Riposte

Another man, dark-haired and ruddy-faced, charged onto the ledge from below. He brandished a portable radio transceiver. "Tommy! Tommy! You gotta hear this!"

Tommy stood. "What is it, Reno?"

The excited man smiled and flicked on the radio. "Listen."

Static crackled from the speaker, then cleared, but the transmission was so faint that all three men huddled around the radio. The first voice they heard, coming in somewhat stronger than the others, Scott identified as coming from the Team Banzai member named Rawhide. "Banzai Base to incoming DropShips, please repeat identification."

The reply, coming in a woman's voice and featuring slightly rolled r's, ignored the question. "We show considerable activity near the Rockspire Mountains. Please confirm, Banzai Base."

Rawhide replied quickly. "Roger that. Two, repeat, two Kurita Regiments. Fifth Sword of Light and 36th Dieron Regulars approximately ten klicks south on the plains. Please identify yourself."

The female voice again let the question of her identity slide by. "Copy. Fifth Sword of Light and 36th Dieron Regulars. Anything else?" A strange squealing echoed beneath her words, but Reno's adjustment of the radio did nothing to clear it up.

The three men on the mountain ledge laughed as Rawhide's surprise crackled through the speaker. "Isn't that enough?"

"For a while, luv," she laughed in return. "For a while it might be."

Scott glanced up over Tommy's shoulder and saw a dozen glowing white sparks against the blue sky. Too bright to be stars at this time of day.Suddenly, it dawned on him what they were. Stabbing his crutch at them, he shouted, "Tommy, look! DropShips coming in!"

Tommy snatched the radio from Reno's mittened hands. Hitting the transmit switch, he broke into the conversation. "Rawhide, we see DropShips incoming!" He glanced over at Scott and got a nod to confirm his unvoiced question. "They're coming this way."

Rawhide's voice took on a strong edge. "Unknown forces, please identify. Are you the incoming DropShips?"

As the squeal sounded slightly louder, a lilt worked through the woman's reply. "That we are, luv."

"Dammit, who the hell are you and what's that caterwauling?" Rawhide exploded in exasperation.

"We're the best of the best, Banzai Base, and those are the war-pipes you're hearing." The woman's voice filled with pride. "We're the Northwind Highlanders, and courtesy of Prince Hanse Davion, we've left the service of Maximilian Liao. Plainly put, Banzai Base, after centuries in exile, the Northwind Highlanders are coming home."

49

Algot

Capellan March, Federated Suns

14 January 3029

In response to the light knocking on his half-opened door, Captain Andrew Redburn waved Leftenant Robert Craon into his room. "What is it, Robert?" Andrew took a last glance at the holodisc viewscreen to memorize the page number of the book he was reading, then shut off the viewer. "You don't look like you're enjoying your R & R."

Craon dropped himself onto the green, vinyl-covered couch set against the quonset hut's curved wall. "Something's odd here, Captain." Craon shrugged his shoulders eloquently, then sighed. "Things just aren't right."

Andrew nodded cautiously. "I've told you repeatedly, Robert, that we're just going to have to get used to the fact that the Davion Light Guards view our unit with some suspicion. You're all products of a non-Academy training program. The unit is configured differently, and they still feel stung by our little rescue of them on St. Andre. Face it, any Davion Guard unit is going to be cocky, and they're just not going to take well to half-trained recruits from the Capellan March."

Craon shook his head. "It's not that, Captain." He smiled briefly. "The guys in the first regiment are still acting like stood-up debutantes, but I expect that from them. No, their attitude is about the most normal thing around this place. It's other stuff that's strange."

Andrew smiled. "I know Algot is not the Axton Riviera, but it's warm and we're off duty. After six months in action, we deserve something of a rest."

Craon nodded, then leaned forward with elbows firmly planted on his knees. "I agree with you, sir, but I just can't kick this uneasy feeling." He nervously clasped and unclasped his hands. "You know how, when in a combat zone, you just have that gut feeling when something's about to pop? That's what I've got, and it's bugging the hell out of me."

Andrew nodded. You're not alone in that, Robert."Let's look at this logically. Anything else besides this gut feeling?"

Craon narrowed his eyes. "How about the fact that they won't let us travel off base. Sure, this place has everything a MechWarrior might want for rest and recreation, but what if I want to go climb a mountain? I mean, they have us at liberty, but not at liberty."

Andrew waved away that objection. "Standard operating procedure, especially for a unit like ours. If they need to assemble our people to head out and save someone's butt, we've got to be close enough at hand to be collected quickly. Keeping us on the base is the only way to be sure of being able to gather us up in anything approximating a short time. Besides, there are no good mountains on this flat dustball."

Craon nodded reluctantly. "Good point about the mountains, and the need to keep us close. I thought about the recall thing at first, but then I wondered why, given our uses as a quick-reaction force, they just didn't keep Delta company on an OverlordDrop-Ship at the jump point. It could cut transit time from the world and make us all that much faster to deliver."

Andrew thought the point was well-taken. "That's something I hadn't considered," he said. "Still, it's hardly enough to justify your uneasiness."

Craon nodded in agreement. "There're some other things, Captain. Have you noticed that we've not gotten any mail? I went down to the base message center to inquire about it and was told by a clerk that nothing had come in." Craon glanced down at his feet. "I talked to a woman in base ops and, ah, got her to check our status on the computer. As far as the whole AFFS is concerned, we're still on St. Andre. Not only that, but the rest of the Davion Light Guards are there, and the Twelfth Vegan Rangers billeted over on the other side of the camp is supposed to be on Buchlau."

Andrew leaned forward. "Come on, give. I can see from the look on your face that there's something else ..."

Craon took a deep breath. "Maggie—she's the woman at the base ops center—just laughed it off. She said it was a computer screw-up and that she'd seen lots of them during this whole thing. She said the computers are usually a couple of months behind what's really going on. Unless someone has faxed orders from New Avalon, nothing gets done. In fact, they consider that the faxes have more validity than anything the computer spits out."

Redburn frowned. "Fax?"

Craon leaned forward. "Orders that come printed out on paper. No discs, nothing. Just messages on paper that burns fast. Maggie says they come in by courier, but no one knows where the courier gets them. Weird, huh?"

Andrew nodded. "True. And faxes contradict what the computer says?"

"Yup." Craon licked his lips. "The computer reports that the warehouses where we have all our 'Mechs being stored—and I mean all the 'Mechs on the base, Captain—those warehouses are reported to be chock full of supplies and spare parts. In fact, the computer says there's enough spare materiel there to refurbish a whole regiment. And the computer reports there's nothing more than an infantry detail for base security!"