Prospect Hill, Kurragin

17 September 3110

For Jonah Levin, the active part of the campaign on Kurragin ended soon after it began, on a bright autumn day on a wooded hilltop, amid a stand of hardwoods glorious in their red-and-orange autumn foliage. The air, quiet and unmoving before the start of battle, carried the faint sounds of movement from far away. Somewhere downslope, amid the low brush, waited the troopers of House Ma-Tzu Kai.

Back in The Republic, Devlin Stone had made a ringing speech about the efforts to recover the lost troops, saying no world or individual that had sworn to The Republic of the Sphere need fear abandonment, but should trust The Republic and its member worlds to send aid. Transcripts of the speech eventually trickled their way to Kurrigan, and, reading it, Jonah was both stirred and worried. If the situation turned out well, it would be proof that Stone could back up his desire to watch over every single citizen of The Republic. If it failed, it could show that The Republic was overextended and unable to protect those willing to lay down the most for it. It would be a sign of weakness in a time demanding strength.

Echo Company had been cut off on its way to the rendezvous. To the north were the other regiments that had accompanied them to Kurragin. To the south were the tired, bedraggled troops they’d come to rescue. In between, and cutting off Jonah from either group, was House Ma-Tzu Kai. And when House Ma-Tzu Kai decided to move, it sure as hell wasn’t going to go against either of the larger groups. It had its eyes set on Prospect Hill, currently occupied by Echo Company.

Their new orders had come through this morning.

HOUSE MOVING WEST TOWARD HIGH GROUND OF PROSPECT HILL. HOLD HILL UNTIL BODY OF ARMY MOVES IN. HOLD AT ALL COSTS.

Jonah turned his attention from the slope outside to the sensor scan in the cockpit of his secondhand Stinger, wishing that his opposition shared his equipment problems. The recon reports, though, showed a well-armed, well-supplied force ahead of them. They had ammunition dumps scattered near Prospect Hill, while Jonah’s Echo Company had only what it carried. If House Ma-Tzu Kai figured out how paper-thin was the opposition they faced on the hill, Jonah and his soldiers were done for.

Jonah tried to coax a reading out of his ’Mech’s bare-bones display that might give him some idea of the nearby forces, but the Stinger wasn’t helping much; the probability curve on known and unknown units looked bad, and the heads-up display in his ’Mech’s cockpit windows hadn’t been updated recently. Available information on the opposing units was sliding from known green to unknown red all along his section of the line.

“Dammit,” he muttered. Even the reports from his own troops were fading to pink, then going red as the time-since-update deteriorated. He glanced away from the heads-up display to check again on the real-world terrain outside.

The view showed him nothing that he hadn’t seen a few minutes before. He stood on a gently wooded hillside. He could make out a mortar section to his right, tubes implanted in hastily dug pits. To his left, an armored trooper with a shoulder-mounted flamethrower leaned against a tree while another soldier worked on the man’s jump jets.

The spread of the valley below was entirely within Jonah’s field of vision. A well-equipped battalion would be able to hold this spot indefinitely, controlling the entire valley below. That was what House Ma-Tzu Kai intended. That was what Jonah was supposed to stop. If he could hold them off long enough, a door might open for the troops to get past the House battalion and finally get off planet.

If he failed, Devlin Stone’s promises to The Republic would ring hollow. Tenuous threads holding some prefectures together could snap. If Jonah failed, the dream of The Republic might fail as well.

On the plus side, Jonah thought, if I fail it’s because I’m dead, so I won’t have to witness the aftermath.

He flicked his comm switch to put something in his mind besides gloom.

“Sergeant Turk. Any sign of the main army?”

“Yes, sir!” Relief flooded over Jonah, but Turk’s next words took away that relief. “They’re mired at the river. They’re trying to catch Ma-Tzu Kai’s rear, but they’re not going to make it. Ma-Tzu Kai will get here first.”

“Roger.” Jonah flicked off the switch.

He allowed himself one breath—a single intake of air—to feel sorrow. Then he chased it away. This was his hill, he told himself. He would hold. He would bend, he would dodge, he would scamper all over the hilltop, but he would hold.

His right foot almost started tapping, and Jonah couldn’t tell if it was nerves or excitement. He stilled it and waited.

Static hissed over his ’Mech’s command circuit, and white fuzz ate at the edge of his position-plotting scopes. Wonderful, he thought. They’ve set up jammers. It can’t be long now.

His cockpit suddenly grew ten degrees warmer, and he told himself it was from a splash of sunlight creeping over his ’Mech. His palms grew slick, but the grips of the ’Mech’s controls held them in place. Sweat trickled down his forehead, down his neck, down his chest and legs. He cleared his throat, and it cracked with dryness.

The comm sprang to life again, still mostly static, but his techs were already finding a way around the jam. Buried in the sea of white noise were three distinct words: “Here they come!”

Jonah drew a deep breath and steadied his own voice before activating his ’Mech’s external speakers so that all of Echo Company could hear.

“Stand fast,” he ordered, his voice firm and clear—an illusion, but a convincing one. “Report enemy force and weapons.”

A moment later the trees overhead exploded in a world of flame as a pack of missiles slammed into his position.

“Counterbattery!” Jonah ordered.

The mortar section started sliding rounds down the tubes. Each round left the tube with a whump! and a puff of thin smoke. The man with the flamethrower was gone, either dead or moved forward, Jonah didn’t know. The soldier who’d been helping the man earlier was still in view and unhurt.

The command comm radio was dead again, rejammed by House Ma-Tzu Kai. Whining white noise filled Jonah’s ears, but he left it on in case someone managed to get a message through. Meanwhile, all of the Stinger’s position scopes went to solid red, leaving all of the unit symbols in the heads-up display frozen where they’d been at last report. Jonah had no new information coming in, no extrapolation based on current positions, nothing.

A current-generation BattleMech in good repair could have stood up to an electronic assault on this scale, but his used and—at least until the militia took possession of it—badly maintained Stinger couldn’t, and neither could the equipment of the men under his command. They’d have to fight blind and deaf.

But that’s what they’d drilled for. This was a militia unit, after all, and as such they had become accustomed to getting the short end of the stick when it came to equipment. They’d been working on backup measures for some of the most common failures and deficiencies since Jonah had taken command. He knew how to get at least part of their hearing back.

Jonah keyed the ’Mech’s exterior speakers. “String wire,” he ordered a nearby sergeant. “I want field phones.”

The sergeant saluted and trotted off. Echo Company of the First Kyrkbacken Militia might be reduced to communicating via the equivalent of tin cans and string, but at least they would not be silenced.

A trooper on a Shandra scout vehicle slid into the clearing through a whirl of dust and fallen leaves. He dismounted at the foot of the Stinger and saluted, then picked up a bullhorn hanging from the Shandra’s controls.