Decision at Thunder Rift Read online

  The Mech jumped, vaulting skyward with magical grace on flaring jets of superheated mercury steam. Grayson saw it twist in midair, swinging its laser down to align on the group of soldiers and vehicles in the street. When the blast hit, Grayson was caught in it. Blue fire seemed to fill the air, as the laser beam hosed across the bricks of the building wall behind him a meter above his head. Bricks splintered as the trace of water within them vaporized. Hot shards rained on Grayson's bare neck, and the beam swept on, slicing into the hovering GEV. The explosion blotted out the sky.

  BATTLETECH

  08601

  DECISION AT THUNDER RIFT

  William H. Keith, Jr.

  This book is published by FASA Corporation P.O. Box 6930 Chicago, IL 60680

  Cover Art by : Jim Holloway Illustrations by: David Deitrick Duane Loose The FASA gang

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright © 1986 by FASA Corporation. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  BATTLETECH is a Trademark of FASA Corporation.

  Trellwan

  NSC L 4-342. 782 Star: Trell Type: M2 Mass: 0.33 Sol Luminosity: 0.03 Sol Radius: 0.36 Sol Estimated time remaining on main sequence: 4.2 x 1010 years Planetary System: 5 major bodies Planet I: Trellwan Mean orbital radius: 0.73 A.U. Orbital eccentricity: 0.056 Periasteron: 0.164 A.U. Apasteron: 0.182 A.U. Period: 45.8 days Mass: 0.68 Earth Equatorial diameter: 11,352 km (0.89 Earth) Mean planetary density: 5.28 g/cm3 (.96 Earth) Mean surface gravity: 0.86 G Escape velocity: 9.6 kps Rotational period: 30d 11h 59m 12s (2/3 planetary year) Axial inclination: 2° 15' 23.2" Atmosphere: N2 -75%, O2 - 23.2%, H2O (mean) - 0.4%, CO2 - 312ppm Pressure: 512 mm Hg at sea level Temperature range: -80° C. (night at Apasteron) to 40° (midday at Periasteron)

  Geology: Two small, landlocked equatorial seas total 9 percent of the planetary surface area. Remaining surface is divided into rugged mountains and uplands, and vast, arid desert lowlands. Tidal stresses account for the high mountain ranges along the equator, as well as for continuing volcanism and seismic activity.

  Ecology: A few of the wide variety of native plants and animals adapted to Trellwan's dry, extreme-temperature surface conditions have been catalogued. Various offworld flora and fauna have been introduced at several equatorial locations by human colonies established in approximately 2616.

  Notes: Trellwan's ecology is dominated by its short orbital period and relatively long rotational period. The planet has escaped the fate of many inner worlds in close proximity to their star, and has a rotational peiod different from its year. However, tidal drag has slowed Trellwan's rotation until the planet is locked in a 2:3 resonance with its primary; its year is only 45 standard days, while its day is 30.5 standard days long.

  The long periods of alternating darkness and light, coupled with short and climactically severe seasons, pose a serious challenge both for native forms and for the human colonies located south of the Mountains near the Grimheld Sea.

  There are three principal settlements. Of these, Sarghad is the major city, the center of world government and trade, and the site of the world's only spaceport.

  The planetary government is a monarchy with an appointed, unicameral legislature. Trellwan has long been a firm ally of the Lyran Commonwealth.

  —Excerpt from Pilot's Manual and Ephemeris,4th Quadrant, Cis-Peripheral Sector, Lyran Commonwealth, 20th edition, published 3015, Tharkad

  PROLOGUE

  Ten thousand years of organized warfare have culminated in that fabrication of arms and armor, mobility and strength called the BattleMech.

  Standing ten to twelve meters tall, the typical 'Mech is vaguely humanoid, an armored giant of myth and legend come to life. The lightest weigh 20 tons, the heaviest 75 or more, and even the smallest 'Mech bristles with lasers, particle cannons, long- and short-range missile launchers, autocannon, or machineguns. A 'Mech is striding, thundering death for any unarmored army crazy enough to stand and fight, and a formidable foe even for heavily-armored conventional units.

  Traditional military tactical thought holds that the best way to fight a 'Mech is to send in another 'Mech, preferably one bigger, stronger, and more heavily armored. When matched, the monster machines can pound away at one another for hours, each waiting for that one fatal mistake by his opponent. Each waiting for that inevitable, critical failure of nerve or machine, that instant's lapse in guard or tactics that will leave the way open for a fatal strike.

  This same kind of military balance exists between the five major Houses of the Successor States of the early 31st century as they war among themselves for control of known space. On one side is the Capellan Confederation of House Liao, the Free Worlds League of House Marik, and the Draconis Combine of House Kurita. Against them stands the uneasy alliance of House Davion's Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth of House Steiner. Around these giants also swarm lesser houses, powers, alliances, merchants, fronts, and out-and-out bandits, whom the Successor Lords try to woo, bribe, or force to assist them when they can.

  And yet, after centuries of warfare, no clear gains have been made by any single House, no fatal flaw uncovered. War continues, with the giants struggling among the ruins of what once had been a proud, galactic civilization. Like well-matched BattleMechs, the forces seemed too evenly balanced for any one to gain that vital, decisive edge.

  But the powers behind the war understood a maxim of war as old as war itself. What cannot be won by force of arms can often be achieved through cunning, deceit, or by a concealed blade slipped into an enemy's back.

  —Nicolai Aristobulus Terror's Balance: A History of the Succession Wars

  BOOK 1

  1

  The traitor slid out from under the tangle of cables and hard-wired circuit boards, wiping grease-stained fingers across the front of his coveralls. The watch officer behind the console above him frowned. "Aren't you done in there yet?"

  "It's a peripheral circuit, boss," the traitor said. "I can't get it from here. I'll have to check the cameras down in the Repair Bay." He reached back into the circuitry access and flicked a row of switches from on to off with precise deliberation. "Your monitors'll be down for a bit."

  "How long?"

  "Oh, not long." He began gathering his tools and stuffing them into his canvas shoulder bag. "Fifteen minutes."

  The watch officer glanced at his wristcom. "Make it fast," he said, penning a notation on the clipboard in his hand.

  "Don't worry," the other man replied. "It will be."

  The traitor was an astech and a native Trell, his sharp-chiseled features and black, curly hair typical of Trellwan's small native population, his complexion extraordinarily pale due to the world's UV-poor sun. The watchstation door passed the man at a touch of his fingertips to the security scanner plate, then hissed shut at his back. As he moved down the stone-walled passageway, the clatter of his footsteps echoed hollowly.

  Cold stone steps led down and down, through deserted corridors and past rooms guarded by grey uniformed sentries. Twice, the Trell had to show his pass, a holographic ID pinned high on his shoulder. Other astechs passed him in stony silence or with nodded greeting. His coveralls and heavy toolbag were pass enough to get him through most doorways, as there were few areas in the Castle where a native as tech could not go.

  The Repair Bay was part artifice and part natural cavern, a high-valuted room whose lingering gloom was broken by isolated pools of light One wall was brown-rusted and corroded with age. At the Bay's center, crisscrossed by spotlight pools and the snaking coils of power feeds and compressor lines, the 55-ton hulk of a partly disassembled 'Mech lay sprawled across an elevated
rack. A Tech bawled orders and gestured from the deck at a pair of astechs working on the behemoth's chest. Wearily, they stooped above the actinic flare of a wielding laser. Armor plates weighing half a ton apiece dangled above in a tangled web work of lines and scaffolding.

  The traitor looked around at the four 'Mechs that were the heart and soul of Carlyle's Commandos. Armored, ten-meter monsters, BattleMechs were all but invincible against troops or conventional armor, so powerful that only another 'Mech of equal or greater firepower had any chance at all of bringing one down. The Trell smiled to himself, thinking how he had accomplished just that with merely a forged maintenance order and fifteen minutes work.

  Disabling the Lance's Shadow Hawk had been the first part of his two-pronged mission. He had been given explicit instructions and training, as well as a replacement circuit board to be slipped into a 'Mech's servoelectronics control nexus if he got the chance. He'd found that chance and the board had crippled every power feed in the 'Mech's leg servoactuator series before melting itself into an anonymous lump of slag, all traces of sabotage erased. Now the Lance had but three 'Mechs — the Captain's Phoenix Hawk and the two 20-ton Wasps. Without the Shadow Hawk's particular balance of heavy firepower and maneuverability, the garrison would be crippled if it found itself in an all-out fight.

  The Trell clutched his tool bag tighter under his arm, and hurried past to the rattletrap metal steps that led in dizzying zigzags to the Bay Control Center, a windowed booth suspended from the back wall fifteen meters above the stone floor.

  The Repair Bay Officer of the Watch looked up from the glow of a monitor, lowered his feet from the console, and set his mug of chava aside. "Yes?"

  "Maintenance, sir," said the small, dark man, turning his shoulder so that the officer could see his astech's card without rising from his chair. "They sent me down from Central Control to find a fault in the security camera circuitry. I think it's a bad line in here somewhere."

  The officer nodded. "Damn junk," he said. "Like everything else on this sand-rotten ..." Realizing too late that he talking to a Trell, he bit off whatever else he'd been about to say and pointed at a row of dead monitors, "Access is back here," he said, then propped his feet back up and returned to the single live monitor on the console. The traitor glanced over the officer's shoulder, and noted that the monitor showed the spaceport, empty ferrocrete broken by overlapping patches of shadow and light under a chill, starry sky.

  So they weren't down yet. He glanced at his wristcom silently counting out the minutes and seconds that remained, and began laying out his tools. It wouldn't be long now.

  * * * *

  Grayson Death Carlyle had long ago given up being sensitive about his grim middle name. He'd inherited it, so to speak, from an ancestor, Lord Grayson Death Thomas. Lord Grayson, it was said, had changed the pronunciation of his middle name's vowel from a long to short "e" after he became the Victor of Lysander and a landholder so powerful no one dared care how he pronounced his name. In a warriors' society that revelled in the deeds and exploits of heroes, the younger Grayson's name drew little more than occasional wry heckling from the other members of his father's Lance.

  As soon as he stepped from the electric runabout that had brought him back to the Castle, Grayson knew he was in trouble. Shedding his cold-weather gear, he dropped it into the arms of a waiting Trell orderly who said nervously, "The Weapons Master's been looking for you, sir."

  Grayson glanced at his wristcomp and winced at the time. "Yes, I expect he has."

  "He seemed a bit upset," the orderly went on, sounding like someone who feared being caught any minute near ground zero of a long-expected blast.

  Grayson shrugged, then turned to the electric heater the Vehicle Bay watchstanders had rigged to take the edge off the bitter air that came in whenever the Bay's outer doors were opened. Amid the grime-smeared walls of the arena-sized hall, about 20 other House troopers were about, either standing in the heater's glow, lounging with books, or playing card games. Grayson rubbed his numbed hands briskly to restore circulation. It was a typical Secondnight, 20° below, with a low-keening wind that plunged the windchill to -40° Centigrade or worse. Sergeant Griffith's reprimand was going to be worse than the cold, he decided, but the memory of Mara's caresses, the lingering warmth of her kisses, made up for it all.

  A voice broke into his thoughts. "So!" Master Death has deigned to join us."

  "Hello, Griff," he said amicably. "Sorry I'm late."

  The shadow resolved itself into the unit's Warrant Weapons Master, Sergeant Kai Griffith. The harsh overhead lights gleamed from his hairless scalp and seemed to highlight the savage blue scar that twisted down his jaw close to his right ear.

  "'Sorry,' the boy says! 'Sorry!'" Griffith's face, with its drooping mustache, wore a studied sneer. "What I want to know is where'n the bloody blue hell have you been?"

  To mask his anger at being called "boy," Grayson continued to smile, but his voice was chill. "With friends," he said, thinking that someday Griffith would go too far.

  '"Friends!' Off-base again, then. Seeing that Trell girl, I suppose?"

  "Aw, Griff..."

  "Don't give me that! You were scheduled for weapons practice four hours ago, and you're supposed to be in the Command Center observing right this minute. What the hell are you playing at, boy?"

  Grayson touched fingertips to his shock of pale blond hair in mock salute. "Reprimand received, Sergeant Griffith."

  "Your father’ll receive it too, son." The bald head moved slowly from side to side, the scar rippling as jaw muscles clenched. "I can't perform my duty if you persist in ignoring yours."

  Grayson turned from the heater and started up the ramp toward the Castle's main central passageway. "Look, Griff, I figured this might be my last chance to see her. We're pulling out in three days..."

  The bald sergeant fell into step beside him. "Well pull out if these negotiations come off. Until then, you'll attend your duty, Mister, or I'll know the reason why!"

  Grayson scowled. He was now 20 standard years old, and the Weapons Master had been his personal instructor in the military arts since he'd formally joined the Lance as a warrior apprentice at ten. The older he got, the less he appreciated Kai Griffith's sharp tongue or his interference in his private life. After all, Grayson wasn't a child any longer, and was both son and heir to a MechWarrior. The Weapons Master would not order his life forever.

  "I'll attend to my duty," Grayson retorted, "but my private life is my own!"

  "Still playing the loner, Master Carlyle? That attitude is going to buy you a world of trouble before you end your apprenticeship. Look, can't you get it through your skull that the damned Trells aren't our friends?"

  "This one is. C'mon! I just wanted to say goodbye!"

  Griffith shook his head disapprovingly. "The daughter of old Stannic himself, no less!"

  "What has that got to do with anything?" Grayson broke in. It was true Mara was the daughter of Trellwan's chief minister, but so what?

  "You keep sneaking off to play with your girl in town, and you're going to end up dead!"

  Remembering a fragment of the evening's fun, Grayson only smiled and shrugged. Kai Griffith shared the prejudice of most old-time garrison soldiers against the local civilians they were supposed to protect. He would never understand.

  They paused at a massive steel door set into a wall of rough-cut stone, guarded by a gray-uniformed trooper holding his submachine gun at a stiff port arms. The door was decorated with the design of a clenched, mailed fist against a sky-blue background. Griffith shook his head resignedly, knowing the stubbornness of this boy staring at him with pale gray eyes.

  "We haven't finished with this, Master Carlyle. You're being trained to con a BattleMech someday, to be a MechWarrior of Carlyle's Commandos. But warriors have to learn a damn sight more than how to pilot a walking metal mountain. Get me?"

  Grayson had heard the lecture and all its variations before - about discipline and dedicat
ion to the unit and working as a part of a team. He made himself look attentive as he stifled an insistent yawn. There hadn't been much sleep for him during the past rest period.

  Griffith finally stopped when he realized Grayson was simply tuning him out. "C'mon, son," he said, gesturing at the door. Let's get in there and watch the reception."

  2

  The Combat Command Center was a bare-walled room lined with consoles and carpeted with enough powerfeeds and cables to make footing hazardous. Clusters of gray-uniformed men stood or lounged here and there, some talking quietly over cups of dew or hot chava, others studying the pale flicker of monitor screens or the eerie green glow of radar trackers. From somewhere overheard, a woman's amplified voice announced, "Mailai DropShip now entering atmosphere. Her captain confirms presence of the Oberon representatives on board. Estimate time to grounding at eleven minutes."

  Two men sat at one near console. One was a dark-eyed Senior Tech in official gray-and-blue coveralls and the other a slight, swarthy-skinned man wearing a high-collared, richly worked civilian tunic. Beside them stood another civilian, silver-haired and erect, a silver-chased quarter cloak fashionable on the Inner Worlds draped across his left shoulder.

  The dark-haired civilian looked up sharply at Grayson, Though his eyes were angry, he said nothing. Grayson knew Nicolai Aristobulus was keeping his reprimand silent only because of the outsider standing behind him.

  "Hello, Ari," Grayson said, as though he neither saw nor felt his tutor's disapproval.

  "Master Carlyle," Ari replied stiffly, with only the slightest inclination of his dark head. "You're late."

  "What's Carlyle's boy doing here?" the silver-haired civilian asked, turning toward Griffith. "These negotiations are extremely delicate."