The Sword and the Dagger

Ardan was left to send the final messages required by protocol and formal etiquette—one to Michael Hasek-Davion stating that the original battle plan had, after all and after much careful consideration, been changed; and another that went by diplomatic paths to Hanse Davion himself, explaining the change and describing the friction generated between the strike force command staff and the Duke of New Syrtis. Ardan had composed this last with some measure of relief. Let Hanse deal with his brother-in-law, he thought. From now on, I'll just have to worry about Liao BattleMechs!

Messages transmitted, Ardan stepped aboard the UnionClass DropShip Exeter and stared for a last time across the nearly deserted plain that was Dragon's Field's largest port facility. Most of the ships had already boosted, and the only humans visible were isolated groups clustered here and there trying to assess the blast damage caused by the departing DropShips. Trash and debris—paper by the ton, discarded equipment cases and cargo crates, the scattered refuse of ten thousand men, the skeletal frameworks of partly dismantled cranes and gantries—littered the field, creating a haunting image of loneliness and desolation.

Dragon's Field was the inner world of an M0 dwarf. The laws of Kearny-Fuchida drive dictated that the star's two jump points would be seven-tenths of an astronomical unit out, the zenith point above the star's north pole, the nadir point above its south pole. At a constant 1 G boost, with time out for a mid-course flip, the trip from world to jump point would take thirty hours.

With an effort, Ardan shook the lingering depression from his thoughts, turned, and boarded the Exeter .Twenty minutes later, the DropShip rose into the sky atop a flaring pillar of fusion-heated plasma.

11

The Exeter 'spilot made his final approach to the gathered fleet with care. The station plasma streams that balanced the JumpShips against the incessant tug of the red star 105 million kilometers below would kill if they swept across the unshielded hull of a DropShip at close range, and the Exeter'sown bursts of high-speed plasma from her maneuvering thrusters would shred the delicate black fabric of a jump sail if her course came too close to one. The DropShip's target was the elongated form of the StarLordClass starship Sword of Davion,needle-sleek when seen from afar, a bewildering complexity of angles, bulges, turrets, antennae, guy struts, and braces when seen up close. Brackets aft of the JumpShip's cargo holds provided mounts for five UnionClass DropShips. A sixth bracket ring and open grapples invited the Exeter into a berth alongside the others. There was a tense moment of delicate maneuver, the firing and capture of a magnetic cable across the tens of meters that separated DropShip from starship. The electrical charge accumulated in the Exeter 'shull by her own plasma streams was drained away into the JumpShip's after transformers, and then the Exeter was drawn slowly into the reach of the Sword of Davion'sgrapples.

There was no need to offload cargo or personnel. Each captured DropShip became crew quarters and cargo module for that part of the starship's payload. Individuals could visit other DropShips or travel to the recreation lounge forward in the starship's nose by passing through hatches and passageways that traversed the ship's length of several hundred meters. Most of the passengers preferred to wait with friends and familiar faces, gaming on the cramped deck spaces between bunks stacked six-high, clustering together in informal bull sessions where experienced veterans described Life As It Was to green recruits, or lying alone in their bunks, reading or worrying.

Conditions were claustrophically crowded and miserably low-G. The starship's stationkeeping thrusters mimicked a fractional G of gravity—far too little to keep the stomachs of spacesickness-prone troops settled. Each section maintained hourly rotating watches called, variously, cleaning details, cookie catchers, or Vomit Brigades. The details were necessary; perpetrators of these low-G nightmare incidents could rarely reach a heaving bag in time, and were invariably in no shape to clean up after themselves.

Ardan, as regimental commander, had the luxury of a tiny cubicle all to himself, complete with bunk, table, chair, desk, closet, and washroom facilities, which—when the facilities were all folded away into deck or bulkhead or overhead—was small enough that he could pace its length in three steps. Low G did not have the same effect on him as jump, and so he spent his time fretting instead of feeling sick.

The plan change had been his idea to begin with. He had set in motion the chain of thoughts and words and events that had transformed Prince Davion's plan of a lightning swoop into the Folly's capital into a war of maneuver and countermaneuver, of slash and grinding attrition in the mountains and swamps beyond. Suppose he were wrong? Suppose Michael Hasek-Davion were right, and the 'Mechs of the 17th became mired in unexpectedly soft ground around the Ordolo DZ? Suppose...Suppose...

Outside the bulkheads of his ship, the last of the strike force's fleet elements assembled and came to full charge. As each ship recorded maximum hypercharge in its banked and shielded accumulators, the crew began the delicate and time-consuming work of furling the jump sail and preparing for the hyperspace transition. This was the busiest time of all for the starship crews, but it was time that hung heaviest on the troops and warriors aboard the DropShips. They could only continue their routine of eating (those who still could), gambling, sleeping, work details, and worry.

And then the time for suppositions was over. The last of the fleet's jump sails was collapsed and furled, tightly rolled into the narrow mast that jutted from each ship's stern like a monstrous sting. Aboard the flagship Avalon,Ran Felsner gave his assent, and Admiral Bertholi gave his command.

In a moment, space opened around the fleet and the ships vanished into it. The next moment, the same fold of space opened twelve light years away, and the Davion strike force rematerialized. The star below them was a Class K6, larger, brighter, and more orange than the sun of Dragon's Field, and just under 1 AU distant. Radar swept the area in all directions, pinpointing a bright, hard return from a large object some 80,000 kilometers away.

That would be the jump station, and the presumed hiding place of any Liao fighters on hand to deal with intrusions such as this one. Davion AeroSpace Fighters were deployed. The JumpShips themselves fired up their stationkeepers but did not unfurl their sails. Those huge, fabric disks were easy targets. Though the ships could not jump again until they had recharged their accumulators, no captain dared open his sails until the threat of enemy fighters was past.

Aboard the ship, the troops still waited. There was little gaming now and no bull sessions. Eyes searched the gray-painted bulkheads endlessly, as though they might see past them and into the surrounding vacuum. They could hear nothing, of course, and so were dependent on word passed down to them from the control room. Each man wondered if the ship's captain would actually let them know if they were about to be hit—and what possible good it would do to know.