FSML Chpt 10

=Chapter 10=
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==Frederick Steiner and the Man Who Knew Too Little==
===Preparing to Withdraw===
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Nagayan Mountains, Helm
Stewart Commonality, Free Worlds League
24 March 3011
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Those members of Frederick’s command company not helping with the loading of the newly arrived dropships were carrying out the almost-as-important task of keeping unpleasant strangers from bothering him. Given that he’d expended all his LRMs and autocannon ammunition already, that was rather necessary. For that matter, the armor of his Zeus bore the marks of long-range fire exchanged with the Twenty-Fifth Marik Militia.
The Twenty-Fifth didn’t feel like the same unit he’d faced on New Dallas. They’d been raw then - brave, but poorly led and lacking the coordination of Mechwarriors who’d trained as a unit. Just as the Seven Lyran Regulars had been polished up into a far more capable unit over that time, the Militia had obviously worked hard as well.
Breaking off ‘mechs to help load the dropships had been the right decision, he thought again. But it’s costing us.
The ranks of the Seventh Lyran Regulars were ragged, lances under strength and sometimes missing officers from their chain of command. It gave them the feel of having fought a hard campaign already, comrades missing and units consolidated temporarily with the teamwork not quite where it needed to be. In a handful of places, they were stiffened by reactivated SLDF ‘Mechs but most of those were being loaded or used by techs to help loading everything that wasn’t palleted conveniently for forklifts - they were too valuable to risk for the most part. The exceptions he’d authorized were a dozen durable assault ‘Mechs with standard armor plating, those likely to survive in repairable condition.
The reduced numbers and cohesion would have been a critical failure, if it wasn’t for the Kell Hounds. The red-and-black ‘mechs moved as a smooth unit even with their short career so far. The Kells’ ability to turn their recruits into a formed unit so quickly underlined how much of a loss they were to the LCAF.
“They’re where I need them right now,” Frederick muttered to himself. Some Kell Hound ‘mechs helped move supplies from the flatbed trucks into dropships, but the rest of their number fought like demons and there was no disorder to indicate that they were operating as fragments of their usual ordering.
The next flatbed to be unloaded was the one carrying Max’s damaged Orion. Comparatively small crates of spare parts were stacked around it and ‘Mechs scurried to shift them away before the crane of the Overlord lifted the Orion itself off the truck.
It wasn’t the only damaged ‘mech - at least a company’s worth of the Lyran Regulars had their ‘Mechs moved back aboard, too damaged to continue fighting or simply loaded first while their owners used SLDF ‘Mechs that boasted hands to work on the loading. Objectively the modern ‘Mechs were worth less than the SLDF equivalents, but Frederick couldn’t just hand those over so the mechwarriors would have been less than motivated if their ‘mechs - often passed down through the generations - were left behind. But Max’s Orion had been the last of the ‘mechs to be loaded. The older man had agreed it could be left behind in favor of more valuable prizes. It was a humbling degree of trust.
“Sir, Snord’s trying to reach you,” warned one of the dropship comm officers helping him to coordinate the defense.
Snord’s company was a small addition to the fighting strength on the planet, but they were also doing most of the skirmishing to keep the other Marik regiment away. “Patch him through.”
“General Steiner, is that you?” the mercenary demanded. At least he’d kept his word about not calling him Freddie.
“It’s me,” Frederick confirmed. “I’m guessing this isn’t good news.”
“It’s not. The Home Guard finally got fed up and used their LAMs.”
He snarled at the reminder. The Home Guard’s position well behind the border had let them maintain a sizable number of Land-Air ‘Mechs - rare creations of the Star League that could transform between ‘mech and aerospace fighter. Earlier they had played a part in the battle for the skies, and he’d hoped that the enemy commander would be hesitant to risk them again. After all, the only factory that could still build them was hundreds of light years away, deep in the interior of the Draconis Combine.
“I take it that you can’t stall them long.” Frederick concluded.
“Hardly at all.” The fact seemed to gripe Snord. “We have drawn them off to an extent, but we can only go so far from our dropship or we will be marooned here. And Janos Marik would not have a warm welcome for me.”
“Rather too warm I think.” The Captain-General had a price on Snord’s head, after the way the merc had left his employ on Rochelle. Frederick wanted to shake his head, but the heavy neurohelmet made that uncomfortable. “Time and distance, everything comes down to that. Alright, can you buy me one more hour?”
The mercenary didn’t hesitate. “Give me first call on your artillery and I can. After that though, we will need to take to our dropship.”
“Agreed. Once you’ve done that, take off as fast as you can.”
“Oh?” Snord laughed. “It will be unhealthy then?”
“Very much so.” Frederick agreed and cut him off without further courtesy. Time was too expensive. Switching channels, he contacted Sheppard. “Warrant officer, make these loads your last.”
“Sir, the dropships aren’t much more than half-loaded.”
“Better half a load than none, Sheppard. Evacuate the facility. Don’t leave anyone behind.”
“That bad?”
He looked at the map where the purple of the Marik Militia was encroaching slowly upon the blue defensive perimeter. If it was just them, he could have held the landing zone all through the night. But not with the Home Guard moving around into his rear. “We can’t take it all anyway.”
“Sir, can I at least move the core? We can’t leave it for the Mariks!”
“We won’t. But are you sure you can remove it without triggering anything?”
The warrant officer hesitated. “Maybe fifty-fifty.”
“That doesn’t cut it,” he snapped. A mistake could destroy their dropships on the ground. “Don’t even try to touch it. We’re leaving with what we can take in this load.”
“Yes, sir.” she agreed reluctantly.
Frederick switched channels and warned his battalion commanders of the change of plans. An organized retreat was always the most difficult thing - as soon as it was noticed, the Mariks would start pressuring harder.
And where was Max? There wasn’t much time left for him to return with Donna.
As if on cue, Patrick Kell cut into the tactical conversation. “Tiger-Actual, do you know anything about a Packrat trying to sneak into our perimeter from the mountains?”
Frederick felt something unclench inside him. “It should be Typhoon-Actual rejoining us. Hold one, while I authenticate.”
Adjusting his radio, he transmitted on the frequency used before by Donna to report Max had found her. “Typhoon-Actual, this is Tiger-Actual. Respond.”
Donna’s voice, recognizable through static, “This is Typhoon-Actual. I’m a little short of air support for you, right at the moment.”
Frederick almost choked and then rasped out: “Yeah, you crashed the fighter I bought you and Max lost the knee of his Orion. I think you’re a bad influence on each other.”
Max cut in. “We’re in sight of the dropships. If I don’t wreck this heap, we’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“I’ll get you some cover,” Frederick promised. “I want you aboard a dropship as fast as possible.” He said no more. Max would probably guess why. “Tiger-Actual, out.”
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===The Warning===
Nagayan Mountains, Helm
Stewart Commonality, Free Worlds League
24 March 3011
“Arcanist-Actual, please respond.”
Colonel Azi Ochambo would have paused his Hermes II behind cover if he could but out on the flats there was essentially no cover unless you made it. All he could do was pull back behind his command lance. “This is Arcanist-Actual. What do you have for me?”
He could see the enemy dropships in the distance. It wasn’t quite possible to identify them at this distance, but Ochambo knew for sure that one of the larger ones was the Retribution - the Excalibur-class dropship that had once been flagship of his own Twenty-Fifth Marik Militia.<br>
Frederick Steiner had taken that dropship, along with a pair of Unions, during the skirmish on New Dallas that had opened up the route for Ochambo to rise to Colonel. Whatever lostech might be aboard it at the moment, Ochambo knew his regiment wanted the dropship itself more. Regaining it would recover their honor in ways that the strike at Wyatt had failed to.
Admittedly, killing or capturing Cranston Snord would also win Ochambo the favor of the Captain-General, but he had to be realistic. The man was on the far side of the battlefield and unlikely to come close to him. If Major General Lao Jarreau-Stewart’s Home Guard could bring the mercenary down, so much the better. Perhaps it was the general calling to boast of that now. It would be typical.
“Sir, General Steiner has opened communications and requests to speak to you. By name.”
Ochambo threw his Hermes II into a sudden reversal, something that threw his lance-mates off-stride but kept him from overbalancing after the way he twitched. His negotiations with Fredrick Steiner had not been a high-point in his career. Nothing left in the New Dallas cache had been worth the loss of equipment suffered - even discounting the dropships. Steiner had taken whatever there was of value and for the most part he'd left behind dross such as thousands of tons of obsolete armor plating.
If it wasn’t for the success on Wyatt, Ochambo knew that he’d still be a Major and someone else would have been promoted over him.
Bargaining with a Lyran was always a mistake! But he could hardly refuse to talk to the enemy commander. After all, he might be offering to surrender. Unlikely, but there was no reasonable way to find out without talking to him. Even if it was not, declining such a message was tantamount to shooting arrows at a medieval herald.
“Put him through,” Ochambo ordered, voice harsher than it usually was. As new background noises became audible, he continued: “General Steiner. You have my attention.”
“No doubt.” The Lyran’s voice had the usual clipped, germanic accent to his English. “I am offering you a warning. My forces will soon take off and we will leave nothing behind us except a wave of destruction. If you don’t wish to be lost in it, I suggest you pull off the flats.”
Ochambo’s eyes widened. He couldn’t be serious… if Steiner was about to take off then he’d have to pull his forces back. Pressure now was the best chance to get close and bring the dropships under fire. Then his eyes narrowed. Was this a bluff? “Why would you warn me?”
“Given the chance to destroy two of Marik’s regiments? By military logic I shouldn’t,” admitted Steiner. “And perhaps if I was fighting the DCMS, I’d consider it a job well done to see two regiments eradicated. But you were an honorable foe on New Dallas. And your raid on Wyatt was careful of our civilians’ wellbeing. At the end of the day, mass destruction is something to be handled with due respect.”
“Mass…” The colonel’s blood chilled. “...destruction?”
That was not a term to be used lightly, not among soldiers. Not after entire worlds had burned in the early Succession Wars. Like New Dallas. Like Helm.
Steiner’s voice was solemn. “You heard me.”
“You’re that intent on denying us the contents of the cache?” Ochambo demanded. If Steiner had emptied it entirely then there would be literally no reason to use nuclear weapons or whatever he had in mind. The message SAFE had decoded had suggested that the SLDF supplies there were enormous, enough to supply most of a military district for a year even if it was only comparable to modern equipment. If it was more sophisticated then the price was incalculable.
“Yes.”
That word alone.
“We made a deal on New Dallas. I may have gotten the worst of that bargain,” he offered, mind racing. “But rather than lose the salvage, we avoided conflict. Can we not find common ground once more?”
Steiner sighed audibly. “Honestly, I would be tempted. However, you misunderstand the contents of the cache. Beside the more conventional military equipment which I am taking, the Nagayan mountains contains a massive SLDF stockpile of nuclear weapons. Vastly more of them than were used by the Kuritas to devastate this world. I cannot in good conscience let anyone possess that arsenal.”
Ochambo froze. That many nuclear weapons?! “You’re going to set them off? Are you insane?”
“We’re a nice long way from the remaining population centers,” the Lyran told him. “The water courses down into the Equatorial Sea shouldn’t hurt anyone either if they’re contaminated - that area’s as deserted as Freeport. And with a mountain collapsed on them, I’m confident those warheads won’t be usable.”
He expects the entire mountain to be destroyed? Twenty years of military discipline was all that kept him from gibbering. He couldn’t even calculate how wide the collateral damage might be. Somewhat akin to a volcanic eruption?
“Steiner, there has to be another way.”
“You have somewhat less than an hour,” the other man told him. “I believe you can get back to your dropships - perhaps even to call them in to make a fast pick-up for your forces. This isn’t a negotiation, Colonel. It is a warning, one I feel is morally obligated. If you choose not to heed it, then that is your problem.” There was a click.
“Steiner… Steiner? Steiner!” Ochambo shouted into the microphone.
“Sir, he cut his transmission.”
“Blake’s beard.” The colonel wished he could rub his eyes. Unfortunately, his neurohelmet made that impossible.
The comms officer had clearly been listening in. “What do we do?”
He might be bluffing, Ochambo thought. He might be. But can I risk that? He swallowed. “Send word to every one of our dropships to warm up their drives and give me an estimate for when they can take off.” A deep breath and then he signaled his battalion commanders. “All units. Regroup, and await orders.”
“Sir, their lines are wavering.” Andrew Merrick still had the second battalion. “I think if we push hard…”
“They’re preparing to take off,” he told them.
“We should push them!”
“I told you to await orders!” snarled Ochambo.
He’d liked his career and it had just gotten back on track. Five or ten years from now, it could have been General Ochambo - purple braid on his shoulders. Whether Steiner was lying or not, that wouldn’t happen now.
“Comms,” he forced himself to speak with some semblance of calm. “Put me through to Jarreau-Stewart.”
A few seconds later and the unfortunately familiar drawl was in his ears. “This is Major General Jarreau-Stewart. We’re almost in their rear Ochambo, so let’s make this quick. I don’t want them getting away.”
Idiot. Did he think Frederick ‘the Hammer’ Steiner was just going to wait in place? And ‘Major General’ wasn’t even a real rank in the FWLM. Jarreau-Stewart just got away with it because the Stewart Dragoons were a provincial brigade, and he was a distant cousin of Earl Stewart.
“General, we have received a message from General Steiner, advising that he will be taking off shortly. His current movements support this.”
“Then push him, man! Do I have to tell you everything? And call in our aerospace - I’ll have my LAMs pincer their dropships from below while our fighters hit him from above.”
Ochambo was fairly sure that wasn’t how a pilot would put it, but whatever. The aerowing would likely nod, smile and translate into something in line with their capabilities. He was fairly sure even LAM’s weren’t just ‘Mechs capable of moving in three dimensions.
“The enemy general has also warned that he intends to employ means of mass destruction to ensure we recover nothing from the cache.”
“He’d never dare!” Jarreau-Stewart exclaimed. “If he did, the Captain-General would authorize retaliation on a Lyran world.”
“That wouldn’t be much comfort to our troops,” Ochambo pointed out. “I’ve dealt with General Steiner before, and he’s…”
“He’s a Leutnant-General, not a real general.”
It takes one to know one, Ochambo thought. “He’ll favor the letter of an agreement over its spirit,” he said out loud. “But he’s not called ‘the Hammer’ because he’s prone to misdirection or deception.”
“Why would he even have brought a nuke?”
“He wouldn’t have to. Kurita came here looking for a SLDF supply base and back then, Helm was what was left of a naval base. They likely had nuclear warheads in stock for use by warships.” He didn’t bother explaining what Steiner had said about a ‘vast arsenal’. “Not that it matters. If we back off - at least on the ground - and there isn’t a nuke then we can still take the base after he’s gone. Even if we push for the dropships now, he’s judged the time well - we can’t really get our ‘mechs close to them for long enough to do serious damage.” That was a lie, but one that would be hard to prove wrong. They were near enough he could taste it!
“Then push them harder, he’s got to thin his defenses if he’s loading his troops!”
He’s not listening, Ochambo thought in despair. “No Sir.”
“What.” Jarreau-Stewart seemed confused, “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I have accepted this warning as genuine. I am withdrawing my forces until I am reasonably sure we aren’t going to be in the area of effect of several nuclear weapons.”
“Like hell you will! I am ordering you to press the attack, or you will be court-martialed for cowardice in the face of the enemy!”
Ochambo could almost see the provincial officer’s face swelling up with outrage. He snorted. “I may well be, but better that than for recklessly killing my men.”
“You will -!”
“You are not in my chain of command.” Ochambo cut the major general off, his voice low, clear and threatening. “I am required to coordinate with you, and I have done so. If you choose to ignore that and lose your cousin half or more of his favorite regiment, then I won’t be the only one facing a court-martial.”
Then he cut that channel and started ordering the Twenty-Fifth Marik Militia towards rallying points where their Unions could hop in and collect them. He tried very hard to avoid using the words ‘run’ and ‘away’. At least the mechanized infantry and light armor he’d had dug in around the dropships had already begun loading - they actually took longer per unit since ‘Mech bays were set up to lock a ‘Mech in place within seconds of the ‘Mech entering them.
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===Dead Engineers Work is Done===
Nagayan Mountains, Helm
Stewart Commonality, Free Worlds League
24 March 3011
Frederick wasn’t quite the last man to board a dropship - that would have been reckless in the extreme - but his command company was the last of the heavy ‘mechs to do so. The Retribution’s hatches closed up as he marched his Zeus into its bay and mechanical arms reached out to pin the eighty-tons into place.
On his tactical display, the last light perimeter guards were rushing up the ramps of their dropships. Up in the air, the aerospace fighters docked on the Vengeance were diving into the atmosphere to provide cover.
Also in the air was Snord’s dropship. The mercenary had elected to get the Union-class ship up into the sky without waiting for anyone else, which meant he was getting quite a bit of attention from some of the Home Guard’s Land-Air ‘Mechs. Presumably he found that risk less threatening than the potential end of the Castle Brian. He might be right.
A rumbling under Frederick told him that the Retribution’s engines were igniting and only a few moments later the massive spacecraft lifted, the force pushing Frederick down into his seat. There was nothing he could do to control things now. As galling as it was, the large, lumbering, thin-skinned and lightly armed dropship was now entirely responsible for his wellbeing. Everything he could do had already been put into place.
Forcing his hand to move, he typed a sequence of instructions and his Zeus linked up with the dropship’s external cameras. It was a functionality every ‘mech had in theory but as a senior officer he had the authority to actually use it whereas anyone else would have needed specific consent from the crew.
It took him a few tries to find the camera he wanted, glancing back and forth between that display and the tactical one.
Marik dropships were moving as well. Some had taken small hops and were finishing up their own loading, but most were arcing up and away from his own formation. Ochambo had taken the warning seriously, which was…
Well, on one level destroying the Twenty-Fifth Marik Militia would have been satisfying, Frederick admitted to himself. They’d raided Wyatt and caused considerable damage to Bowie Industries. But at the same time, for them to be gutted by an event like this would have also had repercussions. There would undoubtedly be voices in the Free Worlds League’s parliament calling for retaliation. It was a thin reed to lean on, but the fact he’d warned them to get clear might count for something in averting massive loss of life on a Lyran world.
Even so, some of them were cutting it fine.
All the Lyran dropships were up now, and their aerospace cover was pulling out of their dives, squadrons moving to cover against any attack.
For a moment, he thought the LAMs and the more conventional fighter wings wearing the Marik eagle on their wings would close in and try to bring down his dropships, but their numbers making an approach remained low. He wondered why and then realized that almost twenty of the Marik fighters were holding back, distinct pairs forming a perimeter around the dropships of the Twenty-Fifth and their accompanying units.
The rest, out-numbered, didn’t press the attacks. Divided command perhaps? It was a not uncommon problem for the Free Worlds League.
The screen looking down on the mountains below still showed no change, so he looked at Freeport for the other Marik dropships. Presumably their commander would want his own aircover when they started taking off.
A ping drew his attention to a timer. Old-fashioned, but simple.
Down below, he knew that the main computer system of the Castle Brian would be getting a very simple instruction. One that it had been waiting for over two hundred years.
There was still no immediate movement. Not at the mountain. Nor, he noted, in Freeport. Weren’t those dropships going to take off? There was nothing he could do.
Slowly he took a deep breath, forced calm. God, give me the tools to do what I can and forbearance to accept what I cannot.
And then, below, the mountains began to shift.
Originally, he knew from Max, the water would have begun to geyser out of Freeport. But it didn’t have to and if they were triggering the destruction intentionally, then he had some way of controlling how.
Centuries before, a fault beneath the Yehudan Sea had opened under the bombardment of the area. Draining incredible quantities of water down below the Nagayan mountains - and more and more water had seeped into it over the years since, the fault ensuring that the dead flats remained exactly that.
At some point the water would have reached a natural limit, but so far that hadn’t happened. It was possible though, through the use - to be honest the misuse - of Star League Technology, to impose an unnatural limit.
The principal fusion reactor of the Castle Brian had already tapped into the original subterranean water for its cooling. That system now had access to a much larger amount of water and while hot water was being vented back into the faultline, it would quickly dissipate that temperature into the cold water there.
But the change of a few valves had altered that, and the reactor was running up to maximum power, using that to generate even more heat, venting the boiling water and steam directly into the Castle Brian at a rate that was downright unbelievable.
Billions of gallons of water were erupting into the interior of the military base, and there was vastly more water in the fault than even that vast complex could accommodate.
The air inside compacted, the steam condensed, and still more and more water rushed in.
Something had to give.
The SLDF had built the complex to impressive standards. The pressure inside the Castle Brian was high enough that military hardware was already functionally destroyed - the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads were now utterly ruined.
And what gave, in the end, wasn’t the doors. Faults in the mountainsides themselves began to rupture and water sprayed out at speeds that would have torn a ‘mech apart.
Jets of water hundreds of meters long, slicing through anything in their path.
Chunks of the mountainside the size of dropships were blasted ahead of the water, disintegrating into small sections that would have still destroyed the Lyran flotilla if they hadn’t taken off.
And then, as Frederick watched the face of the mountains bulge, the charges left behind by the long dead SLDF engineers to deal with any interlopers who merely blasted their way in went off.
Every major structural member holding the caverns up ruptured as one.
Billions of tons of rock sank visibly and the water, still coming in faster than it was escaping, was compressed further.
Frederick’s face went white as a section of the mountains kilometers across was almost completely vaporized, erupting in a cloud of water, steam and liquefying stone that hit the Dead Flats and spreading out almost faster than he could follow it. He’d promised a wave of destruction and now a literal tidal wave was flooding across what had once been a seabed.
The last dropships of the Marik Militia were taking off - no fools, they had taken the rumbling as the final warning. A few ‘Mechs disappeared beneath them, but no more than a handful were left to their now inevitable demise. The white clouds engulfed the ovoid hulls for a moment but then the fusion torches blew back the water, raising more steam, and the trio of dropships emerged once more, hurtling themselves away from the apocalyptic violence.
The Vermilion River tried to drain some of the flow of water away, but while this sapped away some of the force of this sudden tidal wave, it was a tiny fraction of the whole and the torrent flowing back into the long dead river engulfed elements of the Home Guard and their support trying to use the riverbed as a road.
The wave of water that hit Freeport was over forty meters tall.
Frederick watched a Leopard Dropship trying to take off, accelerating down the improvised runway to build enough speed. The water caught its rear, hammered down on one stubby wing and sent nineteen hundred tons of dropship tumbling. The fuel store ruptured – hydrogen mixing with the air outside - and the heat of the dropship’s thrusters did the rest: the aft half of the Leopard exploded, adding to the destruction.
Other dropships were driven sideways into buildings. One Condor was tossed upside down. Entire buildings collapsed, their concrete and mortar driven as the leading edge of the continuing devastation.
As destructive as the nuclear bombing had been all those years ago, Freeport had still recognizably been a city in its form.
But when the tide’s fury was finally spent, all but the most inland suburbs of it had been razed to the ground. Only the hulks of shattered dropships remained as markers.
“Jesus wept.” Frederick whispered.
Steam clouds were forming and as the dropships ascended, he lost sight of the surface. But he would not forget. No, he would never forget this. Nor would anyone else.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
The comms officer hesitated. “Message from the enemy commander.”
“Ochambo? Tell me?”
“He says… he says he’d have rather it was just nukes.”
Slumping back in his seat, Frederick finally wrestled his neurohelmet off. “The man’s a moron,” he muttered. “Then again, he got most of his troops out. More than the other commander down there thought to do for his unit.” The LAMs might have made it out, but that was a mixed brigade of the Stewart Dragoons that would be good for nothing for years to come.
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