----- Three Days Later -----
Date: April 25, 2996
Location: Tsinghai
Title: High-Value Target
Author: Philip A. Lee
Type: Short Story
Synopsis: In Tsinghai's capital city of Kokonor, the Orloff Grenadiers parade along the main boulevard. Cyril views the spectacle from a raised viewing platform, along with Colonel Polzin, Ambassador Skylar Orloff, and Prime Minister Jain, who appears mesmerized by the display. Skylar promises that the Orloff Grenadiers will serves as Tsinghai's first line of defense if it joins the Duchy of Orloff, and will no longer have to rely on a lackluster planetary militia to defend against raids. Cyril realizes that the parade serves a double purpose - the same force could either offer protection, or it could burn Kokonor down around the Prime Minister's ears. He realizes that Skylar is making Jain an offer she can't refuse, and feels disgusted that the honor of the Grenadiers is being leveraged for such an underhanded purpose.
An aide interrupts Skylar's speech with a note from a ComStar courier. Skyar reads the message and looks up, stunned - announcing that his father has been killed. Cyril is horrified by the implication - Skylar is the new Duke of Orloff. After speaking on a comm unit, Colonel Polzin reports Capellan forces are inbound, and says the Grenadiers cannot be committed to Tsinghai's defense without orders from the Captain General, unless Tsinghai becomes a member of the Duchy first.
Meanwhile, aboard the CCS Divine Thunder, Commander Park rouses Lin Wei from deep meditation in the cargo container. He tells her the troops are assembled, and the ship will jump in ten minutes. She scrambles into her Vindicator and is ready by the time the two-minute warning sounds. As the Kearny-Fuchida drive powers up and hurls the ship through hyperspace, Lin has an intense vision of fleeing a viper in a forest, and being fatally bitten by it just as reality reasserts itself. She recalls she's had strange hallucinations during jump in the past, but nothing this severe. Still badly shaken by her vision, Lin drops with the rest of her battalion 35 minutes later.
On the ground outside Kokonor, Cyril wrestles Duke Skylar out of the limousine and hustles him to his Awesome, the "Wicked Witch." Skylar looks up at the Awesome with trepidation, having apparently never actually piloted it before, and refuses to get in. Cyril tells him that if he dies, the Duchy of Orloff will be dissolved, the Grenadiers defunded and disbanded, and the League frontier will crumble before a Capellan onslaught. Skylar suggests Cyril pilot the Awesome, while he makes his escape in Cyril's faster Trebuchet.
The neurohelmet is too big (sized for Skylar's considerable girth) and not properly calibrated, but Cyril gets the Awesome powered up. The lance moves out, with the Trebuchet wobbling after a Griffin, Wolverine, and Shadow Hawk, and the Awesome bringing up the rear, just as a Capellan Transit strafes the hangar complex. Cyril sends out a sitrep, and receives rendezvous coordinates for evacuation ten kilometers away. Major Duarte estimates they're under attack by at least two 'Mech battalions - a full fledged invasion.
At the Capellan LZ, Lin Wei and her lancemates push through the Kokonor Foothills in the wake of the Prefectorate Guard and House Hiritsu. She muses that Tsinghai is her family's ancestral home - lost since the latter years of the First Succession War. Commander Huang from Recon Lance reports contact with a Marik lance that looks like it's escorting a VIP. Lin asks for permission to engage, but Major Petrowski denies the request, ordering her to intercept a Grenadiers lance that penetrated the Prefectorate Guard's lines.
Lin protests, worrying that an escaped planetary dignitary could spur hope among partisans and lead to decades of uprisings. Petrowski says that no high-value targets are going to escape offworld. To calm herself, Lin lights an incense stick in the cockpit, and briefly loses herself in meditation. She then contacts Commander Huang and tells him to stay in contact with the high-value target until she arrives.
Cyril curses both the slowness of the Awesome and the steady gains the pursuing Capellan force is is making. The Wolverine pilot radios from ahead that she has visual on the rendezvous point - an outlying airfield with an intact hangar and airfield. The Griffin pilot reports hostile contact as LRMs begin to burst around the fleeing Grenadier lance. The Awesome responds more slowly than his Trebuchet, and Cyril misses his shot at an approaching Clint. Cyril winces as he sees his family's Trebuchet take heavy damage under Skylar's amateur handling. As more Capellan 'Mechs approach, Cyril receives no response to his request for reinforcements from Major Duarte.
Lin faces competing demands over her intercom - Major Petrowski demands she maneuver as ordered, while Commander Huang asks for backup to prevent the Leaguers from reaching the airfield. Lin tells Huang they're en route and ignores Petrowski. Approaching the airbase, she sees, painted on the Awesome's front, the horrid green viper from her vision. She tells her subordinates to concentrate on the rest of the recon lance, and to leave the Awesome to her.
Still three kilometers from the airfield, the Grenadier lance is getting chewed up. Cyril takes a hard hit and sees Lin's Vindicator on approach. 'Mechs begin to drop on both sides. Cyril orders his lance to get Skylar to the airfield, while he turns and faces the onrushing 5th CRC 'Mechs, backing into the forest canopy for cover. Lin pursues into the forest, but finds sensors useless - the trees have high metallic content, appearing as false positives on the MAD display. Lin sends an open broadcast, demanding surrender. Cyril responds with a particle cannon barrage - rendering himself visible on heat sensors in the process. He continues his attack, systematically downing Lin's entire lance, except for her Vindicator. A desperate last volley from the Vindicator takes the Awesome down at last.
Cyril awakens as he is taken into custody by Capellan infantry, along with his lancemates. However, he sees an Orloff-painted Leopard blasting off from the airfield, and knows that the Duke made it away.
Notes: I was incorrect in my earlier assessment. The Orloffs weren't trying to swing a Capellan world out of the Confederation - they were trying to woo an independent League world into the Duchy of Orloff. This is the invasion where the Capellans reconquer Tsinghai during the Third War.
Lin's bout with Transit Disorientation Syndrome is the first time we've seen prophetic-seeming visions linked to hyperspace jumps. Interstellar Players suggests alien consciousnesses attempt to take over human minds during jumps for sinister purposes. Though this is clearly a tabloid fantasy in the BattleTech universe, you can see where such stories gain credibility if visions like Lin's are at all commonplace. Given the intensity of her visions, I was wondering if Lin was inhaling incense laced with KrayZee, but it's described as simple sandalwood.
I know from experience how hard it can be to take an Awesome down. In one seafloor battle I played years ago, all I had to do was breach the armor in any section to flood and kill it. I kept plinking the Awesome all over, until there was only one section left that could take a hit without breaching. So where do I connect with my last shot before my unit gets wiped out? You guessed it. I liked how author Philip Lee describes the little quirks that make piloting different machines a completely different experience.
After centuries of steady losses, many Capellans must have emotional ancestral ties to enemy-held worlds. In this sense, Lin has a lot in common with the Northwind Highlanders, though she was lucky enough to be able to reclaim her ancestral home without having to change sides first.
I wonder how common it is/was in the League for the larger political alliances to pressure independent worlds to join. We've seen some instances of political entities seceding from parent powers, but it's rare for individual worlds to be pulled into the orbit of the regional powers.
A spare escape ship located at an outlying airfield is on the verge of becoming a BattleTech trope - since Theodore Kurita uses the same tactic (right down to putting another person in his personal 'Mech as a decoy) on Marfik.
The timing of Reinhard Orloff's death seems entirely too coincidental to be random happenstance, especially since it was a killing, rather an an accidental death. My guess is that a Maskirovka hit team took him out to throw the Duchy of Orloff into chaos and prevent the Grenadiers from sending reinforcements to stop the Capellan invasion.
There seems to be a bit of a continuity error regarding House Orloff. Looking at the House Marik sourcebook, I see that Vicente Orloff, "son of the Earl" is a member of Janos Marik's "Council of Friends" in 2991. Vicente is noted as having been a decorated officer in the Orloff Grenadiers, and he's still alive and running the Duchy as Earl in 3025 at the age of 56. This story names the Duke of Orloff (and Skylar's father) Reinhard. The House Marik sourcebook, however, doesn't leave much room in the continuity for either Reinhard or Skylar. I'll ask in the "Ask the Writers" section to see if an official explanation can be handwaved (probably as an error by House Marik in-universe author George Ninetrees).
(Edit: Actually, it's possible that Vicente was Skylar's younger brother in 2991, since the House Marik reference just calls him the "son of the Earl" rather than the heir, and then sometime between 2996 and 3025, he succeded Skylar. Vicente would be 27 in 2996.)
