Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 11

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s

Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

For Russell and Roberta Loveday,

who never moved so far away

that the Internet could not reach them.

We’ve missed you.

Acknowledgments

One year I am helping to create The Republic, through articles and character bios for INN, and

consulting on back history. The next, I’m doing my damnedest to tear it apart. Sometimes it feels like one

of those old military make-work projects. Dig a hole; then fill it back in. Except that not all of the dirt

ever makes it back into the hole. It gets scattered around, lost in the grass and clumped into the treads of

work boots.

And that’s where all of our stories come from—when the pieces do not fit back together quite so nicely

as when we took them apart.

I would like to thank everyone at WizKids for their tireless support in this process: Jordan and Dawne

Weisman, Maya Smith, and Mike and Sharon Mulvihill, among so many others. Also the wonderful

people I have been privileged enough to work with at Roc—Laura Anne Gillman, who will be missed,

and Jennifer Heddle, with whom I always look forward to working—and Vic Milán, who wrote one hell

of a book and ended up being a hard act to follow.

Best wishes to my agent, Don Maass, and to his office staff for their hard work on my behalf. A hearty

thanks to Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch for their continued support, mentoring, and

friendship.

Speaking of friends . . . thanks again go to Allen and Amy Mattila, Randall and Tara Bills, Phil DeLuca,

Kelle Vozka, and Peter and Cathy Orullian, all of whom help keep me relatively sane by dragging me

away from my computer from time to time. And then there are Oystein Tvedten, Herb Beas, Chris

Hartford, Chris Trossen, Pete Smith, Chas Borner, and Warner Doles, who always seem ready to drag

me back. Special acknowledgments go out to Dave Stansel for his recent efforts, and Mike Stackpole,

who continues to keep in touch with everything.

My heartfelt appreciation also goes out to my wife, Heather Joy, who continues to indulge my selfish

need to lock myself away for days and weeks. And to my children, Talon, Conner, and Alexia, who pick

that lock all too regularly or not often enough—I can’t decide.

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And because I would find hair balls on my pillow if I didn’t: thanks to Chaos, Rumor, and Ranger, our

Siamese cats, for keeping our house in strict order. (And Loki, our dog, for his frequent infusions of

happy chaos.)

For he owned and displayed such remarkable ability that even as a private person it was spoken

of him that he lacked nothing but the kingdom to be a king.

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli

1

Cheops

Seventh District, Nusakan

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Prefecture IX, Republic of the Sphere

8 September 3134

Thick, viscous fog shrouded the Willamette Valley, creating the worst whiteout conditions Jasek

Kelswa-Steiner had ever seen. It stretched the battlefield into a canvas of thin shadows and brief, pale

flashes of fire and lightning. Lasers strobed in snatches of emerald green and angry red. Cerulean beams

from particle projector cannon arced back and forth. Occasionally, a bolt of the man-made lightning of

the PPC slashed into the shadows, grabbing one in a spectral aura like Saint Elmo’s fire, drawing a brief,

cold outline around an armored vehicle or a BattleMech.

Jasek could only guess if it had been the enemy, or one of his own.

Violent eruptions of fire slashed a path through the knee-high sward of tall grasses and Scotch broom as

a flight of missiles hammered down from the closed heavens. He ducked reflexively, as if he could drag

theGriffin back by force of will.

Blackened earth pattered against the screen.

Smoke mixed into the fog, tainting the frosted blanket with a gray, dishwater color.

Appearing at nearly point-blank range, two shadows raced forward. Jasek knew they were enemy tanks

even before the vehicles opened fire. They probed through the thinning curtain, relying on instruments or

instinct. Light autocannon firespang ed off the BattleMech’s arms. The dark forms solidified in an instant,

showing themselves as Skanda light tanks. Angular lines and their dropped nose marked them certainly

as belonging to Clan Jade Falcon.

Bullet-shaped treads chewed up the sward like hungry mouths. They raced to either side of the camera,

trading out autocannon for medium lasers and laying in a blistering cross fire. The camera view hitched

and swung around, following the left-side Skanda. Return fire came late, scarlet-tinged lasers splashing

armor from the tank’s rear quarter.

At nearly 120 kilometers per hour the tanks raced off into the fog, disappearing quickly. The scene

slowed, catching the Skandas as thin shadows once more, and froze just before they disappeared.

“There!” Jasek threw the remote to his best friend and aide-de-camp, Niccolò GioAvanti. Jasek came

out of his chair and prowled a tight box around a kidney-shaped desk. Lean and muscular, the

thirty-one-year-old leader had the powerful grace of a stalking cat. “Look at that.”

He gestured to the Tri-Vid viewer inset into one of the office’s dark, walnut-paneled walls. This

compilation of gun-cam footage had been specially edited to give him an overview of an

intelligence-gathering raid against the world of Ryde, where one of his Stormhammer units had run into

intolerable weather conditions and stiff Jade Falcon resistance. It was showing him a lot more.

“Hauptmann Falhearst’sGriffin has a Cyclops XII extended-range laser mounted on its right arm. What

the hell is he doing, not using it?”

Niccolò GioAvanti rose from his own chair and set the slender remote on the edge of Jasek’s desk. His

mouse brown hair was cut short and straight across the back and sides except for a family braid twisting

down over his left temple. His eyes were an unsettling pale blue and never seemed to blink enough.

Wearing dark slacks and a flowing white shirt under a dark vest, he created a stark contrast to Jasek’s

dusky features and crisp dress-gray uniform. Which was likely the reason he dressed that way.

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Jasek watched as his friend squared the remote against a glass-topped holopic base that projected a

clenched gauntlet into the air over his desk. Niccolò was obviously stalling, giving Jasek a moment in

which to regain his composure. Thankfully, Jasek’s noble birth and inherited title did not stand between

the two men. Niccolò himself came from a fairly influential merchant family, and twenty-two years of

friendship had eroded any formality due a Landgrave and a ducal heir.

“Perhaps if we issued Tri-Vid remotes to our pilots,” Niccolò finally offered, “letting them slow the

action and review it a time or two before making their decisions.”

Jasek glowered. Eighteen months on the world of Nusakan, sitting out a self-imposed exile, had not

improved his mood. “Don’t twit me over being stuck here, Nicco.”

His friend raised an eyebrow. “Who thought Nusakan would be the perfect base of operations?”

“I did. And it was. Is!” He laughed dryly as his tongue tripped him up. “I just thought the key word

would beoperations , notbase .”

Still, the barb stuck. Jasek snagged his desk chair and dropped back into it, testing the springs, which

creaked several loud protests. The warm smell of rich leather wrapped around him as he rocked back

for a moment, studying the ceiling. The scent reminded him of his father’s office, and that memory

unlocked the door to so many more.

Skye will never need your kind of leadership.

Shock. And a warm thrill of anger.

We’ll see what Skye needs, Father. If you think The Republic will stand on its own merits, you’re

going to be greatly disappointed.

Obviously not for the first time.

That last conversation with Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner, his father and Lord Governor of Prefecture

IX, continued to echo through his thoughts. It had angered Jasek in the DropShip, lifting off from Skye.

Chased him all the way to Nusakan, where Niccolò offered him offices and support out of the GioAvanti

mercantile assets in Cheops. Drawing like-minded warriors to his standard, the Stormhammers, Jasek

had stripped Prefecture IX of what little defense it mustered. Then he waited for his father to call him

home. To admit to being wrong.

Duke Gregory did neither.

And Skye very nearly fell.

Jasek scrubbed one hand over his face. Opening his eyes, he found himself staring at the

clenched-gauntlet hologram projected over its glass-eyed emitter—the symbol of House Steiner and the

Lyran Commonwealth. The mailed fist was burnished copper with silver chasing. The background was

dark blue, nearly indigo, the same color as his eyes.

A promise, she’d said, giving it to him. He very nearly smiled.A token of our shared resolve.

Which, as it turned out, was not all they had shared.

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But he couldn’t live inside memories, even pleasant ones, for long. Niccolò waited patiently, right elbow

braced on the back of his other fist, right hand tapping a knuckle against his chin. Jasek knew his friend

would wait as long as it took; he had never outlasted Nicco in any game of patience.

“All right,” he finally admitted. “So it’s not fair to expect perfection out of the Stormhammers.”

He had splashed two fingers of dark whiskey into a tumbler earlier. It sat on his desk, untouched and

unwanted. Leaning forward, he reached past the glass and stabbed at the remote, continuing the gun-cam

footage. He left the slender wand slightly canted toward the edge of the desk, knowing it would annoy his

friend.

On the Tri-Vid, the scene cut to another camera. This one, according to the information tag scrolling

along the bottom of the screen, was mounted on a Hasek mechanized combat vehicle. More fog. A

shadow grew and coalesced into theGriffin that had been under fire only a few seconds before. The

fifty-five-ton war avatar showed laser scoring along its left leg and right flank, and jagged armor where its

left-shoulder plating had been ripped apart in an earlier engagement. A long-range-missile system sat on

its right shoulder. Its lasers appeared intact, stubbing out of the centerline and mounted on the outside of

its right arm. The BattleMech’s “head” had one of the best range-of-views of any design, Jasek knew,

with more than eight square meters of ferroglass curving around the cockpit.

Standing nearly nine meters tall under most circumstances, the BattleMech crouched, twisting from side

to side as if expecting another attack at any moment. Jasek tried to imagine what Falhearst’s HUD had to

look like—a tangle of icons and data tags. What had the Mech Warrior been thinking, trying to regroup

in the face of a determined assault, cut off from the Stormhammers’ DropShip?

Jasek watched as the Hasek disgorged two squads of Purifier infantry. The battle armor troops fanned

out in front of theGriffin , mimetic armor blending them into the sward with perfect camouflage. Only the

bending grasses and scrub brush betrayed their passage as they moved forward to act as an

early-warning picket. Slowly, too slowly, the combined-arms lance advanced. He said so aloud.

“This isn’t five and six,” Niccolò reminded Jasek, referring to The Republic’s prefectures that bordered

against the Capellan Confederation. “We haven’t seen real combat in more than forty years. That much,

at least, Devlin Stone did accomplish.”

“Yeah, well, where’s Stone now?” Jasek asked, not expecting an answer. Niccolò did not volunteer

one.

Of course, both men had been raised on Devlin Stone’s “accomplishments.” His status, perhaps

deservedly, as the war hero who saved the Inner Sphere from Word of Blake’s Jihad. The campaign to

form a new Republic and promote peace through a policy of economically enforced disarmament and the

intermingling of cultures.

Jasek had endured such lessons from his father as well as in his formal schooling. Duke Gregory was a

true believer, one of Stone’s early supporters when the bulk of Prefecture IX had been known as the Isle

of Skye. For generations, Skye had sought independent rule from House Steiner’s Lyran

Commonwealth. Then Devlin Stone dangled the carrot of The Republic in front of them, and Duke

Gregory helped lead Skye into Stone’s camp. Soon The Republic of the Sphere had gobbled up nearly

all worlds within 120 light-years of Terra, humanity’s birthplace.

But to Jasek’s way of thinking they had merely traded one lord for another, and the grandeur of House

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Steiner for an upstart with dreams of utopia.

His friend agreed. “For all his speeches of forging a new path,” Niccolò had said, “there are still two

types of government: republics and principalities. We may style ourselves The Republic of the Sphere,

but we are still Stone’s hereditary fiefdom. And without him, we founder.”

Jasek clenched his jaw as theGriffin struggled forward through the fog, sniped at by Jade Falcon

tormentors who materialized as half-visible ghosts or simply guessed well based on the Clans’ superior

instrumentation. A stream of energy from a PPC blasted through the thick curtain and sloughed away a

ton of armor in a wide swath across the ’Mech’s chest. A StormhammerPanther made brief contact, the

smaller ’Mech leading a pair of Scimitar hover tanks and a long line of Cavalier battle armor infantry. For

a moment, it looked as if the full unit might reconstitute itself and make a stand.

Then the Jade Falcons hammered into their flank.

AGyrfalcon led, arms thrust forward, alternating between large lasers and medium-weight autocannon.

Two Skandas—maybe the same two from before—charged in at its side, challenging the Hasek MCV,

with a Kite recon vehicle trailing and adding its SRMs to the hard-hitting assault.

The Cavalier infantry managed to swarm one Skanda, jumping onto its top and ripping away large

chunks of armor. They thrust arm-mounted lasers into the crew space and filled the cabin with lethal

energy. The Purifiers, by design or just bad luck, ended up in the path of the Kite. Like a lawn mower,

the hovercraft slammed through their formation, its nose crumpling. Bodies flew to either side, broken

and lost.

The Stormhammers shattered.

Rather than stand their ground, pitting two ’Mechs against the oneGyrfalcon , thePanther broke left

with its Scimitar support and theGriffin right. The fog claimed both, separating them as the Falcon

MechWarrior hammered the Hasek’s nose into unrecognizable scrap. TheGriffin sliced its lasers at the

other fifty-five-tonner, but it lit off jump jets and rocketed up, out of sight, before suffering much damage.

Jasek stood, scooping up his drink and carrying it with him as he walked a slow perimeter around the

outer wall of his office.

“I’m tired of waiting, Nicco. I’m done watching. I’ve sat by while the Jade Falcons tear up our worlds

these last two months, and I’m telling you that it’s killing me. Skye very nearly fell! I feel like I’m the one

lost in that damnable fog, and I don’t know where the next blow is coming from.”

Niccolò leaned against the side of Jasek’s desk. “But look at how much more we know compared to

twelve months ago. Even twelve weeks ago.”

Jasek shrugged, looked down into his drink. Amber liquid sloshed back and forth. “We know nothing.

Wesuspect . We suspect that other prefectures are having just as much trouble with the loss of the HPG

network, and we suspect that the Falcon incursion is more than they claim—this ‘hunting expedition’ to

destroy the Steel Wolves.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Niccolò disagreed. “Weknow what worlds the Falcons hold, where

they are strongest and weakest. We also know that your father has accepted that Skye cannot stand on

its own.”

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“Granted,” Jasek said. A tight smile cracked his stern expression. “At least there is that.”

When the Jade Falcon force hit Skye itself, the only reasons the world did not fall were the presence of

Tara Campbell’s Highlanders and the intervention of Anastasia Kerensky’s Steel Wolves. Three rival

factions coming together in the face of a common threat: how his father have hated that. Would he have

rather had his son, and the Stormhammers, by him then?

Or was he just that stubborn, to look the other way even in the face of overwhelming odds?

Was it time to find out?

On the Tri-Vid, the scene cut back once again to theGriffin ’s own gun-cam footage. The fog thinned

as the BattleMech slogged its way up a gentle slope, rising above the disturbance. A final, upward jog of

broken stone lifted it over a thick blanket of cotton, the camera swinging back and forth with theGriffin

’s even gait.

The Hasek was lost back in the gloom. Only a limping trio of Purifier infantry remained, scurrying around

theGriffin ’s feet like feeder fish sticking with their shark.

But this shark was wounded, and hunted by predators stronger than itself. Jasek raised the tumbler to his

lips, inhaling the whiskey’s strong scent, then set the glass back on his desk when he saw the first Jade

Falcon ’Mech lift itself from the fog bank, rising up on the same open ridge. A bird-leggedVulture , with

Elemental infantry scurrying about its feet.

Off to the right side anEyrie also swam up from the white depths, hauling a Kinnol main battle tank in its

wake. TheGriffin shifted left, the camera finding a trio of Skadi swift attack VTOLs jumping up on

horizontal fans, their heavy-class autocannon swinging in search of targets.

Like true sharks, the Jade Falcon forces circled the trappedGriffin . The screen washed into a gray

haze of static. This, Jasek knew from the report, was when his Mech Warrior transmitted the video logs.

They had only voice transmissions after that, captured by the DropShipNoble Son before liftoff. He

didn’t have the heart to listen to them again. His warrior had gone down swinging, taking theEyrie and

two Skadis with him.

His warrior was dead.

That was what there was to know.

“The Falcons are here to stay,” Niccolò said with certainty. Although he was no military mind, his

political acumen and advice had never failed Jasek. “You know this.”

He nodded. “I do. They came back to Ryde, even after the Steel Wolves beat them there. Which means

they’ll be reinforcing Kimball. Glengarry, Zebebelgenubi, Summer—they have quite the foothold already,

and they’ll be coming back for Skye. These Clanners don’t leave things half done. They’ll be coming

back.”

“So what will you do?”

Jasek leaned over one corner of his desk. The polished wood felt cold to the touch. “All that there is left

to do. Decide the where and when of the final battle. The Archon’s Shield is ready, and most of the

Lyran Rangers are back from the intelligence missions I sent them on, aren’t they?”

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Niccolò nodded. “Tamara Duke should make planetfall tomorrow.” The way he said it, it sounded

almost like a warning. “With the kommandant’s arrival, I believe Colonel Petrucci’s report will put the

Rangers at sixty percent force readiness.”

“Orders will go out over my signature today, drawing up whatever we can of the Tharkan Strikers. If

we’re moving, I want everyone with us. Including you, my friend.”

“And where are we going?”

Jasek stared down into his desk’s polished surface, at the darker version of himself that looked back out

of the wood grain. Niccolò knew, of course. But Nicco also knew that armies did not march except on

the express order of their commander. “Home,” Jasek said with a sharp breath.

“We’re heading back to Skye.”

2

Cheops

Seventh District, Nusakan

9 September 3134

Hands tight on the control sticks, worried for every step, Kommandant Tamara Duke limped her

beloved “Eisenfaust,” her “Iron Fist,” into Cheops. TheWolfhound BattleMech swayed precariously

every time she put weight on its right leg. A grinding screech stabbed into her ears, and her atmospheric

system labored to pull the acrid smell of stressed metal from the cockpit.

A pair of VV1 Rangers raced ahead, holding up traffic at each intersection and allowing her to pass

safely. Horns honked in a near-continuous salute. People gathered on walks, on building rooftops. They

waved to the returning Stormhammers, to her, but she could not afford the distraction of waving a

massive hand back at them.

Sprawling full length into the middle of the street would be a very undignified way of returning to Jasek.

Tamara gritted her teeth, leaned left in her seat, straining against the five-point safety harness. She tried

not to look at the damage schematic displayed on one of her auxiliary screens. It drew a wire frame of

the lean machine. Blackened frames outlined a ruined right hip, and a wide swath of destroyed armor

slashed across her Eisenfaust’s back. Inside the frame a small icon flashed between black and red,

warning her of damage to the massive gyroscopic stabilizer that nested behind and below the

BattleMech’s fusion reactor, laboring to keep thirty-five tons of metal and myomer upright. If not for the

gyro, her Eisenfaust would have been hauled into Cheops on the back of a flatbed recovery vehicle.

Instead, her sideways list was translated through the bulky neurohelmet she wore, turning her own sense

of equilibrium into a regenerative signal. This signal was used to calibrate the BattleMech’s stride and a

natural swing in its arms. It adjusted by the smallest amount her weapons’ targeting system in combat.

And it formed a continuous feedback loop between neurohelmet and gyro.Shuffle - step . . .Shuffle

-step . . . the gyro’s tortured screech and her ’Mech’s occasional grinding shudder added fuel to the rage

she had held deep and quiet since the betrayal.

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Her mission had been fairly straightforward. An intelligence-gathering raid against the world of Towne,

one of very few worlds left with a functioning HPG station in this second year of the blackout. Go in,

download all intel, and leave Jasek’s propaganda message playing on a continuous loop over as many

local stations as possible. It was one of several similar missions being conducted by the Stormhammers

across several different prefectures, but hers had been handed to her personally by Landgrave Jasek

Kelswa-Steiner.

His salute had been textbook formal. His handshake lingered just for a moment. The memory of Jasek’s

touch had kept her warm through the dull weeks of travel and the tense ninety-three minutes it had taken

to accomplish their goal.

Then she had lost it in the confused terror as her own soldier turned weapons against her, nearly

destroying theWolfhound .

But she would see Jasek again, and she would have justice. The Stormhammers tank crew who had

fired on her was dead, its vehicle left burning on the streets of Towne. The man she suspected of

organizing the attempt on her life was right under her sights.

Her targeting reticle actually floated over the outline of the VV1 Ranger, in fact, in which Hauptmann Vic

Parkins, her exec, rode as a passenger. Parkins, who never stuck a foot out of line but always seemed to

be there whenever anything went wrong. Off the field he fraternized with many of the junior officers. On

the field, his frequent repeating of her orders down the chain promoted the feeling that he actually ran the

Lyran Rangers’ Second Company, not her.

It would have taken only an instant to bring weapons on line and light up the VV1, but the driver might

not be complicit. Also, she imagined that Jasek would want to squeeze Parkins himself, rooting out any

further treachery in the Stormhammers.

The two of them together, Jasek and Tamara, would eventually form an unstoppable team. She knew

this.

First Hill was coming up, and Tamara focused even harder on the task of maneuvering her crippled

Eisenfaust. The semisteep slope was not an easy climb, forcing her to lope up in a kind of sideways step

with her stronger left leg always lower on the hill. The city of Cheops was laid over three sides of a

sculpted mountain. Each of the five Rises had been perfectly leveled and squared, each Hill graded

exactly the same as every other. The effect was stunning: to anyone arriving at the DropPort to the south,

the city looked like an ancient pyramid. Governor Paulo and Legate Lorenzo, the political and military

leaders of Nusakan, had estates on Fifth Rise, at the very top. Jasek and the Stormhammer senior

officers had been offered residences up there as well, but their leader had declined. The GioAvanti

industrial facilities on First Rise had everything the Stormhammers required, from apartments and

cafeterias to corporate offices (now in use as administrative and training facilities) to a large set of

warehouses (converted into ’Mech bays and vehicle repair shops).

She angled across an empty parking lot, now the Stormhammers’ parade grounds, and straight for one

of those warehouses. Giant doors already stood rolled back, and she needed to duck forward only

slightly to get inside the cavernous interior. The building still showed signs of its retrofitting, with the

second-story floor ripped out of the middle and a series of catwalks and chain falls dropped down from

the ceiling for elevated work, but it served.

The VV1 Rangers both peeled away, finding parking slots along one wall. A technician in bright orange

coveralls waving two glowing wands directed Tamara to an empty berth, helping her maneuver in the

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tight quarters with a series of semaphore-style signals. Finally, he crossed the wands overhead, indicating

a good position.

Tamara gratefully banked her fusion reactor and instituted shutdown and security procedures for her

Eisenfaust, unplugging from the control systems and peeling herself out of the cockpit command seat. Her

cooling vest went into a locker built into the back of her seat. The neurohelmet on an overhead shelf.

Grabbing a set of breakaway fatigues, she pulled them on over field boots, shorts, and a tube top, which

was all she wore in the hot seat. She snapped the legs shut and fastened the cuffs around her ankles, then

unlocked and cracked open the cockpit hatch.

The mixed scent of welding and grease assailed her. The techs were slow in bringing her a gantry, so

Tamara unrolled the chain ladder from theWolfhound ’s head. Scaling it to the ground, she dropped the

last meter, landing in a crouch in front of Leutnant-colonel Alexia Wolf.

“Wolf,” Tamara sighed, straightening up. Belatedly, she added, “Sir.”

Alexia’s smile was pro forma. “Welcome home, Kommandant.”

The two women eyed each other carefully. Alexia Wolf stood six centimeters shorter than Tamara, with

a soft fall of brown hair and an athletic frame. She never wore makeup, which did not detract from her

hard beauty and made the colonel even more intimidating. Tamara reflexively reached up to tousle her

own black curls, repairing some of the damage caused by wearing her neurohelmet.

“Landgrave Kelswa sent me,” the colonel announced, shortening Jasek’s name in the most common

manner but awarding him his formal title. “I am to take delivery of the data you brought back.”

“Are you?” Tamara asked. She felt as if the data wafer, her copy of the intelligence recovered on

Towne, were burning in her pocket. The request cut her to the quick and struck her as inappropriate for

any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Alexia Wolf was not in her chain of command.

“We heard about the assaults by the Jade Falcons. I would think our data would now be of secondary

importance.”

“Intel is never secondary. Information is ammunition, Kommandant.”

Tamara nodded. She recognized the saying as an old Lyran Commonwealth military adage. “Even so, I

would rather deliver it in person. I have an urgent matter to discuss with Jasek—the Landgrave.”

“You can pass that through me as well,” Alexia offered. “If you want a direct meeting, request it through

Colonel Petrucci.”

Tamara visibly bristled. Alexia Wolf’s promotion to commanding officer of the Tharkan Strikers, the

Stormhammers’ third and least-experienced combat group, had caused a great deal of talk. On the face

of it, so far as Tamara Duke was concerned, Wolf had no business in command. She wasn’t a member

of the former Republic military, as was Tamara and most of the Stormhammers, nor one of the

supporters who had rallied to Jasek’s call from nearby worlds of the Lyran Commonwealth.

Alexia was a freeborn descendant of Clan Wolf exiles, who had trained as a MechWarrior but failed her

Trial of Position. In disgrace, she had left the Arc-Royal enclave and traveled through Lyran space to

The Republic. Caught in the blackout, by fate or by fortune she had been on Skye when Jasek’s stand

against Duke Gregory suddenly opened up a need for warriors.

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Loren L. Coleman - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 11 - Blood of the Isle

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