Castrum Keep, Priori
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Homeworlds
12 June 3046
The bite of cold air stung against Chris’ exposed face as he left the cabin, closing the door softly so as not to wake his mother or Dane. Not that the bottles that had accumulated on the table suggested that either was likely to wake, but it was important to calculate risks and only take those necessary.
When the latch caught, the young man trotted down the porch steps and onto the muddy path that served as a road for Castrum Keep. His breath froze every time he exhaled and he tucked the scarf around his throat more securely. If the books and lessons available to him were correct, summers were supposed to be warm and presumably were in the other hemisphere of Priori. Not that he was ever likely to find out.
The sky was full of gray clouds, dimming the morning light as he crossed the broader road that separated the residential district from the sturdier buildings that lurked behind thick, v-shaped berms. If anyone attacked Castrum, the idea was that the berms would channel attacks into killing zones between them. Chris’ mother didn’t think much of the notion - it was arguing over that which had driven off her previous astech. Dane was less argumentative, which might have endeared him to Chris more if the man wasn’t clearly the third best technician in their little household.
Then again, that didn’t endear Chris to him either, and Dane still had a head of height and several kilos of weight over him. It hadn’t come to a fight so far, but Chris had the suspicion that if they did fight then winning might cost him more than it was worth.
Glenda Castrum was a pragmatic sort, but she also knew that letting her followers kill each other could tear her little kingdom apart.
Fishing through his coat pocket, Chris found the key he needed for the padlock and fumbled it into place with gloved hands. Once through the door, he hung up the padlock from the hook inside and unzipped his coat. The hangar was a little warmer than outside, not to mention shielded from the wind. Two bays, essentially ripped out of a dropship and reassembled, held the entirety of the keep’s battlemech strength.
The young man gave his own ride a rueful look.
Gimpy would never walk again, at least not unless another right leg could be found for it. And for that matter, Glenda would have words if its reactor wasn’t kept powering what passed for the settlement’s power grid. Assigning it to Chris was partly a joke, but it gave him at least the status of apprentice mechwarrior.
Beside it, quieter and colder since its own reactor wasn’t active, Gimpy’s brother sat waiting for Chris. The second Griffin clutched a Star League era PPC in its right hand - taken from Chris ‘mech after its own was destroyed in a raid several years ago. Chris kept his gloves on as he scaled the gantry ladder - the metal would still be cold at this time in the morning.
He couldn’t help but glance left as he climbed, seeing where Dane had opened up the plating around Gimpy’s LRM launcher.
Today’s job would be to detach the missile launcher for transplanting over to the other Griffin. It had its own missile launcher - a much newer one, but it was driving his mother to distraction with problems so Dane had recommended stripping it for Gimpy’s, which would match the original.
Chris remembered angry words the night before. The bigger man confident in his decision, derisive of the notion that he’d be taking the only working weapon off Gimpy. What, he’d asked, had it mattered? Gimpy was going nowhere and would never fight again.
It didn’t matter to Dane that a weaponless ‘mech was barely a ‘mech at all. The only reason it hadn’t been done before was that Sophia was so sure that the new launcher would be a great upgrade over that damaged six months ago. Built in a proper factory, to the specifications of modern warmachines, it had twice as many tubes and could handle similarly current production missiles.
The problem, Chris thought as he opened up the hatch, was that it was also much bulkier. Even letting it rise up higher out of the shoulder as far as it could while still being structurally secure hadn’t allowed for enough space and that had left the three of them spending weeks rearranging the ammunition bin to scrape up the room. There was barely room for half as many missiles, which meant only a quarter the original endurance in theory.
In practice, the loading mechanism was still jamming, which meant that his mother would be going into battle with one salvo pre-loaded and then what reached the launcher for the second before it jammed. Not ideal at all.
Climbing inside, Chris took off his coat and rolled it up to fit behind the seat. Dane’s solution would work, he admitted. It’d mean all their work since obtaining the new launcher was for nothing - not to mention the effort to obtain missiles for it, or disarming Gimpy completely. But he was also sure that there was another way, one that Dane was ignoring simply because it extended beyond his limited grasp of the systems.
And between her son and the astech who shared her bed, his mother had made her decision.
The only way Chris would keep the thin grace of mechwarrior status would be if he solved the problem himself, before they arrived to start disarming Gimpy. Fortunately, the amount they’d had to drink meant several hours to himself.
He had the technician codes to boot up the reactor, but for this he’d need full access to the weapon systems. Chris pulled out a decoder he’d cobbled together using the electronics bench before Dane asserted sole right to the technician’s workshop and plugged it into the access ports. The battle computer spun up and started the security procedure before dropping into a loop as it found nothing to check against. The mechwarrior apprentice pulled the neurohelmet down from its shelf and secured it on his head, tightening the chinstrap.
As if relieved to have something to work with, the security locked in and opened the new user prompt. Chris mumbled something that would pass for a security phrase - it wasn’t as if he could leave the user ID active once he’d done this, his mother would kill him - and with a blink the screens lit up. A recorded message reported the reactor going online, something he could feel as the vibrations reached him even through the padded seat. And more importantly, the weapons went live.
Chris set the individual safeties - he didn’t want to fire them! - before digging into the coding of the missile reload process. He’d noticed that it was always the nineteenth or twentieth missile in a salvo that jammed and that suggested a solution that would give his mother almost the full benefits of her new weapon, without the handicap of the current problem.
It took him over an hour, working from the manual, to find the loader’s control options. His mother had already amended them once, telling it to double the original missile load per salvo. The original code was backed up and Chris was able to compare the two. To be honest, he wasn’t sure why it wouldn’t work. But it didn’t matter: the fact was that it didn’t.
Opening the editor, Chris altered the salvo load. His mother’s amendment was for two sets of ten missiles to load. Rather than remove that, Chris changed it so that each set would be nine missiles. Doing so twice would only load eighteen missiles out of the potential twenty, but if it worked it was still much better than the original ten.
He doublechecked the code before saving his work and strapping himself into the seat. It was vanishingly unlikely it’d be necessary even if something went wrong, but his mother always told him that it was better to take a precaution and not need it than the reverse. At one time when running checks like this, he remembered his mother telling Dane that among the Clans technicians would have dummy missiles to work with for this - no propellant or warhead that could be set off if something went wrong. It would be nice to have something like that, but there were higher priorities in a raid, or when dealing with other groups. Still, live missiles were supposed to be safe until they were armed.
Checking the ammunition bin wasn’t full, Chris initiated a test cycle - drawing loaded missiles from the launcher back into the bins. He could hear the mechanism trying to work, before an error message reported there was nothing to be cycled back. Good, he’d thought it was empty but better to be sure.
Next he set it to cycle in a full load without arming the missiles, turning his head to listen for the sound of anything jamming as missiles were fed up from the storage into the launcher next to his mother’s cockpit. With the Griffin not moving it was quiet enough to hear each missile clunking into place. One, two, three… there was a brief pause after the ninth missile, just long enough to worry him but then they kept loading and reached eighteen.
Chris exhaled in relief. Now if they did the same when arming, this might be enough to convince his mother. He ordered the launcher cleared again and listened as the load cycled back into the magazine. “Right, here we go.” His thumb hit the key that ordered standard combat load, arming each missile as it entered the launcher.
One, two, three…
An explosion broke his count and for a second he thought he’d wrecked the launcher and perhaps the entire ‘Mech. The youth gripped the arms of the seat, bracing in case the Griffin fell as a result - the ejection system was safed because if it went off now he’d have been plastered against the hangar ceiling.
Nothing. Nothing but the scream of sirens outside.
The explosion had been from outside the hangar. There was a clunk of the LRM launcher accepting the load and Chris saw that it was showing as ready to fire.
Mouth dry, he reached for the comm, but before he could speak the tactical band went live. “All troops, this is Castrum,” Glenda grated. “We are under attack. Clanners. We fight or we die. Non-combatants, get to shelter.”
Chris had drilled this a thousand times in Gimpy’s cockpit, simulated only. But by reflex he slapped the switch to detach his mother’s Griffin from the gantries and then a second that would - hopefully - open the hangar’s massive doors.
He wasn’t wearing a cooling vest, he realized. That wouldn’t help, but there was no time to get one on. The Griffin rocked slightly as he took the first step, but the second was crisp and clean, the way his mother taught him.
She was going to beat his ass for this, but there might not be time to wait.
The main door was sliding open, everything working the way it should be. Chris turned the fifty-five ‘mech sharply and marched through them.
The first thing he saw was fires descending, even as smoke columns began to rise from burning buildings. The tactical display pegged ‘mechs dropping from the sky, jump-jets or disposable packs flaring as they slowed them to survivable rates. There weren’t many… but it didn’t take many, not when they were dropping directly into the heart of the keep.
Planets were large and settlements small. Secrecy had been Castrum Keep’s main defense, but that had clearly failed and now one of the two Clans that currently shared control of Priori had decided to swat what they probably dismissed as bandits… or dark caste, as if the inhabitants were part of their culture.
For a moment, Chris wasn’t sure what was causing the existing fires but then an alarm warned him of both the answer and an immediate threat: a ton of metal and flesh had seized hold of one of the Griffin’s legs and was clambering up to where it could do more damage - an Elemental, one of the Clans’ elite battle armor infantry!
Training kicked in and Chris flicked the leg against the hangar door, catching the infantryman between the mass of the limb and the heavy panel. The elemental dropped to the ground, but looking down he could see that the warrior was already recovering.
With a cry that was as much terror as anger, Chris stamped the foot of the ‘mech down on the soldier, crushing the man (or woman) flat.
Not even an elemental would survive that.
Chris felt his breath rasp in his throat. He’d just killed someone. As easily as stepping on a fly. His mother had told him that piloting a battlemech was a responsibility, one that had been shared by that elite fraternity back to before General Kerensky’s great war against Amaris, back even before the Star League. A responsibility to use the power of their war machines wisely.
Had he been wise? He wasn’t sure… but as warnings blazed out, he realized that one of the falling ‘mechs was descending almost directly upon him.
There was a crash as dozens of tons of metal struck the hangar roof and Chris pushed the Griffin away from the building as it collapsed around the new arrival.
The ‘mech that had brought it down was round-bodied, with two blocky shoulders that seemed disproportionate to the rest of it. About the size of his mother’s Griffin.
The mechwarrior inside it had keen reflexes - they’d landed with their back to Chris but the ‘Mech was turning towards him even before the legs had fully straightened from the landing.
If they’d completed the turn then they would have probably had a chance to tear into the Griffin before Chris even understood what was happening. But instead the ‘mech - a Hunchback, he realised suddenly - stopped and both the massive autocannon fired their full, massive might.
The Clan’s version of the Hunchback mounted not one but two of the most powerful autocannon mounted on a battlemech, weapons with limited range but awe-inspiring effectiveness. Point blank and against an immobile target, the streams of shells tore through the front of Gimpy with terrifying ease.
Chris’ empty, crippled mech slammed back against the rear of its bay, tearing through what was left of the wall behind it. Destroyed in an instant.
Enraged, he threw his mother’s Griffin forwards, slamming shoulder first into the Hunchback.
Caught off guard, perhaps having expected only one Griffin, the clan mechwarrior didn’t respond in time and the slightly smaller ‘mech crashed face first into the divider between the two mech bays.
Given a clear shot at the weak rear armor, Chris didn’t hesitate again. He triggered everything the Griffin had: the Extended Range PPC and the eighteen LRMs loaded into the launcher. At this range, the older LRMs would have been barely effective but the newer missiles didn’t have that problem.
With so much of its mass devoted to the heavy autocannon, the Hunchback’s armor was thin and what it had favored the front. Practically everything fired punched through the plating on the ‘mechs back and shells still in the ammo bins ignited. The explosions tore the sides of the Clan ‘mech apart, sending both arms spinning away, and there was a brief thermal spike before the reactor shut itself down.
That was a kill, Chris thought as sweat trickled down him. A second kill.
It didn’t bother him as much as the first.
And it had been fast. Nothing like the deliberate duels he’d fought in simulation. It had been over in seconds.
Turning, Chris brought the Griffin out of the hangar. There were other Clanners here, other… he glanced back at the wrecked Hunchback and saw a shark painted on one leg. Diamond Sharks. Other Diamond Sharks to fight.
He saw one as he scanned the settlement - another battlemech, this one smaller. The warbook called it a Piranha - the shape somewhat like an upright shark. It was fleet, fast, lethal… and as he watched an SRM explode against its chest, able to largely ignore infantry-carried weapons unless they were deployed en masse.
Two men with launchers on the back of a hover-truck hardly counted as a threat - but they did count as defiance and the Clans generally had little patience with that. The Piranha turned on one heel and the miniguns scattered across its chest sprayed fire back at the pair.
Small compared to the shells of the Hunchback, they were more than enough to tear through unarmoured people. Through thin plating and through wooden walls.
Through the cabin that Chris had called home for almost two decades.
The Diamond Shark hadn’t even been aiming at it particularly, a part of him thought. The hovertruck had just been moving past it when the Piranha fired.
But whatever the intent, there was even less left of the cabin than there was of the now burning hovertruck and its passengers. And thus the other side of Chris howled in fury and he hurled the Griffin forwards, barely remembering not to fire the PPC until he’d cooled further. The LRMs fired though, scattering fire across the Piranha and drawing its attention away from the fleeing crowd.
Kathmandu Castle Brian
Asia, Terra
12 June 3046
The door opened while Wei Rong’s head was pressed between her knees, which made it hard to see who had come inside.
“That looks painful,” a man’s voice observed, the bemusement suggesting that he’d not been watching her on cameras as she exercised. Wei assumed that there were cameras, anyway. She might be in protective custody, but it was still confinement.
She straightened out deliberately, arching her back gradually to work out any kinks remaining. “It takes practice.” Once she was past the halfway-point she saw a powerfully built ComGuards officer in the doorway, long white hair giving the impression of a uniform kepi despite his being bareheaded. The eyepatch suggested his identity, but it was hard to tell while inverted and looking up from the floor. Wei brought her feet up against her buttocks and then rolled forwards until she was crouched on them before standing.
Only when she turned around was she sure she was facing Precentor Martial Anastasius Focht, commander of all of the ComGuards. Wei had never met the man, but he did appear occasionally in official news items. “Precentor Focht?” She tried not to look worried, but she was in military detention so this probably wasn’t good. Compared to his dress uniform, she felt underdressed in the ComGuards issue exercise gear she’d been provided while her own clothes were being laundered. She’d been working out as best she could in the lounge for a while and built up a bit of sweat.
Focht dipped his head slightly. “Precentor Rong. I trust you’ve been kept comfortable.”
“I can’t complain.” She probably could have.
He nodded heavily and gestured towards the seats. “I assume you’ve watched the news.”
Acting as if it wasn’t trivial for the staff here to check what she’d watched on the holo-set. Wei hid derision as she took a seat on the couch, leaving the soft armchair facing her for him. “It’s not been very informative. It seemed censored.”
“It was.” Focht sat stiffly. “The Primus…”
“Whatever she said, they had adult IDs,” Wei blurted and then cursed herself for a blabbermouth.
The way the Precentor Martial’s eyebrows rose suggested this wasn’t what he’d expected. “Yes, I heard you were found in the Bangkok redlight district.” This was in fact true. “You may wish to refrain from that in the future.”
“You know I run the Canopus HPG station, right?” Or she had. Damn, had Waterly finally got around to reassigning her?
“I’m afraid you have other responsibilities now. Primus Waterly is dead.”
“...really?”
Focht frowned. “This isn’t a joke, Precentor.”
“We weren’t close.” To understate it. The bitch had accused Wei of doctoring her own medical records to hide having had work done. As if, Wei was 100% natural. “How did she die?”
“A sniper.”
“...oh.” That must sting. Most of the security around the Primus and other senior ComStar staff came from the ComGuards, albeit sharing the responsibility with ROM. An assassination reflected poorly on the ComGuards and by extension on Focht. “So… Mori is in charge?” Sharilar Mori, Precentor Dieron, had been Primus Myndo Waterly’s right-hand woman and was obviously being groomed as the successor. It was possible someone else would be voted in, but Wei wouldn’t have bet on it. Two-thirds of the First Circuit had been appointed by Waterly, leaving her faction in control.
But Focht shook his head. “A car-bomb, six hours before the Primus’ death.”
A chill went through Wei. Both the Primus and her successor? That suggested an outright coup, and the one in the best place to carry that out was sitting across from her. She leant forwards, absently noting that his eyes did not shift the way most men’s did when she moved her chest. “Could you start from the beginning.”
“That might be best,” he agreed. “Seventy four hours ago -” Twelve or so hours before Wei had been politely detained by a ComGuards patrol who’d seemed quite unprepared for where she’d been found. “- three Precentors were admitted to hospital in Brasilia for severe food poisoning. Precentors Weinberg and Laumer were declared dead on arrival.”
“What the hell did they eat?”
“Forensics suggest that some of the Caph Mussels served had been mis-identified for a similar breed that is toxic. Precentor Behl, the one survivor, appeared to believe that the matter was a case of poisoning by political rivals.”
Wei winced. She’d met Behl once. He was Precentor at New Earth, the first world ever colonized outside the solar system, a post that in theory put him on the First Circuit. Unfortunately for Behl, it had been fifty years since anyone but a Precentor-Advocate mattered in that regard. Grame Behl had made no secret that he resented that, and with the paranoia invoked by Primus Waterly summoning a full conclave of every Precentor of a Class-A station… “What did he do?”
“Do you know how many Precentors have subverted members of ComStar, including elements of ROM, to act as their personal agents?”
Other than ‘more than zero’, Wei did not. There were reasons she enjoyed her posting to HPG stations hundreds of light years from Terra. She shook her head. “So, who’s the Primus now?”
Focht gave her a tired look. “You are.” He refrained from ‘Blake help us’.
“Are you absolutely sure,” Wei said slowly, “That this is not an elaborate practical joke?”
The Precentor Martial slapped his hands down on the arms of his chair. “Precentor, three days ago there were over two hundred Precentors on Terra. We are now down to single digits.”
“You can’t be serious!” Wei came to her feet. “How…”
“Behl targeted fourteen senior Precentors, five of them survived and acted on the basis that this was a coup attempt. While she wasn’t a target herself, Primus Waterly drew the same conclusion from Precentor Mori’s death and ordered a counter-coup purge, which led to those uninvolved but now under threat lashing out.” Focht was easily twice Wei’s age and he sounded furious. “Two hundred Precentors are dead, and close to a hundred times that many civilians and junior personnel who were either executing the attacks or collateral damage.”
Wei considered the fact that she’d been unescorted in the notoriously wicked city of Bangkok while all this had started. She sat down again, heavily. “Then I…”
“Of the surviving Precentors called for the conclave, you are the only one I am sure had no part in this bloodbath. And we must have a clear chain of command before this is made public. We cannot afford for this to spread beyond Terra.”
Wei’s mind raced. Being Primus would essentially trap her here on Terra. Even if she retired, she’d know too much by then to be allowed to leave. “Why me? Why don’t you take the lead? You’re a Precentor and you have seniority over me.” She could see the rank pins he wore marked him as a Precentor with twelve years’ seniority, twice her own six years.
But Focht shook his head. “I have no aptitude for political leadership, whereas you did well for three years at Scarborough.” Wei’s posting before Canopus IV had only been a Class-B station, but it was one of the border systems where it had become necessary early in the Third Succession Wars to establish a wide perimeter around it. Refugees had settled inside that perimeter for security and by the time Wei took over, there was a thriving city administered by ComStar and secured by the fact that neither the CCAF, FWLM or any reputable mercenary would take their forces within a hundred kilometers of the HPG. “And besides that, if I become Primus, this will have the appearance of a military coup.”
She opened her mouth to disagree and then closed it again as she realized he was right.
“The five Precentors who have been involved in this cannot be trusted with the authority of Primus.” Now the white-haired soldier leant forwards, his one eye seizing Wei’s attention. “You are the only viable candidate. And you took an oath when you joined the Order.”
Wei rubbed her eyes. “Have you even buried Waterly yet?”
“Not yet.” In a moment of levity she hadn’t expected, Focht continued: “Given her personal appraisal of you, I imagine we’ll need her to stop spinning before we put her in her grave. She used the word apostate three times.”
“There is nothing irreconcilable between the word of Jerome Blake and the New Hedonist philosophy,” she protested reflexively.
“That would be an ecumenical matter I don’t consider myself qualified to comment upon,” the Precentor Martial observed drily. “In any event, we have your new robes of office being prepared and I have a small provisional staff ready to help you prepare your first public statement.” He raised one hand. “And I only mean help. I am even less qualified to govern from behind the scenes than I would be to serve as Primus myself.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then my honest appraisal is that ComStar will be torn apart and I will be left defending Terra and over two thousand enclaves from the Successor Lords,” Anastasius Focht told her bluntly. “If you’re the woman I think you are, that isn’t a choice.”
Wei Rong, Precentor-VI and holder of two doctorates, one of them on the history of the Second Succession War, searched deep within herself before concluding that - with the alternative of dying in a second and far more overt power struggle within ComStar - that Focht was right.
