I knew something was up nearly three months ago. Sgt-Major Petrilli called B Company together for a briefing on our new training schedule and told us that all leave for the Eridani Light Horse were cancelled. New training routines aren't unusual, but losing leave time nearly caused a mutiny. The Eridani Light Horse is a crack unit, one of the best merc outfits going. My own regiment, the 71st Light Horse--better known as the White Horse--tends to think of itself as the best of the best, though the other two Eridani regiments would dispute that, of course. But crack units need R&R, too, and the new regimen of training and drills wasn't leaving us with time enough to catch our breaths. Galahad, the brass said... we've got to be sharp for the Galahad summer exercises. We figured it was one hell of a note, training to get in shape for a training exercise. Things got progressively worse, too, with inspection after inspection in full kit, maneuvers and deployment drill at any time of day or night, and class-A checks of every 'Mech and piece of equipment in the regiment. Then came the word: all passes are cancelled and standby for transport. Our orders were to proceed to Ampat Starport for transportation to our next duty assignment. By that time, not one man in our entire outfit had any doubt that we were being sent into combat. We just didn't know where. We found out when Brevet General Armstrong himself made the announcement at a full dress inspection of the 71st at the spaceport. "Gentlemen," he said, "you all know that I'm not much for long speeches, so I'll just say it straight out. The Davion-Steiner Alliance will be formalized with the wedding on Terra in one week. That marriage is going to make a lot of people very unhappy... from Takashi Kurita and Maximilian Liao on down. "It's going to mean war. "The specific reasons for the war don't concern us. We're soldiers, warriors, and we fight because that is what we are. "The 71st Eridani Light Horse has been awarded the honorof spearheading the first offensive of this war. You will be fighting side by side with a regular Davion unit-the 3rd Guards. Your destination is the world of Algol, and you'll be facing the 1st Ariana Fusiliers. "Your assignment, ladies and gentlemen, is especially important. The 71st will make an ablative drop onto the plains southwest of a city called Groffer's Toll. There's a starport there, an important one. Your orders are to take that port and hold it. "I'm not going to lie to you. It won't be easy. There's been lots of talk circulating about the Fusiliers, about them being a hard-luck unit, easy pickings, a walkover. Gentlemen ... ladies... I want you to disabuse yourselves of that notion right now. By the time our DropShips deploy for our combat drop, the Fusiliers will have had plenty of time to figure out what we're up to, and they're going to be waiting for us. They will be determined... and very, very tough. I can guarantee you that we're going to be in for a tough fight. "But then, that's what the Light Horse lives for... right?" The question was answered by cheers and a small shower of berets tossed in the air. Training schedules, cancelled leaves, hard work or not, we were ready! "That's it, gentlemen," Armstrong said, smiling. "See you on Algol! Good luck!" I had to admire old Armstrong's strategy. "Not much for speeches," huh? Yeah... right. I really liked the way he snuck that bit in about our opponents, the 1st Ariana Fusiliers. You see, the 1st Fusiliers really is known as the Hard Luck Regiment. They've been up against Davion line units and mercenaries time after time, and time after time they've been pounded into scrap. My Granddaddy fought them on Mirach in '87, and the way he told it, they got hit six different times by six Davion units. By the time that scrap was done, they'd lost better than half of their people and scarcely had a 'Mech still standing. No sooner had we been dismissed from formation than the rumors and stories started flying. Sure, the 1st Ariana was a hard-luck regiment, right enough. They'd been broken and reformed so many times they were brittle. Yeah... hit'em again, and they'll shatter. Shatter, hell! They'll take one look at us and run screaming. Morale in the Light Horse was soaring by the time we boarded ship. But I had to wonder about it. This push was big... real big. Hell, the Federated Suns had been at war for centuries, whatever the history books said about "First Succession War" and "Second Succession War" and "Third Succession War." It looked like this was going to be labeled the Fourth War, but the Light Horse had been fighting hard enough and often enough that there wasn't a one of us who thought we'd been at peace. But this Algol invasion was something extra special... and if the scuttlebutt was anything to go by, Algol was going to be just one of eight or ten systems hit all at once. A push? Try invasion... or all-out, bloody-minded offensive. Hanse Davion was gunning for Max Liao, and he meant serious business. I did not doubt for one second that Max Liao and the 1st Ariana Fusiliers meant business, too. The Fusiliers, especially: they could read maps, they were combat veterans, and they were as brave and as determined and as stubborn as we were, whatever their luck had been in the past. This was going to be a rough one. I stood in the 'Mech bay of our Overlord-class DropShip staring at the 'Mechs in my lance. There was Paul Langley's Vindicator, still bearing the scars on its left torso from that scrape on Demeter. Jacob Engler's Griffin was partly disassembled as he and his techs worked to trace a short in its Delta Dart tracking array. Ted Cermac was standing in the open cockpit of his ShadowHawk, joking with the crew chief on the scaffolding embracing the Hawk's neck. Good men, damn good men, all of them. Below me, on the floor of the bay, technicians were unpacking and assembling the big ceramic and aluminum ablative capsules which would protect our 'Mechs as we dropped from orbit. As we dropped into history. How many of these brave men and women would still be alive and unharmed by this time tomorrow? Would I even live to see Algol's surface? So many questions ran through my mind, questions whose answers were as elusive as smoke on the wind. Ask any soldier what the worst part of a battle is, and most will say the waiting. When that waiting must be done inside the bland world of an ablative capsule, it seems to last forever. I could imagine my comrades as they sat and thought or prayed or wept in the lonely confines of their cockpits. It may sound strange for a soldier to admit to such feelings as fear and sorrow, but soldiers are human beings with the same emotions as civilians. Heroes are often men who are just too scared or cold or tired to care anymore. The DropMaster's voice crackled from my comlink. "Thirty seconds to Drop point. First string, stand by." Seconds crawled by, then the drop indicator on my Wolverine's panel flashed green and the gravel-voiced DropMaster called, "3... 2... 1 ... DROP!" Suddenly, gut-wrenchingly, my Wolverine was plummeting towards the surface of the planet below. Unable to see, relying only on my senses and the radio traffic from our fighters, I imagined the swirling chaos outside my capsule as the defending ships fired on our descending forces, while our own aerospace support tried to keep them off us. Soon even radio contact was lost, as entry heating ionized the air around my 'Mech. Then sunlight flooded into my cockpit. The cocoon, still hot from entry, split apart, leaving my 55-ton machine failing towards the ground like a gigantic sky-diver. More fighters flashed past my 'Mech and those of my lance-mates. Off to my left, perhaps 300 meters away, I saw a fireball blossom where once was a Davion Shadow Hawk. Then another 'Mech died. A Liao fighter fell from the sky, trailing a long plume of smoke and fire. At 1000 meters, I rolled my 'Mech upright and fired its landing jets. "Too fast! Too fastl" my mind screamed as the ground rushed up to meet me. Six hundred meters... 400... 200... I landed with a bone-jarring crash, which I felt must surely have destroyed my 'Mech. As I scanned my 'Mech status display, I could taste blood in my mouth. I had bitten my tongue in the impact of the landing. My MSD showed minor damage to my Wolverine's left foot. Otherwise, the big machine was unhurt. Glancing around, I saw Engler's Griffin, and Langley's Vindicator, but there was no sign of Cermac and his Shadow Hawk. Could one of the explosions have been his 'Mech? Or was he somewhere planet-side, thrown off course away from the DZ by the dog fights still raging above? For that matter... where were we? This didn't look like any part of our original drop zone. Somehow, our lance had gotten scattered off the main drop. I keyed in on the Regimental Command Frequency and got a signal bounce from a command support ship orbiting over the DZ. We'd missed the DZ by ten klicks, the spaceport by twelve. We had some hiking ahead of us. Unable to raise Cermac by radio or transponder, I formed up the surviving members of my lance and started for the spaceport. If we were to rejoin the 71st, it would have to be there. Before we'd covered the first klick, threat warnings flashed on my HUD. Coming in low, skimming the treetops, were a pair of H7 Warrior Attack helicopters. Engler's Griffin sent a salvo of long-range missiles burning toward the incoming hostiles, while Langley brought up his Vindicator's heavy PPC. I raised my own subgun-shaped whirlwind autocannon and locked it onto the lead chopper. It is impossible to describe the weird half-human, half- mechanical sighing noise made by the whirlwind, but one you hear it, you never forget it. The sound still raises my hackles every time. White fire blazed into the enemy formation. Most of Engler's missiles smashed into the twin co-axial rotors of the trailing Warrior, causing the 20-ton machine to blossom flame, then arc over in a twisting, splintering fall which carried it behind the swell of a low hill. My AC burst struck home on the lead helicopter, making the VTOL lurch sideways. Fire flashed from the surviving gunship's nose and flared from its stubby wings. Three short-range missiles hammered my Wolverine, while 30 mm hypervelocity rounds chewed up the ground around me. Langley fired his particle cannon. The man-made lighting slagged the aircraft's armor and burned into its airframe. The Warrior's engine cowling shattered as the VTOL was engulfed in flame. Engler had his rifle-like Fusigon particle cannon at the ready and was scanning the horizon for any sign of the line defenders. "You OK, Sarge?" Langley asked. "Yeah, Paul. I'm fine. I took some damage to my left torso and arm, but my armor's still intact. Are you guys all right?" "No damage here, Sarge," was Langley's reply. "I'm intact, too," Engler said. "All right." I studied my tac readouts, assessing the data unfolding on the computer imaged map display. "Listen up. We're late for our rendezvous, and we're off target. We've got some travelling to do, so we'd better get moving. Langley, you take point. Make your best speed, but don't get too far ahead. I make our destination at 0730 and about 12 klicks. Keep your eyes open, boys. We're a long way from Groffer's Toll, and I'd rather not get my actuators shot off trying to get there." Now, twelve kilometers doesn't seem like much--especially when you're talking about a machine which can cover nearly any terrain at better than 60 kph. But when you're in unfamiliar, enemy-held territory, twelve klicks can seem like 800. It took us nearly half an hour to cover that short distance. We could see the fight before we reached it. A pall of murky smoke was spreading across the sky from just beyond a low, rugged ridgeline. "Okay, boys," I addressed my lance as I studied my battlemap display. "Groffer's Toll Spaceport ought to be right on the other side of that ridge. Langley, hustle up there and take a look-see." The young 'MechWarrior moved his 45-ton 'Mech up the hill, dodging from cover to cover as lightly as any infantryman. "Sarge, Jacob, get up here!" Langley screamed over the comlink, his voice tinged with fear. Without a moment's hesitation, I started pounding up the slight incline as fast as my Wolverine could go, with Engler's Griffin right on my heels. As I topped the rise, I caught sight of what had thrown Langley into such a panic. Below us was the spaceport, a sprawl of dingy buildings and acres of tarmac, stretching out clear across the floor of a low, bowl-shaped valley. There were ships, aged merchanters, most of them, but nothing that looked military. The smoke was coming from junked 'Mechs scattered across the tarmac. It was as wild a melee as I'd ever seen, 'Mech against 'Mech in pounding, slashing, burning, up-close combat that was claiming more casualties on both sides with every passing minute. The numbers looked about even, but it was impossible to tell through the swirl of battle machines and smoke and rising dust. Langley began to raise his PPC. I stopped him. "Hold it a second, Paul." It looked to me as though our boys had snapped an ambush on the Liao 'Mechs. Despite the confusion and the smoke, I could see the regimental colors of the 1st Ariana on more of the 'Mechs crowded towards the center of that mess, with Eridani Light Horse 'Mechs closing in from three sides. The fourth was to the east of the spaceport, near a broad defile through a ridgeline. The Liao 'Mechs must have come through there, spread across the spaceport tarmac, then been hit by an Eridani counterattack. If things got tough for the Liao 'Mechs, that defile would be their line of retreat. "Let's back down the hill," I said. "We'll circle around to the north, and hit 'em from behind." Moving as quickly as we dared, the three of us backed off until we were out of sight of the brawling 'Mechs. I knew that if we were going to turn the tide of the battle, we could waste no time. Our quarter circle took us about half a klick north and a full klick east. The defile would be guarded, I was pretty sure. The Liao forces wouldn't want anyone sneaking up on them from the rear. We came down the pass in wedge formation, with Langley in the center, and Engler and me to left and right. As we neared the opening of the pass, we could see a pair of heavy 'Mechs, a tall Crusader and the odd, nearly headless shape of a Thunderbolt. The odds weren't real good. We had the advantage in numbers-3 to 2-but the tonnage was almost even. My Wolverine already carried some damage and I'd expended A/C munitions in the fight with the Warriors, while these two guarding the pass looked fresh. Those heavies could absorb a lot more damage than our mediums. Our one hope was to take them by surprise. "Get in as close as you can before you open up," I instructed my team. "Paul, you take the Crusader. Jacob, you and I will hit the Thunderbolt. Make your first shots count, boys, we may not get many more." At my signal, we started forwards at top speed. I watched the range finder ticking off the distance to the target. "Don't turn around," I said aloud, as though to the Liao 'Mechs. "Don't turn around. Just stay there, and don't turn around." I'd hoped we could close to within the 270-meter effective range of our medium lasers and short-range missiles, but luck was against us there. The range finder had just flashed up 360 meters when another Liao 'Mech entered the pass. Curse the luck! It was a 50-tonner, a Trebuchet. Its pilot must have shouted warning when he saw us, because the two heavies turned then, tracking our approach. The Treb lifted its right arm, aiming its wristmounted Zeus long-range missile pack at us. "Fire!" I yelled. "Fire!" Simultaneously, two particle streams and a burst of autocannon fire clawed out at the Liao 'Mech. At the same instant, the Capellan pilot fired both the wrist-mounted missiles and the identical pack mounted in the Trebuchet's left torso. Smoke, fire, and flying rock obscured my view of the target, as all three of our shots went wide, leaving the Liao 'Mech untouched. One of his missile volleys flew over our heads, detonating along the valley behind us. The other flight showered Paul Langley's Vindicator with dirt and shrapnel, but a few must have found their way to his 'Mech. "I'm hit," Langley yelled. "It's not too bad, but he perforated my torso armor. Wait a minute... Dammit! He took out my LRMs!" "Boss, I think we really stepped in it this time," Engler called. "Shut up and fight!" The Thunderbolt cut loose with all three of its torso-mounted lasers. I weaved left, returning fire. Engler raised his Griffin's PPC and sent a bolt sizzling into the T-bolt's left arm, then followed it up with a cluster of long-range missiles. Langley triggered his own PPC at the "trench -bucket" and then launched his Vindicator into a lumbering charge. I cut loose with my Wolverine's autocannon, spewing 50 mm armor-piercing explosive rounds into the Capellan 'Mech's legs. Langley was trying to close to within 180 meters of the Trebuchet, where he would have the advantage of being inside the "dead-zone" of the Liao's LRM systems. Engler and I could only position our 'Mechs far apart so that the T-bolt could only target one of us at a time. After raking the 65-ton monster with more AC fire, I urged my 'Mech into a ponderous run. At that range, I was at a severe disadvantage. Neither my SRM rack nor my medium lasers could effectively lock onto a target at greater than 270 meters, and without that added firepower, we would be hard-pressed to destroy the Capellan Thunderbolt. The crash-crash-crash of LRM fire thundered across the valley. I chanced a look and saw Paul Langley's Vindicator down, gouges chewed across his right arm and side. He had his 'Mech levered up on its left arm and was trading shot for shot with the Crusader with his PPC. The damage to Paul's 'Mech looked bad, but I couldn't help him. A trio of bright flashes hit the Thunderbolt's left torso, as the Liao pilot fired his medium lasers again. One shot burned into my Wolverine's right leg, another its already savaged left arm. The third scorched into the ground beside me. My return fire went wild, sending gouts of earth geysering into the air. When the big 'Mech pivoted to fire at me, it turned away from Engler's Griffin. My comrade's PPC shot burned a hole into the Thunderbolt's right arm, while his full complement of missiles hammered the Capellan's right leg and torso. A shattering explosion blasted smoke and flame and debris into the sky, sending twisted chunks of metal rattling against my armor like machinegun fire. The explosion was followed by another, deep-throated and rumbling, and the blast wave knocked my Wolverine to its knees. "God Almighty..." Engler said over the comlink. His missiles had found a weak spot in the T-bolt's armor and detonated its SRM ammunition. The big 'Mech was a wreck now, gutted by the blast and burning furiously. I had my 'Mech on its feet, intending to aid Langley. Too late. The battle-our part of it, at least-was over. The Liao Trebuchet lay on its side, a smoking ruin where its left leg used to be, and a gaping hole in its torso. But Paul's Vindicator was sprawled in the dirt, most of its head and right shoulder missing. Wires and coolant conduits spilled from the hole, and oily smoke was adding to the inky overcast of battle smearing the heavens. We found out later from his onboard recorder that his LRM stores had blown at almost the same instant as the Thunderbolt. His 'Mech had overheated and he'd been unable to override or damp down. He should have been able to eject, but he hadn't. Maybe the Crusader was pushing too close... maybe he hadn't noticed in the excitement. Who knows? Just damn bad luck... The Crusader had pulled back towards the main battle, unwilling to face odds of two-to-one. Engler and I charged out onto the tarmac, to find the Capellan 'Mechs were already crowding back away from the valley's mouth. "Lascher, where the devil have you people been?" our company commander yelled over the comlink. "What the hell are you doing way over there?" "Sorry, Sir." I was too tired to explain. "We just got a little lost, that's all." "Better late than never, I suppose," he grumbled. Static from a PPC blast hissed in my helmet phones, cutting the conversation for a second or two. "Join in!" he said when the air was clear. "There's still one hell of a plenty to do!" He clicked over to the general frequency. "Attention! The 71st will advance, open line! B Company... front rank, oblique left! Hype!" Plenty to do was right. Our arrival had plugged the hole in the Liao rear... and I guess our arrival had convinced them they were surrounded. The Hard Luck Regiment had its backs to the wall now, cut off, surrounded... and dying as 'Mech after 'Mech crashed into fiery ruin. The Eridani Light Horse surged forward from all sides, squeezing them together into the junkyard tangle at the center of the spacefield tarmac. It took five, bloody hours of slaughter and heat and dying to finish the fight for Groffer's Toll. Not many of the Ariana people broke through our lines... and fewer still got out with their 'Mechs intact. The press called it an easy victory. They said we suffered only light casualties, that securing that spaceport was a stroke of tactical genius, striking where the enemy was weakest. To hear them talk, the battle was a foregone conclusion... a walk-over. After all, Groffer's Toll pitted the Eridani Light Horse against the Hard Luck Regiment itself, right? Hell, I was there, and I can tell you that the victory had little enough to do with luck. The Light Horse had suckered them deliberately, bypassing their positions when a scattered drop caught them looking in the wrong direction. The Light Horse made straight for the spaceport instead of the Capellan rear. The Fusiliers regrouped and came on hell-for-leather... straight into an ambush set by our tanks and infantry. They were already hurting by the time they reached the spaceport and found it deserted. Our boys had circled around, redeployed... then hit them just when they thought they'd chased us off. My lance had arrived on the scene just after the Eridani Light Horse hit them. Walk-over? Hah! Ask Ted Cermac. They found the ruin of his 'Mech after the fight, scattered across a couple of square kilometers near our Drop Zone. Ask Paul Langley. We salvaged his 'Mech, but there wasn't enough left of him to identify, much less bury. My lance had been cut in half... and that's 50% casualties whatever the news media might say. Ask the pilots of that Trebuchet or that T-bolt, dead in the burned-out wreckage of their BattleMechs. They gave everything they had to hold open a line of retreat for their comrades, and died in the giving. I don't hold Paul's death against them. They fought and we fought, and we shared the luck... good and bad. At that, it was a close thing. If Engler's missiles hadn't penetrated that T-bolt's torso armor at just about the same time that Paul's Vindicator blew... It seems to me that luck-good and bad- was favoring both sides pretty evenly. But if the final measure went against the Fusiliers, it wasn't because they were a walk-over! "Form up, people," the Captain said. We'd come through pretty well, all in all. Eight of the company's 'Mechs were still reporting for duty, and five of them weren't even too badly shot up. In the distance, other 'Mechs of the Light Horse were already picking through the ruins, marking wrecks for salvage and checking for traps. Way off to the north we could hear the rumbling thunder of heavy fighting going on somewhere over the horizon. Exhaustion dragged at me. After five hours of fighting, it was hard to realize that I was still alive. "Form up!" the Captain repeated. "C'mon! Look like soldiers! We've got a war to win!" A war to win. I looked over the field of ruined machines and shattered lives and wondered if any of us would live to see that victory. If the 1st Ariana Fusiliers had been a hard luck regiment, I didn't want to run into any Capellan units which considered themselves to be lucky! Mech Sergeant Simon Lascher is, at last report, is still on Algol with the 71st Light Horse Regiment. After suffering only light losses in the fighting around Groffer's Toll, the unit rejoined the rest of the Eridani Light Horse near Kollasa and entered a period of refit and reorganization. Indications are that, after several pitched battles, the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Ariana Fusifiers have largely ceased to exist, while the 3d battalion was able to withdraw off-world intact. The Eridani Light Horse, after the arrival of regimental reserves, declared itself fit for combat. Rumors abound regarding their next target, but it seems certain that they will shortly be engaged with the enemy once again. Only time will tell whether their good luck will hold. Back to BattleTechnology 6 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1988 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com