25

Dormuth
Mandoria, Marik
Marik-Stewart Commonwealth
1 June 3137

The assault began at dawn.

A large force of ’Mechs, vehicles and battle armor— even several Stars of conventional infantry—hammered into the forward positions of the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth defenders entrenched in Dormuth. Major Chris Leger, the defending commander on the front lines of the brutal assault, immediately knew this was a last, desperate attempt by the Spirit Cats to smash the leadership of the Marik troops before the Commonwealth grinder pared them down so far that a militia with a lance of salvaged IndustrialMechs would be their undoing. He surmised (in the first of three fatally wrong conclusions) that the force could be no larger than a Cluster—though that scared him plenty. He further surmised (in his second mistake that day) that the Spirit Cats were likely and finally preparing an ordered withdrawal to the DropShips they’d been cut off from for so long, and this attack was simply a diversion. With that in mind, not only could no more than a Cluster be deployed in this assault, but their true focus would be in linking up with those DropShips and making sure that as many troops as possible could then be extracted from Dormuth to that new staging area and finally off-world.

The third and final error of the day could not really rest on his shoulders, as the Spirit Cats had scrubbed the last of the Commonwealth’s eyes and ears from the skies and near space of Marik, and the assault by Nikol’s forces in the Oceana system had annihilated all the reinforcement aerospace assets that might have allowed the defenders to reassert air superiority. But it was an error nonetheless, as commanders are supposed to anticipate the unexpected; an especially grievous failure of judgment, since the battle for Marik had turned into an endless war of surprises as each side struggled to topple the other through one ingenious military plan after another.

Major Leger immediately began his own ordered withdrawal, pulling back in the face of the onslaught street by street as he issued nontransmitted orders through a pony-express relay system using any civilian craft that could be dragooned into service; to date, they’d managed to keep the Spirit Cats at bay until the long-sought-after reinforcements arrived by shifting almost all communications to nontransmitted orders after it became clear the Clanners were cracking one too many burst transmissions.

The Marik defenders pulled back in good order as Leger waited for the pony-express-carried orders to marshal his rear and portions of each of his flanks’ troops. Worry didn’t set in until he traveled the entire distance of his allotted fallback and then even he could not ignore the facts staring him in the face down long weapon barrels; not only had no relief troops appeared from his rear or flanking deployments, but there was a terrifying number of Spirit Cat troops barreling down the long roads of Dormuth on his position.

Leger finished his retreat into prepared revetments and met the first wave of the Clanner assault. Though the Spirit Cat machines appeared as bedraggled as his own, with armor patches as prevalent as the spent ammo casings on the rubble-strewn streets and numerous weapon systems damaged or out of ammo—the sheer ferocity of the assault, combined with the numbers, almost dislodged his troops in that first, horrifying wave. With morale quickly eroding and the Spirit Cats setting up for a second attack wave while simultaneously sending smaller units of battlearmor and light ’Mechs through the barriers along their flanks, Leger made the only decision he could and broke radio contact.

Five minutes. Five minutes of a death-wail call for help that apparently went unheard; static filled all lines. There could be only one reason.

The general was dead.

As a third assault began and Leger’s entire front crumbled, strange glowing objects appeared in the bright, late-afternoon sky. As though mesmerized by an angel come to carry him home, Leger found his will to fight finally fleeing after the endless months, broken by the sure knowledge that the one person who kept them all going lay dead . . . somehow dead. He gazed upward, his ’Mech unmoving in the midst of the apocalypse as the Spirit Cats scythed through his forces, not a muscle twitching as the glowing lights resolved and the metal rain began and he started to laugh hysterically and continued for long, long seconds until an azure beam of charged particles reaved him from this life.

Chazwasl Starlord-class JumpShip
Zenith Jump Point, Marik
Marik-Stewart Commonwealth
5 June 3137

Nikol stretched her tired back and closed her eyes as her body floated in place in the command berth aboard the Chazwasl Starlord-class JumpShip. She knew her lack of decorum in that moment would horrify her oldest sister, since Casson occupied the same berth, but she didn’t care.

Too tired to care. You managed to stay alive, Julietta. Amazing. Since she’d been bracing for news of her sister’s death, Julietta’s miraculous escape—considering the scope of the fighting in Dormuth—should’ve left Nikol feeling relieved. Instead, she felt nothing. That disturbed her; she tried to chalk up her numbness to the shocking report accompanying her sister’s news that she lived.

‘‘We have failed,’’ she said. The emotion that prompted she refused to let out, keeping her eyes closed until the sensation passed.

‘‘What?’’ Casson responded.

‘‘We’ve failed. All this work and the damn Clanners live. They live and even more Clanners are on-planet! ’’ She was shouting by the end of the sentence.

‘‘Nikol.’’ Casson’s calm voice fished her partway out of her self-pity; she opened her eyes to see him floating past her field of vision. A flush crept across her features at the thought of the ludicrous image she must present to her subordinate, and she unfurled on the next rotation, allowing her foot to snag the armrest of her chair so that she could reel herself back in and latch herself down.

‘‘What?’’ That did not sound petulant at all.

‘‘First, you must always expect the unexpected.’’

She couldn’t help roll her eyes at such a tired aphorism, but held her tongue at the look of reproof in Casson’s eyes.

‘‘What’s more, you must respect a brilliant plan. And what the Spirit Cats have pulled off is brilliant.’’

‘‘What are you talking about? Mother was simply using them. They were supposed to annihilate themselves and take the Commonwealth defenders with them. Now we’ve got two Clans on-world.’’

‘‘You should respect their achievement; even our enemies can teach us. The fact that the Spirit Cats managed to hold on all this time is a magnificent testament to their drive. Their commitment. Their battlefield acumen. And then, contracting with Clan Sea Fox and offering the warrior merchants large tracts of Marik to serve as one of their clearinghouse worlds in exchange for military aid in putting down the last of the Marik defenders? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.’’

‘‘But it’s not their world. It’s ours!’’

‘‘We’ve not set foot on Marik yet. And as the saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law. They purchased Marik with their blood.’’

‘‘Rather than complaining about the situation, we need to figure out what we can we learn from it.’’

She ran her fingers through her dirty hair and tried to ignore how nasty it felt as she bent her mind to the question. She finally nodded as the lesson became painfully obvious. ‘‘That if the Spirit Cats could survive everything they’ve been through in the past months—let’s even say win the planet, for the sake of argument—trying to extricate them at this point would be difficult.’’

Casson bellowed a rare laugh that filled the berth with deep echoes. ‘‘Difficult doesn’t scratch the surface. Dormuth is now a ruin of mazes and tunnels that the Spirit Cats probably know like the backs of their hands. They’re wounded. But they’re a wounded animal in the corner. Digging them out would be suicide.’’

Nikol nodded grudgingly. ‘‘Not to mention that Clan Sea Fox has settled in.’’

‘‘Exactly. Now that they’ve sunk their teeth into such a fine morsel as Marik to help them expand their mercantile empire . . . well, they’d likely be even more dangerous than the Spirit Cats. No, we have to face the fact that we may be able to plant a flag on Marik and call it a part of the Oriente Protectorate, but it’s a world with other owners. Owners I hope Her Highness can woo into bonds of fealty.’’

‘‘Defeat, then. Just as I said.’’

‘‘No,’’ Casson responded immediately. ‘‘Not defeat. Just a different type of victory.’’

‘‘Uh?’’

‘‘What was the ultimate goal of our mission?’’

‘‘To obtain Marik.’’

‘‘Yes, but there was a more important goal.’’

She tipped her head to the side as she considered the larger scope of their mission, then said, ‘‘To deprive Anson of Marik.’’

‘‘Exactly. And when it comes to that objective, victory is victory, no matter how we achieved it.’’

She nodded at the logic, her spirits rising slightly before they crashed hard under a new thought. ‘‘But will Mother think so?’’

Neither had a response to that.