"You mean the Liao forces could be planning to do the same thing to us that we've been talking about doing to them?" Ardan asked. "Let us take Steindown, while they hold the isthmus and mountains?" The same thought had been grumbling at Ardan since he'd started rethinking the Davion strategy.
"Uh huh. I couldn't put it into words until you sketched out your plan there...but Maximilian Liao hasto know Hanse Davion's going to try to take back the Folly! What's the point in his taking it away from us in the first place... unless he's got something special in mind for us when we return? Something that would tie down a huge chunk of the Federated Suns' ships and 'Mechs and men? Maybe something that would trap them on that peninsula where Liao's 'Mechs could slowly close in and crush them..."
Ardan studied his map a moment more. He picked up the stylus again, cleared the red circle from the Folly's Neck, and began marking the isthmus with neat, precise points of light. "We'll need to go over this again on a real map, but look here. If the Capellan forces arealready here, they'd hold this ridge from here...to here, right?"
The others nodded. "They'd have to," Felsner said. "High ground, good cover. And if we land anywhere on the plains around Steindown, they have us ringed in."
"So they would. Watch. First we put a diversionary force down here..." He tapped the rugged plain between Steindown and the mountains. "If it's not a trap, they move into position in the mountains and watch Steindown. If it is a trap..."
"And it is," Felsner interrupted. His face was showing excitement now. "It is, for all the stars in space!"
"If it is a trap, the enemy will be along these heights, and they'll be watching the show on the plains below them," Ardan went on, excited, too. "Now, look here." The stylus tapped the southeastern edge of the Ordolo Basin. "Our mainforce sets down here...and here. The bad guys hold Jordan's Pass, but we hold the road on both sides and we can come south along both flanks of this ridge, one on this side, one on that side. If we move fast, we control the pass, this section of the ridge, and the road. A push down the road, and we link up with our diversionary force. The Liao forces in the mountains will be stuck here, with the sea at their backs, and us closing in from the front and their flank! If it turns out that they have heavy forces in the mountains and in Steindown, we withdraw north through the pass and seal off the whole damned peninsula. Our air patrols crack down, and we wait 'em out. If we're lucky, they'll get desperate and storm our position along the pass."
Ardan looked up from his notations on the pad. "That would settle things quite nicely, I think."
"The trappers are trapped!" Hamman said. "By God, Ardan, we'd have them cold!"
Ardan nodded. A vast weight had lifted as he'd discussed his doubts with these men, and now a definite plan was forming in his mind. "I think so. I really do think so. Now the question is, can we change the strike force operational orders now, at the last minute?"
Ran Felsner was still studying the map. "It'll be no trouble to change the drop pattern. We can brief the battalion commanders, and post new objectives and rendezvous points easily enough. Admiral Bertholi won't like reassigning the DZs, but I can handle him. Victor DeVries, my Operations Chief, will give me a hard time. My biggest concern is dropping at the edge of that jungle, though. That ground could be mighty soft."
"It is," Ardan said, "in the wet season. But it's well into the dry season now. Based on the tapes I scanned, I'd say the area is more savannah and grassland than jungle. It gets lots of rain during the local winter, but in summer it's bone dry."
"I've known planetological tapes to be wrong," Hamman said
"So? You want to drop in first and check it out yourself?"
"Ha! Not likely. Just so long as it's not an actual swamp, we'll be O.K. Even DropShips could set down along the road. We'll leave that to the section tactical leaders."
Felsner nodded. "It'll be worth it for another reason, too."
"What's that?" Hamman asked.
"Well, there's bound to be one hell of a tangle, with units not getting their DZs confirmed. Hell, just finding a specific drop zone will be next to impossible because they won't have something easy to orient on from the air, like the city. And maybe some of them land in a swamp and don't come out, or hit a ridgetop hard and smear their 'Mechs across the face of a mountain. But it'll be worth it."
"I don't follow you," Hamman said.
"You're thinking of a leak," Ardan said.
Felsner nodded again. "Such things have been known to happen. Even with slow intersystem communications, even with everything secured and guarded and security-cleared half to death, leaks happen."
"Liao wasn't born yesterday," Hamman said. "Like you said, this has all the earmarks of a trap. He could have planned it all this way, or.
"Or," Felsner continued, "he's set things up this way because of information he's been picking up from...from within our own camp."
Ardan shook his head. He didn't like thinking about these possible wheels within wheels within wheels. "He could have set this up without help from his spies," he said. "I've studied Maximilian Liao for so long, it feels like I know the guy personally. I only met him once, one time when Hanse took me with the Guard to a big conference in the Lyran Commonwealth."
He paused, looking from Ran to Lees, and back again. "You know, Liao would execute any officer who changed a battle plan he'd approved—have him shot on the spot—even if the new plan worked better than the original. I don't think the man could even imagine a group of officers rewriting an entire battle plan without first getting permission from the top."
Felsner took a thoughtful bite of his neglected food, chewed slowly, swallowed. "That's what appeals to me about this. We haveto do the unexpected. If we don't, we're going to find ourselves up to our chins in Capellan BattleMechs. They knowwe're coming. We haveto come, and they'll be ready and waiting. But if we set down where they don'texpect us, well...it just might give us the edge we need."
"Well, you gentlemen had better eat up," Ardan said. He tapped the E-pad's sceen. "We have to do some talking with the battalion strike commanders, don't we?"
Hamman looked thoughtful. "We've got to get a message back to the Prince, too. At this point, even if the message were intercepted, the news wouldn't get to Stein's Folly ahead of us. And then there's also Michael.
"Michael?"
"Michael Hasek-Davion," Hamman said. "Hanse's brother-in-law."
"Oh...right" Ardan knew the Duke of New Syrtis, of course. He was ruler of the sector, and so military operations had to be cleared through him even when he had no direct jurisdiction over them. As a matter of courtesy, they would have to inform him of the changes in the operation. The man had always struck Ardan as being pretentious and officious, but formal court etiquette and proper military discipline both required that they advise the Duke of the new plan.
It took them the better part of the afternoon to discuss the proposed changes in the drop zones with their own commands. Fleet Admiral Bertholi, charged with delivering the strike force to Stein's Folly, voiced the most stubborn protests, because he would have to pass on the extensive changes and recalculations in the approach vectors and navigational sightings to every DropShip in his command. Strangely, the one man they hadto convince, Ran Felsner's Chief of Operations, General Victor DeVries, accepted the proposed change the moment they presented it