TEXT: BattleCorps
  DJINN OF DESPAIR
  Kevin Killiany
  Chapter Ten
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Jungle foothills 
  West-northwest of Chevalier Base 
  Despair, Ender’s Cluster 
  Lyran Alliance 
  29 October 3057
  The plodding exodus of tonners followed the curve of drier 
  ground—and Hauptmann Sardella’s prediction—hugging the 
  base of the hills in a shallow curve northward as they entered the 
  swamp region. 
  If they stayed this course, the beasts would pass a bit less than a 
  kilometer north of Chevalier Base. They wouldn’t even infringe on 
  the area Lex had been patrolling—was it only two days ago?
  The secondary screen flickered at the edge of her vision. She’d 
  left the image looping—flipping back and forth between the read-
  ings on the two ’Mechs she’d spotted on the hill above Aldicott 
  and Sardella. 
  “Damn it!”
  “What?” Chevalier asked.
  But it was Lex’s turn not to answer. The image on the screen 
  wasn’t looping back and forth between the readings on the 
  sixty-ton BattleMech and the seventy-tonner. It was bouncing 
  between the two different images of the sixty. Live—and playing 
  the recording back—the numbers had seemed to morph from 
  one machine to the next. But at the end of the loop, when the 
  transformation was complete, it jumped instantly back to the 
  first set of numbers.
  Lex lurched as her Nightsky stepped into a creek bed she hadn’t 
  noticed. Checking to be sure there were no more serious hazards 
  nearby, she refocused on the screen. It was a quick tap of buttons 
  to freeze the two sets of numbers next to each other.
  And that’s what it had been—two sets of numbers. ’Mechs next 
  to each other—or at least along the same vector—with their read-
  ings blurred to form one impossible machine by Despair’s fog. 
  Dividing her attention between the live sensors, the view through 
  the cockpit canopy and the auxiliary screen, Lex worked to refine 
  the numbers. Standard filters didn’t apply—or at least not well. 
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  She relied on her judgment—or guessed outright—to nudge the 
  readings into meaningful data.
  Definitely two BattleMechs. One—the nearer one, she thought—
  was squatter, wider, and running a bit hotter than the other. And 
  the taller one just beyond it... 
  The outline teased at her memory. Nothing she had seen on 
  Despair, she was certain. But somewhere else with fog and dark 
  and rain. A Lancelot! The memory of Hauptmann Showalter de-
  feating her in the pouring rain on the Florida training grounds 
  snapped into sudden focus. Knowing what she was looking at, 
  there was no mistaking the high, boxy shoulders and the tapering 
  large laser arms.
  And the shorter one? Sixty tons and running hotter—bigger en-
  gine? Or poor shielding. Broad. If she could make out the arms, 
  figure out the main weapons.... But the image was too fuzzed. It 
  didn’t matter, she had enough to report.
  “Hauptmann Sardella,” she transmitted.
  “Go ahead, Atreus,” Caradine answered. 
  “I’ve been studying the readings I gave you for the sixty-ton 
  BattleMech I saw earlier,” Lex said. “Be advised I now believe it 
  was two sixty-ton ’Mechs close together. Compare the first set of 
  numbers with the last, ignore transition figures.”
  “Looking,” Caradine said.
  Lex was aware of Chevalier being very quiet behind her.
  “Confirmed, Atreus,” Caradine said. “Hauptmann Sardella says 
  he sees a Champion and something else.”
  Champion! Of course. 
  She couldn’t make out the arms because the sensors imaged its 
  stubby wings as a broad torso. Better yet, the Champion fit the 
  profile of her phantom Victor: a close-matched pair of medium 
  lasers and an autocannon. She’d just overestimated the power of 
  the weapon that had toppled the Crockett. 
  “The taller BattleMech is a Lancelot,” Lex supplied. “Have not 
  cleared up the numbers on the heavy ’Mech yet, but it’s definitely 
  only one. Tally three hostiles ahead.”
  “Good work, Lex.”
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Lex suspected that last hadn’t originated with the Eighth’s haupt-
  mann.
  “How many more, Chevalier?” she asked over her shoulder. 
  “Adders were a company. Your grandfather couldn’t have imported 
  a whole lot of reinforcements, or we’d have seen them by now.”
  Chevalier said nothing. Which was what she had expected. She’d 
  never been trained in interrogation. Asking her prisoner questions 
  had more to do with organizing her own thoughts than gaining 
  new information.
  “So twelve ’Mechs, less seven destroyed and one captured,” she 
  said. “A lance left? They have to know they can’t win against a 
  company of Lyran Regulars. Even if they avoid a ground search, 
  with two DropShips in orbit, they can’t get off world.”
  Her external microphones conveyed a thunderous sneeze.
  A cloud of burning methane washing over her canopy alerted 
  Lex that she’d wandered too close to the river of migrating ton-
  ners. Her sensors went down, but she didn’t need them to see a 
  second of the great green herbivores douse her with flame before 
  turning to run.
  A family pod of greens had separated from the megaherd, brav-
  ing the packs of scavengers to grab mouthfuls of foliage from the 
  trees of the hillside. Now they were lunging back into the mass, 
  their blind charge creating a ripple effect. 
  Lex watched as beast after beast took momentary alarm and tried 
  to push past—or in some cases jump over—the animals around it 
  to get away. The panic didn’t last. With no obvious danger threat-
  ening, the tonners calmed down almost immediately—their minds 
  too basic to imagine danger. 
  By the time her sensors were back on line, the river of tonners 
  was flowing placidly.
  v v v
  Sardella replayed the loop of sensor readings the Florida leutnant 
  had deciphered. Seen as a whole, it made no sense. But once you 
  realized it wasn’t a whole...
  Brains versus computers. Again. 
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  The targeting computer had seen the readings as one machine—
  a machine itself, it didn’t have the imagination to realize that was 
  impossible. And their brains, used to this godforsaken planet 
  disorienting their equipment, had assumed the computer was 
  right about there being one machine but wrong about the sensor 
  data.
  Speaking of confusing recordings and wholes that make no 
  sense....
  He keyed his mic.
  “Leutnant Caradine, it is my sad duty to inform you that you died 
  in the line of duty,” he said soberly. “Leutnant Atreus also died 
  tragically.”
  “There may be some inaccuracies imbedded in that intel,” 
  Caradine startled him by responding in the same somber tones. 
  Pretty daring for a first year militia Leutnant to joke with an Eighth 
  Regulars Hauptmann. Then again, he’d started it, so it might have 
  been more daring not to go along.
  “I’m inclined to think Lance Leader Britto drew a wrong conclu-
  sion based on available information,” Sardella said more seriously. 
  “And given that available information, I can see why the error was 
  made. I wonder if you could fill in a few blanks.”
  “Certainly, sir,” Caradine answered crisply.
  Yep, following my lead.
  Sardella pulled up the ROM clips Britto had provided. The battle 
  scene, the headless body of Caradine’s Hatchetman, the broken 
  trail of softwoods and ’Mech prints showing Atreus’s short run 
  north then disappearance to the south, the Nightsky—evidently 
  crushed—trapped beneath the fallen Crockett. With a quick series 
  of taps, he blipped the visuals over to the Thorn’s computer. He 
  did not send along the lance leader’s actual report. He wanted to 
  hear what Caradine had to say without knowing her commander’s 
  spin on the facts.
  The silence stretched for several minutes.
  Sardella scanned and rescanned ahead. Knowing how thor-
  oughly the sensors and targeting computer could be led astray, 
  he was not willing to rely on any automatic alarms to warn him of 
  heavy metal contact.
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  “Sir,” Caradine said in the same crisp tones of a moment before. 
  “I can understand Leftenant—Leutnant—Britto’s thinking. We were 
  not aware he found us when we were down.”
  “We?”
  “Yes, sir. Leutnant Atreus had already rescued me from my 
  escape pod when she attacked the Crockett,” Caradine ex-
  plained.
  “Wait,” Sardella interrupted. “How did she take out a Crockett 
  with a Nightsky?”
  “She cut a standard jump-over short to land toe-to-toe,” Caradine 
  said. “She delivered an overhand hatchet chop on landing, then 
  fired her small pulse laser directly into the cockpit.”
  Sardella tried to picture it.
  “You’re telling me that at melee range, the Crockett pilot didn’t 
  use his autocannon?” he asked.
  Now it was Caradine’s turn to pause. He wondered what aspect 
  of her story she was going to adjust.
  “Sir, I can only conclude he was distracted by the laser two me-
  ters in front of his viewscreen,” the young leutnant answered at 
  last. “Also....”
  Another moment’s hesitation.
  “Have you noticed that these MechWarriors aren’t very good?” 
  she asked. “It’s not just that their ’Mechs are in poor repair, the 
  pilots themselves seem to be out of their depth in combat.”
  Sardella replayed the memory of the pirate Cyclops going down 
  under the massed attack of several lesser machines. Several tar-
  gets and he’d missed them all but the Nightsky because he didn’t 
  focus on any one adversary long enough to actually fire. A compe-
  tent MechWarrior would not only have survived the engagement, 
  he would have destroyed the Hatchetman—and very likely the 
  Nightsky—in the process.
  Assuming their intel on the Adders was even approximately 
  accurate, these BattleMechs had been on Despair—subjected 
  to corrosive air, fire-breathing mega-birds, and who knew what 
  else for thirty-five years. And Twindle’s theory the pilots inside 
  the ’Mechs weren’t the Adders made a lot of sense. It was looking 
  more and more as though the muscle these pirates were using 
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  to garrison their stash world was a group of cowboys who knew 
  more about herding big birds than they did about combat.
  “I take your point,” he said. 
  But that answer led to another problem. Sardella could not rec-
  oncile the image of Atreus taking the fight to an assault ’Mech 
  with her medium after running away from the same machine a 
  few hours earlier.
  “Why did she not engage the Crockett during the initial battle?” 
  he asked. “Working together, the two of you should have been 
  able to break free with both BattleMechs in one piece. Made it 
  back to base with your intel.”
  “She wasn’t there,” Caradine sounded surprised at the question. 
  “You saw the tracks of her search pattern. Something distracted 
  her, then she followed the route of my escape pod. The Crockett 
  and Flashman were both long gone when she found my ’Mech.”
  Sardella grunted. The way the Nightsky’s tracks dug into the soft 
  earth, the BattleMech had been running at speed. Not the prints of 
  a MechWarrior conducting a search pattern.
  “When the Crockett fell on us, we were knocked unconscious,” 
  Caradine resumed her report. “We had assumed it was only a 
  matter of minutes, but from this record I can see it could as easily 
  have been much longer.”
  A sensor bleep. Sweeping manually, Sardella recognized it as 
  a natural outcropping of— No, it was a plant. A tree with enough 
  iron in its bark to stand up to a hand laser. This world was crazy.
  “Any idea what destroyed the Flashman?” Sardella asked when 
  he was sure nothing dangerous lay ahead.
  “Some combination of jump jets, elbow spike and hatchet,” 
  Caradine answered. “I think she fired lasers, too. You’ll have to 
  review her battle ROM. I was getting thrown around too much to 
  follow what was happening.”
  Sardella stared at his radio. Then he leaned as far forward as his 
  safety harness allowed to stare directly at the Thorn. The small 
  machine was just visible at the edge of his canopy as it kept pace 
  with his Highlander. 
  There was certainly nothing about it to indicate its pilot had lost 
  her mind.
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  He wondered about the extent of her injuries. He thought he 
  remembered from first aid training that shock often involved hal-
  lucinations and false memories.
  “You’re right,” he said at last. “I am very much looking forward 
  to reviewing that battle ROM.”
  Below them the valley had widened out into the swamps and 
  marshes of the coastal region. As he’d predicted, the migrating 
  tonners had curved north, following the band of firmer ground 
  that framed the wetland basin. He adjusted course slightly.
  “Sir,” Caradine said suddenly, “Atreus asks if you are familiar 
  with herding horses.”
  “Why—? Never mind,” Sardella realized if there was a point to the 
  question Atreus would get to it faster without his counter ques-
  tions. “Tell her I was raised on a cattle ranch.”
  Static crackled from his cockpit speakers. 
  “—oos,” said Atreus. 
  Sardella saw the icon denoting her Nightsky climbing the ridge 
  toward him. Not a reckless maneuver, considering their quarry 
  was probably well ahead, but still opening a gaping hole in their 
  tiny dragnet.
  “Go ahead, Atreus,” he said.
  “Sir, what would your DropShips do if there were a natural di-
  saster?” she asked, her voice getting clearer with each step. “If 
  something happened to the base?”
  Sardella opened his mouth, then stopped, his eyes caught by the 
  topo map. The megaherd of tonners was going to pass north of 
  Chevalier Base. The pirate BattleMechs were north of the tonners. 
  And these tonners were terrified of BattleMechs.
  “A stampede,” he said.
  “When the DropShips land to rescue survivors—”
  “I see it, Leutnant,” Sardella cut her off. The pirates had a 
  DropShip stuck on the ground. No doubt a JumpShip lying doggo 
  near a pirate point. With the Pith or Harpy on the surface, they’d 
  make a break for it. Chevalier junior would be their prisoner, but 
  he could probably beat any charges—after all, he was a kidnap 
  victim.
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Though the fact that he’d been terrified until he learned he wasn’t 
  being taken to the base said a lot about how innocent he was.
  “Caradine, relay to Aldicott. Update him on the TacSit. Tell him 
  best speed to engage and delay pirate ’Mechs,” he studied the 
  map, trying to estimate the megaherd’s speed and radio distances 
  through Despair’s opaque atmosphere. 
  “Atreus, outrun the herd. Get to the base. Have them radio the 
  Pith and order it to land. Authority code Bad Egg. Tell Dimitri to 
  deploy Beta and Gamma lances to start a counter stampede.”
  “There isn’t—” Atreus began.
  “Do it,” Sardella snapped. “Try to raise Jarhaal and Twindle on 
  the way. If you can’t get them, you, Franks, and Britto will have to 
  defend the base until they get there.”
  He was talking to the Nightsky’s back. His targeting comput-
  er confirmed she was driving her ’Mech at twice the speed his 
  Highlander could manage over the rough terrain.
  “Let me go, sir,” Caradine said. “This Thorn can—”
  “You are my ears and voice, Caradine,” he said. “Stick with me 
  and keep trying to punch a radio signal through.”
  He looked at the numbers on the map. Atreus would make it. 
  Jarhaal and Twindle—it depended on how fast they’d been push-
  ing it since he lost contact. 
  He wasn’t going to be close. 
  
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