Текст книги "The Sword and the Dagger"
Автор книги: Ardath Mayhar
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Космическая фантастика
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
10
No soldier looks forward to a strike against a major city, because street-to-street combat can turn a skillfully defended urban area into a death trap. Nevertheless, when word trickled down the Davion line of command that the strike force would not be dropped into Steindown and the spaceport as originally planned, the troopers and Mech-Warriors greeted the news with complaints and grumbling instead of relief.
Soldiers are a superstitious lot, and have been ever since the first savage threw the first rock. They have an automatic tendency to suspect that the enigmatic and godlike decisions coming down from the remote High Command might somehow alter fate, putting a man here,directly in the path of an incoming round, instead of there,where he could have survived. After all, it was not usually the higher-ups who had to put their butts on the line. Even the veteran NCOs, who might have breathed a small sigh of relief that they would not be dropping directly into a hot strongpoint, could only shake their heads and curse the blind fumblings of Higher Authority. Why couldn't those brass-heavy paper pushers leave well enough alone, without stirring everything and everybody up?
But the changes were made. Admiral Bertholi reported that new navigational fixes had been recorded for three distinct peaks in the ridge around Jordan's Pass, and the drop zones could now be positively identified and homed on. Unit commanders down to individual lance commanders and platoon leaders reported that troop assignments had been re-set, new 'Mech assembly points positioned and confirmed, and primary targets reassigned. Contingency planning and logistical support evaluations were continuing, but these chores could be carried out aboard the DropShips. Within twenty hours of the visit by Ardan, Lees Hamman, and Ran Felsner to Duke Michael's field headquarters, the first DropShips carrying Felsner's 5th Crucis Lancers had already boosted from Dragon's Field and were hours outbound on their way to the system's nadir jump point.
Ran himself had remained behind to parry any possible official or bureaucratic delays Hasek-Davion might create because he was displeased. The Capellan March Militia were still ostensibly under the Duke's command even though they had been temporarily reassigned to Lees Hamman by Prince Davion himself. Though powerless to stop the invasion, the Duke of New Syrtis could find myriad ways to hamper the assembly and loading of his own troops. An order to loyal unit commanders simply to slow down the boarding process or to lose the clearance orders for a vital shipment of munitions could delay the unit's departure for days, even weeks.
Felsner's solution was equally simple, though risky. He made sure that Michael would not interfere with the new plan for the counterinvasion by solemnly informing the Duke that after all and after careful consideration, the Davion commanders had decided to stick with the old plan.
Ardan considered this strategy dangerous as well as dishonest, knowing that Hasek-Davion would be furious and humiliated when he finally learned that they had lied to him. Having an influential and powerful nobleman like the Duke of New Syrtis for an enemy was not going to be amusing. It was these wheels within wheels within wheels, rather than the prospect of battle, that was keeping Ardan awake at night.
But he was too busy to worry for long. Once his own unit was scheduled for loading, he found himself in a running, three-sided battle with the Dragon's Field Technical Officer and the Chief of Procurement.
A JM6 JagerMechin Company C, 1st Batallion of the 17th Avalon Hussars, died right on the landing field in the shadow of the UnionDropShip it was preparing to board. An old, old fault in a leg servounit finally shorted an actuator circuit board too often patched instead of replaced.
The leg locked, freezing the 'Mech in place and blocking access to the DropShip's number one hold.
Though replacing a circuit board is not particularly difficult, the repair meant removing the JagerMech'sleg at the knee, a procedure that required a field repair gantry or a full maintenance facility, at least. The 17th's field gantries were already broken down and stored, and Procurement refused to provide a new circuit board unless the crippled 'Mech could be brought to the maintenance center some two hundred meters across the field. A request for a deployed field gantry was refused: why should that gear be broken out when maintenance blocks were open just across the field?
Unfortunately, the base Field Technical Services Division could spare no transports for the three hours' work needed to lower the 'Mech onto a flatbed crawler and carry it across to Maintenance. Proper authorization to redetail a transport and crew had to come from the base commandant, and he was at an official briefing with His Grace the Duke and would not be available until that evening—or possibly tomorrow. So sorry, they said, but we are really very busy and could you call back later? Or you might check with the Logistical Staff at Pallos, eighty klicks from here. They might have a transport, and if you could get authorization...
Meanwhile, the other three 'Mechs of the JagerMech'slance were scheduled to board through the blocked hatch, and the entire loading schedule was falling behind. After two hours of fruitless tail-chasing, Ardan arrived at the only possible solution. He had the two heaviest of the waiting 'Mechs drag the crippled, sixty-five-ton JM6 across the field to the maintenance center and leave it there, laid carefully and squarely across the accessway leading to the building's underground VIP garage.
If the major in charge of the Technical Services Division wanted to get home for supper that evening, the 'Mech would have to be repaired that afternoon, transport or no transport.
It was, and loading proceeded almost on schedule.
As boost time approached, the scene became even more chaotic and hectic. The port facilities of Dragon's Field were a hive of activity focused on the squat shapes of the DropShips– Unionsand Overlords,mostly—resting in their blast pits surrounded by the lacelike traceries of loading gantries and crane supports. Somehow, hundreds of tons of food, water, munitions, and spare parts had to be directed from storehouses around the planet to the proper ship at the proper time.
The physics of mass and mass distribution were unforgiving of the schedules and problems of ship supply officers. If each ton of supplies was not positioned precisely, the ship would not respond as expected when the captain later tried to cut in a control jet to vector clear of incoming missiles or to maneuver through a turbulent atmosphere. Worse, if those tons of supplies were not stored in the proper order, ground troops queuing up to draw ammo might be told that their supplies lay somewhere on the far side of 400 tons of dried meat and a case of JagerMechleg actuator circuits.
Finally, after three days of grueling work, the last 'Mech was somehow winched into its transport niche and locked down, the last liter of reaction mass had been pumped into tanks and the hollow, partitioned spaces between bulkheads and decks, and the last squad of infantry had filed aboard and found the narrow, padded ledges that would be their homes for the next several days. Lees had departed the day before with the Capellan March Militia. With the threat of official delay from the Duke's office removed, Ran boosted to rejoin his unit hours later.
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.
Ardan was on the Exeter 'sbridge, which was linked to the bridge of the Sword of Davionby an open vidlink. The Exeter 'scaptain, Harvey Danelle, was shaking his head as he examined the banks of monitors, then turned from the screen to face Ardan. "I think that scares me more than an assault wave of enemy ships incoming at 5 Gs."
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"That's right, sir. No-damn-thing. Our fighters turned up a blank at the jump station. There's nothing there...and nobody." He checked his monitor screens again. "The patrols are returning. It looks as though Liao has left the jump point to us."
Ardan worried at this piece of information for a time. It was possible that the entire Liao space strike force was concentrated at the opposite jump point—but foolishly unlikely. Radar and IR sweeps of the entire system had so far produced equally negative results. So, it looked as though Maximilian Liao's defense of Stein's Folly would be concentrated near the planet itself.
The word finally came from the Avalon.Throughout the fleet, DropShip brackets opened, and grapples dropped silently clear. The DropShips began drifting away from their JumpShips like seeds scattered from slender pods. Once clear of the JumpShips, and refueled now from the stores of reaction mass aboard each larger vessel, the Drop-Ships calculated vectors and accelerations and began the long boost toward the Folly. Behind them, metal foil parasols two kilometers wide began unfurling against the stars, as the strike force fleet began the process of recharging for the next jump.
From jump point to star was .9 AU. From star to planet was .37 AUs. Simple geometery gave a distance between jump point and world of a hair under 1 AU, or over 67 hours of travel at a constant 1 G.
Ardan had been over the figures in his head many times already.
Each person in the fleet, Ardan included, now bore the expectant and frustrated attitude of one waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. Standard doctrine called for a defending force to meet an invading fleet as far off from the planet as possible, to inflict as much damage on the incoming fleet before the DropShips had a chance to release their precious 'Mechs or to land and disembark them.
The first attack wave came forty-two hours into the passage, long after the DropShips had flipped end for end and begun their deceleration. Davion Corsairand Stukafighters launched from their DropShips and accelerated at high-G toward the assault formations that were spreading across the fleet's screens.
Hours passed, an impossible agony of time in which to remain charged with the expectation of immediate fury and death. Beyond the drive flares of the DropShips, ComInt scans registered distant targets and stabbing lances of energy. Screens on the Exeter 'sbridge told a story of exultant life and fiery death in tiny clots of moving, colored lights.
The Exeter 'scaptain grunted. Ardan looked up from the plot screen at him. "You're not happy, Harve."
"You're right. It's too easy."
"We've lost three."
"Damn it, Ardan, their whole air-space reserves should've been there...should've been waiting for us at the jump point! I think we're being suckered in."
Ardan nodded. It would make sense if the Liao ground commander were preparing a surprise—such as luring the Davion invaders into dropping on Steindown and boxing them in from the hills. The problem was, what if there were other, less obvious traps in the offing?
Ardan watched another amber light—a Liao Thrush—flash white and die, and dreaded failure.
Deceleration complete, the fleet entered low orbit over Stein's Folly. In the entire passage, only three enemy fighters had broken through the Davion Stukasand Corsairsand made high-speed runs through the DropShip fleet. One DropShip, the aging UnionClass Alphecca,suffered minor damage to her fire control systems, but with no casualties among the MechWarriors of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Crucis Lancers, sweating out the attack aboard her.
Davion forces commanded the space approaches by the time the DropShips entered orbit. Battlegroups of Stukasrefueled aboard their base DropShips, rearmed with bombs and air-to-ground missiles, then plunged into the goldtipped clouds of the Folly's atmosphere. Reports continued to be relayed from the Stukaflights to the fleet: enemy 'Mechs observed in Stein's Folly and at the Highland port; Liao heavy 'Mechs observed and bombed on the coast road west of Travis; no fighters observed on any of the spaceport fields; ground anti-air defensive fire seemed light...
The Exeter 'scaptain appeared on the steel latticework deck of the 'Mech bay, where Ardan was making a final systems check of the towering, eighty-ton Victorin its outboard launch niche. The 'Mech itself was almost lost in the forest of tubing, cables, wire, and ablative plate that cocooned the machine.
"I came down to wish you luck, Ardan" Danelle said.
"Thank you, Harve. Any change?"
The older man shook his head. "Maybe...just maybe, we've got them cold."
"Uh-unh. Not Maximilian Liao. He's got something up his sleeve." Ardan smiled, a tug against one corner of his mouth. "A dagger, perhaps."
The Exeter 'scaptain looked at him closely. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, sure. Nervous. Scared to death...How should I feel?"
"Before being booted into space in one of those junk piles? Nervous and scared widess, I should think."
"Harve...what if I've guessed wrong?"
"Then you live with it...or die with it, whatever comes. Your course is set now. Fretting won't change it...except maybe to work the odds against you when you need to be at your best."
Ardan looked up at the Victor.A grey-coveralled technician waved to him from the cockpit, signalling that the instrumentation checked out and the 'Mech was ready for launch.
"Twenty minutes to drop," the Captain said. "You'd better snug in."
"Right And...thanks. Thanks for everything."
"All part of your better Davion Travel Service," Danelle said, but he wasn't smiling.
Harvey Danelle stared up at Ardan as he climbed a slender ladder to the Victor'shatch and squeezed himself in. Young Sortek's moodiness concerned him. He'd seen too many 'MechWarriors overcome by depression or black or thoughtful moods—and more often than not, those were the ones who failed to return. Silendy, he said a kind of prayer for Ardan's safety.
The landing plan called for an atmospheric drop rather than a drop from space. With the Drop Zone so perilously close to sea, jungle, and rugged mountain, absolute precision was necessary. One by one, the main drives of each DropShip flared, killing velocity, dropping the ships into the upper fringes of the Folly's atmosphere.
Sealed into his cockpit, listening to the babble of voices coming across his comchannels, Ardan could feel the gradually increasing thrum of air against outer hull, the occasional lurch and bump of high-altitude turbulence, or the jar of a maneuvering thruster burn. He fought down his seething emotions, and attended to the nearly automatic tasks of preparing for drop. He had already stripped off all clothing except for his boots and shorts—his Victor'scockpit was going to be a sauna in very short order—and donned a light cooling vest, taking care with the connections between the shoulder pumps and the coolant reserve in the small of his back. A Kelvin Triple-0 Lancer 3 mm laser pistol went into a holster, and he tightened the web belt it hung from around his waist. The new combat knife was strapped by its scabbard to his calf just above his low-cut boot top. The canister of survival gear went into a flat pouch hanging from the belt.
The Victor'sneural helmet was already tuned to his brain patterns, of course. He brought the helmet down from its storage mount suspended above the back of his seat, eased it across his shoulders, and clamped it shut. Gradually, the Victorwoke up. Feedback through the helmet gave Ardan a sense of the machine's balance and position through the nerves of his inner ear. He felt...power.
Fear melted, and his uncertainty with it. Rumor had it that MechWarriors controlled their massive charges by thought alone, as if the 'Mech became their body through some sorcery in the neuralink. Human technology had never been capable of that, of course, though there were speculations that such control might one day be possible. Donning a BattleMech neural helmet was far less taking on a new body than it was taking on a new outlook on the world. A man's viewpoint changed somewhat, from eight meters up, with eighty tons of juggernaut combat machine responding to the touch of his fingers.
His eyes flicked to the chronometer set above his faceplate. Four minutes to drop. The ride became rougher, more violent He could feel sudden shifts of upand downthrough his neuralink as Captain Danelle maneuvered his ship.
"There they are!" The voice was Danelle's, sharp through his helmet commlink. "Bogies, dozens of them, coming up out of the clouds!"
Ardan could not see them and had to rely on the running commentary from the Exeter 'sbridge. Sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip, and it wasn't even hot yet.
"We've spotted 112 of the bastards so far," Danelle continued. "They must have been bunkered underground, masked or camouflaged from our scouts. They rose from a dozen points all across North Continent...strange, though. I think they vectored wrong. They're rising to meet us, but they're having to burn a lot of mass to shift from their original course." There was a pause. "Combat Intelligence believes they were vectored on a course to intercept us if we were on an approach path toward Steindown. We're well north of that course, and they're having to scramble to adjust"
That was the trap, Ardan thought, exultant They were waiting for us at Steindown! I was right!
"Our fighter cover is engaging them. Ha! Got that one! Oops...that one broke through, but the old Denebburned him down. Look at him burn! Here come our reserves..."
There was a long pause, then Ardan heard, "We're coming up on the drop site. Nav fix is positive. DZ in sight! Twelve seconds, people." Another pause, an eternity. Every MechWarrior reserved a special dread for death striking in the last seconds before a drop, while men and machines were still cradled helplessly aboard their DropShips. Then Danelle yelled, "Good luck! Give 'em hell!"
