Battletech jaguars leap, p.1
BattleTech: Jaguar's Leap, page 1
BATTLETECH: JAGUAR’S LEAP
✷ ✷ ✷
BATTLETECH
BOOK 113
REED BISHOP
CONTENTS
Epigraph
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part II
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part III
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Part IV
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Epilogue
Notable BattleMechs
Battletech Glossary
BattleTech Eras
The BattleTech Fiction Series
I dedicate this book to the following MechWarriors—and one aerospace pilot—who were kind enough to loan me the use of their wonderful characters.
* * *
In alphabetical order:
* * *
Michael Castle
Matthew E. DameBrusie
Ryan Fedele
Robert Granfors
Kona Johnston-Kitazawa
Dr. Boris O. A. Tasch
Ryan Vogel
Before she steps into the rainforest, the doe looks up into the tree’s branches. She sees dappled sunlight filtered through green leaves.
She does not see the golden eyes watching her from the shadows.
The jaguar’s muscles are coiled like a spring, her body perfectly still.
Except for her twitching tail.
She cannot allow the deer to pass safely. There can be no peace between them. If the jaguar misses the doe, her two cubs will starve. There exists no universe in which both the deer and the cat can live.
The jaguar edges forward on the branch as a twig snaps beneath the doe’s hooves. The cat eyes the deer, judging the distance. A primitive calculus runs through her skull as she evaluates position and angle and time.
She must get this exactly right. Once she jumps she cannot alter her trajectory. Once she pounces she is either alive or dead.
So she watches as intently as she has ever watched anything.
Then the moment comes.
And the jaguar leaps.
PART ONE
ISORLA - 3028
CHAPTER 1
THE RUINS OF VOSTOK, KHARKIV DISTRICT
LONDERHOLM
KERENSKY CLUSTER
20 AUGUST 3028
The abandoned city of Vostok was a dark ruin, its silent streets clogged with half-collapsed warehouses and the rusting hulks of overturned buses, all overgrown with wild vegetation. Nothing moved down those streets except a cold, keening wind that rattled particles of grit against warped sheets of corrugated steel and slabs of buckled ferrocrete.
The cockpit of Star Captain Michael Furey’s Timber Wolf A was supposed to be airtight, but he imagined he could taste, really taste, that bitter decay of this old, destroyed city on his tongue.
Or maybe that was just his conscience.
Dusk was drawing down on the city, and a low ceiling of angry storm clouds the color of slate threatened rain. Between the twilight and the coming storm, the light was draining out of the day. And when the rain finally fell, slanting down out of that lowering sky, it would not wash the city clean.
This was not a city that could be washed clean.
Michael peered at the city’s sawtooth skyline. A few worn and battered buildings pierced the dismal gray sky, the surviving skyscrapers separated by humps of moldering wreckage too heavy for the wind to bear away.
Is this what it means to be Smoke Jaguar? he wondered.
Is this what we are fighting for?
Vostok offered no answer save for the wretched whistling of the icy wind.
Michael guided his Timber Wolf down Twenty-Third Street, stopping before he quite reached the intersection with Silvia Levi Avenue—one of the avenues named for a Jaguar Bloodname founder. He leaned the 75-ton ’Mech forward, meaning to present a small target profile to any Steel Viper that might have a line of sight down the intersecting road. The nose of his BattleMech just peeked out past the charred wreckage of the building on the corner.
His heart pumping hard, he tried to look everywhere at once. His index finger trembled on his primary trigger, waiting on a flash of khaki—one of the Clan Steel Viper ’Mechs—to send twin shafts of man-made lightning from a particle projection cannon slashing down the street.
He did not see it.
Michael exhaled heavily, wiping sweat from his face with the back of his arm.
The Steel Vipers had expected to fight this combat trial in farm country, and had painted their ’Mechs to match the color of ripening summer wheat.
Michael’s ’Mechs were painted in a camouflage pattern that included the gray of ferrocrete, the smeared black of charcoal, the dark sanguine red of brick. The Vipers’ wheat-colored ’Mechs would stand out against the city’s drab colors, while Michael’s heavies would blend in.
But he saw no sleek, fast Adders or Fire Moths or Incubuses momentarily exposed to a deadly snap shot.
All he saw was Silvia Levi Avenue.
The road looked just as bad as the other streets that crisscrossed Vostok. A spill of blond bricks from the smashed wall of an apartment building barred the road. The street’s storefront windows were shattered, shards of glass scattered everywhere.
But there were no vehicles abandoned in the street.
There was a cargo truck in an alley marooned on four flat tires, its wheels half-melted by laser fire. The ass-end of an olive-drab hoverjeep stuck out of a hardware store’s shattered plate-glass window.
Michael could just see the sun-faded Smoke Jaguar emblem on the jeep’s side: a dark gray cat, its mouth curled into a snarl, claws extended as it pounced out of a tree. It was the creature as it would be seen by its victim as they looked up, with only a heartbeat to recognize their impending death.
So. A truck and a jeep. Not unusual for the long-abandoned streets of Vostok.
But neither vehicle blocked the roadway.
The meter-high pile of blond bricks would be an obstacle to wheeled traffic, but it would not even slow a BattleMech.
Silvia Levi Avenue was passable.
And who had cleared the north–south avenue? Because it had been cleared.
Not by Smoke Jaguar hands. To Michael, Vostok was a place of shame and dishonor. None came here, except when it was necessary.
Was it the Steel Vipers then?
It was the only other possibility, but it did not seem likely. The Sixty-First Striker Scout Trinary’s light ’Mechs would have a difficult time moving through the city. That was the reason Michael had chosen Vostok as the ground over which this Trial of Possession would be fought.
The Vipers had challenged them for the wheat harvest of Londerholm’s Kharkiv district, bidding fifteen light ’Mechs in this Trial of Possession. Michael had bid his assault Star in defense and chosen the battlefield on which this trial would be fought. The Fangheads had expected him to choose the wide, flat plain near the wheat fields, a tabletop where there was plenty of open land for running. No doubt Star Captain Emily—the Viper commander—believed her light ’Mechs could literally run circles around Michael’s heavies, hitting their weak rear armor from cover.
It was a worthy plan.
Especially since Michael’s already ponderous heavy and assault ’Mechs would be further slowed by Londerholm’s 1.5 G gravity.
Except Michael had seen the ploy coming. As the defender, he had the right to pick the ground on which they fought, so he had chosen Vostok, a destroyed city choked with overgrown weeds and debris that would deny a light ’Mech freedom of movement. Here, in this desolate tomb of a city, only slow and careful motion was possible. In Vostok, Michael’s superior firepower would tell.
Was it possible that the Viper BattleMechs were clearing the streets? Were they adjusting the battlefield to their advantage?
It was a clever idea. But, neg. Michael did not believe the Viper ’Mechs were conducting a long and noisy exercise in ad hoc civil engineering.
Then who had cleared Silvia Levi Avenue?
Try as he might, Michael could think of no possible answer. Which made the road a mystery.
Michael Furey did not like mysteries.
As a rule, no Smoke Jaguar liked mysteries.
For a moment, Michael debated with himself. Should he warn his Star of this strange new development? There was little chance a radio transmission would alert the Vipers to his location.
On the other hand, Michael was not sanguine about diverting his people with this odd little puzzle. They were here to defeat the Vipers and retain all that wheat for Smoke Jaguar mouths.
Anything else was a distraction.
Michael almost let it go.
But going into battle only half-armed with information was like going into battle only half-armed with ammunition.
So he activated his neurohelmet transceiver to transmit and selected the Smoke Jaguar channel.
“Attention, 181st Battle Cluster, Beta Trinary, Assault Star. This is Star Captain Michael Furey. I am at the intersection of Twenty-Third and Silvia Levi, and I have discovered something—uh, unexpected. Levi Avenue has been cleared of debris. I do not believe the Vipers would take the time to clear the city’s streets. Nor do I feel our foes would execute the task in such a subtle and clever way.”
“Then who could it be?” asked one of his people.
“I do not know,” said Michael. “But it is a factor to be cognizant of, quiaff?”
He was answered by a chorus of “affs.”
Michael thought about the cleared roads and began to formulate a plan.
What were the Vipers really fighting for?
That was up to him to decide.
As Star Captain Emily guided her Adder down Seventeenth Street, it started to rain.
The rain came slashing down out of an angry black sky crowded with storm clouds. For the first few minutes, it merely rattled against her light ’Mech’s cobra hood and spotted her canopy. Then it was as if someone had thrown a switch, and the rain was coming down in torrents, great blurry washes of water running down her windscreen and turning visibility to zero.
She switched to infrared, but that was no good either. The rain painted everything with the same cold brush.
How ironic that the very precipitation that made crops grow in abundance in the Kharkiv district would now oppose her Trial of Possession.
“Alpha Star,” she barked, “hold this position.”
Like an infantry squad taking cover, the four humanoid ’Mechs that made up the rest of her Star each took up position at one of the points of the compass, crouching behind buildings, watching the intersection’s approaches for the smallest hint of movement.
Once they took their positions, the Incubus and the three Mist Lynxes stood absolutely still.
For a long time, there was no sound save for the pounding rain.
Emily stood in intersection’s center, ready to reinforce any of her people.
But her eyes were on the Incubus.
Aaron Chen’s ’Mech.
And as the rain filled her cockpit with white noise, she found she was no longer in the murdered city of Vostok on the world of Londerholm. Instead she—
—is crammed into one of those narrow bunks you always find in the staterooms of Broadsword-class DropShips. Aaron Chen is pressed up against her and he is taking up more than his share of space.
Emily does not mind.
It is quiet here. And warm.
And safe.
The air is filled with the astringent scent of their coupling.
She does not mind that either.
Emily turns on her side, pillowing her head on his chest.
A part of her thinks she could stay like this forever.
It is a strange thought for a Clan warrior. She knows this.
But still.
She has coupled with men before, but none of them have ever affected her like Aaron has.
Emily does not understand why this should be true.
But it is.
Aaron is tall for a man born on a standard-gravity world, one meter ninety, and every centimeter hard, lean muscle. He is ruggedly handsome, with unruly black hair and a crooked smile. And there is an intriguing kindness about him, though he is able to put that kindness aside in the savagery of combat.
Of course there is more to him than just the physical. There is also…
But she cannot find the words for this ineffable thing she is trying to describe.
Is this the Spheroid brand of madness called love?
Love. The sickness that split the Smoke Jaguars apart from their allies the Nova Cats when the Khans of those two Clans had broken their love union.
Emily has never understood that. Why would a Khan sacrifice an advantageous strategic position merely to serve some emotion bound up with physical pleasure? If that is what love did, then the Clans were wise to discard it.
She has always thought so.
But now, lying in her lover’s arms, she is no longer sure.
Without speaking, Aaron draws his right arm down her bare back, his fingertips tracing her warm, smooth flesh. At first it makes her shiver.
But she can feel the bondcord around his right wrist brushing against her skin.
The bondcord.
Aaron Chen is her bondsman, her isorla, a prize taken in battle against Clan Nova Cat. That is what the bondcord means. He is her property as surely as is her discarded clothing strewn across the stateroom’s deck. She has the right to use his body, because it belongs to her.
Does Aaron really care for her?
Or is he just being good property?
Only a single strand of the cord remains. He had long ago proved his fidelity and integrity.
And tomorrow on Londerholm, he will prove his ability as a warrior.
She will cut the bondcord’s final strand.
And he would become an abtakha.
An adopted Trueborn warrior of Clan Steel Viper.
No longer anyone’s property.
Are you going to leave me, Aaron? she silently asks him. Are you going to leave me on Londerholm?
She should be worrying about the tactics for the trial. The importance of gaining another victory for her codex. The civilians who will starve if she does not secure the wheat harvest. She should be thinking of any of these things instead of her aching heart.
Are you going to leave me on Londerholm?
She realizes she is weeping. No, the whole world—
—was weeping. The rain poured down out of that dark sky, interfering with Emily’s ability to carry out her mission.
How had she come to be like this? She had always thought love was a sickness. Maybe it could be contracted like a virus. Maybe all you had to do to catch the illness was to meet a carrier.
The idea made her uneasy.
It made her question who she was.
At last, the rain began to slacken enough so she could see, and Emily hoped it was a good omen for this battle.
“Move out,” she said gruffly. One by one, her warriors broke cover and followed her down Seventeenth Street, the Incubus right behind her, guarding her back.
Michael loped his Timber Wolf down Silvia Levi Avenue, trusting the rumble of thunder and the fierce crack of lightning to hide his approach.
His Jaguars had a good plan. The somehow-cleared street would serve his Star as an expressway, offering them rapid access to the city’s southern quarter.
Now he just needed to guarantee the Vipers’ presence when his Star arrived.
A feral smile split Michael’s handsome face.
His Star—less one—would race down the avenue, their slower Jaguar ’Mechs made comparatively swift by the absence of obstacles.
When they closed in on the enemy, Michael would split his force so they could approach the Vipers from multiple points of attack. Hemmed in by the debris-choked roads, the Vipers would have no chance to flee.
He reached the intersection of Twentieth and Silvia Levi and stopped long enough to verify the path forward was clear, then he crossed, looking both ways for enemy ’Mechs.
When he reached the next block of Silvia Levi, he found his way forward obstructed not by the Steel Vipers,
