And Raul would deal with whatever the Fates had in mind for him tomorrow, he promised. Just so long as they didn’t call a military alert this evening.
12
Bait and Switch
Sirens’ Pass
Achernar
1 March 3133
The last high peaks of the Tanager Mountains, the ones that anchored the short march down toward the Taibek Hills, had swallowed Achernar’s sun not quite an hour before. A pale sky hung over valleys and narrow clefts now being drowned in shadow. Sirens’ Pass, the last—or the first—major break in the Tanagers, which faded down into the B’her farming valley, swam in an artificial twilight.
The perfect place for an ambush.
Erik Sandoval-Groell waited with his forces inside the lower pass, hands sweat-slick on his Hatchetman’s dead control sticks. Reaching into the storage under his seat, he fished out a pair of neoleather gloves and pulled them on with determined tugs. Better. He wouldn’t let anything betray him here. Not damp hands, and certainly not second thoughts. Five days before he had set himself to watching for a chance to ratchet up tensions between the Steel Wolves and the Republic forces on Achernar. Now was that time. There was no turning back.
Outside, a violent wind cut through the pass, howling and wailing as it brushed past the dark shafts that were an old Taibek Mining venture. The mine openings were such an obvious ambush site that Erik had ordered them left clear. Five MiningMech conversions and his own BattleMech crouched against cold rock, concealed on precarious ledges or half buried in ancient tailings. They would hit first.
And soon.
Through his sweating ferroglass shield, Erik watched as Steel Wolf infantry concluded their sweep of the first few shaft entrances, calling them clear and scrambling to the next set of dark openings even as the main patrol worked their way down out of the knife-edged Tanager Mountains. A converted ForestryMech led the way, flanked by two JES strategic missile carriers. A line of supply and support vehicles trailed behind them in column formation, ready to rape the B’her valley agrocombines of foodstock and machinery, and at sound military positions several infantry carriers and light armor paced the column. The JES’s slowed a bit, no doubt on alert with magres imaging throwing back so many metal-lode returns. Ore, abandoned dump carts, an old drilling rig—there was too much clutter for them to read solid outlines and Erik’s forces had been in place long enough for thermal shadows to cool on everything except his Hatchetman’s fusion engine. That took them several critical seconds.
He saw the carriers finally react to his presence, accelerating forward and swiveling their turrets against his position. Trembling with pent-up adrenaline, Erik banked the BattleMech’s fusion fires to life, checked that he was selected to force-wide comms and ordered, “Now, hit them now!”
Priorities had been assigned earlier. His quartet of missile-equipped conversions rained fire and destruction down on the lead ForestryMech, Erik not wanting to take any chances against the design. His ultra-class autocannon hammered out eighty-mil slugs at double any normal rate of fire, chewing through armor with good-sized bites as the ForestryMech raced for the cover of a large pile of tailings.
Erik’s final IndustrialMech conversion ended the Steel Wolf Mech’s flight, spending its banked capacitor charge through a power amplifier to light off a large laser. A ruby beam stuttered a half-powered lance into the ForestryMech’s left arm, severing the autocannon at its elbow joint. The modified IndustrialMech toppled awkwardly, crashed to the valley floor, and skid out of sight behind the tailings.
Standing the Hatchetman up from its crouch, Erik called for his infantry and armor as blossoms of fire erupted all around him. The JES carriers peppered his location with long-ranged missiles, throwing enough ordnance up-slope to trigger a possible rockslide. Erik rode out the jostling, trusting the regenerative feedback loop created between his neurohelmet and the Hatchetman’s massive gyroscopic stabilizer to keep him upright, then throttled forward into a careful down-slope walk. His autocannon barked out more hot metal, and the torso-mounted extended-range laser stabbed several megajoules of scarlet energy into the lead Big Jess carrier. Not enough to do any real damage. Didn’t have to be.
While dismissing the mine shaft entrances from his earlier plans, what Erik had counted on was that the infantry would miss the blind draw—a narrow cleft in the pass’s south wall which opened up into a fair-sized canyon, and inside which he had hidden a heavy complement of armored vehicles.
A pair of SM1 Destroyers barreled out of the blind canyon, leading Erik’s flanking charge as they struck into the forward head of the column. Long licks of fire and smoke burst from their assault-class autocannons, ripping into a Joust tracked vehicle that lay directly in their path. The Joust’s engine erupted, bursting the side armor and blowing the turret skyward on a column of greasy fire. The scrapped mass of metal fell hard on the side of one SM1, grounding its skirt in a long, dragging scrape. It rebounded, and both Destroyers wheeled over to race for the rear of the column, spending thousands of rounds into lightly armored support vehicles on their way.
Behind them came a squad of Demons, a Behemoth, Erik’s elite hoverbike unit, and two Maxim heavy troop transport vehicles carrying Hauberk and Purifier infantry. Most began spitting laserfire and missiles before even clearing the draw. More convoy trucks erupted into flaming debris.
Momentarily thrown back on their haunches, the Wolves rallied faster than Erik would have thought. The JES carriers charged forward, missile systems belching out flight after flight of armor-pounding warheads. One of the Swordsworn’s MiningMech conversions got in their way and was left scattered in pieces over a blasted stretch of smoking ground. Another two Miners were pressed back into a nearby shaft and then sealed in by carpet-fire missile barrages.
Elementals vaulted from the backs of several convoy trucks. A point of five battlesuit soldiers seized onto the sides of a Maxim, ripping through plate armor and breaching the troop pen. They spent several of their backpack missiles into the interior before the Hauberks inside managed to stagger out and engage them point-blank.
Erik’s men struggled and died at the hands of the genetically bred infantry.
Off the pass wall and throttling up into a run, Erik dodged his Hatchetman around one particularly large pile of tailings and met one of the JES carriers coming around from the other side. With its LRM racks severely hampered at close range, the carrier pivoted on diamond-track treads and raced for open ground.
The Hatchetman was faster, cutting it off in only five long strides. Erik’s autocannon opened up several gaping rents in the carrier’s armor. Then he raised the right arm, which carried the massive titanium hatchet from which his BattleMech took its name. The hatchet fell once, twice, each time crushing large wedge-shaped bites into armor.
His third strike split open one of the launchers, and live munitions rolled and tumbled out to litter the floor of Siren’s Pass.
Erik’s laser touched off spilled fuel. One warhead burst open still in its launch tube, then another. Erik spun the Hatchetman away, racing for distance. The horrific explosion of the JES carrier and its payload of missiles shoved the Hatchetman with a brutal fist to the back. The BattleMech sprawled forward in a facedown slide, shaking Erik against his restraining harness like a rag doll caught in the teeth of a mastiff.
A growling mastiff.
Tearing… trembling… buzzsaw teeth…