“Luck,” she said in a husky whisper.
“Funny.” Raul shook his head lightly. “I wouldn’t have thought that you believe in luck.”
“A little good luck never hurt anyone. Neither did a morale boost.” She made a show of looking coy. “So, are you boosted?”
Tassa’s grin was infectious, spreading from her mouth to his. “The Wolves aren’t going to know what hit them,” he said, then turned away for his nearby Legionnaire, securing the last word for once.
He felt the hot caress of Tassa’s gaze follow him as he walked around to the side of his BattleMech’s foot and took hold of the chain link ladder. Remembering Kyle Powers’ ascension Raul swarmed up the ladder to his access hatch, and then threw a jaunty salute back toward the waiting cameras and a second one to Tassa. Fifty meters away, a pair of JES tactical carriers fired up their lift fans, blowing out twin halos of dust and debris. A Saxon personnel carrier also fired up as a squad of Purifiers finished loading, the APC and infantry filling out the Republic’s augmented “lance.”
A warm raindrop splashed Raul’s ear and he glanced up into the heavy skies just in time to catch another pregnant drop against his face. Licking the gritty taste of desert rainfall from his upper lip, he ducked inside his cockpit before the skies truly opened up. Local storms, like Achernar’s usual heat, were often severe.
Settling into his command couch, Raul fastened himself into the five-point harness and then reached up to a shelf to draw down his neurohelmet. He pulled it over his head, shifted it about to make certain the sensors made decent contact with his scalp. A coil of metal braided hose and another cord of flexible nylon sat between his feet. Raul threaded the metal-braided hose into a restraining ring on the hem of his coolant vest, then snapped the lock-tite fastener into the vest plug. The initial coolant charge jolted him, standing gooseflesh out on his bared arms and legs. He shivered, then set about fastening the nylon cord with its socket plug into some velcro straps on the vest front, finally threading it up to connect into the chin of his helmet.
The neural connection complete, Raul released the dampening field on his Legionnaire’s fusion engine and fired the massive furnace to life. Up through the cockpit deckplates came the massive thrum of barely-controlled power, massaging his lower legs with radiated warmth and subsonic vibrations. The Legionnaire’s computer brain ran through several systems checks on an auxiliary screen, returning all-green indicators and a final prompt for MechWarrior identification.
“Raul Ortega,” he identified himself. “Captain, Republic Standing Guard.”
“Identity confirmed.” The computer’s synthesized voice was only slightly more feminine than masculine, devoid of any real inflection or feeling. Just enough, Raul guessed, to make a MechWarrior feel comfortable with the disembodied voice without paying it too much attention. “Proceed to secondary security protocol.”
Because voiceprints could be faked, and there was a very real threat in having a BattleMech captured and put back into service against you, security systems used a second line of defense that stopped all but the best-trained code breakers from making the attempt. A simple quotation, created by and known only to the MechWarrior, which would be checked for accuracy using voiceprint and neural wave patterns. A personal key.
Raul looked out through his cockpit’s ferroglass, past the streaks of broken rain that trickled down the transparent shield to the now-animated Jupiter which moved to take its place at the head of the Republic formation. “To be all that we are,” he dredged up his quotation from an ancient Terran author, “to become all that we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”
“Lockouts released,” the computer responded. “Legionnaire is now weapons-able.”
And with a live BattleMech at his command, and the memory of Tassa’s lips still warm on his mouth, Raul was finally ready for battle.
He hoped.
15
Trials and Grievances
Sonora Plateau
Achernar
10 May 3133
Ahard deluge hammered down as if weapons fire had opened mortal wounds in the skies over Achernar’s Sonora Plateau. Fat water drops carrying desert grit splashed against the Tundra Wolf’s ferroglass shield, pushed into horizontal bands by sharp, gusting winds, smearing the landscape into a gray watercolor. Sight was hardly an issue, though, as target-lock warnings screamed for Torrent’s attention, giving the star colonel a scant three seconds’ warning before a new rain of warheads fell over and around him. Blossoms of fire tore into the armor mantle protecting his right shoulder and gouged new craters over the ’Mech’s left leg. Geysers of smoke and earth erupted down a line right in front of the seventy-five-ton Tundra Wolf, throwing up blackened, smoking dirt that pattered down against his cockpit’s ferroglass, mixed with streaks of actual rain and clotted against the shield.
Torrent sidestepped his Tundra Wolf several meters to the left, anticipating the follow-up. A single, coruscating particle beam blasted through the gray downpour but passed wide to the BattleMech’s right. One PPC less than the Jupiter could have—should have—used.
Light damage and a defensive enemy posture. That was Torrent’s immediate assessment.
Still, he throttled back, wary of the Jupiter’s long reach and not quite ready to commit to a full press. His extended-range laser stabbed blood-red energy into the assault ’Mech’s side, carving a deep, angry wound into its armor. The whistling screams of hard-burning propellant slashed by his left ear as the Tundra Wolf’s shoulder-mounted launcher spread a score of missiles into the air. His computer counted better than half of the missiles peppering the Jupiter’s lower legs.
It wasn’t enough to goad Kyle Powers into a premature advance, though. Trusting to his assault machine’s impressive armor, the Sphere Knight ignored Torrent’s assault to turn his weapons against a second Steel Wolf, inviting return fire from both warriors.
Torrent grinned at the implied insult—that he was not worth the Knight-Errant’s full attention. Grinned, and continued to orchestrate an envelopment.
His Tundra Wolf held the center of the Steel Wolf line. Of course. Early on in the shaping battle, just after his Elemental infantry lost their Maxim heavy transport vehicle to the Jupiter’s PPCs, Torrent had swung two AgroMech conversions, each modified with medium-grade autocannons, wide to the left and right. Now they were almost on the direct flanks of the Jupiter and Legionnaire, waiting for his orders. He had kept the M1 Marksman tank and his surviving Elementals in close, putting them on his Tundra Wolf in vanguard positions. Once his AgroMechs tore into the Republic flanks, his abbreviated unit would be the jaws snapping for their neck.
Kyle Powers seemed to invite the encircling maneuver. He kept the much-faster Legionnaire pacing alongside his Jupiter, and never too far away. The two Republic ’Mechs protected a Saxon hover transport, which waited in their immediate backfield, while both JES hovercraft carriers ran a picket line out front, daring any Steel Wolf to close on against their short-ranged missile barrage.