer’s gently-rolling gait, waiting. The crosshairs flickered green for an instant and he mashed the trigger beneath his index finger down. The Kit Fox rocked as the HAG’s many small capacitors discharged, firing a stream of small hypersonic slugs rather than the large, single slug Gauss weapons traditionally used. Recoil pushed the ’Mech around a little—the masses were small, but there were a lot of them and they were going really fast—but Rood was long used to that. He held the trigger down until the entire capacitor ring was discharged.

The Hellbringer fired a moment later, both the big particle projector cannons in its arms. Idris must have been distracted by the glittering, sparking impacts raking across his ’Mech, because both slugs of relativistic ions missed. Rood smiled and watched the reload indicator charge the HAG’s capacitors for another shot.

His throttle stayed at its forward stop. The Kit Fox never slowed.

As fast as he was going, the range fell quickly, but Rood still took time to glance at the others of his Binary. All of his warriors had challenged one of the Jade Falcons, and all had charged with him, but not all of them were in range. Only he and Star Captain Lira had fired, but Lira had done better than her Khan. Her target, a verdigris-colored Horned Owl, was collapsed on the blue grass, its cockpit crushed by her Shadow Cat’s Gauss rifle. A Falcon Pinion, one of the three ’Mechs who hadn’t been previously challenged, immediately leapt forward to challenge her.

A tone sounded in Rood’s helmet. The HAG was reloaded. He cut the Kit Fox to the left, dodging around a stand of sloop-branched werewillows. The long-limbed trees were eight or nine meters tall, but their branches spread almost thirty meters wide and were nearly impenetrable by a ’Mech’s sensors. The heavy metals in the leaves blocked IR and other scans, and they glowed like a large, diffuse magnetic mass in magres imagers. With any luck, he could trick Idris into blasting the trees with his PPC instead of the Kit Fox’s thin armor. As the Kit Fox cleared the werewillow, he cranked it’s torso around to bear on the Hellbringer.

Idris fired before Rood could, again thrashing the landscape with his PPCs, but missing the speeding Kit Fox. Rood’s snarled cheer was unheard beneath the slam-crack of the HAG-20 firing and the thunder of the ’Mech’s feet on a rock outcropping. He was content to let Idris waste the landscape while he poked holes in the Hellbringer’s famously-thin armor, but it would be more difficult to keep the PPCs missing once he closed to range. His lasers would cut deeply, but the Hellbringer had lasers of its own, and missiles besides. That was a losing proposition.

“We are moving, my Khan,” a voice said. Rood blinked. It was Adam. His eyes went automatically to the tactical screen, but the Ice Hellion Trinary was too far away still. “A minute or two and we will be there.”

“Aff,” he bit out. The restraints that held him against his command couch bit into his shoulder through his cooling suit’s cloth as he leaned the Kit Fox as far over as he dared, making a tight turn. The HAG console pinged again as it reloaded, but the Hellbringer was hidden behind the bulk of the werewillow Rood crouched behind in a half-skid, half-stop. He blinked at a precise point on his HUD and a new channel opened.

“Star Captain Lira,” he said.

“My Khan.” Lira’s voice was flustered. Her easy victory over the Horned Owl was one thing—apparently the Pinion was giving her more of a challenge. There was a squelch of static as she fired her Gauss rifle. 

“When you see Star Captain Adam’s units on your HUD, you will initiate the melee.”

“Aff, my Khan.”

Rood closed the channel. He was taking a gamble, but the situation was untenable. He’d been trapped here on Bone Norman for two weeks already. The new Hellion Trinary had not been part of the initial bid, but by opening the melee—by firing on a target not adopted under zellbrigen—much of the rules of dueling could be discarded. And if one of my Hellions wants to face me in a Trial of Grievance for abrogating so much honor, Rood told himself, so be it. Victory is more important than my honor.

He let the Kit Fox rise enough for his sensors to get a peek over the werewillow, searching for Idris and his Hellbringer. A red caret appeared on his HUD a half-instant before a PPC annihilated much of the tree between them. The explosion pushed the Kit Fox into a lurch that Rood used to duck the OmniMech into a run. He cranked the torso over again, but couldn’t get the heavy Falcon ’Mech in his sights.

He’d considered opening the melee himself. It was difficult to ask another warrior to do something so anathema to the Clan way of thinking, but Lira—like so many of his chosen officers—had the same pragmatic streak as he did. She would do as she was ordered, because she saw beyond this battle. If the Hellions were to succeed in Khan Montose’s plan to wrest away enough worlds to form an Ice Hellion invasion corridor, they needed to move swiftly. Being trapped on Bone Norman for two weeks against a savashri garrison Cluster was not moving quickly.

Lira would do her part, and preserve the public honor of the Khan of the Ice Hellions. If they lost, Rood could scapegoat her; he and Lira both were intelligent enough to know he would. The way forward required victory from both of them.

And Connor Rood would do his part.

He turned the Kit Fox toward Idris’ Hellbringer.

CHAPTER THREE

Plains of Red Stone

Bone Norman

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

27 June 3071

Star Colonel Idris grunted as another fusillade of small Gauss slugs rattled against his Hellbringer’s armor. The Ice Hellion Khan’s Kit Fox was amazingly fast, or at least it seemed so. The clinical—pragmatic—part of his mind knew that the ’Mech wasn’t any faster than any other of its class, and that he was just seeing the machine under the control of a masterful MechWarrior, but the thinking, feeling part of his brain refused to believe it.

He could not hit the stravag thing.

Around him, the other warriors of his Trinary were learning what it meant to face frontline Clan warriors in top-of-the-line equipment. MechWarrior Beckham’s spectacular death in the original rush had left his Horned Owl in wreckage, but MechWarrior Glandra’s Pinion was giving the Hellion Shadow Cat a run for its money. The other Eleventh PGC warriors weren’t learning fast enough—while Idris watched, Colby’s Locust IIC collapsed beneath a barrage of laser fire from a Hellion. And Rood’s damnable Kit Fox was still weaving a path through the werewillows.

Idris smiled. He was going to lose this Trial. He knew that. All that remained was to make the Hellions pay for every Falcon life lost. He touched a preset on his control panel to send a prearranged signal. His smile fell into a slight frown as he re-gripped his controls. Despite his foreknowledge, the act had felt dirty.

I should not have done this. He wanted to tell himself he was talking about the signal, and the trap that signal triggered, but the pragmatic part of his mind took over again. He should not have led his Trinary into battle. Idris had known the Khan’s own Binary on the field was a trap, but the trap was too sweet to not trigger.

Especially when it overlapped his own.

His ’Mech’s sensors pinged as they recognized a new contact. Several new contacts, from the sounds. Idris glanced down, expecting to see the many smaller green carets he expected, but there were no icons in the places he looked. He fired the Hellbringer’s right-side PPC toward where the Kit Fox would be, not really trying to hit. He was buying time to find the new contacts. If the Star Commanders had not hidden in the correct positions…

Red icons clustered at the very edge of his tactical scanner.

Ice Hellion icons.

Ice Hellion ’Mechs.

The red icons sped across the display. Idris knew if he twisted the Hellbringer around he’d see the white-and-blue painted shapes of the fresh Hellion Trinary bounding across the plain. So. This is the Hellion trap.

The Hellbringer staggered beneath an impact. Idris clutched his controls, but the sixty-five ton OmniMech staggered several steps. According to his sensors, the Gauss slug that had struck his ’Mech had been a full-sized round from the Hellion Shadow Cat that had been dueling the Falcon Pinion.

She broke zellbrigen. Idris stared at the damage report, not believing his eyes. But that means—and then he laughed, full and deep and filled with surprise. Of course.

With the melee opened by the breach of zellbrigen, the Hellion ’Mechs were free to attack any other Falcon ’Mech they chose. The two unengaged Falcons charged forward, desperate to get into play before the Hellions withdrew.

And thus they preserve their honor, Idris saw. The new contacts would charge in and, with no dueling to hold them back, tear the Falcon Trinary apart. Idris opened his mouth to order a withdrawal, but snapped it shut before speaking.

New green icons appeared on his HUD. 

His own trap was springing.

And it is not as if I were going to win in the first place.

Connor Rood was sweating. 

It wasn’t the heat inside the Kit Fox’s cockpit, though that would be a factor once he got close enough to burn the Hellbringer with his medium lasers. He sweated because Star Colonel Idris had to have seen the Ice Hellion reinforcements, and he wasn’t ordering his Trinary out of the melee. There was disgrace in leaving the Circle of Equals—not that they could, really, since they’d declared all of Hapsburg their Circle—but if the Falcons withdrew, the chances were good that the Hellions would let them. It was one of the not-spoken-of-but-commonly-accepted traditions of wide-area Trials. 

But the Falcons were standing firm. Pushing forward, even, with the two new combatants sending long-range PPC and missile fire toward Star Captain Lira’s Shadow Cat. Rood eyed the Cat’s battered hull with a critical eye but judged her okay; potting the Hellbringer had opened the melee he’d wanted. And put a hefty hole in the Hellbringer’s armor for me.

He swung the Kit Fox around, intent on closing the range. Despite the releasing of zellbrigen, he still wanted Idris. The Star Colonel had proven himself an even more resourceful officer than Rood had suspected, and if he could take the man bondsman, the Hellions would benefit from his service once he earned his way back into the warrior caste.

All I need do now is take down a ’Mech more than twice the mass of my own. Rood smiled at the thought. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done so. He manipulated his controls until the crosshairs for the HAG-20 were over the Falcon ’Mech’s heart and then rubbed the trigger. The Kit Fox shook as the bundled capacitors fired.

It shook too much. Alarms shrieked to life.

All around a flurry of red carets appeared on his HUD. 

Elementals.

Idris had set his own trap.

Rood smiled. His esteem for the Falcon Star Colonel went up another notch. If they both lived through this, there was no way the young PGC commander would not become his bondsman. A man like that … a man like that I can use.

If they both lived through it.

Switching his aim, Rood let go of the HAG trigger and brought his lasers live. A Point of five Elementals—the three-meter tall, genetically-modified Clans infantrymen in powered combat armor—were already leaping toward his Kit Fox on silver-flamed jump jets. Rood knew why they were coming his way. He was a Khan, true, and the honor that Point gained in taking his ’Mech down would send them far in the Falcon touman—it’s armed forces.

But even more, at thirty tons, a Kit Fox was an Elemental Point’s natural prey.

If he let them get close enough.

He fired his lasers in two pairs of two. Rood’s first burst both caught an armored infantrymen in the abdomen. One ER medium laser hit his armor would stop—but not two. The man’s severed body fell to the ground in two places.

The second pair of lasers fired a second later, but only one hit. That one hit clipped the left arm off of one of the Elementals and tumbled him to the ground, but the man was back on his feet a moment or two later. The damage-dampening capabilities of the Elemental battlesuit were fearsome. Even without an arm the combination of the mysterious HarJel and a cocktail of drugs and stimulants kept the pain and shock at bay.

The other three Elementals landed in dust-puffing crouches and immediately leapt into the air again. This time six short-range missiles burped from their shoulder-mounted launchers, two from each suit, at the apex of their jump. Rood twisted the Kit Fox to the side, trying to clear their trajectory, but he couldn’t avoid three of them. They blasted plate-sized divots from the tough armor over the OmniMech’s shoulder actuators. 

The HAG indicator blinked green, indicating it was reloaded. Rood snarled and brought the big gun around to bear on the charging infantrymen. He didn’t use the same care in aiming that he used with an enemy BattleMech; the battlesuits were too small and moving too fast. Instead, he tried to feel where they were going to be when the slugs arrived. He fired.

Two of the Elementals—including the one-armed monster—exploded beneath the impact of the hypersonic slugs. The rest disappeared beneath a convenient werewillow.

“Great Father,” Rood whispered. He was breathing heavy, far heavier than could be justified by a surprise Elemental assault. Then he realized why. How could they have known to place those Elementals so near? How had they known where I would be, where they could attack? There hadn’t been any plan to his movement, no schedule to intercept… Rood slowed the Kit Fox’s throttle and turned away from where the Falcon battlesuits had taken cover. Then he smiled. Of course.

They had planned the ambush, and then waited for the opportune time to strike. They had waited for him to walk into their trap. All this time spent on the march, all this time that had been frustrating him and making his Hellions restless, had been spent waiting for a prize large enough for the expenditure of a Falcon Trinary.

And Khan Connor Rood was prize enough for any Jade Falcon.

When he looked into his HUD, the caret for Star Colonel Idris’ Hellbringer was still within range. Rood kicked his pedals, cranking the OmniMech around, and drove the throttle forward to its gate. Idris was trading fire with one of Star Captain Adam’s Ice Ferrets, using his two PPCs to answer the Ice Ferrets’ one.

This man is valuable. Rood was more convinced than ever to make him a Hellion bondsman. He triggered the HAG again, blasting armor from the Falcon Hellbringer’s left side.

Idris spun the ’Mech and fired, a single PPC shot that Rood didn’t have a chance to brace himself for. It took the Kit Fox low in the right side, smashing the pitifully-thin armor protecting the Kit Fox’s insides and nearly destroying the OmniMech’s extralight fusion engine. The ’Mech staggered, off-balance from the strike and the heavy damage. Waste heat, vented by the damaged shielding, flooded Rood’s cockpit and his cooling suit vibrated as it went to full capacity trying to keep his body cool in the much-higher-than-sauna temperatures.

“Freebirth,” Rood muttered. A quick scan of his console confirmed what he’s suspected. The right side of the Kit Fox’s torso was gone; with it had gone the control runs for the HAG-20. The weapon was still there, but it was dead weight now. All he had left were the four ER medium lasers in the Kit Fox’s left arm, and with his heat burden those were dangerous.

Next time, Rood told himself, I take a bloody damn Gargoyle. 

If there was a next time.

Despite the alarms, and the heat, and the taste of blood from where he’d bitten his tongue, Star Colonel Idris of the Jade Falcons was smiling. He’d seen his PPC strike the Khan’s Kit Fox. He knew what kind of damage such a strike did to such a ’Mech—he’d faced many in Trials, since the Jade Falcons favored the OmniMech as well. One more strike, and the Ice Hellion Khan was done for. One more strike, and the sacrifice of his Trinary—probably the Cluster, if I kill their Khan—would be worth it.

The Kit Fox had much of its teeth pulled, but it wasn’t hobbled. It leaned forward and sprinted toward him at just under 100 kph, and he let it come. The other Hellions were distracted with their own battles, and Glandra had managed to draw the pair of Ice Ferrets that had been sniping at him toward her own Pinion. The port PPC was still recharging, but the right side weapon was ready. He lined up his shot and fired, but missed low. The Hellion Kit Fox came charging through the cloud of debris and smoke unslowed.

Idris stopped the Hellbringer and reversed his throttles, starting the ’Mech walking backward. He needed to keep the Hellion Khan at range; without his HAG, all he had were lasers, and Idris’ PPCs far outranged those.

But the Kit Fox was much faster. He eyed the PPC recharge indicator.

The Hellbringer rocked as the Kit Fox entered the useful range of its quartet of medium lasers. Idris rode the motion as destroyed armor fell from his ’Mech’s frame with a wry grin. The Hellions were an audacious Clan, but their audacity often wrote claims their warriors couldn’t keep. The Khan of the Hellions cared nothing for his heat burden. 

Fresh alarms sprang to life in his cockpit.

He had almost no armor left.

Only one task remained.

He brought his crosshairs to bear on the Kit Fox.

CHAPTER FOUR

Red Stone Palace

Bone Norman

Clan Ice Hellion Occupation Zone

30 June 3071

Despite the pain from his burns, Connor Rood kept his face impassive as the merchant and labor factors recounted the status of Bone Norman’s lower castes. The chair he’d found in this office had a small back and no arms, forcing him to lean forward on the desktop with his hands clasped in front of him. Which made the skin beneath his burned shoulder pull taut over muscle.

Which hurt. He held up a hand. “Enough.” The woman who’d been speaking, Merchant Factor Elise, closed her mouth, but her eyes flashed. Rood ignored the insolence. “I am satisfied that your castes are working ably. Ice Hellion senior factors may feel differently. For now, all I care about is that you begin the steps necessary to integrate Bone Norman and its enclaves into Clan Ice Hellion.”       

“We don’t have enclaves,” the labor factor, Gerald, said. He was a large man, with wide heavy shoulders and a strong back. He was going to flab as he aged, but Rood saw the muscle beneath the fat. “We have cities. Although the Jade Falcons tried several time to mold us into the Clan model, in the end it was less wasteful to simply adapt our existing infrastructure to support the Clan economy.”

“Fine.” Rood closed his eyes for a moment, not caring what the factors thought. Settlements on the Clan homeworlds were based on the enclave model—small, defensible and largely contained urban areas—and were traded regularly in Trials of Possession. If Bone Norman was too large for that, it was a matter for the lower caste factors to work out. “I am sure we will speak again.”

Gerald inclined his head and stood. Elise stood as well, but dipped her chin and said “My Khan.” The two filed out, Gerald gesturing Elise to precede him. She was a small woman, small-boned with delicate features. Idly Rood wondered if the two were coupling, but didn’t let his mind linger on the matter. The lower castes’ ideas of procreation and romance were far too confusing and intricate to waste his time on.

As soon as the two factors cleared the doorway, Idris stepped into the office. The former Jade Falcon officer—now Rood’s bondsman, as indicated by the three blue-white cords wrapped around his wrist—stepped two paces inside the door and stopped. Rood looked up at him, waiting.

“A loss, they say,” Idris finally said.

“You are sure.”

Idris raised an eyebrow. “I know I am still new to the Ice Hellions—but do technicians normally lie to bondsmen of the Khan?”

Rood snorted. “No. My apologies.” He spread his hands and pushed himself to his feet. “It is a testament to my wisdom in making you a bondsman, we shall say.” He smiled at the former Falcon. “If my Kit Fox cannot be repaired, we shall have to choose a replacement ’Mech for me before the next Trial.”

Idris stepped to the side to let Rood precede him out of the office, then followed. The small office was set to the side of the main situation room in the bowels of Red Stone Palace, the ancient command center on Bone Norman. It had, in fact, previously been Idris’ office. As the former senior Falcon officer on-world, Idris had been instrumental in identifying which lower castemen could best oversee the transition from Jade Falcon to Ice Hellion administration. Any castemen would obey a warrior’s orders, of course—or quickly learn to, assuming he survived the instruction—but Idris had been on Bone Norman to learn which of the lower castemen knew their jobs.

Star Captain Lira had the watch this hour. She stood in the center of the operations pit, watching over the shoulders of the technician caste station operators. A noteputer was clutched in her hand, but she rarely accessed it. Rood stopped and watched her for a moment, enjoying the simple physical confidence she displayed. Born of a Taney sibko, she was already assured a sponsor in the next Trial of Bloodname for an acceptable Taney Bloodname.

She turned to look at the next console and saw Rood and Idris. She inclined her head in respect and returned to her duty. Rood smiled. She respected him, of course. But she had also been his tactical second for so long that she knew he wanted her focused more on her duties than on subservience. When he wanted to speak with her he would; she knew that.

“The doctor asked me to remind you of your appointment,” Idris said.

Rood twisted to look at him and regretted it when the burned skin pulled. “So he can tell me I need to rest?”

“No doubt.”

“I know I need to rest,” Rood said. “When I have time, I will.” He started toward the pit where Lira stood, gesturing for Idris to follow. “Right now I need to know what the Khan’s orders are. Perhaps they will even make sense this time.” He bit his lip as soon as the words were out—those were not words anyone else needed to hear. Not even Idris, whose status as a bondsman was little better than slave.

He reached Lira and stopped. “Report.”

“My Khan.” Lira looked past him at Idris but didn’t speak to him. “The HPG download is expected momentarily.” She gestured toward a technician at the correct console. “Once we have decoded it, I will bring it to you.” She smiled. “There is no need for you to wait for it. Surely the doctors have told you to rest.”

“They have,” Rood said, grinning back.

“I have heard that the Roods are terrible listeners,” she said.

“Nonsense. We hear fine.”

“That is not what I said, my Khan,” she replied. “But of course you do.” The technician at the HPG console extracted a chip and held it out to Lira, who took it and inserted it into her noteputer. She tapped the screen a few times, entering the correct cipher, and then handed the device to Rood. 

“There is a message from the Khan,” he said. He tapped the text-only file open and scanned the few lines of text. By the fourth word he had bitten his upper lip to keep from cursing. By the end of the message he knew his blood pressure was higher than the doctors would have liked, but he tapped the message closed and made himself calm down before he spoke again.

“Khan Rood?” Lira asked. “Has Khan Montose agreed to your proposal to reinforce our garrisons, in light of the lack of defenses we encountered?” Her voice was calm and even, but pitched to carry. No doubt everyone in the pit had heard her question. A part of Rood’s mind was angry at her—the business of Khans was not meant for lower caste ears. But that part was a small part. Because the larger part—the part of him that watched and recognized how people worked together—saw what she had done.

She had planted a seed of doubt in everyone’s mind about Khan Montose. No matter the answer, his reputation would be enhanced. If the Khan agreed with his plan, he would be the visionary leader who foresaw the coming Jade Falcon counterattack and blunted it, making certain the many worlds the Hellions had won in the last month were held.

If the Khan vetoed his plan, that same counterattack would gut the new Ice Hellion occupation zone. It would make the Hellions’ gains a mere blip, rather than a victory worth defending. And the inevitable loss of respect and honor would go—in the minds of everyone in the room, and everyone those in the room spoke to—to Khan Montose, for ignoring her saKhan’s advice.

“She has not,” he said, just as loudly. There was more in the message, of course, but the gist was all that was needed. He handed the noteputer back. “Forward the rest of the message queue to my desk on Rapacious.” Lira nodded and turned to her people. Rood spun on his heel and addressed himself to Idris.

“Find Star Colonel Jeremy Cage. Tell him to finish the Trials for the new garrison commander today. We are leaving Bone Norman.” Idris nodded, but didn’t move. “Yes?”

“That was nicely done,” Idris said. “Did you arrange that with her?”

“Arrange what?”

“That show you and Star Captain Lira just put on.” Idris grinned. “An hour from now it will be all over the gossip network. No doubt the crewers on the DropShips will hear before we boost. You have undercut the Khan.”

Rood stared at him. “That was no plan,” he said.

“Then you are a lucky man, my Khan.” Idris glanced at Lira. “To inspire such loyalty.”

Rood stepped past him. “Loyalty is not inspired,” he said over his shoulder. Idris hurried to follow. “It is earned.” He entered the corridor that would take him to the Palace infirmary. The other direction would take Idris toward the ’Mech bays.

“So it is,” Idris said. He stopped. “So long as the Jade Falcons attack.”

“They are your former Clan,” Rood said. He kept his face impassive. “Will they come?”

Idris’ grin wasn’t at all respectful. It was predatory. “They knew you were coming, Khan Rood,” he said. “Imagine the sun not rising tomorrow before you imagine Samantha Clees not retaking this world.”

Rood licked his lips. “See to your task.”

Idris ducked his chin and walked away. Rood continued toward the infirmary. The burns where the last Elemental Point’s flamers had penetrated his Kit Fox’s cockpit were torturous. Not so painful as when they’d been inflicted—that had been white-hot icefire—but still annoyingly painful.

Idris had been right. If the Jade Falcons did not counterattack, Lira’s ploy would backfire. He would be the fearful Khan who was afraid of a nonexistent threat. He’d be a laughing stock, and that could open him to a Trial of Position for the Khanship. It was a gamble, to be sure. But Rood was fairly sure he had stacked the deck.

Because like Idris had said, there was no chance that the Falcons would not counterattack. None of the expected frontline Clusters had been present at their garrison stations. Each of the Beta Galaxy Clusters, save the Lithe Kill, had faced only solahma, and even then only penny-packets in Binaries or even single Stars. Almost a dozen worlds had been taken, but Khan Montose had already ordered him to push deeper into the Falcon OZ. Ice Hellion garrison Binaries and Trinaries would take up the stations they’d just finished blasting Jade Falcons out of.

Only a fool would think forces that same scale would hold these worlds against the Jade Falcon counterattack.

      Rood reached the lift toward the living levels and punched the button. Moving his arm out drew his uniform blouse against his burned skin. His lips drew back in a snarl, but it was only half pain.

      A fool—or Raina Montose.

The Ice Hellion Star Colonel standing at the foot of the white-painted Ice Storm stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back and feet shoulder-width apart. He didn’t look away from whatever spot on the far wall he’d focused on when Rood and Star Captain Ephraim Cage walked up. Rood traded a glance with Cage and schooled his features.

“Star Colonel Benito.”

“My Khan.”

“You have won command of the Bone Norman garrison, quiaff?”

“Aff, my Khan.”

Rood kept his face impassive. “You have chosen your officers?”

“I have, sir.”

Rood licked his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. “Stand easy, Star Colonel.” The Hellion officer relaxed a bit, and met Rood’s eyes. He couldn’t see Ephraim Cage behind him, but he knew the DropShip commander was smirking. “Tell me your orders.”

“I am to hold Bone Norman for Clan Ice Hellion.” Rood waited, but Benito said nothing else. He was unremarkable looking, pale and black-haired, with wiry muscles and poor posture. His eyes were closer together than most people found attractive. 

“And how will you do that?”

“With all the strength at my disposal,” Benito said instantly.

“You have two Clusters.” Rood gestured at the light ’Mech standing behind the Star Colonel. “What if the Falcons arrive with a full Galaxy, as we did?”

“I—” Benito blinked. “They will bid—”

Rood cut him off. “If they do not?”

“They are Jade Falcons. They will bid.”

“And if they do not?”

Benito set his jaw. “Then I will die.”

Rood smiled. “One hopes not.” He slapped the Star Colonel on the shoulder. “If they will not honor zellbrigen, you must do two things. You must use the HPG to alert the Clan. And you must do as the Falcons did against us—fade into the landscape and keep them pinned here until we can return to relieve you.”

Benito’s face displayed the war he was fighting with his emotions. He was new to Beta Galaxy, and was not familiar with the… oddness… of Connor Rood. His conflict didn’t last long. He banished his discontent and nodded. “Aff, my Khan.”

“Good.” Rood held out his hand, and shook Benito’s when the younger man accepted. “Do your duty to the Clan, Star Colonel.” He spun on his heel and walked away. Ephraim Cage followed him, still having not spoken. The two men headed out of the ’Mech bay onto the tarmac of the small military port. The towering monolith of Rapacious blocked the sunlight when they were outside.

“He will do it if anyone can,” Cage offered.

“Aff.”

“We have gained much here.”

“Aff.”

Cage grunted. “This is the oratory that won you the Khanship, I take it.”

Rood stopped. His fingers clenched into fists and unclenched at his side. He stared up at the bulk of the DropShip, eyes unfocused. “I should—we should stay.”

“The Jade Falcons are coming.”

Rood glanced at the small man. “All the more reason to stay.” He waved an arm at the distant landscape. “This is an Ice Hellion world now.” His outstretched hand clenched into a fist. “We took it. In the best traditions of the Clans.” His hand flicked out, fingers opening. “And now we will give it away.”

“Perhaps not ‘give.’”

Rood looked back at the ’Mech hangar, past Cage. “Oh, he will do his duty. And like he said, most likely die in the defense. Again, in the best traditions of the Clans.” He looked at Cage, who stared back. He has only two Flurry Clusters and a Trinary of trueborns.

“But?”

Rood sighed. “But nothing.” He rubbed the knuckles of his left hand with his right. “I know my duty. He knows his. You know yours. We are slaves to it, and because of that, slaves to our Khan.”

“Sir—”

“No.” Rood looked up and met Cage’s eyes again. “I know. It does not matter.” He slapped his hands together, once, sharply. Then he turned back toward the DropShip. “Let us go. The Dark Nebula awaits.”

“I have heard the stories of Camelot Command,” Ephraim Cage said as he fell into step beside his Khan. “We spacers talk, of course.”

“Star Admiral Montose will have taken it by now.” Rood glanced up at the DropShip. The name—RAPACIOUS—was picked out in bold letters across the white-blue hull, above the snarling insignia of the Ice Hellion Clan.

“I will be glad to have seen it,” Cage said quietly.

Rood smiled. “As will I.” He forced a grin onto his face. “Who knows? Perhaps Khan Montose is having the same cakewalk we are.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Bangor Harbor

Evciler

Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

9 August 3071

Star Captain Vandal Hildenrath tried not to watch as the Khan lost her mind.

She knew few of the other Ice Hellion officers in the room were doing the same—most of them were going quietly insane along with her. Khan Raina Montose was hunched over the holotable, one hand clutching a forgotten noteputer, the other wrapped around a handful of her own black hair. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, but her lips were moving.

This was not the Raina Montose that Vandal had come to know. This was not the woman who’d led the Fortieth Hellion Lancers before she was Khan.

This was not that woman.

But it was.

Vandal chewed her lower lip and tried not to look at the other officers. Star Colonel Freed Hasbrin looked nauseous, but that could have been explained by the severe neurofeedback he’d taken in his ’Mech earlier that day. He was naturally a pale man.

Next to him, Star Colonel Patricia Rood’s mahogany skin hid much, but nothing could hide the smoldering anger in her eyes. She was staring at the Khan with a fearsome intensity. Vandal wanted to step closer to the older woman, to say something, but there was nothing to be said. Unless one of us were to challenge the Khan to a Trial of Position, Vandal chided herself, but that would be suicide. The Falcons would eat us alive.

The initial assault on Evciler had gone well, but the planet had been reinforced since the Hellion Watch’s last report. The whole of the Jade Falcon Alpha Galaxy was present, facing the weary Clusters of the Ice Hellion Alpha and Zeta Prime Galaxies. The Hellions had secured their landing zone near Bangor Harbor, but the Falcons were pressing on all sides. The Falcon commander, Galaxy Commander Brian Pryde, was pressing hard. He’d tried to declare a general Trial for Evciler, but the Khan had deferred, content to defend against smaller-scale Trials and inflict a few of her own.

It was a war of attrition—but the Falcons had more of everything.

Vandal took a deep breath. She was here because her Star Colonel was in the field hospital waiting for a new arm to bud. She was the senior Star Captain of the Fortieth Lancers—the Cluster fell to her, until there could be a formal Trial of Position. If no one else was going to say anything—

“We shall do it,” Khan Montose whispered.

No one spoke. Vandal looked at the Star Colonels, but none of them spoke. Patricia Rood looked as though if she did speak, it would be profanity.

“We will accept the Falcon Trial,” Montose said.

We will die, is what Vandal heard.

“This Falcon is overconfident,” the Khan continued. “He offers us first bid, promising to match his force to ours.” She looked down at the noteputer in her hand as if it were the first time she’d seen it. Vandal saw her blink, then frown. Then the Khan held the noteputer out until Star Colonel Hasbrin stepped forward to take it. “He is proud.”

“Perhaps we should counterbid,” Star Colonel Hasbrin offered. There was little conviction behind his words, but Vandal admired the simple courage it took to even utter them. “If we could gain one or two of their DropShips—”

“Neg.” The Khan’s voice showed more strength than it had in a while.

“Khan Montose—”

“No.”

Vandal shifted her weight. To her left and slightly behind her, just in the edge of her peripheral vision, she saw Patricia Rood move. Vandal turned her head just enough to see the Star Colonel loosen her laser pistol in its holster. Vandal’s eyes widened. Her mouth half-opened before she caught herself. Rood never looked at her.

“We will bid the Fortieth and Seventy-eighth Hellion Lancers.” Montose leaned against the holotable. Her left hand came down in the field projector, blotting the image. She appeared not to notice. “The rest of Zeta Prime will stand to nearby, to exploit any breakthrough we achieve.”

“When will we bid for command?” Vandal heard herself ask.

“There will be no bidding,” the Khan said. “I will command.”

“But—“ Vandal didn’t know who spoke. Maybe she had spoken.

“I will command, quiaff?” There was again—finally—steel in the Khan’s voice. She stood away from the table, finally meeting her officers in the eye. Vandal stood a little straighter when Montose’s eyes crossed hers. A chorus of “affs” filled the room.

Montose waited. When she spoke, she sounded tired. “Summon Galaxy Commander Eld Coddington. He shall make the reply to this Brian Pryde.” There was a soft snort behind Vandal. Montose didn’t hear it. Instead, she strode out of the room. Star Colonel Freed Hasbrin and the other Star Colonels followed, some already talking into communicators. Vandal waited.

The Fortieth. She would lead the Cluster into battle.

“The Fortieth,” a voice said.

Vandal spun. Star Colonel Patricia Rood stood leaning against the wall. She commanded the Seventy-eighth Hellion Lancers. The other Cluster the Khan had named. Without intending to Vandal looked down at the Star Colonel’s holster. It was securely fastened.

“Aff, Star Colonel,” Vandal said. “We are honored.”

“Neg. We are damned.”

“We are not damned,” Vandal said. Had she been aware of it she’d have been shocked at her tone. One did not speak to a Star Colonel of Patricia Rood’s stature in that tone. “We are honored. We will face the Jade Falcons in honorable combat.”

Even as she spoke, Vandal was surprised at herself. She’d just spent the last hour wondering if the Khan had lost her mind. Now she was defending this near-suicidal attack to a senior officer she respected. Am I so easily swayed by the promise of combat and glory?

Patricia Rood laughed. She threw her head back and laughed. She had a deep-throated laugh that sounded as though it began somewhere near her stomach. Vandal tensed. She felt the heat rising in her face. Her hands clenched into fists. She held her tongue, waiting for the Star Colonel to compose herself.

It didn’t take long. When she had caught her breath Patricia Rood grinned at her. “I am sorry. You have not been in these Galaxy-level meetings before.” She crossed her arms. “Tell me what you know about the Jade Falcon Alpha Galaxy.”

Vandal frowned. “They are new, mostly unblooded in combat. Their commander is listed as Kael Pershaw, Loremaster of the Grand Council. Brian Pryde is his second. Aside from the Falcon Khans, there is no one more senior.” If it weren’t for the fact that there were so damn many of them, Vandal would not be worried. But as the ancient maxim held, quantity had a quality all its own. Few knew that better than an Ice Hellion.

Rood chuckled. “They are filth.”

“They are Jade Falcons, yes.” Vandal tried to keep the frown from her face, but this was not a conversation she had imagined. Patricia Rood was perhaps the most respected Star Colonel in Alpha Galaxy—certainly the most feared. Vandal had never imagined her to be one of the unthinking zealots who classified warriors by their Clans and not by their abilities. “That does not make them filth.”

“It is not their Clan that taints them,” Rood said. “It is the warriors.” She snorted. “If they can be called such.”

“I do not understand.”

“There is but one Bloodname in the Falcons’ Alpha Galaxy. By mandate of the Falcon Khan.” Her grin went from entertained to condescending. “They are solahma. Or malcontents. Test-downers. Dregs. It is as if we are attacking a sibko of freebirths.”

Vandal stared at her.

Rood laughed again. “Welcome to Raina’s menagerie.”

“And the Khan,” Vandal said slowly, ignoring the Star Colonel’s gibe at the Ice Hellion senior Khan, “wishes to lead the assault?” Her dismay at the beginning of the staff meeting had been for the Khan’s strategy—but if she were debasing herself fighting the Falcon dregs…

“She does.” Rood stepped past her toward the door. Then she stopped. “Whatever your doubts, Star Captain, you must do your best against the Falcons. We must triumph, and we must do it without destroying ourselves. You have seen the reports.”

“The reports?”

Patricia Rood stopped at the door. “From the saKhan.” She waited, but Vandal only held out her hands. “The Falcons’ Gamma Galaxy has cut our line of retreat. Bone Norman fell to the Jade Falcon Guards. We had to take Golandrinas twice. Connor Rood is stalemated on Wotan by a provisional garrison Cluster.” She laughed, a short, harsh bark completely different from the belly laugh of earlier. “Connor Rood. Stalemated.”

“But the Khan—”

“—has chosen not to believe her saKhan.”

“We will beat this Galaxy of Falcon rejects,” Vandal said, trying to rally her confidence. They had to, after all. The decision was made. It could not be unmade, so wishing they weren’t fighting the Jade Falcons here on Evciler was worse than pointless.

Rood nodded. “No doubt. But at what cost?” Her eyes unfocused, as if she were looking at something only she could see. “Even as we kill them, they will be killing us.” 

“We can do nothing else,” Vandal said.

Patricia Rood’s eyes snapped back into focus. “Not while Raina Montose commands,” she said. She nodded to Vandal and then stepped out the door, leaving the Star Captain alone with the holotable. Vandal turned back to face the display, but despite the play of red and green icons across her eyes, she didn’t see it.

Instead, she saw the likely result of anyone, even Patricia Rood, challenging Raina Montose for command of Clan Ice Hellion while engaged with the Jade Falcons. Even a Galaxy of dregs would be enough to overrun them while they were embroiled in the Trials of Position and Refusal that would result.

That would be certain death.

Vandal switched the holotable off. Darkness enshrouded the room. She waited a moment, collecting herself. Then she turned and walked out of the room with a purpose. There was only one path that would lead to Clan Ice Hellion’s survival.

Victory.

Blinking rapidly to try and get her vision to settle down, Star Captain Vandal Hildenrath worked her controls, bringing her fifty-five-ton Black Lanner to its feet. The Jade Falcon Summoner that had knocked it to the ground stood nearby, waiting for its autocannon to reload. The PPC mount still spat sparks and arcing electricity, but Vandal’s lasers had dealt with the weapon itself. Her sight snapped back into focus as the Black Lanner gained its footing. The Summoner launched itself into the air on jump jets, its remaining arm held wide as if daring Vandal to fire.

“Fool,” she muttered. Her finger tightened, and six extended-range medium lasers snapped as one. Two of the brilliant scarlet beams missed, disappearing into Evciler’s sky, but the other four savaged the armor across the Summoner’s chest. The ’Mech wobbled in the air, off-balanced by the loss of armor.

A tone sounded in Vandal’s helmet an instant before the Black Lanner shuddered. Six short-range missiles leapt from the Lanner’s launcher and blasted into the Summoner as it descended. Smoke obscured Vandal’s view for a half-second, but the Summoner fell out of the smoke out of control and slammed into the ground more than a hundred meters from Vandal. She felt the shock through the Lanner’s frame.

“I told you,” she whispered. Heat shimmered in her vision as the Black Lanner’s heat sinks labored to drain the heat of her last salvo. She watched the temperature indicators for the Streak SRM-6’s ammunition magazine closely, but it only edged near the orange band. She moved her attention to the tactical screen.

The two Hellion Lancer Clusters had met two Clusters of the Jade Falcon Alpha Galaxy on the rolling flats between Bangor Harbor, the city, and the wide-mouthed harbor that the city was named for. The Khan’s Star had moved with the Fortieth Lancers, which had made Vandal both proud and uncomfortable. Proud, because the Khan was there to see her Cluster perform.

Uncomfortable, because the Khan was there to see her Cluster be destroyed.

The Falcon Clusters, despite the larger number of less-flexible second-line BattleMechs and ProtoMechs, were uniformly heavier than the Hellion ’Mechs. That was not uncommon, of course, but the Falcons were also more adept at pairing their machines via Trials and personal challenges than many of the other Falcons Vandal had fought. Rumor said the Falcon Alpha Galaxy was made up of a large number of former Falcon Watch operatives; they certainly fought like warriors who spent more time studying their opponents than crushing them.

Vandal brought her Black Lanner around toward where the Khan’s Star had been fighting. Just before the Summoner had challenged her, she’d heard Galaxy Commander Brian Pryde challenge the Khan herself. She needed to check on that. Her Star Captains would handle their Trinaries.

The diamond-caret of the Khan’s ’Mech was a little less than a kilometer away. The white-painted Stormcrow was dodging around the hulk of a Hellion Linebacker. The stout-bodied shape of a Falcon Jupiter stomped ponderously after her—Pryde. Leave it to a Falcon to choose a ’Mech almost twice the Khan’s weight.

Lasers flickered their nth-second pulses, connecting the two ’Mechs. Smoke burst from the Stormcrow’s left shoulder housing. Dialing the magnification, Vandal saw the limb dangle limply, the sure indicator of a destroyed shoulder actuator. That would cost Montose some much-needed firepower.

If she dies, Vandal found herself wondering, will a succession be easier? Who is senior? She looked at the far right corner of her tac screen, where the line of green icons of the Zeta Prime Galaxy waited. Galaxy Commander Eld Coddington was the most senior Hellion officer on-planet, after Khan Montose, but the trueborns of Alpha Galaxy would likely not follow him. Patricia Rood, then.

The Khan was not dead yet, though. And Ice Hellions had much experience fighting with damaged OmniMechs. Vandal pushed her throttle forward, keeping an eye on the nearby Falcons. If one of them challenged her, she’d have to stop. Until then, she watched the Khan. She knew what the Hellion leader would do. In a moment she’ll break forward and get in under the range of the Jupiter’s big guns—

The Stormcrow broke into a run, as Vandal had predicted, but not forward.

It ran toward the rear.

Vandal blinked. She is just withdrawing to gain room to maneuver.

The Khan’s icon on her tac screen blinked, indicating an outgoing radio message.

A Star of Harpy ProtoMechs broke into a run toward the Stormcrow. It was a Flurry Star, one of the ad hoc attachments to Alpha Galaxy that many of the Galaxy’s regular warriors disdained. The Khan ran right through them, ignoring the trailing fire from Pryde’s Jupiter. 

The Harpies opened fire on the Jupiter.

She is running away.

Vandal’s com board pinged, announcing a fresh challenge from a Jade Falcon. She didn’t even glance at it. Her entire attention was directed at the Khan’s fleeing Stormcrow. It had slowed, well out of range of Pryde’s Jupiter. Outside of whatever Circle of Equals they had agreed to. The Khan had forfeited the Trial. 

She ran away.

The Khan of Clan Ice Hellion had run away.

Vandal swallowed. She swallowed again, trying to hold the bile down. The com board pinged again, as the Falcon broadcast his challenge again. A PPC exploded a patch of soil forty meters in front of her Black Lanner. She pulled back on the throttle, slowing the charging ’Mech.

Brian Pryde tore into the Harpies attacking him. The light ProtoMechs—smaller machines, using mutilated former aerospace pilots directly tied to their machines—tried to dodge, but the Falcon Galaxy Commander’s gunnery was too good. One of the Protos exploded, then another. The Falcon’s Starmates were driving forward, firing. Long-range missiles and laser fire began to fall around the Protos and the nearest Hellion ’Mechs.

They have abandoned zellbrigen.

Vandal touched her com board. “Star Colonel Patricia Rood.”

There was a momentary hash of static, then the pinched voice of the Star Colonel filtered out of her helmet speakers. “I am busy, Star Captain.”

“The Khan had fled.” Silence. “She has withdrawn from the Circle. The Falcons pursue her.”

“And?”

Vandal wanted to scream. “She ran away.”

A warning tone sounded from her tactical display. She looked to her left, where the ranks of the waiting Zeta Prime Galaxy were breaking. White-and-blue ’Mechs were sprinting forward, toward the Jade Falcon lines. “What are they doing?”

“This is our chance,” Patricia Rood said. “Turn and engage. Your entire Cluster.”

Vandal blinked. “But—”

“The Primes think the Falcons have broken zellbrigen. They are advancing to protect the Khan.” Vandal looked where the Khan’s Stormcrow had run. It was amidst a clump of Fortieth Lancer ’Mechs, watching the Jade Falcon Star get closer. Why has she stopped? A pair of errant LRMs blasted dirt from the ground near the Stormcrow’s clawed foot, throwing clods of soil and debris against the ’Mech’s armor. It took a step forward, toward the Jade Falcons.

“But she ran away,” Vandal muttered.

“That does not matter now,” Rood said. There was a rumble over the com line, and then Rood was back. “We must win. This is our chance. We can tell the story right after the battle, when we hold Evciler and the Jade Falcons have run.”

“We sacrifice our honor.”

Rood snorted. “The Clan is more important than our honor. The Clan needs an Alpha Galaxy and a Khan. Even Raina Montose.”

Vandal turned her Black Lanner toward the Falcon who’d fired the PPC at her. It was half-turned, lasers flickering at a charging Hellion OmniMech. Her fingers brought the Lanner’s targeting sight over the Falcon ’Mech’s heart without thinking about it.

The Khan’s Stormcrow broke into a limping run toward the battle line.

Vandal did the same. 

She felt empty inside.

CHAPTER SIX

Whitechapel

Apollo

Clan Ice Hellion Occupation Zone

13 September 3071

It was an illusion.

All of it.

Connor Rood swallowed for what felt like the hundredth time. The rolling gait of the new OmniMech he’d chosen was different from his old Kit Fox. The speed was the same, but the ’Mech massed more than twice his last ’Mech. The feeling of being large and slow was an illusion, but it was convincing.

Like so many of the illusions that kept the Ice Hellions in the Inner Sphere.

“I will never hear the end of this.”

“Sir?”

Connor grimaced. He punched a button on his com panel—the wrong button—and then found the right one. “Nothing, Lira.” A glance at his HUD showed her repaired Shadow Cat still where it should be, thirty meters to the left and back of his ’Mech. His ’Mech. All sixty-five tons of it.

A Linebacker.

Idris is laughing at me.

He had put his bondsman in charge of locating a suitable replacement OmniMech after Bone Norman. There hadn’t been a need for a ’Mech during the debacle on Wotan, and he hadn’t fought directly on any of the worlds since. He’d been stuck in offices and command centers and the armored battle direction centers of DropShips, overseeing battles and Trials and bidding. And arguing, via HPG, with the Khan.

Idris had come back when they’d been inbound to Apollo. Star Colonel Brendon Wick had handled the bidding for the world, but Idris had said he’d found a suitable ’Mech and had it transferred to Rapacious’ ’Mech bays. Rood had found time to review it just after the DropShip had landed, when Wick had led his forces out for the formal Trial.

“You are joking,” Rood had said.

“I am not,” Idris had replied. 

“That is a heavy ’Mech.”

“Yes.”

“I am an Ice Hellion.”

“Yes.”

“I cannot drive that.”

“We Hellions,” Idris had said, and there hadn’t been a catch in his voice for all that he’d been a Hellion for only a matter of weeks, “value speed, quiaff?”

“Aff.” Rood had stood looking up at the Linebacker, arms crossed.

“The Linebacker is as fast as the Kit Fox you used to pilot.”

“That is—” Rood stopped.

“Does not Khan Montose pilot a Stormcrow?” When Rood had nodded, Idris had continued. “This ’Mech is only ten tons heavier. Does ten tons matter so much?”

Rood had stood there, pondering for a minute or two. Then he had turned and, taking the bondsman’s hand, cut one of the three bondcords with his knife. He’d replaced the knife in the hilt-down sheath at the small of his back and clapped Idris on the shoulder.

“We shall see,” was all he had said.

As he racked the Linebacker in Rapacious’ bay, Connor Rood tried not to imagine the other things that seemed illusory to him just then. There were too many. He knew when he rode the lift down to the bay floor he’d find Idris and Ephraim Cage waiting for him, fresh with another batch of HPG dispatches. More bad news, almost certainly, from Alpha Galaxy and Khan Montose. There was little to complain about his own task force. Wotan was behind him, thank the Founder.

He tapped the Linebacker’s reactor to standby and tried not to grind his teeth. Wotan. I will not think about Wotan. He hadn’t been able to crack the nut that was Wotan before he had to move on to oversee the assaults on Bensinger and Toland. He’d been distracted by those duties while the Khan destroyed the flower of the Ice Hellion Clan on Evciler. Rood undid the clasps for this neurohelmet and racked it in its bin above his command console. Perhaps he should have led the Trial of Possession for Apollo himself.

I could have worked some of this frustration off. But no. Brendon Wick had helped him rebuild Beta Galaxy from the near-shattered formation it had been when Sellen Cage left office to the force that had claimed a sizable portion of the Jade Falcons’ occupation zone by itself. He deserved a chance to earn his won glory. The fighting in the OZ would lead—had led—to casualties. A Galaxy command slot might open—Wick deserved to be ready for it. That was part of leadership, loyalty. Wick had served him well. Giving him the chance to impress the warriors he might someday lead was a demonstration of Rood’s loyalty to him.

The Linebacker’s hatch opened smoothly. The OmniMech’s codex was fairly clear—a Falcon Star Colonel had taken the machine as isorla during a Trial against the Wolves, and the Hellions had done the same before the ’Mech had been used in combat. Rood smiled as he climbed out onto the gantry. Perhaps there’d be a Trial of Grievance in his future and he’d be able to try it out for real.

He’d been correct in the cockpit. Both his bondsman and Ephraim were waiting when the ’Mech gantry lift deposited him near the Linebacker’s right foot. Both men held noteputers—which meant the HPG reports he’d been fearing were in.

“How fares the Khan?” he asked. Then he held up his hand, looking past the two warriors. Several men in gray technician caste jumpsuits stood behind them, eyes down, waiting. “Technician?”

The lead man, a small, older freeborn technician with a shock of eerily-white hair, stepped forward. “My Khan?”

Rood frowned. “Your name?”

“Kiley, sir.”

“You are assigned to this ’Mech?”

“My team is, yes sir.” He gestured to the three other freebirths behind him. “We wanted to inquire after its performance. If there are any calibrations the Khan would like…?”

Rood sniffed. “The ’Mech is perfect, Kiley,” he said. He met the eyes of each of the technicians. “My compliments to your team.” He nodded to the lead technician and waited while the men shuffled past toward the gantry. Then he turned back to Idris and Cage. “My apologies.”

Idris grinned, looking from the backs of the techs to Rood and back. Cage said nothing, but his expression was grim. Rood loosened the seam of his combat suit and waited. Cage held out the noteputer he held. Rood took it.

“Brendon Wick is dead,” Ephraim Cage said.

“What?”

“Killed in the Trial,” Idris said. “Which we won, by the way.”

“How?”

“A Gauss slug to the cockpit,” Idris said. Rood looked from him to Cage.

“It was quick,” the DropShip captain said.

Rood drew in a deep breath. Brendon Wick had been his friend for many years. A warrior lived on the knife’s edge, of course. He didn’t mourn his death in the mopey sense that a Spheroid would. That does not mean it is not still a shock. He looked at Cage again. “The giftake?”

“Secure.”

Rood nodded. A warrior’s giftake was the genetic sample that would be returned to the Hellions’ genetic repository on Hector for use in the eugenic breeding program. Brendon Wick’s prominence in Beta Galaxy—and his possession of the Wick Bloodname—had already secured his place in the breeding program. There would be future sibkos spawned from his material. It was the goal of every trueborn Clan warrior. A place in the breeding program, a few words in the Remembrance, the epic poem of each Clan…these were as close to immortality as a Clansman could come.

Rood shook himself. Many places in the breeding program are being earned here, he told himself. “The Trial?”

“Won,” Cage said, inclining his head toward Idris. “As your bondsman said.”

“Losses?”

Cage shrugged. “As expected, save Star Colonel Wick.”

 As expected. Rood lifted the noteputer, but only stared at its blank, unpowered face. We speak of the death of Ice Hellion warriors as expectations. The dichotomy had bothered him for some time during his sibko years. The life of a trueborn Ice Hellion warrior—of any Clan warrior, he’d later realized, trueborn or freeborn—was precious. They were highly-trained, genetically-enhanced specimens. But they were expendable—more, they were trained, grown and equipped to spend themselves for the Clan.

Precious gems. To be thrown against the diamond-hard wall of war until they broke.

“For the world of Amaris,” Rood muttered.

Idris cleared his throat. “The formal reports are there,” he said, gesturing toward the noteputer Rood held, “but we have also claimed Botany Bay and Von Strang’s World.” He paused to lick his lips. “Three more worlds for the Hellions, with Apollo.”

“Three worlds,” Rood said. He felt his lip curl into a sneer, despite his best efforts to control it. “And what three worlds. A Periphery station named for an ancient penal colony. Apollo, homeworld of the bloodline of the greatest horror ever to blight the human race.” He waved broadly with his free hand. “And, of course, the world claimed and named for Vampire von Strang, who might have been Amaris’ greatest monster.” He barked a bitter laugh. “Imagine our honor, brothers,” he said. “We have claimed the dirt from the boot heel of history.”

Ephraim Cage frowned, glancing at Idris. The small man was standing slightly bent forward, his hands clasped behind his back. His lips moved and pursed, but he didn’t speak. His eyes focused on the scuffed bay floor between them. Rood waited, but the DropShip commander still didn’t speak. Rood considered, and then let it go. He looked at his bondsman.

“What word from Evciler?”

“There is a holo from the Khan,” Idris said. He met Rood’s eyes evenly, with no fear. As if he were challenging him. That means he has seen the message and, knowing its contents will not please me, wants to see if I will kill the messenger. 

“And?”

“Last Chance and Lackhove.”

Rood blinked. Both were Jade Falcon-held worlds. “She retreats toward them?”

“Neg.” Idris waited until Rood raised an eyebrow. “They are to be Beta Galaxy’s next targets.”

Rood closed his eyes. “And the Khan?”

“Remains on Evciler with Alpha Galaxy.”

His right arm snapped out, flinging the noteputer away from him. The flat device spun in a shallow arc before shattering against the armored bay wall. His lips were compressed, holding his voice inside by conscious effort. It would not do to curse the Khan for the freeborn whelp of a mentally-handicapped laborer’s incompetent sister in front of anyone. Not even these two men.

It was also too tame a profanity.

She is killing us. Rood opened his eyes.

Idris looked toward where the noteputer had shattered, then grinned at Ephraim Cage. Cage shook his head slightly and shrugged.

Idris held out the noteputer he’d carried. “We brought a spare.”

Nadir Jump Point

Steelton

Clan Hell’s Horses Occupation Zone

19 September 3071

“That is not supposed to be here.”

Star Colonel Tanda Ho Jang didn’t have to ask what Galaxy Commander Damon Hawkins had meant by “that.” The offending object hung in Impaler’s combat information center holotank. Tanda was too far away to read the alphanumerics scrolling alongside the floating image, but she recognized the Clan insignia easily. It was a standard Clan communications satellite. They were often left at a system’s jump point to announce possession of the system to whomever arrived. She’d seen many on Delta Galaxy’s path through the Jade Falcon observation zone. All of them had flown the green, square-bottomed insignia of the Jade Falcons.

Except this one. It showed a horsehead. 

Clan Hell’s Horses.

Freebirth.

The technicians running the CIC were carefully—and, Tanda knew, consciously—silent. Damon Hawkins’ temper was legendary. She regarded him now, surreptitiously from the side. He was a small, squat man, with black hair just beginning to show streaks of silver. His shoulders were wide and thickly-muscled, but his posture was that of a lumberer, like a bear. Tanda imagined that was a legacy of his past. In his youth he’d been captured from the Ghost Bears and made a warrior of the Ice Hellions. It was rare—not unheard of, but rare—for an abtakha warrior, as they were called, to rise so high in their new Clan. Hawkins had earned every position. 

“It is confirmed, Galaxy Commander,” a technician said. “The satellite is broadcasting a Hell’s Horses IFF.”

Hawkins snorted. “I can see, can I not?” He waved a hand angrily at the holotank. “What else?”

“It is a looped transmission,” the tech said. His voice was a half-octave higher, his tone more hesitant. Tanda glanced at him but didn’t let her gaze linger. “It announces the Horses’ possession of Steelton, and orders anyone not cleared to depart immediately or face attack.” The technician stood at the edge of the holotank’s entryway. “Nothing else.”

“The Watch had this world in Jade Falcon hands, quiaff?” Hawkins asked.

“Aff, Galaxy Commander,” Tanda said. She gestured the technician away while Hawkins was engrossed in staring at the satellite image. “Apparently our information is out of date.”

“Damn.” Hawkins abruptly stood up straighter, slapping his palms against his trousers. His toes were hooked beneath a staple in the floor to hold himself in place; Impaler had not yet begun to accelerate in-system, which meant they stood in microgravity. “I had hoped to continue our streak.”

Tanda understood what he had meant. Aside from Wotan—damned Wotan, the Sargasso of this bloody part of space—Delta Galaxy had proven itself exceptionally well in the invasion. Losses were heavier than they had predicted, to be sure, but losses were always heavier than predicted. One often wondered if whomever made the predictions had ever been in combat. Morale in the Galaxy was high, as the warriors were expecting to crush another Jade Falcon garrison and move on. Steelton was an important world, heavily industrialized. Taking it for the Ice Hellions would have been quite a coup for the Galaxy Commander. And his subordinates, Tanda let herself note, especially those who have just won command of their Clusters. 

It would have also secured valuable production facilities for the Hellions. Resupply was getting thin. Greater than expected losses, combined with longer campaigns and the general reluctance of several of the Falcon garrisons to engage in quick, stand-up fights, meant that they were getting critically low on expendables. Isorla captured from the Falcons made up for some of that use, but not all.

But the Hell’s Horses being in possession made taking Steelton a different thing entirely. There was no way that Hawkins would order an attack on the Horses—the alliance between the Hellions and the Horses was quiet, to be sure, but it was strong. They shared a common enemy in the Jade Falcons. Tanda opened her mouth—

“We will do it,” Hawkins said.

Tanda closed her mouth. “Sir?” Do what? Withdraw? Of course we will—

“Attack.” Hawkins raised a clenched fist at the Hell’s Horses satellite. “We proceed as planned, Star Colonel.”

“But—”

Hawkins turned and looked at her. His eyes—blue, almost gray eyes—met hers. “Yes, Star Colonel?”

“We cannot attack a Hell’s Horses world, Galaxy Commander,” she blurted. What was he thinking? He’d been there—Founder’s bones, it had been Hawkins himself who’d face the Hell’s Horses Khan James Cobb in the Trial of Possession!—on Nouveaux Paris when Khan Montose and Khan Cobb had agreed to the alliance. “The Khans—”

“Are not here.”

Tanda blinked. “Sir, you were there. You know the Khan’s mind on this matter. We are allied to the Hell’s Horses. They are striking the Wolves, we the Jade Falcons.” She stopped and kicked loose of the staple holding her to the deck. A small motion sent her toward the holotank entryway, where she triggered and then sealed the hatch so no one in the CIC would hear. “Sir, please. This is madness. Khan Rood will challenge you to a Trial of Grievance.”

Hawkins shrugged. “Perhaps he will. But I think rather, when I have secured Steelton for the Hellions, the Khans will say nothing. We will challenge the Horses to a proper Trial of Possession. Alliance or not, trial by combat is part of the Way of the Clans. What the Hellion desires, the Hellion takes. The Horses would do the same.” He barked a short laugh. “Consider the situation, Star Colonel. Steelton was a Jade Falcon world. Now it is a Hell’s Horses world. The Horses have already abrogated the agreement. They were to take Wolf worlds, quiaff?”

“Aff,” Tanda said, pulling herself down to rest her feet lightly against the floor. 

“Inform the Star Colonels that bidding will commence once the Horses have replied to my batchall.” He glanced at the Horses satellite, floating peacefully in the midst of the gathered power of the Ice Hellion’s Delta Galaxy. The predatory shape of the Fredasa-class corvette Swift Bait floated behind the satellite from where Tanda stood, watching. She reached down, unaware she was doing it, and wiped suddenly-sweating palms against her snow-camo jumpsuit. 

“As you order, Galaxy Commander,” she said, triggering the hatch. She didn’t look to see if any of the technicians looked up. She pulled herself out of the holotank as Hawkins shouted orders to Impaler’s crew past her. She’d almost made the armored lift doors when the tones announcing imminent acceleration echoed down the corridor. She made sure her feet were firmly planted as Impaler’s massive drives lit off, pushing the Lola III-class destroyer toward Steelton.

This is madness. But even as she thought it, another part of her mind was arguing. Hawkins is right. This is the Way of the Clans. If the Hell’s Horses have claimed a Jade Falcon world, perhaps we are right to claim it from them.

Would the Khans see it that way?

No part of Tanda Ho Jang’s mind would answer that.

Whitechapel

Apollo

Clan Ice Hellion Occupation Zone

19 September 3071

While he waited for the file to download, Connor Rood examined his hand. He flipped it back and forth, looking at the lighter skin on his palm and the darker skin on his knuckles. He flipped it back and forth, as if it were a freebirth child’s toy. There is a commentary to be made there, he told himself. Something about the duality of nature. What the ancients called yin and yang. Then he chuckled.

Or perhaps you simply cannot decide between an open-palmed slap or a backhanded one, the next time you are alone in a room with that damnable woman.

The door to his office slid open and Idris stepped through. Rood waved him to a chair and pointed to the small holo emitter on the desk. “Any moment,” he said. Idris nodded and sat down. A chime rang from the desktop. Rood touched a control and the holo sprang to life, painting the head and shoulders of a woman over the desktop. 

“I said no the last time, and I meant it, Connor,” the image of Raina Montose said.

Rood tapped the pause key and drew in a deep breath. The frozen image of his Khan stared at him, her eyes accusatory. He leaned forward, looking closely. The resolution on the holo was high enough to be lifelike, and he could see every centimeter of her face. Her skin was pale and drawn, with a sheen of light sweat across her forehead and down her throat. Her eyes had a hint of madness—not the usual, near-fanatical drive toward whatever goal she had at the time that Connor Rood knew well, but something more—and her pupils were dilated. She is on painkillers, he realized. As he’d been informed. Enough that it must be—must it not?—be affecting her judgment.

Her hair was unkempt, with strands of the night-black mop falling from her temples and around her ears. There was a crinkle between her eyes, atop her nose. Rood unconsciously rubbed the same area on his own face. That crinkle meant stress—more stress than could be hid beneath stoicism. Raina Montose was worried. He released the pause key.

“We will not withdraw,” she continued. “Your orders stand. You will take Beta Galaxy to Lackhove and Last Chance, and claim them both for the Hellion. By the time you have finished that, I will have reconsolidated Alpha and Zeta Prime, and Hawkins will have taken Steelton from the Falcons. We will then move to the next phase.”

“The next phase?” Rood whispered. He knew this wasn’t a conversation—he knew he was talking to a recording and that his bondsman was sitting across the desk, watching him speak to uncaring, unhearing adjusted photons. He didn’t care. “The next phase is death, woman.”

“There will be no more talk of retreat,” Montose’s image said. She stopped for a moment, looking down at something outside the holo’s field. Notes? Her hands? Some ethereal demon her drug-addled mind has concocted like a Goliath Scorpion’s visions? Rood chewed his lower lip. “You are saKhan of Clan Ice Hellion. I expect you to follow orders and support mine. The Clan cannot afford to have us divided, not when we are so close to victory.” Her eyes came back up. “Persist in this disloyalty, and I will have you challenged to a Trial of Position.” Her face was set. “We can discuss our differences after we have secured our objectives.” The holo ended and went dark.

Idris sucked air through his teeth. “So that is what the intimate conversations of Khans are like,” he said. “I have often wondered.”

“She is mad.” Rood said it without inflection. He might have been saying “the wall is red.” He felt numb—too numb to think, too numb to plan. 

“We knew this already, quiaff?”

“Aff. But one hopes…” Connor Rood reached up with both hands and rubbed his face. He needed a shave. Both his chin and his head were stubbly. The calluses on his hands caught on the stubble on top of his head. He slid his hands down, feeling the thick pads rub against his nose and chin, and then sighed.

“That is it, then,” he said.

“That is what, exactly?”

“I cannot allow her to crush the Ice Hellions beneath her madness,” Rood said. “When we have completed the invasion, and the Clan will survive it, I will challenge her to a Trial of Position for the Khanship.” He set his hands on the desktop, palms down and fingers splayed. He looked at them. “I thought it would feel different.”

“Different?”

“Saying that out loud.”

“How did it feel?”

“Empty.”

Idris snorted. “Empty, says the next Khan of Clan Ice Hellion.” The bondsman stood. “What is next?”

Rood pursed his lips. “We prepare for movement. The Khan has ordered us to Lackhove. I will take the Lithe Kill and what is left of the Nintieth Striker Irregulars.” He tapped the tabletop. “The 121st can move to Last Chance.”

Idris grunted. “We do not move deeper, to challenge the Khan?” When Rood glared at him, he held up his hands in mock surrender. “If we are to challenge her, surely now is better, is it not? To save more of the Clan that will be slaughtered on the altar of her madness?”

“We cannot.”

“Because that would be treason, quiaff?”

“Neg. Because it would be stupid.”

Idris frowned. “This unworthy bondsman does not understand,” he said. “Please instruct me, o great Khan.”

Rood grinned. “You were a Jade Falcon. Ignorance is to be expected.” He beckoned Idris back down into his chair. “What is the greatest calling of a Clan warrior?”

“Combat,” Idris said.

“And what has Khan Montose given the Ice Hellions?”

“More combat than they’ve see since the Hellions’ Tantrum?”

Rood nodded, not bothering to correct Idris on the name. The Hellions’ fury at being shut out of the initial Clan invasion was considered a righteous campaign on Hector; to the rest of the Clans, it had been little more than a tantrum. “More combat,” he agreed, “but more than that, she has given them victory.” He gestured to the austere, tan-painted room he’d appropriated as his office. “And even more than that, victory in the Inner Sphere.”

“Ah.” Idris nodded. “Even if that victory is bleeding the Clan white, it is still victory. No one will listen.”

“Is it worse than that. If I challenge her now, at best I am a power-hungry greed-monger who wishes to claim credit for the final victory before it is won,” Rood held up his hands. “At worst, I am a defeatist coward, afraid to bring the Jade Falcons to heel.”

Idris nodded. “Few Clansmen would have reasoned that out,” he said. “Elias Crichell, perhaps.”

Rood smiled. “Crichell was ilKhan.”

“For a few seconds.”

“It is not how long you hold it, but what you do with it that matters.”

It was Idris’ turn to snort. “The whole of his reign was spent bleeding on the Grand Council floor, I believe,” the former Jade Falcon said. Then he sobered. “So. Lackhove?”

Rood nodded. “Lackhove.” He stood and waved to the door. “Let us go. The sooner we get there, the sooner I can kill something and we can bring this damn fighting closer to an end.” He stepped around the desk.

“Soon,” he muttered as Idris led the way into the corridor. “Founder knows we cannot take any more mistakes.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Zenith Jump Point

Falcon’s Beacon

Deep Periphery

29 September 3071

The screeching klaxon brought Star Captain Fordham out of a sound sleep. He slapped at the five-point harness holding him into the zero-G sleeping pack strapped against his cabin wall and pushed toward the intercom panel. He’d been captain of the Star Lord-class JumpShip Admiral Garrett for six years. Moving in microgravity was like breathing to him. 

“Report!”

“Sir, we have a jump signature. Danger close.”

Fordham’s eyes widened as his mind pushed the last vestiges of sleep out of his awareness. “ETA?”

“Minutes.”

“Big, then.” Fordham thought, trying to remember the patrol schedules of the Ice Hellions’ other deep space patrols. There were too many, and the invasion had shot them all to hell in any case. “How close?”

“Danger close, but not overlapping.” An incoming JumpShip created a large IR signature before it emerged from hyperspace. The size of the signature was dependent on the number of DropShip collars vessel mounted and the distance it had traveled.

“All right. Send the flotilla to general quarters and get the CAP warmed up. I am on my way.” He toggled the intercom off and pushed away from the wall with his fingertips. His uniform jacket was across the room. He kept his fingers in contact with the wall and brought his toes up, intending to push off and snag the jacket on the way. The intercom pulsed again.

“Fordham.”

“It is here,” the watchstander said.

“It?”

“A Whirlwind.”

Fordham leapt for his hatch, jacket forgotten. “IFF?”

“Emerald Tornado, sir.”

Fordham keyed the hatch open. There weren’t that many active Whirlwinds in service with the Clans. He recognized the name. This particular destroyer was in service with Clan Jade Falcon. The very Clan his brother and sister Hellions were busy attacking in the Inner Sphere. The very Clan he was bringing all these megatons of supplies forward from Hector to support. “The CAP?” He slid out his open hatch into the corridor.

“The pilots are not even to their birds yet, sir.”

Fordham kicked, hard, for the lift. He’d worry about stopping against the back wall of the lift, assuming the door slid open quickly enough. If he hit too hard there was a good chance he’d break something, maybe get an injury he’d feel for the rest of his life.

But that seemed like a minor concern at the moment. Especially when his life might be measured in minutes.

Whirlwind-class destroyer Emerald Tornado

Falcon’s Beacon

Deep Periphery

29 September 3071

Star Admiral Carlos Binetti was trying to focus on the holotank and shake off the residual disorientation from the jump at the same time. The tank had to be on the fritz. There couldn’t be that many JumpShips at Falcon’s Beacon. It was a Watch outpost; maybe a Star of warriors and support staff and some warehouses. Founder’s bones, it wasn’t even on half of the old maps!

“We are getting IFF,” a technician announced. Binetti glanced at the man, then looked back into the tank. The images there flickered as names and flags were appended. “Sir—”

The JumpShips were Ice Hellions.

Binetti’s eyes snapped into focus. Behind him, he heard Emerald Tornado’s captain, Star Captain Charlotte von Jankmon, bark orders. “Secure from jump stations. Set condition one throughout the ship!”

Ice Hellions. Here.

“Star Captain von Jankmon,” he said. “I do not want a single one of these stravags to leave.”

“Roger that, sir.” Charlotte von Jankmon was a small, angry-looking woman. She kept her hair shaved to a centimeter’s length, which did nothing for her round face and plain brown eyes. Not that she cared. In the eight months since Emerald Tornado had left Ironhold Binetti had not once seen nor heard of her coupling with anyone. She was a naval officer and little else. 

And right now he needed the officer.

“Signal the Ice Hellions,” Binetti ordered. “Standard batchall.”

Von Jankmon came to float near him. “If they scatter,” she whispered, “some of the DropShips may outrun us.” The DropShips—some of them—would have higher available acceleration than the Whirlwind, and Emerald Tornado could only chase in one direction. With 360 degrees in three axes available, most of the DropShips would evade capture. Binetti grinned. Not that they would. There was nowhere they could go without their interstellar JumpShips, and those couldn’t maneuver. 

He looked at von Jankmon. Her eyes flicked around the tank, cataloguing ships and classes. Binetti had been in WarShips for his entire career, but no one read a holotank like Charlotte von Jankmon. “Mostly merchies.”

“Escorts?”

“CIC will have the numbers,” von Jankmon said. “I only see a couple of Broadswords.”

“Very well.” Binetti licked his lips. “In that case, Star Captain, fight your ship.”

The smile that blossomed on Charlotte von Jankmon’s plain face was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with beauty. She twisted away.

“Spin up the drive, Hayes.” Her voice was almost giddy. “It is time to go catch us some guppies.”

Zenith Jump Point

Falcon’s Beacon

Deep Periphery

29 September 3071

By the time Fordham reached Admiral Garrett’s bridge, he’d already made his decision. He swam out of the lift toward his central command chair and climbed into the familiar cradle. The bridge crew—largely technician castemen—were dutifully paying attention to their consoles. The large holotank forward was showing a tactical display. The flock of Ice Hellion JumpShips showed as blue arranged in a loose sphere; the solitary red icon—Emerald Tornado—was near the center, but not quite. 

The red caret moved toward the center. Apparently the Falcon commander had realized his mistake. Fordham pressed a key on his tactical screen that would pulse the CAP aerospace fighters—their icons might be lost in the clutter. He looked at the holotank, watching for blue flashes. There were none. What the—

“Where is the CAP?”

Suleiman, the technician manning the radar plot, turned his head to look at Fordham. “None have launched yet.”

“None—?” Fordham closed his eyes. This actually worked better for his plan, but the sheer fact that his combat aerospace patrol fighters hadn’t left their tubes galled him. They had drilled the entire jump series from Hector. These same fighters had participated in the capture of the small Watch station on Falcon’s Beacon. Had they become so complacent with one paltry victory?

Perhaps we deserve this defeat.

A tone sounded behind him. “Sir, we are receiving the Falcon’s batchall.” Castro’s voice was flat. Fordham smiled, looking at his chest. “I can forward it to your station—“ Fordham cut him off.

“Concede.”

“Sir?”

Fordham looked up, eyes staring into the holotank at the floating blue icons. The defenseless—or nearly so—JumpShips of his flotilla. His charges. His responsibility. “Tell the Falcon commander we surrender.”

“Yes, sir…” Castro’s voice was hesitant, but Fordham heard him keying the message into his console. Fordham didn’t look. He didn’t want to see the words that destroyed his career—maybe his Clan—prepared.

The lift door opened again. Fordham looked, saw his second-in-command hurtle from the lift. Star Commander Vicenzo caught a technician’s chair back to arrest his flight and looked at the holotank. “Founder’s bones,” he spat. Vicenzo was a young warrior, barely two years out of his sibko. His hair was too long for space, but he refused to cut it. Instead, he kept it pulled into a short, tight ponytail that pulled at the skin on his forehead. He looked at Fordham, nodded once, and then stared back into the tank.

“Where are the escorts?” He frowned. “Where are the CAP fighters?” He tugged himself around to face Castro at the communications console. “Castro, order the escorts launched. Find out why the CAP is not in space.” Without waiting for a reply, he looked at Fordham again. “Have we received a batchall?”

Fordham nodded.

“Terms?”

Fordham opened his mouth, but Vicenzo looked past him. “Castro, I gave you an order,” he said. “Send the orders.”

“I have surrendered.”

Vicenzo’s mouth hung open. He blinked several times. “You what?”

“I have surrendered the flotilla, Star Commander,” he said, emphasizing the younger man’s rank. “It is done.”

“Sir—” The word came out half-strangled. A flush crept up Vicenzo’s pale skin, from his neck first but then crowding around his temples and across his face. “You cannot just give up.” He gestured to the holotank. “You know as well as I do that the supplies on those DropShips are the lifeblood of our Clan. Without them…” 

“We cannot fight a destroyer.”

“But—”

“We. Cannot.”

Vicenzo exhaled. “You have killed our Clan.” He looked stunned, dazed, as if he’d taken a blow. And perhaps he had, to his pride and his tidy mental framework of the universe. Fordham had the same reaction on the lift, but he’d been alone and had more years—more disappointments—than Vicenzo to make him familiar with the sensation of loss of control.

Vicenzo shuddered. “I will not let you,” he said, sudden steel in his voice. “I will challenge you to a Trial of—”

“Tell me how to do it, then!” Fordham shouted, and regretted it.

No one moved on the bridge. On one level, none of the technician castemen were going to involve themselves in an argument between two of the warrior caste. On another, more personal, level, no one had ever—ever—heard Fordham raise his voice. Now they watched the older Clansman climb out of the cradle of displays and restraints in the command chair and push off toward his second.

“Tell me,” he growled. “Tell me how I can fight a WarShip when the fighters have not left their bays. Tell me how I can take a handful of light DropShips—’Mech carriers, not assault ships—against a destroyer. Tell me how I can do those things—from rest!—when I am facing a WarShip whose weapons outrange mine by a factor of ten?” He grabbed a stanchion and stopped, face-to-face and chest-to-chest with Vicenzo.

“Tell me,” he said.

Vicenzo gobbled.

“To. Fight. Is. To. Die. It is that simple.”

Doctrine grabbed ahold of Vicenzo. “But to just give up…”

“Our deaths earn the Clan nothing. We fight, we die, and none of these supplies reach our warriors in the Inner Sphere. We surrender, and none of these supplies reach our warriors in the Inner Sphere.” Fordham squeezed the stanchion, hoping no one would notice the shaking tension in his arms. “Tell me.”

Vicenzo looked from Fordham to the holotank. His eyes unfocused—Fordham, watching closely, saw his pupils dilate—and Fordham knew he was seeing through the hull, through time and space, to where the Ice Hellion touman was fighting and dying. 

“The Clan—” he said, but stopped.

Fordham nodded. “Our defeat was certain the moment that destroyer left hyperspace.”

Vicenzo didn’t hear him. “The Clan,” he said again.

Cabletown

Steelton

Clan Ice Hellion Occupation Zone

29 September 3071

The pain was not real. Tanda Ho Jang knew that, but watching another of her brother warrriors’ death sent pangs through her soul. No part of her body was hurt, but pain was an artifact of the mind, and her mind screamed with impotence. With pain. Familiar pain.

And beneath, a hint of shame.

I should have challenged Damon Hawkins then.

The past two weeks had been a pure form of Hell. The bidding against the Hell’s Horses had been handled by Galaxy Commander Hawkins, but the fighting had involved all of the Clusters of Delta Galaxy before it was done. Not that Damon Hawkins had lived to see it—his Warhawk had been destroyed during the first skirmish, felled by a Point of Hell’s Horses Gnome battlesuits. Star Colonel Scott Moore had taken over the Galaxy as the senior officer, and they had pressed the attack. 

The attack they were never supposed to make. Tanda didn’t let herself think about the alliance with the Hell’s Horses they’d almost certainly sundered by coming here. It had been Damon Hawkins’ decision, and he was dead.

It fell to his officers to deal with the aftermath.

Her own Third-third Striker Irregulars had performed as well as she could have expected. The only Cluster in the Ice Hellions’ touman to embrace the assault ’Mech, the Thirty-third was a hammer most Ice Hellions never expected to use—and few opponents expected them to field. The Hell’s Horses had their own share of assault ’Mechs and the doctrine to use them, but across those two weeks the Hellions of Delta Galaxy had pushed them back, until there was nothing left but the spaceport in Cabletown. The Horses were withdrawing, and after the first horrible orbital battle, the Ice Hellion’s didn’t have the strength to stop them.

The debris from the exploding Kit Fox had barely struck the ground before the Ice Hellions’ killers, a pair of Epona hovertanks, sped through the smoky cloud toward her. Both of the OmniVehicles were in the beta configuration. Big-bore Ultra autocannons barked at her, but neither of the streams of high-explosive shells hit her ’Mech. Tanda pushed the pain down and snarled at the heads-up display. Come this way, plastic toys. She shoved her OmniMech’s throttle forward and forgot about her pain.

Her Ebon Jaguar, sixty-five tons of fighting death designed by the now-dead Smoke Jaguar Clan, shoved itself into a running lope. Her crosshairs flickered as the tanks came into range. She chose the port-side tank as her first target and fired. Paired extended-range large laser beams flickered out, painting the tank’s bow in brilliance for half an instant before the hovertank’s thin armor succumbed and crumpled. The Epona went from an angular, graceful assault tank to a rolling fireball. She screamed in triumph and jerked the controls to the side, bringing the charging OmniMech around to face the other tank. It had sped in close while its Pointmate died.

Short-range missiles roared from its launchers and peppered the Ebon Jaguar with explosions. Tanda rode the shocks, concentrating on the keeping the ’Mech on its feet. If the Epona was close enough to hit her with Streak short-range missiles… She slammed the Ebon Jaguar’s clawed left foot down and spun, bringing her torso-mounted autocannon to bear. She looked for the flicker in her crosshairs, saw it—

—the Ebon Jaguar shook as its 200-millimeter Ultra autocannon vomited fire—

—the Epona disappeared beneath the hammer of the big rounds—

      —and it was gone.

 Tanda breathed deeply. The air in her cockpit was hot, fresh with the smells of her sweat and overworked cooling conduits. Her skin was rubbed near-raw beneath her combat suit, battered by sweat being evaporated by heat and the replaced by new sweat.

She was tired.

“Star Colonel Ho Jang.” Tanda blinked. A blue-white Ice Hellion Stormcrow had appeared alongside her Ebon Jaguar. She queried its IFF and raised an eyebrow at the ID. 

“Star Colonel Moore.” 

“There are indications the Hell’s Horses are leaving,” Moore said. He sounded as tired as Tanda felt. “One more push, one more Trial. We can take their DropShips as isorla. That might make up for…” Tanda heard the sneer of disgust in his tone, “this.”

“You really think anything will make up for this?”

Tanda released her controls long enough to shake her hands vigorously. Her fingertips tingled with fresh blood, new sensation. When she gripped her controls again she felt the trembling motion of the Ebon Jaguar’s restrained power. One last push.

“The batchall is yours, Tanda.” The Stormcrow turned away. “As is the honor.”

Tanda signaled her Trinary commanders and throttled up toward the city. She would do it, because it was duty. And duty was much.

But there is no honor on Steelton.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Overlord C-class DropShip Rapacious

Lackhove

Clan Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

3 October 3071

Connor Rood stared at the package on the desktop in his small cabin aboard Rapacious. It was extruded plastic, the casing for some technical component. A circuit board of some kind. He didn’t know what it did, nor did he care, so long as it served his purpose. He wasn’t interested in the component’s function. He cared about the case.

It bore the rampant horsehead of the Hell’s Horses Clan.

He rubbed his freshly-shaved skull. When he lowered his hands he examined them, eyeing the thick black fingers and the callouses of a man who worked out regularly. They were strong hands, hands he had accomplished great things with.

And now, he snarled into his mind, those things are undone because of an incompetent glory hound and a power-mad woman who will not see reality.

The hatch slid open. Idris stepped through, a questioning look on his face. “I have examined the latest shipment. The supplies are good.” He gestured to the container on the desktop. “And with a small amount of paint, one would never know where they came from.”

Connor swept the carton off the desk. “It came from Steelton.”

“You did not wish to attack the Horses?”

“I had an arrangement with the Horses. They agreed to leave the Falcons to us.”

“Ah.” Idris smiled. “And now?”

“I do not know.” Even as he said the words, though, his mind shouted at him that he was a liar. You know exactly what James Cobb will do. You have met the man. You have spoken with him, bargained with him. Our agreement is at an end. He rubbed his hands together, mind working. The Khan would not authorize a withdrawal, but perhaps once the resupply convoy from Hector arrived they could rally and mount one last offensive. If we strike hard enough, perhaps we can shock the Falcons into giving us time to consolidate. He looked at Idris.

“What do you think your former brethren would do—” he began, but stopped at a chime on the hatch. At his nod Idris cycled it open to reveal the small form of Star Captain Ephraim Cage.

“My Khan.”

“Ephraim. Are you all right?”

Cage was pale, paler than normal. His face was pinched, and he avoided looking Rood in the eyes. He almost seems frightened.

“I have news, my Khan.” Cage held out a noteputer. “There has been an attack.”

“An attack?”

“On our resupply convoy.”

Rood sat down. He didn’t take the noteputer. Idris reached past Cage and took it before spinning to sit in one of the two small chairs. “Tell me.”

“A Jade Falcon WarShip, Emerald Tornado, stumbled onto the flotilla at Falcon’s Beacon. Star Captain Fordham, the senior warrior present…” Cage swallowed. His lips disappeared as he pressed them together.

“Say it.”

“He surrendered, sir.”

Rood closed his eyes. He concentrated on his breathing. It cannot be as bad as it first seems, he reminded himself. Freebirth. It was much worse than it seemed. When he opened his eyes he looked at Idris. The bondsman nodded. “I am going to need a new appraisal,” he said slowly, “of the current state of Beta Galaxy’s expendables and replacement parts.” The bondsman stood.

“I will see to it,” Idris said.

“No.”

Idris turned away from the hatch. “What?”

“You will order someone else to do it.” He pulled himself to his feet and reached behind his back. Cage stepped back, clearing the way, as Rood leaned over his desk. “Your hand.”

Idris frowned, but held out his wrist. The bondcord, the symbolic length of string wrapped around his wrist that marked him as a bondsman, dangled. Rood flicked his knife between the cord and Idris’ skin, severing the remaining two knots. “You are again a warrior,” he said. “We will need every one, especially now.”

“My Khan—”

“You are a warrior of Clan Ice Hellion,” Rood said. “Welcome, brother.”

Idris looked from his wrist to the severed bondcord on the desk. He picked the blue-white tendril and turned it over in his hands. Ephraim Cage reached out and touched Idris’ shoulder.

“Welcome, brother,” Cage said. The DropShip captain smiled.

“I—”

“Have duties,” Rood finished. “As soon as we have taken Lackhove, you will undergo a Trial of Position. You do me little good as a common MechWarrior.”

Cage cleared his throat. “Then we proceed to Lackhove?”

“Of course.”

“But—” the DropShip captain gestured to the noteputer Idris had set on the desk.

“It does not matter.”

“It does not matter?”

“No.” Rood held up the knife he’d just used to free Idris. “We are this blade, now.” He slid it back into the sheath at the small of his back. “The only way forward is victory.” He met each man’s—each warrior’s—eyes in turn. “There is nothing else we can do now, but move forward and take what we need to survive.”

“If we fail…” Ephraim Cage whispered.

Rood’s voice was strong. “If we fail, it is the death of our Clan.”

He drew in a deep breath.

“We cannot fail.”

Connor Rood and his Ice Hellions will return in

The Winds of Spring: Operation ICE STORM, Part Two.

BATTLETECH GLOSSARY

Clan military unit designations are used throughout this book. The information below refers to pre-Stone disarmament, before the end of the Jihad in 3081; late 31st and early 32nd century Clan organizations were scaled down considerably. Only recently have “standard” organization numbers begun to reach these levels once more.

Point: 1 ‘Mech or 5 infantry

Star: 5 ‘Mechs or 25 infantry

Binary: 2 Stars

Trinary: 3 Stars

Cluster: 4–5 Binaries/Trinaries

Galaxy: 3-5 Clusters

Nova: 1 ‘Mech Star and 1 infantry Star

Supernova: 1 ‘Mech Binary and 2 infantry Stars

ABTAKHA

An abtakha is a captured warrior who is adopted into his new Clan as a warrior.

AUTOCANNON

This is a rapid-fire, auto-loading weapon. Light autocannon range from 30 to 90mm caliber, and heavy autocannon may be from 80 to 120mm or more. The weapon fires high-speed streams of high-explosive, armor-piercing shells.

BATCHALL

The batchall is the ritual by which Clan warriors issue combat challenges. Though the type of challenge varies, most begin with the challenger identifying himself, stating the prize of the contest, and requesting that the defender identify the forces at his disposal. The defender also has the right to name the location of the trial. The two sides then bid for what forces will participate in the contest. The subcommander who bids to fight with the  number of forces wins the right and responsibility to make the attack. The defender may increase the stakes by demanding a prize of equal or lesser value if he wants.

BATTLEMECH

BattleMechs are the most powerful war machines ever built. First developed by Terran scientists and engineers, these huge, man-made vehicles are faster, more mobile, better-armored and more heavily armed than any twentieth-century tank. Ten to twelve meters tall and equipped with particle projection cannons, lasers, rapid-fire autocannon and missiles, they pack enough firepower to flatten anything but another BattleMech. A small fusion reactor provides virtually unlimited power, and BattleMechs can be adapted to fight in environments ranging from sun-baked deserts to subzero arctic icefields.

BLOODNAME

A Bloodname is the surname associated with a Bloodright, descended from one of the 800 warriors who stood with Nicholas Kerensky to form the Clans. A warrior must win the use of a Bloodname in a Trial of Bloodright. Only Bloodnamed warriors may sit on Clan Councils or hold the post of Loremaster, Khan, or ilKhan, and only the genetic material from the Bloodnamed is used in the warrior caste eugenics program.

BONDCORD

The woven bracelet worn by bondsmen is known as a bondcord. Warrior-caste bondsmen wear a three-strand bondcord on their right wrists, with the color and patterning of the cords signifying the Clan and unit responsible for the warrior’s capture. The cords represent integrity, fidelity, and prowess. The bondholder may cut each strand as he or she feels the bondsman demonstrates the associated quality. According to tradition, when the final cord is severed, the bondsman is considered a free member of his or her new Clan and adopted into the warrior caste. Each Clan follows this tradition to varying degrees. For example, Clan Wolf accepts nearly all worthy individuals regardless of their past, while Clan Smoke Jaguar generally chose to adopt only trueborn warriors.

BONDSMAN

A bondsman is a prisoner held in a form of indentured servitude until released or accepted into the Clan. Most often, bondsmen are captured warriors who fulfill roles in the laborer or technician castes. Their status is represented by a woven bondcord, and they are obliged by honor and tradition to work for their captors to the best of their abilities.

CASTE

The Clans are divided into five castes: warrior, scientist, merchant, technician, and laborer, in descending order of influence. Each has many subcastes based on specialized skills. The warrior caste is largely the product of the artificial breeding program; those candidates who fail their Trial of Position are assigned to the scientist or technician caste, giving those castes a significant concentration of trueborn members. Most of the civilian castes are made up of the results of scientist-decreed arranged marriages within the castes. 

The children of all castes undergo intensive scrutiny during their schooling to determine the caste for which they are best suited, though most end up in the same caste as their parents. This process allows children born to members of civilian castes to enter training to become warriors, though they belong to the less-prestigious ranks of the freeborn.

CIRCLE OF EQUALS

The area in which a trial takes place is known as the Circle of Equals. It ranges in size from a few dozen feet for personal combat to tens of miles for large-scale trials. Though traditionally a circle, the area can be any shape. 

CRUSADER

A Crusader is a Clansman who espouses the invasion of the Inner Sphere and the re-establishment of the Star League by military force. Most Crusaders are contemptuous of the people of the Inner Sphere, whom they view as barbarians, and of freeborns within their own Clans.

DEZGRA

Any disgraced individual or unit is known as dezgra. Disgrace may come through refusing orders, failing in an assigned task, acting dishonorably, or demonstrating cowardice. 

DROPSHIPS

Because interstellar JumpShips must avoid entering the heart of a solar system, they must “dock” in space at a considerable distance from a system’s inhabited worlds. DropShips were developed for interplanetary travel. As the name implies, a DropShip is attached to hardpoints on the JumpShip’s drive core, later to be dropped from the parent vessel after in-system entry. Though incapable of FTL travel, DropShips are highly maneuverable, well-armed and sufficiently aerodynamic to take off from and land on a planetary surface. The journey from the jump point to the inhabited worlds of a system usually requires a normal-space journey of several days or weeks, depending on the type of star.

FREEBIRTH

Freebirth is a Clan epithet used by trueborn members of the warrior caste to express disgust or frustration. For one trueborn to use this curse to refer to another trueborn is considered a mortal insult.

FREEBORN

An individual conceived and born by natural means is referred to as freeborn. Its emphasis on the artificial breeding program allows Clan society to view such individuals as second-class citizens.

HEGIRA

Hegira is the rite by which a defeated foe may withdraw from the field of battle without further combat and with no further loss of honor.

ISORLA

The spoils of battle, including bondsmen, claimed by the victorious warriors is called isorla.

JUMPSHIPS

Interstellar travel is accomplished via JumpShips, first developed in the twenty-second century. These somewhat ungainly vessels consist of a long, thin drive core and a sail resembling an enormous parasol, which can extend up to a kilometer in width. The ship is named for its ability to “jump” instantaneously across vast distances of space. After making its jump, the ship cannot travel until it has recharged by gathering up more solar energy.

The JumpShip’s enormous sail is constructed from a special metal that absorbs vast quantities of electromagnetic energy from the nearest star. When it has soaked up enough energy, the sail transfers it to the drive core, which converts it into a space-twisting field. An instant later, the ship arrives at the next jump point, a distance of up to thirty light-years. This field is known as hyperspace, and its discovery opened to mankind the gateway to the stars.

JumpShips never land on planets. Interplanetary travel is carried out by DropShips, vessels that are attached to the JumpShip until arrival at the jump point.

KHAN (kaKhan, saKhan)

Each Clan Council elects two of its number as Khans, who serve as rulers of the Clan and its representatives on the Grand Council. Traditionally, these individuals are the best warriors in the Clan, but in practice many Clans instead elect their most skilled politicians. The senior Khan, sometimes referred to as the kaKhan, acts as the head of the Clan, overseeing relationships between castes and Clans. The junior Khan, known as the saKhan, acts as the Clan’s warlord. The senior Khan decides the exact distribution of tasks, and may assign the saKhan additional or different duties.

The term “kaKhan” is considered archaic, and is rarely used.

LASER

An acronym for “Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation.” When used as a weapon, the laser damages the target by concentrating extreme heat onto a small area. BattleMech lasers are designated as small, medium or large. Lasers are also available as shoulder-fired weapons operating from a portable backpack power unit. Certain range-finders and targeting equipment also employ low-level lasers.

LRM

This is an abbreviation for “Long-Range Missile,” an indirect-fire missile with a high-explosive warhead.

POSSESSION, TRIAL OF

A Trial of Possession resolves disputes between two parties over ownership or control. This can include equipment, territory, or even genetic material. The traditional batchall forms the core of the trial in order to encourage the participants to resolve the dispute with minimal use of force.

REMEMBRANCE, THE

The Remembrance is an ongoing heroic saga that describes Clan history from the time of the Exodus to the present day. Each Clan maintains its own version, reflecting its opinions and perceptions of events. Inclusion in The Remembrance is one of the highest honors possible for a member of the Clans. All Clan warriors can recite passages from The Remembrance from memory, and written copies of the book are among the few nontechnical books allowed in Clan society. These books are usually lavishly illustrated in a fashion similar to the illuminated manuscripts and Bibles of the medieval period. Warriors frequently paint passages of The Remembrance on the sides of their OmniMechs, fighters, and battle armor.

SEYLA

Seyla is a ritual response in Clan ceremonies. The origin of this phrase is unknown, though it may come from the Biblical notation “selah,” thought to be a musical notation or a reference to contemplation.

SRM

This is the abbreviation for “Short-Range Missile,” a direct-trajectory missile wth high-explosive or armor-piercing explosive warheads. They have a range of less than one kilometer and are only reliably accurate at ranges of less than 300 meters. They are more powerful, however, than LRMs.

SUCCESSOR LORDS

After the fall of the first Star League, the remaining members of the High Council each asserted his or her right to become First Lord. Their star empires became known as the Successor States and the rulers as Successor Lords. The Clan Invasion temporarily interrupted centuries of warfare known as the Succession Wars, which first began in 2786. 

SURAT

A Clan epithet, alluding to the rodent of the same name, which disparages an individual’s genetic heritage. As such, it is one of the most vulgar and offensive epithets among the Clans.

TOUMAN

The fighting arm of a Clan is known as the Touman.

TROTHKIN

Used formally, trothkin refers to members of an extended sibko. It is more commonly used to denote members of a gathering, and warriors also frequently use it when addressing someone they consider a peer. 

TRUEBORN/TRUEBIRTH

A warrior born of the Clan’s artificial breeding program is known as a trueborn. In less formal situations, the Clans use the term truebirth.

WARDEN

A Warden is a Clansman who believes that the Clans were established to guard the Inner Sphere from outside threats rather than to conquer it and re-establish the Star League by force. Most Wardens were opposed to the recent invasion of the Inner Sphere.

ZELLBRIGEN

Zellbrigen is the body of rules governing duels. These rules dictate that such actions are one-on-one engagements, and that any warriors not immediately challenged should stay out of the battle until an opponent is free. 

Once a Clan warrior engages a foe, no other warriors on his or her side may target that foe, even if it means allowing the death of the Clan warrior. Interfering in a duel by attacking a foe that is already engaged constitutes a major breach of honor, and usually results in loss of rank. Such action also opens the battle to a melee.

If you enjoyed The Frost Advances, more exciting BattleTech fiction from Jason Schmetzer is available! Download and read Hector now!

Since their appearance in the Inner Sphere in 3005, the mercenary regiments known as Wolf’s Dragoons have proven themselves the masters of the battlefield, the equal of any regiment of any of the five warring Successor States.

Now under contract to House Marik’s Free Worlds League, the Dragoons have undertaken their most daring mission yet: an attack on House Steiner’s impregnable Hesperus II BattleMech factories. Success on Hesperus will make the Dragoons into living legends… but few enemies have survived House Steiner’s fanatical defenses. 

The Steiners know how important the ancient BattleMech factories are to their nation—and not even the fearsome reputation of Wolf’s Dragoons will make them blink.

HECTOR

CHAPTER ONE

Alpha Regiment Landing Zone

Harkspur Mountains, Hesperus II

Lyran Commonwealth

6 June 3019

The Harkspurs were magnificent mountains. Lucas Kenner stood near the foot of his BattleMech and looked out at the horizon, both near and far, while the rest of his company finished debarking. Chieftain had blasted the landscape bare of what little vegetation grew nearby with its mighty fusion drive. Kenner kicked absently at a loose stone with his boot, his attention on the sharp jags and spurs of the mountain range. Directly in front of him was a sharp face, broken by the ravine pass south of them that the regiment’s scouts had gone out through. The face rose at least a full kilometer, towering over him. It went on as far as he could see, a seeming shield wall against the invaders. The wall’s sheer presence awed him in a way that no BattleMech or DropShip ever had.

A scrape of boot on stone focused his attention closer at hand. A breeze was blowing from behind him, gentle winds busy liberating the heat Chieftain’s drive had baked into the ground. Hesperus was not a cool world, but the DropShip’s motors channeled the heat of a star. Local weather in the canyon would be a bit unpredictable for a few more hours.

The breeze also carried the scorched-earth scent of burnt dirt and the telltales of ’Mech lubricant and DropShip exhaust. Kenner clenched his jaw as the wind wrapped a separate tendril around his face and caressed his nose with her. Roses and lavender, with the sweet undercurrent of clean sweat. He drew in a shuddering breath, held it, and blew it out as he turned.

“Kaley,” he said. “You already said it.”

Kaley Cross stood with her arms crossed in front of her, looking alternately at his eyes and his feet. Her body language said scared but resolute. Kenner was an expert in body language. He’d used its hints all his life, ever since he learned its secrets in the crèche. He saw the way she squeezed her fingers against each other without knowing she was doing it and heard tension. Her eye contact was spotty, which was submissive… but he knew she wasn’t a submissive woman—he knew it well—and so he saw it for what it was: pity. His jaw tightened anew at the realization, testosterone pounding his blood against his veins, fueling the fight and flight response that Kenner almost always answered with fight. His whole body tensed, and he looked at her posture again. He looked, and saw the determined set of her back and shoulders.

I did it again, he thought, and felt a familiar piece of himself die anew.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” Kaley said.

“Don’t be,” Kenner said. His voice was stiff. So were his arms and his shoulders and his back. “All good things, right?”

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t treat this like something casual.”

“What else was it, if it’s over?”

Kaley’s eyes flashed and her chin snapped up. “You son of a—”

A rumble rolled out of the ravine exit to the lakebed, a deep, tremulous rumble that Kenner knew well and felt in his diaphragm. He turned his head and looked, but of course there was nothing to see, just the long shield wall of the mountain. No smoke, no flash of fire, no clouds in the sky. A civilian would have thought it was thunder and commented on the lack of noticeable weather.

Kenner was a MechWarrior. He knew the sound.

“The Colonel—” Kaley started, but Kenner cut her off.

“The Colonel gave me a company,” Kenner said. “Able First.”

“Gamble’s Company?”

“Gamble’s dead,” Kenner said. “He bought his farm on Lamon.”

Kaley stared at him. He was surprised she hadn’t heard, but then realized that she’d probably been busy on the transit from Lamon. The Widows and the Zetas had taken a decent enough pounding, he knew, and technicians of Kaley’s class were always in demand after a good fight. They’d spent their off-duty time on Chieftain doing other things than talking about duty assignments, and then no talking at all for the last week.

“So now it’s Kenner’s Company?” she finally asked.

“It’s Able First,” he said shortly. “I’m not Gamble.”

“It’s your company, Luke,” she said. “Don’t let your stupid pride ruin this too.”

Kenner felt the spark light in his chest again, the reflex—the fight. Part of his mind raged at him for letting it out, screamed and railed and pointed at it and damned him for letting the very thing that drove Kaley and all the others away have its say again. He opened his mouth, but the horn high on Chieftain’s hull spun up and howled and pounded sound off the shield wall, and all he could do was smile coldly at Kaley. He didn’t move.

A moment passed, and then two, where she held his eyes, and he watched the emotions play across her face. She nibbled on her lower lip for half an instant, and Kenner felt his heart tremble, but then that lower lip disappeared beneath the hard tension of a frown, and he knew she was gone from his world.

And then she turned and was.

He watched her walk away for perhaps ten steps, his eyes tracing the familiar curves of her body beneath the blue jumpsuit, seeing the ponytail sway with her shoulders as she walked, catching the first sob trembling at her shoulders. He watched all that, feeling like less than the cracked earth beneath his boots. And then duty took hold. He spun and started climbing.

The Harkspur Mountains were great and imposing, and made Kenner feel small in his little packet of reality called Lucas Kenner. He looked to the side and saw the familiar sleek bulk of Chieftain. Her turrets were unmasking and pivoting on their tracks, the ’Mech bay doors scrolling closed. Chieftain had always made him feel both small and proud, small because of its sheer mass, and proud that he was part of a race that could design and build and fly something so massive and complex as an Overlord-class DropShip.

He paused just above his BattleMech’s knee and looked down at the insignia painted there, a black wolf’s head on a red circle. The howling wolf the Colonel had brought to the insignia, the comforting lethality of Wolf’s Dragoons. That mark, and the machine that bore it, made Lucas Kenner feel less small, but no less proud.

It made him feel alive.

By the time he made it into the Marauder II’s cockpit and got himself strapped in and his neurohelmet settled on its shoulder supports, the rest of his company had gathered around him. His two lances, Angel Dumphries’ Heavy Lance and Austin Lee Jennings’ Attack Lance, had the patrol around Chieftain. Foster and the other members of his Command Lance had been racked on Chieftain, waiting their turn in the rotation.

“Able First,” Kenner reported, as soon as his ’Mech was ready.

“Able First, Able Actual,” a strong voice replied. Kenner sat a little straighter in his command console. If Major Yukinov himself was doing the talking, things had to be more complicated than he expected. The Dragoons had only been down for ten hours. The sound of the battalion commander doing combat controlling was not comforting.

“Go ahead, Major,” Kenner said.

“The scouts have found the Lyrans, Captain,” Yukinov said. “We didn’t get anything beyond a contact report before they stopped broadcasting, so all we know if they hit something heavy enough to take them down fast.” The major paused. “With Lyrans, that’s probably heavies and assaults.”

Kenner nodded. The Lyran Commonwealth was well-known for its predilection for the heaviest BattleMechs and vehicles available, and many of its regiments were comprised almost entirely of heavy and assault class ’Mechs. Many of those machines were manufactured here on Hesperus inside the Dragoons’ target, the famous factories of Defiance Industries. There had been briefing after briefing during the transit about the history and impregnability of the factories nestled inside the Myoo Mountains.

“Orders?” Kenner asked. The history lesson could wait. Dragoons were dying.

“Move to contact, Captain,” Yukinov said.

“And when contact is established?”

“This isn’t a social call, Captain,” Yukinov said. “You’ve got an assault company. Assault.” The transmission squeaked an instant’s background noise and then cut off, closed down by Yukinov.

“Simple enough,” Kenner muttered. He started his Marauder into motion and pointed its nose at the ravine. “Form on me,” he called on the company frequency, and then dialed for the lance commander’s channel.

“What’s the word, sir?” Lieutenant Austin Lee Jennings asked. The Attack Lance commander had been coldly formal ever since Kenner had taken command, two days before landing. Kenner hadn’t figured out yet if the man was jealous—he’d seen Jennings’ service jacket; the man was far too junior for a line company—or if he just resented a new CO so close to a major operation.

“Scouts are down,” Kenner said. “We’re going to see what happened.”

“What happened is this is the Lyrans’ backyard,” Lieutenant Angel Dumphries snapped. “Of course they know the terrain and the routes through the mountains.” Dumphries drove an Atlas, 100 tons of fearsome assault ’Mech, despite the fact that she barely stood a meter and a half and probably weight fifty kilos wet. She was angry—always—and being passed over for Gamble’s slot hadn’t helped her any. Kenner couldn’t help her with her anger over the decision to place him in command of Able First.

He didn’t understand it himself.

“We move forward until we find the scouts coming back,” Kenner said, “or else we move forward until we find the Lyrans. Angel, I want you to lead. Austin, you follow in the center of the column. I’ll keep my lance in the rear.”

“Unity!” Dumphries snorted.

“I want our heaviest armor on the ends of the column,” Kenner said. In a rank-conscious outfit he could have her up on charges. In the Dragoons, he wasn’t going to say a word. Dragoon officers led and the rest followed, or else they didn’t. “If we’re in contact with the Lyran line regiments already, it’ll be in ambush. So Angel and her boys can take the front, and I’ll keep mine in the back.”

“Florence isn’t a boy,” Dumphries said.

“I meant the ’Mechs,” Kenner said. “Now move.”

“And when we trip this ambush?” Jennings said. “What then?”

“Then we stick it in and break it off,” Kenner said coldly. “We’re Dragoons. It’s time these money-grubbers learned what it means to face Dragoons.” He was parroting a mess-hall speech he’d heard the Zeta colonel, big Sim Pollock, give six days earlier at the jump point, but he didn’t care.

The company moved into formation, each lance in a ninety-meter diamond, with Dumphries in the lead and Jennings following. Kenner moved his Marauder II into the lead position of his lance’s diamond and the dialed his Command Lance frequency.

“Ariana,” he said, “take the rear, please.”

Foster’s big Atlas slowed and let Barrows’ Awesome pass her by. “Big ’Mech in the back to scare off the camp followers?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Kenner said. “Keep your eyes open.”

“How’d the L-T’s take it?” she asked. A nugget of information scrolled past Kenner’s eyes on his heads-up display. She’d switched to a discrete channel, just the two of them.

“They’re good officers,” Kenner said.

“So they hate you.”

“You hate me,” he snapped.

“Yeah, but you’re my lance leader. You’re their company commander. They must really hate you.” The joking in her voice as clear despite sixty meters of distance and the heavy encryption of Dragoon battle frequencies. Ariana Foster had been his lance second since 3016 in Charlie Battalion, and he trusted her more than most other Dragoons.

“You hate me because I’m cute,” he said. There was no snappy comeback.

“I’m sorry about Kaley, Luke,” she said after a moment.

Kenner’s mind closed down to the two-meter reality of his cockpit. “Not now,” he said.

“I know you wanted it to work,” she said.

“Later!”

“Sometimes—”

“Unity, Ari!” he shouted. “Shut your malfing mouth!”

There was a click as the Atlas’ pilot closed the channel. Kenner snarled inside his neurohelmet and squeezed his controls. He stared out of his cockpit canopy, watching the backs of the lance in front of him disappear around a bend in the ravine. The Marauder II had a slow, rocking gait, and he lost himself in the comfortable motion for a bit while his mind kept watch on his sensors and his heart sewed some fresh stitches on old wounds.

“Contact!” a voice cried. Kenner snapped into focus and searched his HUD. Nothing. He turned to the feed from the rest of his company, the feed displayed on his secondary tactical screen. “’Mechs, nine o’clock and closing.”

Red icons appeared to the left of the point lance. Dumphries. The ravine had narrowed, barely a hundred meters wide at its narrowest and two hundred at its widest, with steep walls of about twenty meters height. Kenner swore and looked at the rest of his dispositions.

“ID contact!” he called.

“Lyrans!” came the reply.

“Unity, Ghanjia,” Dumphries snarled. Her anger carried quite well through the static of low-level ECM jamming. Even if Kenner’s mind hadn’t been ready to fill in the missing emotion he’d have heard it. “They’re all Lyrans. Which ones?”

“Sixth Lyran Guards,” came the prompt reply. “One lance, heavy spread.”

Kenner checked his sensors, saw nothing, and dialed his communications systems. “Able First to regiment,” he called. “Contact enemy ’Mechs, Sixth Lyran Guards, these coordinates.” A touch slugged his current position to the transmission. “Engaging.”

“Watch for flankers!” Jennings called. His lance was still in the middle, ready to support in either direction.

“Watch our six!” Kenner ordered. He was already doing that, expecting the frontal attack to be a feint while the real weight of the assault fell behind them, trying to cut off the Dragoons’ escape. That’s what he’d have done, were the positions reversed. He tapped a quick series of preset order transmissions to his lance and moved the Marauder II forward, anxious to get a look at his enemy.

Janos Marik, lord of the Free Worlds League and holder of the Dragoons’ contract, had sent them to Hesperus II in an attempt to cow the Lyrans into quiet along the battered Marik border. No enemy had ever damaged the Defiance Industries complex in combat. Simple entropy had done more damage to the once-great Terran Hegemony facilities than enemy action ever had. The Dragoons had fought their way across the lower half of the Lyran Commonwealth to get here, despite all that, this was Kenner’s first fight of the campaign. His first fight in command of a company of Dragoons. His first combat on famed Hesperus II.

He didn’t want to miss it.

Half a minute’s travel brought him to the Attack Lance’s position. Jennings had arrayed his lance facing out, slowly rotating around a small rock outcropping for cover from unseen attackers. At the sight of his Marauder II Lieutenant Jennings brought his smaller Marauder out of rotation and stopped it before the company commander’s ’Mech.

“Sir,” he said. “No contacts in my area of operations.”

Kenner snarled. “Get back to your troops, Jennings,” he said. “And don’t ever paint me as a target again.” He stalked the Marauder II around the lance position, already swearing at himself. Sure, that jackass bringing his ’Mech out to meet you is about as amateur as saluting an officer in a combat zone, but it’s not like anyone with half a neuron wouldn’t figure one ’Mech moving toward combat instead of away from it might make a good target.

As if summoned by his thoughts, a brace of autocannon and long-range missile fire laced the canyon wall barely fifteen meters from the Marauder II’s carapace. Kenner staggered the throttle, chopping the already-slow ’Mech’s speed, and more fire tore into the soil where he would have been standing had he not slowed down. He smiled savagely and looked into his HUD, searching.

A big Lyran Zeus stood on an outcropping above him, with the fat-bodied shape of a Dragon standing nearby. Kenner nearly laughed at the incongruity of seeing the two flagship BattleMechs of two warring nations standing side by side but held it in. Someone took that ’Mech away from a Drac, he thought. Never an easy thing.

“Watch for leakers!” Dumphries said. “A Zeus and a Dragon.”

“Found ‘em,” Kenner said. Then he twisted the Marauder II on its narrow waist and brought the ’Mech’s bulky forearms into line. Sparks flickered as the capacitors dumped energy and ions into the firing matrix and each Hellstar PPC vomited a gout of charged particles at the Zeus, both bolts taking the Lyran assault ’Mech over the heart. Heat washed through Kenner’s already-warm cockpit, a raw dry heat that parched his lips and evaporated the sweat from his forearms. The Zeus staggered but held its ground. Kenner triggered the heavy Magna laser mounted in a restricted turret on his upper hull, but the ruby lance flickered away into the sky behind the Zeus. The heat spiked again, making Kenner gasp through cracked lips.

“Captain?” Foster called.

“Stay where you are,” he rasped. “Watch the six!”

“Unity, Luke,” Ariana said.

“Follow my orders!” he cried. Already the Marauder II’s prodigious number of heat sinks was working, drawing the waste heat out of the BattleMech (and the cockpit). Kenner turned the ’Mech to an oblique angle of approach and watched his recharge indicators. The Vlar 300 fusion engine groaned and howled as it fed power to the weapons and heat sinks, but Kenner wasn’t listening.

The Zeus started moving, in the same direction as the Dragoons’ line of march. Its course would take it back past Dumphries and her lance, but with the four ’Mechs of Jennings’ lance pounding up behind him, Kenner was carrying better than two to one odds. Pulling back was the smart thing to do. No ambusher would waste precious ’Mechs when he could strike and fade away, and the ravine walls would keep most of the Dragoon ’Mechs stuck in the narrow lane, unable to pursue.

Most of the Dragoon ’Mechs.

Kenner slammed his feet down against the foot pedals. Massive plasma jets roared to life and lifted all 100 tons of the Marauder II from Hesperus’ embrace and carried it up to alight on the ridge a little under a hundred meters behind the fleeing Lyran ’Mechs. Kenner paused, letting the Marauder’s Dalban targeting system sweep and process, and then started after the two ’Mechs. The Dragon had already spun to face him, putting its heaver frontal armor toward the threat. The Zeus accelerated, trying to flee out of the Dragoon’s firing range before his thinner rear armor could be breached.

Kenner ignored the Dragon. The Hellstars blazed again, both shots blasting great glowing rents in the Zeus’ back. The eighty-ton ’Mech staggered and collapsed on its face, overbalanced by the run and the furious power of the PPC strikes. Kenner’s follow-on laser shot missed high again, tracing a glowing weal across a rock face a half-kilometer distant. He snarled into his neurohelmet and stalked the Marauder forward, trying to close the distance. There was roaring behind him and he checked his 360 degree vision strip. The angular shape of Kerri Tennler’s Grasshopper touched down sixty meters behind him, lasers flashing.

“More ’Mechs!” Foster reported. “Another lance, heavies.”

“You got them?” he asked.

“Hush,” she said, and cut the connection.

Kenner chuckled and checked his readouts. The Marauder II had been designed nine years earlier to correct a few of the feared Marauder’s flaws… the most serious of which had been lack of armor and heat dissipation. The Marauder II, aside from being a full twenty-five tons heavier, was more heavily armored and carried enough heat sinks to keep up an insane rate of fire. Kenner let his face climb into a grin as he though about that. Rate of fire, he thought. He fired again.

The Zeus managed to get to one knee before the brace of PPCs took it in the back again, this time coring through the armor to smash the ferro-titanium bones of the ’Mech. A blossom on his thermal readout announced the destruction of part of the Zeus’ fusion engine shielding, and Kenner triumphantly triggered his large laser. This time the shot didn’t miss, instead stabbing deep into the ravaged cavity in the Zeus’ back. A series of small explosions erupted and quickly cascaded into a hellish torrent that threw the eighty-ton ’Mech back onto its face before it disappeared in the ruckus of a runaway ammunition explosion. Kenner shouted in victory, riding out the Dragon’s fire, trusting the Marauder II’s heavy armor to hold against the autocannon and missiles. Tennler leapt past him, charging hard, lasers flashing, melting armor from the Snake machine’s arms and legs.

“Zeus down,” he said.

“Another one here,” Dumphries reported. “Also a Crusader and I think what used to be an Orion. It’s all little pieces now.”

The Dragon abandoned its shooting and spun and charged away in full retreat. Tennler kept up her pursuit until the Dragon darted into a cut in the rock face and then throttled back. The sounds of combat lessened from ahead, but picked up from behind.

“Ari?”

“We could use a little help,” Foster admitted.

“Jennings, get back and support Foster,” Kenner ordered. “I’ll keep Tennler with me.”

“Copy,” the lieutenant said.

“Do we pursue?” Kerri Tennler asked, bringing her Grasshopper to stand beside the Marauder II. Kenner was motionless, letting the Marauder’s excellent heat sinks bleed off the last of the waste heat from the skirmish. Her ’Mech pointed back toward where the Dragon disappeared. “We could probably catch him.”

Kenner laughed. “You might,” he said. “Not me. I can’t stump through these hills that fast.” He called up a topographical map on the lower-left quadrant of his HUD and studied it for a moment. “We’re about two klicks from where the scouts bought it,” he said.

“They won’t stand here much longer,” Tennler guessed.

“Even engaging was a mistake,” Kenner agreed. “We’re Dragoons, and we’re heavier. Even the Sixth Lyran couldn’t be that stupid.” He looked at the map again, tracing elevation lines and marked obstacles. The scouts had been sending back regular reports, and the techs on Chieftain had been steadily updating the radar survey the DropShip had made before landing. Sure they’d gotten the scouts, but those were armored vehicles and light ’Mechs. Why even strike an assault company, except to prove something?

Or slow us down.

“What if they’re hiding something?” he mused.

“It’s Hesperus, Captain,” Tennler said. She moved her Grasshopper around behind Kenner and directed her sensors that way. “They’re pissed as hell we’re even here, and they’re not thinking straight. The first battles of any landing are like this.”

“This isn’t my first drop, Sergeant,” Kenner snapped.

“Respectfully, sir, it is with us.”

Kenner opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut at the last moment. She was right. He’d only been in command for a few days, and this was his first engagement as a company commander. So far he’d fought as a lance leader, looking to see for himself what was going on before looking at the rest of the company.

“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Leading the Grasshopper back to where they’d jumped up, Kenner used his jump jets again to drop down to the ravine floor and started back toward the sound of fighting. He heard the sounds of battle played over the radio when he switched to the Command Lance frequency, but he didn’t speak. He wasn’t fighting—he’d only be a distraction to his troops without actually being there, and distractions got Dragoons killed.

I’ll have to remember that.

By the time he reached his lance the skirmish was over. Two more Lyran ’Mechs were scattered in pieces across the landscape, victims of ammunition explosions from the looks of them. Kenner shivered despite the heat. He often had that reaction, and thanked the Unity again that his Marauder had only energy weapons.

“Two got away,” Foster reported when she saw him. From the looks of her Atlas, it had been a serious fight. “A pair of Quickdraws—they used their jets and went over the hills.” Kenner acknowledged her report and looked at the rest of his company.

The Attack Lance ’Mechs were pristine, having come into the battle in time to only help chase the Lyrans off. The three Command Lance ’Mechs were more battered. Foster’s Atlas was scarred with laser burns and PPC strikes, and Barrows’ Awesome was limping where melted armor had clogged his knee actuator.

“So,” he said after a moment. “Was this the troop that got the scouts?”

“Our boys were already hurt,” Foster said. “I checked. That Thunderbolt,” she beckoned to a still-smoking pile of debris, “had some fresh laser scars. Maybe some short-range missile pocks, too… I’ll have to look at the ROMs when we get back to be sure.”

“I didn’t get a look at ours,” Tennler said.

“It’ll be on the ROMs,” Kenner said. “Dumphries?”

“Nothing to report,” came the immediate reply. “We’re holding a half-klick ahead of you, but there’s nothing on scanners.” The Heavy Lance commander’s voice was devoid of emotion, which made the edges of Kenner’s awareness tingle. For Dumphries to be calm was not right. He wondered about it for a moment before reminding himself that the time to wonder was later. He was in the middle of the assault.

“Hold your position until we rejoin,” Kenner ordered Dumphries. The he switched frequencies. “Tennler, I want you to scout the high road. See where those ’Mechs were going. Watch out for the Dragon. You’re doing a recon, not an assault.” The Grasshopper raised a hand in salute and moved off, using its jump jets to ascend to the cliff face again.

“The rest of you, sweep forward. There might be wounded Dragoons out there, and we need to find out how far the Lyrans have advanced in the defense.” He suited action to words, moving the Marauder II to the head of the column and keeping a close eye on his sensors. Tennler’s IFF pulsed by itself, even though her ’Mech was out of sight, but no sign of the enemy was found.

“Anyone see a way to get up there?” he asked a kilometer later.

“Not without jets,” Dumphries said.

“We could go back for jump packs,” Foster suggested.

“They’d just send one of the other companies,” Kenner said. “Keep an eye out.”

“How much farther do we go?” Foster asked on a discrete channel.

“Until we make contact again,” Kenner said. “We need to know how far forward the defense is.”

“That’s a job for a recon lance, Luke,” she said.

“It’s our job,” he said. “We’re out here.”

“If we make contact with a heavy unit,” she said, after a moment, “you know we won’t be able to disengage without killing them first. We’re too slow.” The Atlas stumped along stolidly in Kenner’s vision strip, its gait confident and fearless. There was no trace in the ’Mech’s appearance of the doubts its pilot was espousing.

“Then we’ll fight it out,” he said.

“Spoken like a true assault ’Mech pilot,” Foster said with a chuckle.

“Zeta’s always looking for a few good men,” he said back. The ravine bent around to the right a dozen meters ahead, and he slowed the Marauder. There hadn’t been anything at any of the last dozen doglegs, but he hadn’t survived this long by trusting past practice. He ordered the rest of the company to halt and then edged around the rock face, sensors open and watchful.

The Lyran Atlas doing the same thing reacted first, stepping in close and slamming a solid right jab into the Marauder II’s center-mass. Kenner rocked with the blow and let inertia carry him back a few steps, away from the Lyran ’Mech. He clutched at his yokes, adjusting his aim.

“Contact!” he screamed, and fired. It was too close for his PPCs to focus so he ignored them, instead firing the paired medium lasers mounted beneath the heavy Hellstars and the big laser on his upper hull. All three shots hit, melting at the thick armor over the Atlas’ heart, but not doing any appreciable damage. The Atlas’s return fire, however, was just as accurate and more damaging.

Six short-range missiles raced across the space between the two ’Mechs and scattered explosions across the face of Kenner’s ’Mech. The 100-ton monster shook the damage off, however, and straightened, only to be blasted back by the hail of autocannon fire that chewed through more than half the armor over the Marauder II’s left leg. Kenner yelped and fought to keep his ’Mech on its feet. He was too busy to try and aim again.

Yelling filled his cockpit as the other Dragoons of Able First charged forward. Foster was there first, matching the Lyran Atlas’ with her own ’Mech’s firepower, blasting with lasers and autocannon. She skipped her missiles, instead concentrating on the potential cutting damage of her lasers. She sidestepped around Kenner’s Marauder II and then sidestepped again. Kenner frowned.

Barrows’ Awesome took two steps closer until the range between his ’Mech and the Lyran Atlas was just over 100 meters and then cut loose, three coruscating cyan torches that annihilated armor wherever they touched the Lyran ’Mech. Kenner blinked at the backscatter from the PPCs and tried to move left, to clear the lane of fire.

“More ’Mechs behind it!” Dumphries called. “It’s a full company.”

Kenner snarled at himself and brought his ’Mech back under control. He kept the machine moving backward, trying to get the range necessary to bring his PPCs into play. The Atlas that had met him retreated around the rock face, but two more Lyran ’Mechs stepped forward to fill the hole. The largest, a Banshee, fired its autocannon and PPC at him, but only the autocannon hit, spraying damage across his right arm. Kenner brought the arm back into line and triggered his own PPCs, blasting armor from the ninety-five ton ’Mech’s chest. Florence Milhaus’ BattleMaster stalked forward, torso-mounted lasers flashing while its armor drank the ineffectual damage from the Lyran Rifleman’s autocannons. Kenner let the Heavy Lance jock wade in close—her ’Mech was built for it—and concentrated on his gunnery. For the next minute or so, this was going to be a slugging match.

And the Lyran Commonwealth, whatever else its flaws, lived and died in the slugging match.

More Lyran assault ’Mechs waded around the corner, common Lyran machines like the Zeus and the Atlas, and Kenner felt a trickle of sweat defy the heat in his cockpit and slip down between his shoulder blades. Able First was an assault company, the finest in the Dragoons, the equal of any comparable company in the Inner Sphere. It fielded some of the heaviest ’Mechs and had the hottest jocks in the regiment. If anyone could smash this Lyran company, it would be them.

But they’d get killed doing it, and being in refit for the rest of the Hesperus campaign didn’t appeal to Lucas Kenner on his first day of combat command.

“Able First,” he shouted, cueing the company push, “concentrated fire, by lance. Let’s bring these bastards down quick and get out of here.”

“Heavy, confirmed,” Dumphries said. “You heard the man, kids… let’s get the Banshee.”

“Attack, roger that,” Jennings said. “We’ve got the Rifleman.”

“And us?” Foster asked. Her Atlas had retreated to beside Kenner’s Marauder II. “Who are we killing today, sir?”

“That one,” Kenner said, selecting a target. He fired.

His PPCs took the Lyran Atlas high in the chest, both discharges spending themselves on the Atlas’s bulbous shoulder housings. It was the same ’Mech from earlier, and the damage Kenner and Foster had done was prominent. Foster fired a half-second later, a full spread of twenty long-range missiles. The Atlas was just inside the missiles’ minimum arming distance but that didn’t matter—at that short range the unspent rocket fuel made up the difference in high explosive. The other two Command Lance ’Mechs fired again as well, and the Atlas flapped over onto its back, its desultory autocannon barrage destroying the rock face behind Kenner’s ’Mech.

The Lyrans were masters of the long line of steel, at standing and taking the damage necessary to inflict the maximum damage back upon the enemy. The Dragoons had plenty of experience with that strategy, from three years of cattle raiding along the border. It was an effective strategy, one the Mariks and Kuritas had been expending themselves against for decades, centuries. The Dragoons had chosen a simple tactic in retaliation, and it involved two stages at the company level.

First, keep moving. Kenner led his lance on an arcing course past the main line of battle, near the edge of the rock face. It would only be moments before the Lyrans extended their line past the mouth of the dogleg and turned the entire short distance back to the previous turn into a killing field. Moving the Dragoons was a more difficult target. Which led to the second half of the tactic.

Shoot to kill.

The only way through an assault ’Mech’s armor was overwhelming firepower. Dragoons were superior gunners, and while their ’Mechs’ armor was just as susceptible to fire as the Lyrans’, the other side was usually too busy trying to get away or dying to concentrate their fire in return.

Kenner hit the Atlas again as it was rising, knocking its forearm out from under it. Foster’s missiles scattered explosions across the tough armor of its back, and Barrows hit it with another triple-PPC barrage. The Atlas fell again, this time missing its left arm at the shoulder and bleeding smoke and fire from its shattered torso armor.

Dumphries and her lance hit the Banshee again even as it fired back. The Banshee hit Milhaus’ BattleMaster with its PPC and cannon, but its fire was nothing compared to what it received. After the smoke cleared the Banshee was sitting on its rump, missing its left leg at the knee and armless.

After Jennings and his lance fired again, the Rifleman was gone.

“Start backing up,” Kenner said.

“We can hold them here,” Dumphries protested. “The dogleg is a natural obstacle. We can bring the whole company against them one or two at a time.” Her ’Mech stamped its foot and speared the Banshee again, destroying more of its torso armor.

“Yes, we can,” Kenner said. “And we can be here an hour doing it while they just keep moving more and more ’Mechs up behind them.”

“Then we’ll kick their asses, too!” she shouted.

“You have your orders!”

“Unity, Captain,” Dumphries swore. But her ’Mech began moving backward.

“We’ll fight again,” he said. But the taste of it was sour in his mouth. You’re doing a captain’s job, he told himself. A captain’s job is to preserve his company.

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