ECLIPSE

  Chapter One

  Forty Kilometers East of Sand Gnat Cove

  Ruchbah

  Word of Blake Protectorate

  21 July 3072

  The first shapes to break the water were the angled air intakes of the massive jump jets on the Phoenix Hawk’s back. Brackish coastal water cascaded down the green-and-black camouflage paint job on the ’Mech, coursing in runnels through the molded armor, obscuring the blue-and-black insignia on the Hawk’s shoulder for several seconds. Only the gold of the crescent moon behind the Hawk’s head in the insignia was visible in the morning light.

  “No contacts,” the pilot said.

  More shapes broke the surface, staggered along the beachfront. Higher and higher the shapes climbed, slogging through the soft sand, water cascading off them in sheets. The water rushed in to fill the meter-deep footprints they left, an even dozen sets.

  “And we’re going to talk again about the CO being the first ’Mech to the beach,” the pilot of the hulking Awesome said, its turret-like waist rotating back and forth as it scanned the distant wood line. A small cottage town blotted the landscape about two kilometers down, but nothing was moving this early in the morning.

  “Like we were all going to wait for your slow ass to lead us out,” the Phoenix Hawk’s pilot said. The forty-five ton ’Mech gestured with the PPC clutched in its right fist. “Let’s get off the beach. We’re still ten kays from our rendezvous, and I think the early-risers in town have seen enough, don’t you?”

  “Permission to scout ahead, sir?” The speaker, pilot of a slender Wraith, pointed with his ’Mech’s left arm. The rest of its lance, slender lightweight machines all, maneuvered around it, anticipating the order.

  “Go,” the Phoenix Hawk said. “Movement in column. Order of march is Pursuit, Striker, Command.” The Phoenix Hawk’s head rotated, looking back at the sea from which they’d come. “Let’s go find the locals,” he said.

  “As long as they’re friendly,” the Awesome’s pilot said.

  “Yeah,” Captain Jeremiah Youngblood said. “Crescent Hawks, move out.”

  “Keep walking,” Toll Packard whispered, watching the Protectorate Militia ’Mechs moving across his heads-up display. Beneath him, the command couch of his six-delta Hatchetman vibrated with restrained power, but he ignored it. He was counting on the heavy tarp—liberally threaded with ablative and radar-absorbing fabrics—to hide his signature from the Blakist troops. There were six of them, four ’Mechs and two armored personnel carriers. That meant four MechWarriors and a whole boatload of leg infantry. Or battlesuits.

  Toll was just one ’Mech. He blinked, slowly, ignoring the images that sprang to mind as the light faded away. He saw Keri’s ’Mech moving, saw the white specters rise up behind her. He saw the missiles come in. He saw the shattered cockpit. He opened his eyes. His breaths came quickly, short and hurried. The Blakists were still moving.

  “There’s nothing to see here,” he whispered. “No unknown ’Mech, no new mercenaries, nothing. Just keep moving. All the way back to Bharat Ur.”

  The lead Blakist, a forty-ton Clint, held up its left fist and halted. The other ’Mechs stopped, weapons at the ready. The Hatchetman’s sensors beeped softly as new targeting sensors queried the landscape around him. “Damn it,” Toll whispered. He blinked again. Behind his eyes, he saw Keri scream.

  “They had better be worth this,” Toll whispered.

  The Clint turned its head toward Toll’s hiding place. He reached out and toggled a control on his communications console. A light on his touchpad flared to life, announcing its readiness. One touch of his finger and the Hatchetman’s computer would squeal a burst transmission with his position and the odds. The rest of the local resistance would hear, along with the newly-landed mercs, if they were local and remembered to bring the right codes.

  “Are you coming?” Toll asked the Clint.

  The forty-ton ’Mech turned and moved toward him. Toll grimaced, stabbed the SEND button, and grasped his controls. A flourish with the massive hatchet carried in the ’Mech’s right arm cleared the camouflage tarp away, and he straightened the Hatchetman out of its hidden crouch. He spread the ’Mech’s arms wide, taunting the Protectorate Militia force.

  “Here I am,” he shouted, using his ’Mech’s external speakers to blast the sound across the landscape. Then he smashed the Hatchetman’s throttle to the forward stops and dialed his rotary autocannon to its highest setting. The Clint broke into a sprint to match him, its right-arm PPC coming up, static electricity snapping around the black maw of the weapon.

  “Here I am,” Toll whispered.

  The Phoenix Hawk raised its right-arm PPC as the trees in front of it shivered, but the slender Talon that stepped clear of the hanging limbs was painted in Crescent Hawk colors. Jeremiah Youngblood raised the weapon out of line and dialed for a low-power radio.

  “Sir,” the Talon’s pilot reported, “Lieutenant Levine’s compliments and we’ve monitored a zip-squeal transmission. Locals under attack, maybe two kilometers ahead, by the signal strength.”

  Jeremiah thought for a moment. It made sense for the resistance to have a unit out watching for them. They’d arrived on schedule, despite dropping further offshore than they’d intended. It had been a minor miracle that no one had suffered more than armor damage in the drop, but he was too experienced to think things would go that well for the whole contract.

  Dan Allard had sounded damned optimistic on Graceland, right before he bought it.

  “What’s her assessment?” he asked. The rest of his Command Lance gathered around them, listening in on the low-energy conversation.

  “It’s a picket out screening for us,” she said. “The ell-tee, she pushed on ahead.”

  “Dangerous,” Lieutenant Klatt rumbled from his hulking Awesome.

  “She’s a scout,” Lena Roderick put in. “Hush.”

  “It could be a trap, Jer,” Klatt said.

  “And it could just be bad luck,” Jer said. He waved them forward. “Return to your lance,” he told the Talon. “We’re following right behind.” He pushed the Phoenix Hawk into the path the lighter Talon was clearing. The rest of his lance followed.

  There was the click of a private channel opening, and then Klatt’s voice filled Jer’s helmet. “On-planet for less than ten hours and we’re already forcing an engagement?”

  “These people pay the bills,” Jer said. “We’re under contract. How’s it going to look if we just let one of them die?”

  “And if it’s a trap?”

  Jer shrugged as much as his restraints would allow. “We don’t need to be paid to kill Blakists, do we?”

  Toll grimaced as his seat punched him in the back. The Hatchetman was sprinting forward, moving at its top speed of eighty-six kilometers per hour. He kept the crosshairs for his Mydron cannon on the center of the Clint’s chest, watched the range count down, gauged the closing rate, and judged it okay. He looked at the tactical screen.

  The Clint’s mates were spreading out behind him. A long-limbed Trebuchet was moving toward the cover of a hillock encrusted with saplings. The other two ’Mechs, identical beneath their white paint, moved behind the Clint. They were thirty-ton Valkyries, familiar to Toll from his years in the AFFS. He looked them over, nodded once, and filed them for later. His speed should keep him safe from their missiles. He looked for the APCs.

  “Damn,” he whispered. A dozen red icons appeared, infantrymen in powered armor, already leaping across the terrain at him. The Hatchetman’s computer compared data and then flashed a schematic on the screen at him: generic battle armor, not one of the custom-built suits that had proliferated over the last decade.

  Hairs stood on his exposed forearms as the Clint’s PPC crackled past the Hatchetman’s angular head assembly. Toll kept his course steady, not falling for the bait. A barrage of missiles fell to his right, where the Hatchetman would have been had he allowed reflex to jerk him away from the narrowly-missed PPC shot. His eyes flicked to the range counter on his HUD. Close enough.

  The massive rotary cannon in the Hatchetman’s chest roared to life, spinning as each barrel hurled a cassette-round of ammunition at the charging Clint. Fired at six-times velocity, the muzzle-blast licked vegetation four meters in front of the Hatchetman. Almost all of the heavy rounds found their homes among the Clint’s armor, shredding the thinly-protected shells of the Clint’s leg. One round blew the forty-ton ’Mech’s right knee out, dropping the ’Mech to the ground in an earth-shaking crash and skid.

  “Yes!” Toll screamed, his voice already hoarse in the hotbox of his cockpit. He took two more steps and then kicked down on the pedals on each side of his command console, launching the Hatchetman into flight on flaming blue-white jets. He came down one hundred and fifty meters closer to the struggling Clint. He brought the ’Mech upright immediately out of the crouch it had hunched into—forty-five tons of metal doesn’t land on a coin—but the Trebuchet’s barrage still scattered explosions across the Hatchetman’s armor.

  “So much for the paint job,” Toll muttered. His console beeped at him, and he looked down. A new contact had appeared on his console, another ’Mech, moving through the forest toward the ocean. The icon was gray—no transponder signal, no way to tell if it was friendly or not—so he ignored it. There were only two things the new contact could be.

  It could be one of the new mercs, in which case he was in for a little help. Or it was another Word of Blake ’Mech, in which case he was in for a little more hell. Toll chuckled, using his controls to duck the Hatchetman to the side, reducing the profile he presented to the Valkyries. His scanners beeped again.

  Now there were two gray contacts.

  “Transponders?” Roderick asked.

  “Not yet,” Jer said. He used the Phoenix Hawk’s empty left hand to brush the bole of a tree aside so the broad-shouldered ’Mech could pass. The tree snapped with a long crackling sound, as if it were made up of a dozen smaller pieces, and sprayed green sap across the lower right side of the Hawk’s chest. A stifled laugh came through the low-power radio.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “I wasn’t laughing,” Lena Roderick said, chuckling. Her Komodo moved into the path close behind the Phoenix Hawk. Jer leaned the ’Mech to the side, brushing against another tree. It too crackled apart, but this time the sap sprayed across the Komodo’s hunched shoulders. Roderick gasped and then chuckled again.

  “You realize my cockpit is lower than yours,” she said.

  “Your point?”

  “If you kids are finished playing,” Rodney Klatt said. His Awesome stepped past them and bulled the trees aside. The green, brackish sap covered the entire lower half of his eighty-ton ’Mech. “There’s people dying up ahead.”

  Jer looked over the tree line. He saw the pall of smoke that marked the telltale signs of weapons fire, but there’d been no word from Lieutenant Levine or her lance. He fingered the transponder switch on his communications console, but resisted. Opening that can of worms would alert the Pursuit Lance that normal-power radio silence was lifted, but it would also announce the Hawks’ presence to everyone within range.

  “Let’s get a little closer,” he said, “before we announce ourselves.”

  “Levine could be in contact already,” Klatt said.

  “Then you’d better stump along a little faster, hadn’t you?” Jer said.

  The Clint was still shooting.

  Toll flinched as a PPC annihilated a stickwood tree to his left, popping the fibrous conifer like popcorn. He dialed the rotary cannon back to its standard rate of fire and cut right, behind the expanding cloud of splinters and debris. It would only take a second for a ’Mech’s scanners to cut through the debris and get a lock, but that second was all he would need.

  One of the Valkyries appeared through the dust, right-arm laser brandished. Ruby pulses cut at his armor, but Toll was ready. He cut back with the Hatchetman’s lasers and the cannon, although it fired only at the familiar tempo of a regular autocannon. The thirty-ton support ’Mech fell back, armor smoking. Toll slowed his advance and searched his HUD.

  The two mystery icons had become four, a full lance of unknown ’Mechs. His computer kept querying the newcomers’ transponders but never got a response; they weren’t broadcasting, whoever they were. Toll was inclined to think them a lance of the mercenaries come to his aid, but there were only four ’Mechs in the Militia Two he was facing, and for all he knew this could be an identical Blakist formation and the stickwoods were blocking the signature of the pair of APCs. Speaking of which…

  Six battlesuit troopers came flashing through the smoke cloud, laser-arms glaring red light at him. Several of the slender powered armor troopers leapt into the air on small jets of their own, but Toll ignored them. They were still a hundred meters away, too far still for them to reach him or their lasers to really damage his ’Mech. He checked the HUD. Still gray, and not moving.

  “What is this, Solaris?” he asked the empty cockpit. Stop watching and do something.

  Alarms cried as the other Valkyrie slammed a half-flight of missiles into the armor protecting the Hatchetman’s right arm. Toll snarled and checks his displays—the hatchet was still viable—and spun the ’Mech around. He charged out of the smoke cloud, scattering the battle armor and accepting the token laser scarring. Another burst of cannon fire spun the first Valkyrie to the ground, and Toll screamed and kept the Hatchetman running. The Clint, still sprawled on the ground, tried to raise its PPC again.

  Two steps and the Hatchetman skidded to a stop and crouched. Toll, still screaming, brought the hatchet around in a powerful, myomer-backed overhand stroke, and cut the Clint’s head assembly clean off.

  The alarms were quiet. Toll was not.

  “That clear enough for you, Jer?” Lieutenant Sarah Levine asked. Her Wraith stood beside the Phoenix Hawk, watching the action. Two other Command Lance ’Mechs were there, as well as the other three Pursuit Lance machines. “Shall we go save that guy?”

  Jer chuckled. “Go get ‘em, Sarah.” He dialed the power on his radio to full broadcast and triggered his transponder, knowing it would pulse his IFF code out to any receiver in range. “Crescent Hawks, attack!”

  With a roar and flames and the popping sound of stickwoods bursting, the Wraith disappeared into the sky. Jer shook his head and readied himself. Sarah Levine prided herself on her jumping abilities, and while he was perfectly willing to admit that there weren’t too many—even in the Kell Hounds—who could get fifty-five tons of metal moving as quickly as she did, he was no slouch.

  “You’re going with them, then?” Lena Roderick asked. Her Komodo gestured with one of its blocky arms. “Flying through the sky and all that?”

  “Wait for Rodney,” he said, now laughing.

  “It’ll be forever before he gets his fat ass up here,” she pouted.

  “Then you can enjoy the show!” he said, and stamped down on his jump jet pedals.

  The Hatchetman shuddered as the Trebuchet rained missiles down on it. Toll gasped for air and looked around, trying to get a sense of his situation. He wasn’t on Axton. He wasn’t back there, with the nukes going off. He was home, on Ruchbah.

  He was in a ’Mech.

  He jerked the Hatchetman to its feet and sprinted left, letting the Valkyries’ follow-up barrage fall harmlessly on the corpse of the Clint. The Valkyries fell back, trying to open the range to keep up the bombardment. The little shapes of the powered armor troops were closing, hoping to use their devilish power claws to strip the armor from the Hatchetman like a man scales a fish. Toll cast his eyes about his HUD, thinking.

  One of the gray icons in the woods turned blue, and alphanumerics appeared alongside the icon. Toll blew out a breath. It was the mercenaries. The other five—no six, now—icons popped blue and started moving. He started cataloging ’Mechs… a Wraith, a Talon, a Phoenix Hawk… a little Drac Komodo, was it? The Wraith lurched into the air, followed quickly by the Hawk. Both hurtled toward the engagement zone.

  “By the Saints…” Toll whispered.

  The Wraith landed a little over two hundred meters closer to the zone, within steps of the edge of the stickwood forest. Toll expected the Phoenix Hawk to fall behind it, probably to jump again. It couldn’t match the range of the Wraith. But the Phoenix Hawk didn’t fall. It hurtled over the Wraith and then came down, more than a quarter-kilometer closer from where it had started.

  “Holy shi…”

  Sarah Levine slammed her throttle forward the instant after her Wraith’s broad feet hit the ground, taking the jarring impact that was by now second nature to her and leaning the ’Mech forward, shouldering the fragile trees out of the way. The big Tronel laser in her ’Mech’s arm was already heated. She grinned, anticipating.

  The Captain’s Phoenix Hawk flew over her head, the purple-white flare of its jump jets bright even through her cockpit polarization. She fought the grin that came to her face but still shook her head as much as her neurohelmet would allow.

  “Show off,” she muttered.

  Jer hit the ground hard and stumbled… breathed, clutched in his controls… and brought the Phoenix Hawk immediately upright and sprinting forward. His HUD painted red carets across the targets in his line-of-sight, and a glance at the edges of his display showed the rest of his Pursuit Lance following as best they could. Sarah Levine’s fleet-footed Wraith appeared out of the treeline and barreled forward, lean and predatory. Jer smiled and directed his attention forward.

  “Hold what you’ve got, trooper,” he sent to the Hatchetman. “Help is on the way.”

 

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