Le5224 wolf pack, p.1
LE5224 - Wolf Pack, page 1
MASTER WARRIORS
A BattleMech, the single most formidable fighting machine ever made by man, is not invulnerable, especially when confronted with another 'Mech. A MechWarrior has been trained in simulators and the harsh school of combat until he's very good at what he does. But the opponent may be better. Equipment, skill, and courage may improve the chances of surviving, but they cannot always save you. Sometimes it's just a matter of luck, and that luck can run out. . . .
BATTLETECH
LE5244
WOLF PACK
ROBERT N. CHARRETTE
To the Tuesday night gang at Eagle & Empire. It's been really scary.
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
First Printing, April, 1992 10987654321
Series Editor: Donna Ippolito Cover: Bruce Jensen Interior illustrations: Earl Geier Mechanical drawings: Earl Geier
Copyright © FASA, 1992 All rights reserved
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Part 1 3053
INTERMIX
1
My name is Brian Cameron. I am a MechWarrior of Wolf's Dragoons.
I would like to say that I am only a simple soldier, but my friends tell me that my attempt to tell this tale makes me more than that. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not. I only know that I find it necessary to record certain events, to make an account of matters that affected my life and those of all others who wear the uniform of Wolf's Dragoons. In doing this my hope is that those who come after will profit from the mistakes and experience of those who went before.
I do not pretend to omniscience, but my effort is honest. For those events occurring where I could not see and for words spoken where I could not hear, I rely on the integrity of my witnesses and my own sense of the affair. I have tried to be true to the heart and mind of the speaker, at least as true as any outsider can be about another person. I have spoken with all-well, all but one—of the persons from whose viewpoints I shall tell this tale. They have told me their piece of the story and answered my questions about their feelings and motivations. I am confident that they have spoken true, at least so far as they see the truth. Who but the Creator can know the ultimate truth?
As I said, my name is Brian Cameron. For the first seventeen years of my life, Brian was all the name I had. Of course, I had a unit nomen, but that is merely a useful designation, not a true name. I will not digress to recount the trials of my youth for that would only further delay the telling of my tale. In the Dragoons, we believe that hesitation is death on the battlefield. Lacking the life-and-death incentive of battle, I have tarried overlong. I offer my apologies.
By the end of February in the year 3053, only ten of us still remained in our sibko. The rest had failed in one testing or another and had been assigned elsewhere. We were all nervous as we assembled on the review field at Tetsuhara Proving Ground for the announcement of the results of our final testing. The tension would have been bad enough had we been merely awaiting the scoring for our final MechWarrior assignments, but it was made unbearable by the fact that we also awaited the results of the Honorname Trials.
I knew I had succeeded in my last trial, but I thought my score was low enough to have cost me ranking. I felt assured of a slot in one of the line units, certain that my skills were sufficient. Still, I was nervous. Like my sibs, I had then entered the Honorname Trials. We were all part of the genetic heritage of the Cameron honorline and thus honorbound to compete when eligible. Though we were all young for our ageframe, some of us held hopes that the compensatory adjustments would give one of us a chance. I had not considered my own performance in the trials to have been particularly stellar.
Thus, I stood stunned when the rankings scrolled onto the screen situated above and behind the reviewing stand where our training officers sat in solemn array.
My name and nomen was at the head of the list. I had done what no one else in my sibko, no one else in my ageframe, had managed. I had tested out and earned the privilege of bearing the Honorname of Cameron for my generation. The unit assignments would not roll onto the screen for minutes yet, but I didn't care. I was happier than I had ever been.
Several mates of my ageframe crowded near as I stood staring at the posting board. I could see in their eyes the disappointment at their own performances. Jovell, an older contender who had outscored me in all battlefield categories, swallowed his pride and was the first to offer the ritual greeting to the newly Honornamed. I could not suppress my grin of pleasure as I returned his greeting. The way he stiffened told me I had offended him, but I was lost in my own spinning world of joy and relief. I didn't give a moment's thought to his true feelings as he turned and shouldered his way through the crowd. There were too many others who wanted to congratulate the new Cameron.
Many of the others displayed honest pleasure in their greetings. We all face the same trials and, if we have made the maximum effort, there is no dishonor in not being first. We were all part of the Dragoons and a success for one Dragoon is a success for the others. But as pleasant as it was to receive the congratulations of agemate strangers, I was overwhelmed by the ecstatic reaction of my sibs. Each had wanted the Cameron name for him or herself, but they hid any disappointment they felt. They smiled and laughed and pummeled me on the back, refusing to address me by anything other than my full name. Brian Cameron. A sib had won the name and we all shared the honor. The moment was electric and I was afire with pride. But I was secretly ashamed as well. I doubted I could have been so honestly and openly cheerful had it been Carson or James or Lydia rather than me who won the name.
My crowd of well-wishers parted and revealed a tall black man moving toward me. It was no less a personage than Colonel Jason Carmody. The multiple decorations of his dress uniform combined with his snowy hair and age-lined face to mark him as a successful warrior, one skillful enough to have survived. Carmody was one of the old cadre, one of the original confederates of Jaime Wolf himself; he had plied his trade for longer than my sibs and I had been alive. Once, Carmody had commanded all of the Dragoons' aerospace assets. He had retired after an injury in an action over Capella, only to be recalled to serve as commander of our homeworld of Outreach after the death of Colonel Ellman. Carmody's post made him commander of the Home Guard and also put him in charge of the Dragoons' training program. It was in that last capacity that we had come to know his iron hand.
He had always been a stern and distant figure, a source of authority, discipline, and rare praise. Now he had left the reviewing stand and come to stand before me. I went to rigid attention as his eyes swept me from head to toe and back again before he spoke.
"I greet you, Brian Cameron. You have earned an Honorname. Earn honor for your name."
His speaking the ritual greeting made it real in a way Jovell's words had not. This was my commander speaking; his voice was authority. I could only whisper, "Seyla."
The grim visage softened. "You so resemble him that it's almost like seeing a ghost."
I knew I resembled my Honorline's founder, but then all my sibs did to some degree. I had never thought the resemblance especially remarkable. I knew that age and memories can cloud eyesight, so I only smiled and bowed my head, acknowledging the colonel's remark. When I raised my head once more, I realized that the shock of having Carmody come to address me directly had blinded me to the two other Dragoon officers accompanying him. I could say that I was too excited, but that is no excuse. I should have noticed them at once, for I knew both by sight although I had never spoken to either. They were the Camerons.
The older warrior was Major Alicia Cameron. Though not the first to earn the name hallowed by our founder William Cameron—that honor had gone to Malcolm, who had died on Luthien—she was the line's eldest, having earned the name in a replacement contest held after Malcolm's death. The younger, Captain Harry Cameron
"I greet you, Brian Cameron. My brother Malcolm and I welcome you to the family."
I had to lick moisture onto my lips before I could say, "I am honored."
She smiled, but it was not like the warm smiles of my sibs. "You have shown yourself capable of the honor. You have not earned it yet."
Harry chuckled at her remark, then said, "I greet you, Brian Cameron. I welcome you to the family."
Fearing another blow to my newfound pride, I tried what I hoped would be a safer reply. "I thank you."
He chuckled again. Something had changed in his attitude, but I couldn't read him clearly. I would have to learn, though; they were my family now. I suspected that they would be reserved toward me for some time, for although they knew my scores, they didn't know me. I felt that I was not done proving myself.
Colonel Carmody broke the awkward silence by demanding my codex. I took the tags from around my neck and handed them over. He inserted them into the reader that he wore at his belt and tapped in some instructions. He nodded as he read the screen.
"Very well then, MechWarrior Brian Cameron." He snapped the reader closed and handed back my codex. "A Dragoon must always be ready to move. Have your gear to Pad Twenty-two by 1730." I was surprised. New MechWarriors get a furlough, but it usually took place on Outreach. Did earning the Honorname rate an offworld vacation? "Why, sir? I-"
"You have orders, Mech Warrior. You are to report to Colonel Wolf aboard the Chieftain. You have been assigned to his staff as an aide."
I must have stammered out another question, but I really don't remember. I do know that Colonel Carmody said some more, but I don't remember his words, either. They were meant to be encouraging, I think. My memories of the next few hours are equally jumbled, a whirl of congratulations and celebration. Carson and Lydia made sure I was at Pad Twenty-two by 1720.
After they left, I stared up at the giant DropShip Chieftain. Its huge ovoid shape screened half the stars twinkling in the sky of Outreach's chill winter night. I can still recall the awe I felt. And still feel the dread that colored it. It was not the Overlord Class DropShip that stirred those emotions, though. It was what awaited me inside.
I was to serve at the side of Jaime Wolf, legendary commander of Wolf's Dragoons. He was known throughout the Inner Sphere as the finest—a consummate MechWarrior, strategist, and tactician who for years had confounded his enemies and been a boon to his friends. He had led us through the fire and out again more than once, always keeping the Dragoons not just alive, but ready to fight. He had made us the premier mercenaries in the Inner Sphere. We sibs called him the Wolf because to us he was the archetype of the fierce ruler of a pack, at once a father, a guardian, and a leader.
If I did my job, I would be noticed. Immediately. And even more immediately, if I failed. Thoughts of Founder William flashed through my head. He would be proud—as long as I didn't botch up. If I botched in the Wolf's sight, there would be no honor for me. I'd disgrace the name, and the family would petition for my displacement. I would lose the right to bear the Cameron Honorname. Then where would I be? No one in the Dragoons would want to take in a disgraced no-name.
To be a warrior is to know fear and, knowing it, to press on. Though I was not so anxious to meet fear and laugh in its face, I shouldered my duffle and walked unfalteringly up the ramp.
2
Once, so I am told, the Inner Sphere believed Wolf's Dragoons to be simple mercenaries. The spheroids knew that the Dragoons had sources of supplies and materiel beyond those of ordinary mercenaries, but most pundits ascribed the Dragoons' bounty to control of a secret cache left behind after the fall of the Star League some two and a half centuries ago. A secret Star League cache. Many merc companies had found just such treasure; it was assumed by most that the Dragoons had been even luckier and uncovered a major find. Of course, everyone now knows that there was no cache.
The Dragoons had never been simple mercenaries. When they made their entrance into the annals of Inner Sphere history nearly five decades ago, they were on a mission of reconnaissance and evaluation for their masters among the far-distant Clans. Their Clan fellows would probably have considered the Dragoons' vintage equipment merely second-rate, inferior cast-offs good only for barely acceptable warriors, those of insufficiently pure genetic heritage or too wild for their fellows of the ruling caste. To the militaries of the Inner Sphere, however, the Dragoon supplies and equipment were pearls of technical treasure the like of which had not been seen since the golden age of the Star League.
Jaime Wolf and his Clan brother Joshua were the leaders of that mission, having been promised legitimacy as a reward for success. Their assignment was to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each of the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere, signing on to serve them, one by one, as the mercenary regiment Wolf's Dragoons. The Great Houses, or the Successor States, as they had become known after the collapse of the Star League, were the mighty star empires that ruled over human-occupied space.
At first, the Dragoons met with success, both as warriors in the Inner Sphere's battles and as spies for the Clans from which they had come. Somewhere along the line, loyalties and sentiments began to change. Dragoon records are not specific on the point, but I believe that the change directly resulted from Joshua Wolf's death at the hands of a rival faction within the House of Marik, rulers of the Free Worlds League. From that time on, Jaime Wolf served as sole leader of the Dragoons, contrary to the dual command structure the Dragoons had inherited from Clan Wolf. Though still hiding their origins, the Dragoons continued to operate in the Inner Sphere, earning a fearsome reputation as the best, most honorable warriors since the time of the Star League.
That reputation took a blow when Jaime Wolf himself revealed that the Dragoons had originally arrived as spies for Clan Wolf, and by extension, for the whole body of the Clans, who were at that moment invading the Inner Sphere. The Dragoon name became a curse in mouths of desperate and frightened people everywhere. Who could blame them? Jaime Wolf admitted that he had been a member of Clan Wolf, the same Clan that had raced ahead of its fellows, gobbling up Inner Sphere worlds like the legendary Norse wolf-beast Fenris. As the Clan hordes drove implacably toward Terra, even the protestations of friendship with the Dragoons by the leaders of the Inner Sphere could not ease the hostility of the common people.
It was not until the siege of Luthien, capital of the Draconis Combine, that spheroid opinion began to shift back to a favorable view of the Dragoons. Hanse Davion, lord of House Davion and de facto ruler of the still new Federated Commonwealth, a marriage-spawned amalgamation of his own Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, ordered the Dragoons and other mercenaries to assist the besieged Combine. The move shocked many people, especially those who believed that centuries of mutual hatred would prevent cooperation between the Federated Commonwealth and the Draconis Combine, even in the face of so grave a common threat as the Clan invasion. After the Dragoons played a key role in checking the Clanner flood at Luthien, the ordinary spheroid began to believe that we had truly split from our past and joined our fate to that of the Inner Sphere. Once again, the Dragoons and Jaime Wolf had become heroes.
In the old days, Jaime Wolf used to play a game with those he had never met before. When the Wolf's face was not well-known, a visitor would be ushered into the presence of a number of Dragoon colonels. Jaime Wolf would be among them, but no sign would be given, no names exchanged, until the visitor had reacted. I am told that people usually mistook one of the other colonels to be the leader of the Dragoons. A comment, I think, on the inferiority of the average spheroid. But the faces of galactic heroes eventually become seen and remembered by grateful people everywhere and so the Wolf's game is no longer played.
I thought about that test as I entered the Wolf's DropShip. I knew that I would not have failed as so many others had; but then, I am a Dragoon. We are trained to look beneath the surface and sense a person's strength. I would have no need to recognize the chiseled features and the iron gray hair and beard. I would not need to know of his short stature and lean physique. Jaime Wolf would be unmistakable, his inner strength easily sensed by a true warrior, even if his appearance were not familiar.
