Biting down on that lower, pouting lip, Jessica gave in. “Because it was the only way to see you, and wish you luck.” Flustered, she clasped one hand around the back of her neck and shot him a new, withering glare. “I’m not through being mad at you yet, and I don’t want you to cheat me out of my due by getting killed out there today. And don’t get wounded either, because then I’d have to think too long about whether or not to put you back together, and that wouldn’t be fair to someone else who deserves help. What’s more—”
Stepping forward, Raul held up one hand to cut off her building tirade, placed the tips of his fingers against her lips and readied himself to be slapped again for daring to touch her. She stood mute, the beginning of tears softening her glare, and he leaned in close with eyes never once wavering from hers.
“Thank you,” he said simply, choosing only to acknowledge her first, better wishes. Backing his hand away from her mouth to his own, he kissed the backs of his fingers as if she might feel it through the brief, earlier touch. “Today we’ll need all the luck we can get.”
“I haven’t forgiven you yet, you know.”
“I know. But there is always the possibility, and that’s enough to keep me safe.” He stepped aside, reaching for the chain link ladder that hung down the inside of the Jupiter’s leg. “Not one wound, then. I promise.”
“Maybe a little one,” she said to his back. Raul thought he heard a trace of actual humor in her voice. “Couple of painful stitches, and a good scar.”
It wasn’t much, as far as good wishes went, but Raul would take what absolution he could get. Lady Janella Lakewood had been right about that, too. One was never past the need for forgiveness.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, and then scaled the ladder for his new cockpit, three stories up.
25
Early To Rise
River’s End
Achernar
18 March 3133
Star Colonel Torrent habitually rose before dawn on Achernar, his diurnal rhythm set to the twenty-three-hour Tigress clock. Here, he always seemed to have more time than he needed. Most days Torrent wrote it off to an impatience instilled in him over the course of the protracted campaign. This morning, though, an urge drew him down to the Lupus’s ’Mech bay and his readied Tundra Wolf. One last round to search out any forgotten thoughts before the evening battle. Before victory.
The bay’s cavernous interior was still on the half-lights order for nights, which Torrent immediately countermanded. Darkened overhead panels flickered and then shone brightly. A few night-duty technicians made a busier show of loading munitions through the back of a Catapult. Torrent ignored them for the open bay door, checking that two sentry vehicles—Scimitars, as it happened—properly blocked the access ramp.
That was where the alarm found him.
The metallic gong of a shipboard general quarters alarm sent the Star Colonel sprinting for his BattleMech, preferring to learn of any danger with seventy-five tons of myomer and armor wrapped about him and his fingers on the triggers of a Longbow missile XX-rack and Series 7 laser. This was what had drawn him down here so early, he knew, scaling the gantry and gaining quick access to his cockpit. With practiced efficiency he released dampening fields from the BattleMech’s fusion reactor and cycled through a dozen prestart checks.
A comms headset held up to the side of his right ear connected him with the DropShip’s bridge. “Torrent.”
“Star Colonel. Remote listening posts have contact with a militia column, coming down out of the base heading east-southeast.”
Achernar’s militia thought to steal a march on the Steel Wolves? He cast aside the communications set and drew down his neurohelmet from its resting shelf. Plugging himself in, he asked, “Any response out of River’s End?” he asked.
“Neg, Star Colonel. River’s End is quiet.”
MechWarriors Verin and Rheese made the ’Mech Bay within seconds of each other, scrambling for their pair of Pack Hunters. Torrent sped through his security procedures, answering with identification and his verbal key without being prompted. “To each, his own,” he said, putting emphasis in a slightly different place than the ages-old saying.
His computer released full control about the time his ready-scouts checked in from the ground. A pair of Shandras had beat him out from another bay, but then Torrent had cleared a BattleMech in less than three minutes from alarm to his first, confident step. He would be the first officer on the scene, and if the militia thought to seriously challenge him here, now, he would be first to draw blood today.
By the Great Father, he swore it would be true.
And it would be, because even from the bottom edge of the ramp, calling the Scimitars to him on an auxiliary channel, his HUD lit up with a chaotic jumble of enemy icons. Legionnaire. Joust. A trio of JES tacticals. He read the IFF tag codes with a veteran’s ease. DI Schmitts. Two Giggin APCs, no doubt brimming with armored infantry.
Jupiter.
Torrent read it again. JP3-a. The same tag his computers had assigned to Kyle Powers during their Trial of Grievance. The Knight had returned from the dead—or at least his BattleMech had. Switching to thermal imaging, he centered his crosshairs over a distant red smear and then called up magnification on an auxiliary monitor.
There it was, standing at the edge of the spaceport tarmac where the razed military field bumped up against the larger civilian side. Torrent smiled. “And today I thought my best victory would be over a Hatchetman.” If the militia wanted to gift him with another kill on the Jupiter, Torrent would oblige.
His Pack Hunters had cleared the bay, and from all three of his DropShip’s vehicles and infantry poured, along with a converted ConstructionMech and an AgroMech, Star Captain Demos in her personally modified SM1 Destroyer. All that Star Colonel Torrent had left to him on Achernar. Enough to deal with the militia and still take River’s End away from Erik Sandoval.
“Form on me, line abreast,” he ordered, strutting the Tundra Wolf forward toward the far end of the field. “No one fires until I have chosen my target.” He wanted the Jupiter, of course. If the militia pilot would agree.
He dialed over to a common military band, one which all Republic forces scanned. “I am Star Colonel Torrent, of the Steel Wolves. Who challenges for the San Marino Spaceport?” Not that he expected a true call to Trial, but the forms had to be observed. So Kal Radick expected, and so Torrent of the Kerensky bloodline would do.
The militia had shaken itself out into an inverted wedge, inviting him in toward the center by placing a line of weaker tanks and infantry carriers there, surrounding a Tribune mobile HQ. It was on the closer flank, though, where the Jupiter stepped out.
“Captain Raul Ortega, Achernar Militia. We do not challenge, Star Colonel. We are here to force you from Achernar, or whittle you down to size so that Lady Janella Lakewood will wonder where all your forces went.”
The bluff was so transparent that Torrent was inclined to dismiss it for bravado. Still, with thirty seconds to close, he allowed himself the caution of turning over the threat in his mind. By his count, the militia mustered two BattleMechs and one converted ForestryMech, a trinary’s worth of tanks—what the regular forces might call a strengthened company—and an estimation of twenty-five battlesuit squads. With the Swordsworn fighting alongside them, working fist-in-gauntlet, perhaps. But not like this. Not now.