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    BattleTech: Vengeance: BattleTech Novella
    BattleTech: Vengeance: BattleTech Novella
    BattleTech: Vengeance: BattleTech Novella
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    BattleTech: Vengeance: BattleTech Novella

    By Jason Schmetzer

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    A PATH TO REVENGE...

    When the armies of the Draconis Combine killed his parents, Galen Cox swore vengeance. Now an elite MechWarrior with the Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth, Galen will have a chance to exact his justice when the Combine raids the planet Ryde with a BattleMech battalion. As two armies clash on this snow-and-ash covered world, two men will be forced to examine exactly why they're fighting even as they both strive for victory and absolution.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCatalyst Game Labs
    Release dateJul 26, 2019
    ISBN9781393899228
    BattleTech: Vengeance: BattleTech Novella

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      Book preview

      BattleTech - Jason Schmetzer

      VENGEANCE

      Men ought to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.

      —Niccolo Machiavelli

      PROLOGUE

      Landing Zone Nurikabe

      Lesser Dasentica Continent

      Ryde

      Skye March, Federated Commonwealth

      3 October 3046

      "Koketsu ni irazunba koji wo! the officer shouted, brandishing a katana. If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub!"

      Thirty-three MechWarrior cadets stood at attention in the Dropship’s cavernous BattleMech bay. Chu-sa Arik Arlansson stood on a gantry beside his Wolverine, staring down at them. He held his sword over his head for a moment longer, then lowered it. He slid the blade home into its scabbard without looking, his hands and arms making the long-familiar motions without conscious thought.

      "You are buso-senshi," he said, naming them MechWarriors, the elite warriors of the Draconis Combine, honored to pilot the ten-meter-tall BattleMechs in House Kurita’s service. Despite his name, and his Swedish-speaking parents back on Thule, Arlansson spoke Japanese, the language of the Kurita-ruled Combine. The victory of Gunji-no-Kanrei Theodore Kurita’s Ghost regiments in the War of 3039 had done much to erode the racist bent toward ethnic Japanese, but Arlansson knew his skin was not the issue. His blood was the issue.

      My name is the issue.

      There were few ethnic Rasalhagians, descended from largely Swedish and Norse stock and still embracing those cultures, left in the Combine. Most had defected in 3034 to the Free Rasalhague Republic, the newly-won realm carved out of the former Rasalhague Military District of the Draconis Combine. Those that remained—men and women like Arik Arlansson and his officers—were scrutinized and ostracized.

      We are sent on fool’s errands such as these.

      "You are eta, he said. So say our masters. They call you trash, less than warriors, undesirables ranked even lower than the yakuza who man the Ghost regiments." Arlansson searched the faces he could see closely, watching for angry glares or shifting eyes. The thirty-tree cadets stood stock-still, listening. A proud smile twitched his mouth, but he controlled it.

      Here, we will prove them wrong, he said. Here, we will enter the tiger’s cave and snatch her cub. Here, we will prove ourselves against the honorless soldiers of the Federated Commonwealth. Now he allowed the grin onto his face. Here, we will earn our place in the Mustered Soldiery.

      Behind the ranked warriors, the giant ’Mech bay doors began to open, breaking free of the old DropShip’s warped hull with a cracking clang. The air was immediately tainted. Sulfur from Ryde’s atmosphere pinched at Arlansson’s sinuses, but he didn’t sneeze.

      "By the grace of Duke Ricol, you have been given ’Mechs. You are, no matter what anyone else says, buso-senshi. He stopped, blinking as the air pricked his eyes. We will crush our objective, and earn our place in the Combine."

      He drew his sword again, thrusting it over his head.

      "Banzai!" he screamed.

      Below him, the thirty-three MechWarrior cadets raised both hands over their heads.

      "Banzai!" they shouted back.

      To your ’Mechs!

      As the cadets broke ranks and headed for their machines, Arlansson rode the gantry lift down to the bay floor, where two men stood waiting. Like Arlansson, they were both much older than the cadets. The shorter, more wiry man on the left threw his hands up, grinning.

      "Banzai!" he fake-shouted.

      Arlansson grinned back. Quiet. He looked at the two men, one, then the other. Both wore red-backed blue katakana 5’s pinned to their cooling vests. The katakana, like the green 3 on Arlansson’s vest, denoted their rank—in their case, tai-i, what other militaries called a captain. His own rank, chu-sa, was equivalent to a lieutenant colonel. 

      The man who’d spoken, Connor Latham, was, like Arlansson, an ethnic Rasalhagian who’d remained in the DCMS when the Free Rasalhague Republic had formed. He was an irreverent man, with many citations on his record of impertinence and uncouthness. Arlansson, who carried many of the same citations, didn’t care about his attitude.

      Latham was an excellent light BattleMech pilot and a decent leader. More importantly, he was an excellent MechWarrior instructor. He commanded the training battalion’s third company, Inugami Company.

      The other man, Tai-i Gunnar Fritofsson, said nothing.

      A fine speech, Latham said, lowering his arms. Believe any of it?

      What I said applies to us as well, Arlansson said, pushing past them to walk toward the open hatch. If we can prove this training battalion concept, perhaps our honor can be restored.

      You mean if we can prove copying a Davion concept works? Latham asked.

      Impertinent, Arlansson muttered.

      You didn’t answer the question.

      No, I didn’t. The trio reached the open hatch. Arlansson looked up at the exposed side, seeing the fresh scrapes where the ill-fitting hatches had forced themselves apart. The DropShip was a powerful Overlord-class vessel, capable of transporting an entire BattleMech battalion, but it was not young. In port on Dieron, a WorkMech had pounded the hatch closed from the outside.

      ISF reports nothing more than militia on this continent, Latham said, after a moment.

      Yes.

      And ISF is never wrong.

      Arlansson snorted. The Internal Security Force, the Draconis Combine’s secret police cum intelligence-gathering service, was universally feared. If ISF was wrong, it eliminated those who disagreed with it, and after several decades of being controlled by the dreaded Smiling One, Subhash Indrahar, its reach spanned the Inner Sphere. Of course not, he said.

      The quiet giant Fritofsson, more than two meters tall and Scandinavian blond, stirred. They are not ready, he said.

      For militia? Latham said with a chuckle. Nonsense.

      We should have held them to training, Fritofsson insisted.

      There was no more time, Arlansson said, in a tone that made it clear he would brook no more argument. The Red Duke—Ricol—required us to move now. And so we are here.

      They’ll be fine, Latham said. He slapped a hand against his bare thigh, beneath the off-white one-piece bodysuit he wore beneath his cooling vest.

      Even if they are not, Arlansson whispered, more to himself than in answer, there wasn’t any more time.

      CHAPTER ONE

      Armored Station Nineteen

      Lesser Dasentica Continent

      Ryde

      Skye March, Federated Commonwealth

      3 October 3046

      Leftenant Galen Cox stood at attention in Hauptmann Rychert’s office, staring at a spot on the wall behind and above the seated officer. He stood at parade rest, his feet spread shoulder-width apart and his hands folded behind his back. He was young, barely twenty-six standard Terran years old, with blond hair and blue eyes. Two days’ stubble dusted his chin. A red scrape marred the left side of his jaw.

      Explain yourself, Rychert said.

      The company commander was older than Cox, almost forty. He sat in an expensive, banth-leather chair. His uniform—a second-class uniform, not the Steiner-blue jumpsuit that was uniform of the day for the Twelfth Donegal Guards and the same jumpsuit Galen wore—was immaculate and, had he been standing, obviously well-tailored and of better quality than the standard-issue uniforms. Dennis Rychert was a scion of the old school of Lyran BattleMech officers, more concerned with appearance and social grandstanding that military readiness. Such officers were quickly being marginalized in the new Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth.

      Not quickly enough, in Galen’s opinion.

      In 3028, just before the outbreak of the galaxy-changing Fourth Succession War, Prince Hanse Davion of the Federated Suns had wed Melissa Steiner, soon-to-be archon of the Lyran Commonwealth, thereby sealing the alliance that became the Federated Commonwealth—or, rather, would become the Federated Commonwealth when young Prince Victor Steiner-Davion, all of sixteen years old, took the combined archon-prince’s throne.

      The marriage of the Federated Suns and its elite military to the economic powerhouse of the Lyran Commonwealth had made the Federated Commonwealth the largest, strongest, and most militarily powerful empire since the ancient Star League. Despite the setbacks of the War of 3039 against the Draconis Combine, most people believed it was only a matter of time before the other three Great Houses of the Inner Sphere—House Marik, who ruled the Free Worlds League, House Liao of the Capellan Confederation, and House Kurita of the Draconis Combine, all bent the knee and submitted to Steiner-Davion rule.

      At the thought of House Kurita, Galen’s hands, safely out of sight behind his back, clenched into fists.

      Sir, he said, it was a dispute over tactics that got out of hand.

      A dispute.

      Yes, sir.

      Over tactics.

      Yes, sir.

      Rychert slapped his clean desktop with the swagger stick he liked to carry everywhere, even into of his Banshee’s cockpit. You began a brawl that cleared two cafes in Nisibis, he said, "over a tactical dispute?"

      Galen frowned. In my own defense, sir, it is not fair to say I ‘started’ the brawl.

      You did not strike First Leutnant Rhaegar first? The swagger stick snapped down again. I have an affidavit from several Ryde Militia witnesses that say you did.

      I was provoked, sir.

      Provocation to start a brawl?

      Galen blinked. The wall he was staring at was, like most of the walls on Ryde, cast-formed ferrocrete heavily reinforced against tectonic activity. Ryde was an active world, a young world in geological terms. The ground shook on average once a week in some

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