"Where in Kerensky's name are those treacherous surats hiding?" Mechwarrior Adolph muttered as he pushed past the branches of a
yet another tree to let his Executioner move through the thick forest that covered most of Andrei Island, leaving a trail of splintered wood and crushed leaves
behind him.
"In this tight terrain, they could be anywhere," Marshall Koga replied. The Star Commander had taken the second place in line and
was relying Adolph to clear away minor obstructions that his Dire Wolf lacked the hands to deal with. "Close quarters like this will reduce the number of
us they have to fight at any one time. It is an effective strategy, Adolph."
"It is -" Adolph broke off. "I have a magnetic anomaly. Very faint, but there is definitely something out there." He
hastened the pace of his Mech, the MASC circuitry accelerating him to considerable speed as he brushed through the trees.
"Slow down, damn you," ordered Marshall. "You are leaving the rest of us behind." The Dire Wolf crunched through the path
being left by the much faster Executioner, the two Warhawks and the Kingfisher behind trying to force their own path around the slower Mech.
Adolph ignored the instruction. It was not his fault that Marshall had taken the largest Mech in the Star, even though it was also the
slowest. In an open field engagement, it allowed Marshall to cover the advance of his Star, but here it was nothing but a problem. Besides, the Surat Adders
had only sent a secondline force here to face the Coyotes, and he had heard that one of the dropships delivering them had been carrying vehicles, not
Battlemechs. If he could close in on the target he should have no trouble reducing it to scrap before Marshall arrived. He had configured the assault Mech with
a heavy autocannon well suited to these close quarters, and several racks of short ranged missiles that would finish off his opponents after the cannon opened
up their armour for him. It was thinking ahead like this that would win him promotion to Star Commander the next time Marshall faced a Trial of
Position.
He glanced at the magscanner and saw that the magnetic anomaly had split into two distinct signatures, both massing just short of twenty
tons. The way that they moved through the woods made it clear that they could be nothing but BattleMechs. Nothing that size could possibly pose a threat to
him. He only hoped that they kept moving in his general dire-
The next thing that Adolph knew, the Executioner was sprawled on the ground and his head was ringing. "What... what was that?" he
muttered.
"Adolph!" Marshall shouted over the radio. "What happened? Have you encountered the enemy?"
"I don't know?" he said, the words more a question than anything. Reaching for the controls he tried to wrestle the ninety-five
ton omnimech back against a tree that he could lean on. It was only then that he realised that the left arm was not responding and checked the diagnostics. Oh.
Well, the fact that the entire left shoulder assembly was scattered across the forest floor probably explained that. "I have been hit," he reported
more definitely. "I picked up two light mechs, but it was something else that shot me. Something big."
He could almost see Marshall nodding deliberately as he processed the data. "Find somewhere to take cover. We will be with you
soon," he promised.
"Understood," Adolph said and, pushing with the Mech's legs, he managed to wedge himself against a tree trunk at least as broad
as the Executioner's shoulders. Standing was the next step, but for now he just wanted something to cover his rear. That was pretty evidently where
he'd been hit after all.
The only thing that his main cameras were displaying were the tree branches overhead and the hole that had been torn through it. He paused
and then focused his cameras on the branches. Whatever had come through them had been coming down, just about behind where he had been when he...
"Artillery," he muttered. "Those little... freebirth... those little surats! They were spotting for an artillery
battery!"
"Who was?" Marshall asked and to his relief, the familiar shapes of a Warhawk and a Kingfisher in Coyote colours entered the
clearing. "You have certainly made a wreck of that Mech, Adolph. I do not think that you can continue to fight in that condition."
Suddenly, as clearly as if it was happening, Adolph realised that both of the OmniMechs he could see would be hit if the artillery fired
again. They were standing almost exactly where he had been. "Get out of here!" he snapped decisively. "They've got the range
-"
"Marshall," one of the Star reported. "He is raving. There is no one within half a kilometer of us and no line of sight more
than half -"
Insulated inside his cockpit, Adolph could not hear the whistle of shells, so the first he knew of the attack was when explosions engulfed
the two OmniMechs. "Mechwarrior Adolph of Star Bravo Three to all Stars, 81st Strike Cluster," he shouted into his radio. "We are under
artillery attack in sector seventeen. The Star Adders are using light battlemechs to spot for a battery of heavy guns." He flipped his radar on long
enough to get a direction for the origin of the shells. "The guns appear to be somewhere in sector twenty four or twenty five."
"Message understood, Mechwarrior," came the calm voice of Star Colonel Wendy Drewsivitch. "What is your
condition?"
Marshall cut into the conversation. "Three points have been disabled, Star Colonel. We can hold against direct attack, but we cannot
counter the artillery."
The shells stopped falling and Adolph gulped as he saw that Mechwarrior Violet's Warhawk didn't have a cockpit any more. The
Kingfisher had been driven to its knees by the sustained salvo, which must have been much heavier than the volley that had disabled his Mech, but he could see
it slowly trying to rise, a sign that the pilot had survived the expereince.
"Star Bravo Three, the estimated time of arrival for reinforcements is at least ten minutes," Drewsivitch advised. "Can you
hold out?"
"Negative, repeat negative," Marshall reported. "I request permission to withdraw."
There was a long silence as the Star Colonel weighed the odds. "Get your warriors out of there, Star Commander," she said at last.
"Why will they not fight us?" she muttered under her breath.
Adolph kept his mouth shut. It seemed to him that the Star Adders were fighting them, and if they weren't fighting fairly, they were at
the least fighting rather effectively.
-/-
Wendy Drewsivitch grumbled as she backed her Gargoyle slowly back through the woods. The snivelling Star Adders were actually avoiding
battle, but their tricks were bleeding her forces nonetheless. "I hate retreating," she said out loud, alone in the cockpit where no one could hear
her. Unfortunately, until she figured out how she was going to force the cowardly surats to face her in battle, lurking in the forest wouldn't help. There
would be nowhere back at the landing site that she could be ambushed like this and it would probably take two Clusters to pin them down in this dense
terrain.
"Maybe I could burn it all down?" she speculated out loud. The Gargoyle's foot squelched in the mud between two of the largely
entwined root systems of the trees. "...not unless there's an unseasonal month of high temperatures, obviously. I don't have the ammunition to
level it tree by tree and I'll probably lose more Mechs doing it by hand than their current sniping..."
"I hate Star Adders," she continued. "They make their weakness into strengths. There should be a law."
"Star Colonel?" a voice that should not under any circumstances be uncertain asked... uncertainly.
"Yes, Star Captain," Wendy said wearily. "What is it now?"
The commander of her reserve trinary swallowed nervously. "The 38th Assault Cluster just advised us that someone - the Star Adders
obviously - just raked the edge of the forest with long range missiles. They are pretty sure that they were Thunder LRMs."
"How sure."
"A Fire Moth got both legs blown trying to get into the forest."
"How much of the edge do they think may have been affected?" asked Wendy.
"Ah... most of it," he admitted. "They tried to clear a path through it but whoever it is simply laid more mines around the
Mechs doing the clearing."
"So they're still around?"
"About half a kilometre inside the forest is the best estimate," Star Captain Toshiro said. "I'm moving to try to
intercept them."
"Good," she affirmed and then hesitated. "No, no that isn't good. You're heading into a trap, Star Captain. Hold your
position immediately."
There was a long pause as Toshiro gave orders and then: "We're stopped, Colonel. But what do we do now? We can't go back unless
we break through the minefield, and if we go on."
"This whole island is a trap," Wendy sighed. "Unfortunately, we're already inside it. Damn the Adders anyway. Stand by for
further orders."
Bringing her Gargoyle to rest under the shelter of a tree, Wendy Drewsivitch started looking for a way out of the mess that she'd managed
to get her command inside of.
An hour later, she opened a general radio channel to the Star Adders and requested hegira.
Hall of the Khans, Warrior Quarter
Strana Mechty
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
26 January 3049
Virgilia waited until Robin Steele was done venting his spleen in front of the Grand Council before rising to her feet and waiting for
permission to speak. There was a satisfied look on Leo Showers face as he nodded to her. The Blood Spirits had been all but rolled over by three Clusters from
Clan Burrock and the Jade Falcons had beaten Clan Wolf almost as badly as his own Smoke Jaguars had the previous year, so the Star Adder's victory was an
empty one.
"Khan Steele has spoken, at length," Virgilia told the Khans, "of how unclanlike the battle my warriors waged upon him was. I
can assure you all that he speaks nothing less the absolute truth. My warriors - old men and women, washouts from training and disgraced failures - were armed
with battlemechs, vehicles and weapons dating back to the era of the Star League and before... which is precisely what will be found within the Inner Sphere
and their tactics are exactly what you may expect there."
"After the invasion rolls over their frontline positions and their hapless Mechwarriors are slaughtered by the manifest advantages that
our warriors have over them, those who survive will learn their lessons well. They will strike in confined spaces where our greater range means nothing. They
will use stealth and they will use treachery. And I salute Star Colonel Drewsivitch for her courage in admitting that she was unprepared to deal with these
tactics and withdrawing before more of her warriors were slaughtered."
"I know that, despite the best efforts of Clan Wolf and Clan Blood Spirit, you will invade using the ilKhan's plan of action. I
suggest that all of you give very careful thought to the humiliation that Clan Coyote faced when even two to one odds did not allow them to overwhelm Solahma
warriors armed with obsolete weapons and consider ways to avoid the same fate against an enemy that I can assure you will not be offering
hegira."
Leo Showers scowled. "I am sure that we will give your words due weight," he told her.
The Star Adder Khan sighed and shook her head. "I have my doubts," she told the ilKhan. "In any event," she added,
stepping out from behind the desk. "Our business here is done. Clan Star Adder won our Trial of Refusal, so even if we cannot stop you, we can at least
refuse to participate in your plans. Have fun stomring the Inner Sphere."
"Do you think that they have a chance?" Roderick N'Buta asked as he followed his Khan out of the Grand Council
chambers.
"It would take a miracle," she told him.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
yet another tree to let his Executioner move through the thick forest that covered most of Andrei Island, leaving a trail of splintered wood and crushed leaves
behind him.
"In this tight terrain, they could be anywhere," Marshall Koga replied. The Star Commander had taken the second place in line and
was relying Adolph to clear away minor obstructions that his Dire Wolf lacked the hands to deal with. "Close quarters like this will reduce the number of
us they have to fight at any one time. It is an effective strategy, Adolph."
"It is -" Adolph broke off. "I have a magnetic anomaly. Very faint, but there is definitely something out there." He
hastened the pace of his Mech, the MASC circuitry accelerating him to considerable speed as he brushed through the trees.
"Slow down, damn you," ordered Marshall. "You are leaving the rest of us behind." The Dire Wolf crunched through the path
being left by the much faster Executioner, the two Warhawks and the Kingfisher behind trying to force their own path around the slower Mech.
Adolph ignored the instruction. It was not his fault that Marshall had taken the largest Mech in the Star, even though it was also the
slowest. In an open field engagement, it allowed Marshall to cover the advance of his Star, but here it was nothing but a problem. Besides, the Surat Adders
had only sent a secondline force here to face the Coyotes, and he had heard that one of the dropships delivering them had been carrying vehicles, not
Battlemechs. If he could close in on the target he should have no trouble reducing it to scrap before Marshall arrived. He had configured the assault Mech with
a heavy autocannon well suited to these close quarters, and several racks of short ranged missiles that would finish off his opponents after the cannon opened
up their armour for him. It was thinking ahead like this that would win him promotion to Star Commander the next time Marshall faced a Trial of
Position.
He glanced at the magscanner and saw that the magnetic anomaly had split into two distinct signatures, both massing just short of twenty
tons. The way that they moved through the woods made it clear that they could be nothing but BattleMechs. Nothing that size could possibly pose a threat to
him. He only hoped that they kept moving in his general dire-
The next thing that Adolph knew, the Executioner was sprawled on the ground and his head was ringing. "What... what was that?" he
muttered.
"Adolph!" Marshall shouted over the radio. "What happened? Have you encountered the enemy?"
"I don't know?" he said, the words more a question than anything. Reaching for the controls he tried to wrestle the ninety-five
ton omnimech back against a tree that he could lean on. It was only then that he realised that the left arm was not responding and checked the diagnostics. Oh.
Well, the fact that the entire left shoulder assembly was scattered across the forest floor probably explained that. "I have been hit," he reported
more definitely. "I picked up two light mechs, but it was something else that shot me. Something big."
He could almost see Marshall nodding deliberately as he processed the data. "Find somewhere to take cover. We will be with you
soon," he promised.
"Understood," Adolph said and, pushing with the Mech's legs, he managed to wedge himself against a tree trunk at least as broad
as the Executioner's shoulders. Standing was the next step, but for now he just wanted something to cover his rear. That was pretty evidently where
he'd been hit after all.
The only thing that his main cameras were displaying were the tree branches overhead and the hole that had been torn through it. He paused
and then focused his cameras on the branches. Whatever had come through them had been coming down, just about behind where he had been when he...
"Artillery," he muttered. "Those little... freebirth... those little surats! They were spotting for an artillery
battery!"
"Who was?" Marshall asked and to his relief, the familiar shapes of a Warhawk and a Kingfisher in Coyote colours entered the
clearing. "You have certainly made a wreck of that Mech, Adolph. I do not think that you can continue to fight in that condition."
Suddenly, as clearly as if it was happening, Adolph realised that both of the OmniMechs he could see would be hit if the artillery fired
again. They were standing almost exactly where he had been. "Get out of here!" he snapped decisively. "They've got the range
-"
"Marshall," one of the Star reported. "He is raving. There is no one within half a kilometer of us and no line of sight more
than half -"
Insulated inside his cockpit, Adolph could not hear the whistle of shells, so the first he knew of the attack was when explosions engulfed
the two OmniMechs. "Mechwarrior Adolph of Star Bravo Three to all Stars, 81st Strike Cluster," he shouted into his radio. "We are under
artillery attack in sector seventeen. The Star Adders are using light battlemechs to spot for a battery of heavy guns." He flipped his radar on long
enough to get a direction for the origin of the shells. "The guns appear to be somewhere in sector twenty four or twenty five."
"Message understood, Mechwarrior," came the calm voice of Star Colonel Wendy Drewsivitch. "What is your
condition?"
Marshall cut into the conversation. "Three points have been disabled, Star Colonel. We can hold against direct attack, but we cannot
counter the artillery."
The shells stopped falling and Adolph gulped as he saw that Mechwarrior Violet's Warhawk didn't have a cockpit any more. The
Kingfisher had been driven to its knees by the sustained salvo, which must have been much heavier than the volley that had disabled his Mech, but he could see
it slowly trying to rise, a sign that the pilot had survived the expereince.
"Star Bravo Three, the estimated time of arrival for reinforcements is at least ten minutes," Drewsivitch advised. "Can you
hold out?"
"Negative, repeat negative," Marshall reported. "I request permission to withdraw."
There was a long silence as the Star Colonel weighed the odds. "Get your warriors out of there, Star Commander," she said at last.
"Why will they not fight us?" she muttered under her breath.
Adolph kept his mouth shut. It seemed to him that the Star Adders were fighting them, and if they weren't fighting fairly, they were at
the least fighting rather effectively.
-/-
Wendy Drewsivitch grumbled as she backed her Gargoyle slowly back through the woods. The snivelling Star Adders were actually avoiding
battle, but their tricks were bleeding her forces nonetheless. "I hate retreating," she said out loud, alone in the cockpit where no one could hear
her. Unfortunately, until she figured out how she was going to force the cowardly surats to face her in battle, lurking in the forest wouldn't help. There
would be nowhere back at the landing site that she could be ambushed like this and it would probably take two Clusters to pin them down in this dense
terrain.
"Maybe I could burn it all down?" she speculated out loud. The Gargoyle's foot squelched in the mud between two of the largely
entwined root systems of the trees. "...not unless there's an unseasonal month of high temperatures, obviously. I don't have the ammunition to
level it tree by tree and I'll probably lose more Mechs doing it by hand than their current sniping..."
"I hate Star Adders," she continued. "They make their weakness into strengths. There should be a law."
"Star Colonel?" a voice that should not under any circumstances be uncertain asked... uncertainly.
"Yes, Star Captain," Wendy said wearily. "What is it now?"
The commander of her reserve trinary swallowed nervously. "The 38th Assault Cluster just advised us that someone - the Star Adders
obviously - just raked the edge of the forest with long range missiles. They are pretty sure that they were Thunder LRMs."
"How sure."
"A Fire Moth got both legs blown trying to get into the forest."
"How much of the edge do they think may have been affected?" asked Wendy.
"Ah... most of it," he admitted. "They tried to clear a path through it but whoever it is simply laid more mines around the
Mechs doing the clearing."
"So they're still around?"
"About half a kilometre inside the forest is the best estimate," Star Captain Toshiro said. "I'm moving to try to
intercept them."
"Good," she affirmed and then hesitated. "No, no that isn't good. You're heading into a trap, Star Captain. Hold your
position immediately."
There was a long pause as Toshiro gave orders and then: "We're stopped, Colonel. But what do we do now? We can't go back unless
we break through the minefield, and if we go on."
"This whole island is a trap," Wendy sighed. "Unfortunately, we're already inside it. Damn the Adders anyway. Stand by for
further orders."
Bringing her Gargoyle to rest under the shelter of a tree, Wendy Drewsivitch started looking for a way out of the mess that she'd managed
to get her command inside of.
An hour later, she opened a general radio channel to the Star Adders and requested hegira.
Hall of the Khans, Warrior Quarter
Strana Mechty
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
26 January 3049
Virgilia waited until Robin Steele was done venting his spleen in front of the Grand Council before rising to her feet and waiting for
permission to speak. There was a satisfied look on Leo Showers face as he nodded to her. The Blood Spirits had been all but rolled over by three Clusters from
Clan Burrock and the Jade Falcons had beaten Clan Wolf almost as badly as his own Smoke Jaguars had the previous year, so the Star Adder's victory was an
empty one.
"Khan Steele has spoken, at length," Virgilia told the Khans, "of how unclanlike the battle my warriors waged upon him was. I
can assure you all that he speaks nothing less the absolute truth. My warriors - old men and women, washouts from training and disgraced failures - were armed
with battlemechs, vehicles and weapons dating back to the era of the Star League and before... which is precisely what will be found within the Inner Sphere
and their tactics are exactly what you may expect there."
"After the invasion rolls over their frontline positions and their hapless Mechwarriors are slaughtered by the manifest advantages that
our warriors have over them, those who survive will learn their lessons well. They will strike in confined spaces where our greater range means nothing. They
will use stealth and they will use treachery. And I salute Star Colonel Drewsivitch for her courage in admitting that she was unprepared to deal with these
tactics and withdrawing before more of her warriors were slaughtered."
"I know that, despite the best efforts of Clan Wolf and Clan Blood Spirit, you will invade using the ilKhan's plan of action. I
suggest that all of you give very careful thought to the humiliation that Clan Coyote faced when even two to one odds did not allow them to overwhelm Solahma
warriors armed with obsolete weapons and consider ways to avoid the same fate against an enemy that I can assure you will not be offering
hegira."
Leo Showers scowled. "I am sure that we will give your words due weight," he told her.
The Star Adder Khan sighed and shook her head. "I have my doubts," she told the ilKhan. "In any event," she added,
stepping out from behind the desk. "Our business here is done. Clan Star Adder won our Trial of Refusal, so even if we cannot stop you, we can at least
refuse to participate in your plans. Have fun stomring the Inner Sphere."
"Do you think that they have a chance?" Roderick N'Buta asked as he followed his Khan out of the Grand Council
chambers.
"It would take a miracle," she told him.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.