“I don’t think we’re guarding the border. We’re going to it, where we’re supposed to wait further orders.”
Jonah didn’t like the sound of that at all. “There aren’t too many places they can order us to once we’re at the border,” he said. “Tell me they’re at least equipping us decently.”
The Kyrkbacken Militia possessed two BattleMechs, a Mad Cat III and a Legionnaire, and Jonah had trained in both. He leaned toward the Mad Cat, preferring its greater strength and mass, but lowly militia captains piloted the ’Mech they were assigned to and learned to like it.
Raffi grimaced. “You’re not going to like this. The ’Mechs are staying here.”
“What?”
“You said it yourself. Support of the border. If they’re going to take away manpower, they want to at least leave firepower. We’re supposed to get new equipment out there.”
Jonah’s hopes raised. “New equipment? Like, fresh-off-the-assembly-line new?”
“No,” said Raffi. “Like, stuff-that’s-been-sitting-around-because-no-one-else-wants-it new.”
“Old equipment, you mean. Ancient.”
Raffi flashed a smile brimming with false cheer. “It’s new to us!”
“Did they say what we’re getting?”
Raffi glanced at the new orders. “Says here they’re purchasing a couple of clapped-out, secondhand Stingers from a disbanded mercenary unit.”
“They’re giving us used Stingers? To defend the Capellan border?”
Raffi nodded. “Yup.”
In the past ten days The Republic, or at least these parts of it, had been enveloped in turmoil. Politicians on Holt were talking secession. Senators were openly questioning the military’s ability to protect the brave soldiers assigned to it. Anti-Capellan factions were urging for an immediate, overwhelming display of force—a display that, Jonah knew, could wipe out large portions of The Republic’s military and fatally weaken the border with the Confederation.
“I wish I knew what they’re going to ask us to do,” Jonah said. “But whatever it is, I don’t think I’ll like it.”
Kurragin, Capellan Confederation
June–July 3110
The secondhand Stinger BattleMechs were even worse than Jonah had initially feared, and so was the assignment. Both ’Mechs had been stripped of their jump jets—their former merc owners must have been cannibalizing them for parts before putting them up for sale. The fact that the ’Mechs also lacked proper repair-and-replacement schematics and had only a minimal number of critical spare parts was another bad sign.
For the first time, Jonah appreciated the cynical comment that he’d heard on occasion from the older officers at headquarters: Nothing’s too good for our men and women in the militia; too bad the government hasn’t figured out how to give us less than nothing yet.
He’d have to rely on his people, who, though not regular military, were not without promise. They ranged from weedy pseudointellectuals taking a year off from college, through the usual assortment of troublemakers, slackers and steady, reliable, young men and women, all the way to Sergeant Wilson Turk—who was, in Jonah’s considered opinion, something close to a gift from on high.
Unlike most of the Kyrkbacken Militia’s enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers, Turk had actually seen combat. He had served for two years in a front-line mercenary unit before cashing in his bonuses and returning home to semicivilian life on Kyrkbacken. Jonah, whose own battlefield experience to date was purely theoretical, soon found himself leaning heavily—but, he hoped, unobtrusively—on Wilson Turk.
Jonah and his men found themselves near a small town with the unpromising name of Rotten Creek on Kurragin, only a jump away from the Capellan capital of Sian. The fact that he was there, combined with the way he’d arrived, caused him no end of astonishment. He’d been in a JumpShip escorted by Capellan troops, guided into the heart of the Confederation. The missing JumpShip—or what was left of it—had been found. The troops within it had been located, mostly alive, but in deep trouble.
The JumpShip had, in fact, wandered accidentally into Capellan territory. Their mistake had been seized upon by House Ma-Tzu Kai, one of the more extreme elements of the Capellan Confederation. The Republic troops had run, only to dive deeper into Capellan territory. The ship, on its last legs, eventually managed to expel its DropShips near Kurragin, where the troops landed in a wide, desolate mountain range. The JumpShip was destroyed soon after, and House Ma-Tzu Kai had pursued The Republic’s troops to the planet.
The Confederation, in a display of generous diplomacy that struck Jonah and many others as quite out of character, announced to The Republic that the lost unit had been found on Kurrigan, and that they would allow a relatively small force into Confederation space to retrieve it. The Confederation reported that it had asked House Ma-Tzu Kai to cease molesting the Republican troops, but, regretfully, Ma-Tzu Kai had not responded well and seemed to be pursuing its own agenda against the troops, and the Confederation was not going to move militarily against one of its own Houses. If The Republic wanted the troops to return safely, it would need to extricate them with its own people.
Jonah, and many of the other soldiers he spoke with, were immediately suspicious of the Confederation’s strategy. They already had one unit stranded in Capellan space, and now they were asking The Republic to send more troops in far beyond The Republic’s border. Though Capellan diplomats repeatedly promised a safe escort to the Republican troops many considered such promises to be worthless.
The Republic knew it had to send troops in or risk alienating the government of several border planets, but it also knew it could not risk top-of-the-line troops on what could be a fool’s errand. So it had scraped together a ragtag group of militias, many similar to Jonah’s in composition and experience. This was a group that was supposed to go up against elite Capellan troops and somehow hold them off long enough to get the lost unit safely away from Kurrigan. If they succeeded, the Confederation promised to look the other way on any losses suffered by House Ma-Tzu Kai. If they failed—well, the Capellans would take the position that The Republic had lacked the strength to rescue its own troops.
Once on Kurrigan, most of the Republican troops were busy trying to root out the Ma-Tzu Kai forces and give the wandering army room to escape. Jonah’s company had been assigned to a backup role, ordered to hold its post and wait. Even in a desperate situation, Jonah thought bitterly, there’s little use for us.
They sat in the middle of hostile territory and waited. After two weeks on Kurrigan, he and Turk had run out of jokes to tell each other about Rotten Creek. By the end of the first month, his unit had its first fistfight, quickly followed by its first arrest and brief confinement. Jonah’s plans grew more and more detailed, but no orders came through.
They eventually spent six weeks encamped near Rotten Creek. Somewhere beyond the range of hills that lay to the west, the troopers of House Ma-Tzu Kai and the main Republic force fought and maneuvered and fought again while Rotten Creek remained completely and totally secure.
Then it came.
The order that changed Jonah Levin’s life forever arrived with a simple beep. After loading in the day’s encryption keys, Jonah watched the message organize itself from gibberish to coherent orders.
FIRST KYRKBACKEN ECHO COMPANY PROCEED IMMEDIATELY 45′36″ REINFORCE REPUBLIC FORCES AGAINST MAJOR HOUSE MOBILIZATION