case white - pt 04 - backroads at night - battletech.pdf

CASE WHITE:

BACKROADS

AT NIGHT

Jason M. Hardy

Backroads at Night • Page

Bremen, Germany

Terra

15 March 3068

The knock came in the middle of night, because such things never

happen during the day. Ingrid set her face in an expression of con-

fused surprise in case it wasn’t who she thought it was. Caution

had become reflex long ago.

“Who is it?” she asked when she arrived at the door. The house

had no external cameras, no sensors, no security of any sort. Such

devices would not have fit her image.

“It’s Carl,” said a deep voice. “Your cows have wandered away

again.”

She sighed. “All right. Why don’t I meet you by the barn?”

“Fine,” he said.

The woman who called herself Ingrid had to grab a few tools and

put on warmer clothes before heading outside. She’d be out for a

while. First she’d have to gather the cows, which hopefully would

be done in a matter of minutes. Then she would have to sit down

and talk to Carl and discuss why he (or someone on assignment

from him) had set her cows loose, and what it was they really

wanted to talk to her about.

v v v

Sorrin Buell was where he was supposed to be. This place, this

time, was right.

Everything else about the current situation was wrong.

Most of his command was gone. Blown up. Betrayed. Pieces of

the fleet might be burning up in the atmosphere over his head

right now. Tiny meteorites that no one on Terra would ever see.

Everything around him was dark. The North Sea, just out of sight

to his left, seemed to pull light into it. The countryside around

him would be green if he could see it. But he could only make

out vague outlines, just enough to make sure he only stomped on

grass and bushes instead of walking through trees and houses.

Occasionally he saw a flash of light here or a bright moving dot


there, some vehicle or plane traveling at a far distance from him.

Nothing showed up on his scanner. No one paid him any atten-

tion.

There was one light that was constant. It blinked steadily in front

of him. Every half hour or so he thought he might just turn it off,

but that really wasn’t a good idea—he didn’t want it to get worse

while he wasn’t paying attention. So he left the light on and re-

ceived constant reminders that the right leg actuator was bad. He

had jogged through Belgium, limped through the Netherlands,

and now he was practically staggering through Germany. He had

no confidence that he’d make it even as far as the Elbe.

He was lucky he was piloting a Falconer. His cockpit was slung

between the legs, keeping the center of gravity low. If he was

above an actuator that was malfunctioning that badly, he could

easily have cracked it and toppled back in Belgium.

It wouldn’t be long, though. Soon the flashing sensor would turn

solid, and he’d go from staggering to—

Not soon. Now.

The light was solid. He stopped. He had no choice. He was in

Germany, he was on Terra, he was hundreds of kilometers from

where he wanted to be, he was alone and he couldn’t move.

And through all this, he hadn’t taken out one Blakist. It wasn’t

supposed to be like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.

v v v

The cows hadn’t wandered far. The gate hadn’t been open long,

it was night and the beasts had no desire to wander away from

their prime source of grazing. Still, a few of them had strayed out-

side the gate, so Ingrid and Carl gathered them up, then took a

few moments to repair the “broken” gate. When they were done,

Ingrid stood and observed their handiwork while Carl scratched

his head.

“Well, that’s done,” she said. “While I’m up, I suppose I’ll go check

on the chickens. You can come along if you’d like.” Carl shrugged

in a theatrical way, and followed her to the coop.

The building was cramped, though surprisingly clean for a chick-

en coop. A few of the chickens were up early and clucking softly.

The most important bird, though, was always awake—an electron-


ic chicken whose clucking filled the coop with a static field. In all

likelihood, no one would be trying to listen. But caution was a

habit.

Carl wasted no time once they were in the coop. His lackadai-

sical demeanor disappeared, and new creases appeared in his

concerned face.

“Some of them made it to the ground,” he said. “We hear they’re

heading to Riga.”

“Not much for us to do,” Ingrid said.

“No,” Carl said. “But some of them landed near the Somme and

are passing through here. They’re beat up.”

“Disabled?”

“Or about to be.”

Ingrid took a deep breath. It had been so long. All the exercises

had seemed like play-acting. Now …

“Fine, then. We know what we need to do.” She walked toward

the door of the coop. “We’ve certainly practiced enough.”

v v v

Every ’Mech jockey, from the day he or she first saddled up, in-

dulged in the same routine. It was a habit shared by drivers of all

vehicles, from carriages to cars to airplanes and beyond, devel-

oped over thousands of years. When something goes wrong with

your ride, you get out and look at it. You might not have the skills

or the know-how to do anything about the problem, but you look

at it anyway, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

Buell stood under his Falconer and looked up at the top of the

’Mech’s right leg. It didn’t look good—laser blasts had carved

through the armor, and scorched black was now the dominant

color in the area. He could tell it was damaged, but the visual scan

told him nothing else useful. And with that, he was at the end of

what he could do. He didn’t even have the proper harness to climb

up and get a closer look.

He needed a plan. Disabled ’Mech or no, he couldn’t just sit in

the middle of Blakist territory. He had no idea how he had avoided

the Blakists for so long—where was everybody? But there was no


point in questioning his good fortune. As long as he avoided cap-

ture, it was his duty to keep moving.

He only had one mode of transportation still working, so that

was what he’d use. He pointed himself east-northeast and started

walking. That would do for the short term, but not much more—if

he didn’t find something faster soon, he’d miss the whole party in

Riga.

He looked back at the Falconer after he’d walked only a few hun-

dred meters. There wasn’t much to see—a black silhouette against

a slightly lighter sky. A timer silently ticked away inside it. Before

long the machine would be engulfed by a tremendous explosion,

leaving no parts behind for salvage. Hopefully, he’d be far enough

away before it blew to avoid the attention it would attract. He prob-

ably already had lingered too long before finally turning away.

He moved forward again, the tall grass whispering gently against

his legs. He tried to feel the earth below his thick-soled boots, to

absorb the softness of the soil. This was Terra. This was what he

had been born for, to take it back.

Except the landing was a disaster. The mission was a disaster.

For the thousandth time in the past few years, good had taken on

evil in the Inner Sphere and good had gotten the living crap kicked

out of it. He’d wondered, not too long ago, why so many merce-

naries had fallen to the allure of service to the Word of Blake. Now

he was wondering why he didn’t just get in line and cross over as

well.

Not seriously, of course. He’d put his sidearm on his temple and

fire before that happened.

He was getting distracted—the last thing he could afford. He

refocused, looking around him carefully. Looking everywhere,

making sure he’d see anyone or anything before they saw him. It

was hard—the ground was so dark, and grass and shrubs seemed

to reach up to pull anything near them down into their blackness.

He looked at certain stretches of land dozens of times and still

could not be sure they were unoccupied. But anyone looking for

him should have the same difficulty seeing.

The ground was mostly level, the minor rises and falls doing lit-

tle to alter his speed. He kept up a steady ten kilometers an hour,

which would get him into Riga by … the afternoon of the nine-

teenth. Far too late.


He needed a road. And a vehicle.

There. To the south. A glow in the sky. There was a city in that

direction. It would have everything he needed. It would also

have plenty of Blakists ready to kill him on sight (he didn’t have

a change of clothes in the Falconer, which left him wearing Com

Guard white), so he should find a vehicle before he got any closer

than the city’s outskirts.

He angled south. Still he ran free, saw no one. He didn’t ex-

pect this. He was in the heart of the jihad and he was running

through fields on Terra and he hadn’t seen a Blakist in hours. He

didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. Shouldn’t there

be checkpoints every mile? Helicopters flying overhead, covering

the ground with searchlights? Vans roaming through the country-

side blaring Blakist propaganda? Warmongering totalitarianism

shouldn’t be this peaceful.

It might have been the darkness, or it might have been the fact

that he was letting himself get distracted again, but he never saw

the hand that reached up and grabbed his ankle.

v v v

“They have him,” Carl said.

“Sedated?”

“Of course.”

“All right. And his machine?”

“Our people are there, but there’s not much we can do without

him. He needs to let us in and shut off the self-destruct—soon.”

Ingrid eased off the skimmer’s accelerator. Fast-moving objects

tended to draw official attention, so she kept it to a sedate thirty-

five kph. The languid pace practically drove her insane, but being

slow and free was always better than being fast and under arrest.

“Do we know what’s wrong?” she asked.

“We’ve got a pretty good idea. We saw how it was walking, and

the scars on it are pretty obvious.”

“Can we fix it?”

“Of course,” Carl said, acting affronted that she’d even asked.


“Can we fix it on time?”

Carl exhaled. “How soon is on time?”

Ingrid looked at the countryside, scanning from one side to the

other. The views were identical. “We’ll find out from the pilot.”

“Will he tell us?”

“Isn’t that what we’ve been training for all this time? To get infor-

mation when we need it?”

“Training isn’t reality.”

“We better hope to hell it’s at least close.” She tapped her fin-

gers near the base of her driver’s-side window. Was she forgetting

something important? “What about the other one? What do we

know about the other one?”

“His machine’s in better shape, but he’s in worse. Some leg prob-

lems. We had to sedate him to work on the injury. He won’t be

walking right for a while, but he’ll be driving okay. Good enough

to move along. He might be ready to go first.”

“Do we have his machine?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, good.” Then she remembered what she had forgotten.

“And how much time do we have before the Falconer blows up?”

“Not long. That’s why we only paralyzed the pilot from the waist

down. Hopefully we can get what we need before the thing goes

up. They gave him another drug. He should be plenty talkative

soon.”

Ingrid pressed down on the accelerator. The surge of power was

gratifying. She climbed all the way up to fifty-five—then pulled it

back down to forty. Slow and steady, she told herself. Slow and

steady.

v v v

Buell balled up his fist and hit his right thigh. Hard. His leg

bounced a little, but he didn’t feel the movement. Well, maybe a

little something in the hip. But certainly no pain, and he couldn’t

move either leg just by trying.


But he was comfortable. He had to give his captors—or rescu-

ers, maybe—that much credit. He had the whole back seat of the

speeder to himself, and he would have been able to stretch his

legs if he could move them.

He watched the dark landscape go by and wondered if he was

going in the right direction. There was no moon he could use to

get his bearings, and the stars above were unfamiliar.

He stared at those stars through the speeder’s window, hoping

they would communicate with him somehow. Shouldn’t there be

something in his DNA, in his soul, that would respond to them?

These were the stars humanity dreamed about. The stars Kearny

and Fuchida looked at when they developed the science that would

eventually take humanity to those stars and beyond.

He waited for them to speak to him, but in the time he stared,

they became nothing more than distant lights.

He had determined early in this journey that the two people in

front had no intention of speaking to him. They might not even

share a common language with him. They didn’t wear Blakist

uniforms, or uniforms of any sort; that was the only piece of infor-

mation Buell had about their identity.

Was that right? Buell had a vague notion in the back of his head

that he’d been talking to them for a while, saying all sorts of things.

But he’d just barely woken up. All of that talking must have been

a dream. Hadn’t it?

He wished someone else was here, one of his friends, but he

didn’t know where they had ended up. He last saw Cazale running

south, being harassed by two battlearmor squads. Verren had

taken a volley of missiles to her cockpit and gone down. And he

hadn’t seen Glover since he’d left the DropShip.

He looked to his right, across the car. Was that a glimmer of

dawn? If it was, that meant he was heading approximately north.

Possibly even drawing closer to Riga, though not at the pace he

needed.

He looked back down at his legs. Did one of his thighs just twitch?

He focused, and thought maybe one of his toes wiggled. Progress,

he thought. I’m making some sort of progress.

v v v


Dawn was not their ally. They’d managed to move most of their

work indoors, but they’d still be performing enough unusual

outdoor activity that anyone paying close attention would no-

tice something was happening. Hopefully, though, recent events

would encourage watching eyes to look elsewhere.

The good news, Ingrid thought, was that the mechanical element

was under control. They had disabled the self-destruct thanks to

the pilot’s drug-induced babbling. They had a diagnosis of the

’Mech’s problems, they had a plan and it fit the timeline. There

would be unforeseen delays—there always were—but at the mo-

ment, it looked like the work would proceed as it should.

The human element was another story, and dealing with that

was Ingrid’s responsibility. What made her work especially dif-

ficult was that if she failed, all the others’ efforts would be for

nothing.

She took a deep breath, then pushed open a gray door. The

ComStar adept sat in a metal chair, his ankles and wrists mana-

cled.

She didn’t bother with any words of introduction or small talk.

“Everything we need to do will go faster and smoother if you can

trust me.”

The adept frowned at her. His dark eyebrows creased into a sharp

vee. He pulled his arms up so hard the chair beneath him shook.

He responded with one word. “Trust?”

“We are here to help you.”

The adept did not respond. His long, angular face was well-suit-

ed to glowering.

Ingrid looked at her watch and decided she didn’t have time for

this. She walked forward until she loomed over him, something

people of her one-point-six-meter height didn’t normally do. “We

have been waiting for this. We have been planning. We are ready,

and we are your only hope. You do not have time to waste.”

The adept seemed on the verge of shouting a reply, but then he

sank into his chair as his neck and face muscles relaxed.

“If I say I trust you, will you take me out of this chair?”

“Of course.”

Backroads at Night • Page 10

“Thank you. I trust you.”

Ingrid nodded. She reached into her pocket and pressed a but-

ton that undid the magnetic clasps on the manacles. The adept

stood, rubbing his wrists.

“What now?” he said.

“Follow me,” Ingrid replied. She walked toward the door and

opened it.

The adept followed on wobbly legs. She walked slowly to ac-

commodate him.

“Where are we going?” he asked as they headed down a dark

hallway.

“To a meeting,” she said.

That must have been a trigger—the adept decided to make his

move before anyone else was around. Ingrid heard his charge the

moment he started it, and she was ready. She had been ready

since she freed him. At her height, her best moves were low to the

ground. She fell to the floor, planting her arms, and swept her legs

out behind her. She caught the adept easily, sending him to the

ground. He was good, already turning to catch himself and spring

back, but she was faster. She scuttled away, came to her feet, and

pointed a gun at the adept’s head.

“You’re unarmed and unarmored,” she said. “I’m not.”

He stopped in his tracks and slowly raised his hands. Then, odd-

ly enough, he smiled. It was wan but seemed genuine.

“You’re quite fast,” he said. “You knew what I was going to do

before I did it.”

She did not smile in return. “When you live under the Blakists,

you learn to expect two things—violence and betrayal. We are al-

ways ready.”

The adept’s smile disappeared. He nodded briefly. “Okay. I guess

we have a meeting to go to.”

v v v

Buell wasn’t aware there were other people in the room until

they spoke. The room had been pitch-black when he entered, and


after his escort guided him into a chair, a spotlight illuminated

the two of them and a battered plastic table, but little else. Buell

couldn’t even say how big the room was. When the voice spoke, it

echoed, but that could have been a speaker-aided trick rather than

an indication of the room’s real size.

“We are in the process of preparing your machine,” the voice

said. It was a male voice, worn and leathery.

“You are?”

“We are. We hope to have it operating tomorrow. Then you can

be on your way.”

Buell squinted into the darkness, looking for some clue to the

speaker or where he sat. He couldn’t make out anything.

“Who are you people?” he asked.

Naturally, there was no answer. People who wanted their iden-

tities known generally did not go to so much trouble to keep

themselves hidden.

“We are repairing another machine alongside yours.”

Buell scratched his head. “Okay.”

“A Darter. Driven by one of your people.”

“A what?”

“A Darter.”

“We don’t have those. I mean, we didn’t land any of those here.”

“The adept tells us he salvaged the car after losing his vehicle

two days ago.”

“Who is it? The adept, I mean.”

“You will talk with him soon,” the voice said.

“Okay,” Buell said. He looked at the woman who had brought

him here. The many lines on her face were all horizontal, and he

couldn’t read a hint of emotion. He looked back in the general di-

rection of the voice.

“So you’re trying to fix my ’Mech?” he said.

“We are fixing it,” the voice said.


“Okay,” Buell said. “Why?”

“Because we want it to work,” the voice said, and Buell could hear

the tone of a parent becoming impatient with a child’s questions.

Buell looked at Ingrid again, then once more stared into the blank

part of the room.

“Who are you people?” he asked again.

There was no response for several seconds. Then the woman

next to him tilted her head slightly. “He’s gone,” she said. “We

should leave too.”

Buell stood with her. The voice hadn’t told him much, but the

basic facts of the situation were plain. “I didn’t know there was a

resistance movement on Terra,” he said.

The corners of the woman’s mouth creased slightly downward.

“We haven’t been able to advertise. And our work … our work has

been difficult.” She led him out of the darkened room.

“Can I ask you when the resistance formed? How long have you

been at this?”

The woman did not turn around when she answered. “Since they

landed,” she said. “Since the first day they landed.”

v v v

At first, Ingrid wasn’t sure why she had bothered with Carl’s

meeting. She didn’t like that he got to sit in the shadows while she

had to feel the heat of the spotlight, sitting in the rigid metal chair.

Of course, it didn’t matter if the Com Guard adept saw her face

well enough to memorize every detail—if the Blakists got their

hands on him, they would surely kill him without bothering to in-

terrogate him. There were parts of this operation that were much,

much riskier than going face-to-face with this pilot.

Carl had insisted that he would learn valuable information just

by watching the pilot’s face. They needed to know the level of

his resolve, Carl said. Why should they bust their ass to repair

his machine and jeopardize their network if he wasn’t going to do

something with their gift?

Ingrid wanted to tell him the interview wasn’t necessary. This

was a Com Guard adept on Terra—he must, she imagined, be full


of fire and passion and a desire to punish the separatists who had

taken the cradle of humanity for their own.

But she’d watched the adept’s face when she walked into his

room, and throughout the interview, and passion seemed far, far

distant. He was befuddled, bemused, but mostly discouraged.

When nothing else was occupying his thoughts, his chin sank

toward his chest and his eyes drooped. He had walked toward

Bremen with more firepower in his machine than Ingrid’s entire

cell possessed, but he had no fire. They would set him loose in his

’Mech tomorrow, and Ingrid was concerned that he would leave in

a saunter, not a run.

Even now she had to keep her pace slow so she did not leave

him behind. She wanted to turn and slap him to see if that would

bring him back to life, but she had an inkling it wouldn’t.

Maybe the other one would help. She hadn’t met him, she hadn’t

heard anything about him, so she could only hope he had more

fire in his belly than this one.

They passed through a few more dark corridors, then entered

another windowless, sparsely furnished room. This one, though,

was evenly lit, so the other person in the room was plain to see.

Like the man behind Ingrid, the man sitting in the room wore

ComStar white. He looked on the verge of jumping out of his

chair—his leg bounced constantly, and his arms folded and un-

folded, dropping to his sides before he lifted them again. Ingrid

became nervous just looking at him.

When he saw her, the fidgety one became more agitated. He ran

his hands through his hair, one after the other in rapid succession,

and blinked several times.

“You should, you should, you should get me out of here. Take me

to my car. I can do something. I can help. I can do more than just

sit here and … ”

He stopped because the other adept had entered the room.

Abruptly, he was still. His eyes widened.

“Sorrin?” he said.

Ingrid turned to look at the one behind her. His eyes hadn’t lifted,

but a smile of relief crossed his face.

“Lane,” he said. “You survived.”


The fidgety adept jumped to his feet. “Sorrin, I’m glad to see you.

You don’t know how glad. Do you”—he glanced quickly at Ingrid

and lowered his voice—“do you know what’s going on here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Your vehicles are being repaired,” Ingrid said impatiently. “That

is all that is going on.”

The fidgety adept turned on Ingrid, bringing his face far too close

to hers. “Then why do you have me here? Sitting in a little room

like a prisoner? What do you think you’re—” He was interrupted

when the adept Ingrid had brought in, Sorrin, touched the fidgety

adept’s arm.

“It’s okay,” Sorrin said. He jerked his head quickly toward Ingrid,

a move she assumed she was not supposed to see. But subtlety

was not a strong point of ’Mech jockeys. “Don’t worry about it.”

The fidgety adept stopped talking but he didn’t stop moving. He

rocked on his feet like his arches were convex and kept scratching

his legs. Ingrid let the two of them stand in nervous silence for a

few moments, then, hating herself even for that limited bit of cru-

elty, let them off the hook.

“Perhaps you would like a few minutes alone,” she said. “To

talk.”

Both of them nodded gratefully. She smiled—very slightly—at

them. “I’ll be back shortly.”

She walked down the hall at a slow pace, since she knew she

wouldn’t get far. Sure enough, Sorrin stopped her after a dozen

steps.

“Could we move into another room?” he asked in what he likely

hoped was an innocuous tone.

She decided to make the discussion as short as she possibly

could. “You have never been here. To these rooms. Any of them.

You know nothing about one or the other. Perhaps I brought the

two of you to a room we have wired for sound. Or perhaps, when

you ask to be moved, I would take you to another room that is

wired for sound. Or perhaps every room here has the potential of

being wired. This is our compound. If we want to listen to you, we

will. While you are here, while you are anywhere on this planet,

you should always— always—assume you are being listened to.”


She turned again and continued walking away, thinking that if

there was any piece of advice she was qualified to give, it was

that.

v v v

He wanted to know how Lane had gotten to ground. How he

had survived the onslaught near the Somme, what happened to

his vehicle and crew, and how he’d found a Darter and made his

way here. But it suddenly felt like he hadn’t seen a friendly face

in a year, so all he could do was stare. Lane Glover looked pretty

good—his crooked nose, which led his face by a good two cen-

timeters, looked a little scraped, but the rest of his thin face was

unmarked.

Glover still seemed nervous, but he was becoming calmer. He

sat once their escort was out of sight, and eventually most of his

twitches were confined to his left arm and his eyes, which con-

tinually scanned the room as if he expected Blakists to walk right

out of the walls.

Glover spoke before Buell could put any words together. “Do

you trust them?”

Buell frowned. “The grabbed me in a field, knocked me out, then

had my legs numbed while they dragged me here. They didn’t

make a good first impression. But they say they’re the resistance.

Well, I guess they don’t come right out and say it, but they act like

it.”

“I didn’t know there was a resistance,” Glover said. “Have they

done anything while they’ve been, you know, resisting?”

“I haven’t heard.”

“Can they really help us?”

“Maybe.”

“They told me they’re trying to get our things ready in time for us

to make it to Riga. How do they know we’re going to Riga? If they

know, who else knows?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what do we do?”


“How many choices do we have?”

Glover didn’t answer. He fell silent again, eyes still skittering to

take in the whole room.

Then Buell found the words. He figured out the first thing he

wanted to say, and plenty more came after it.

“I looked for you when we landed. It was such a mess down there,

we’d lost all our support from above, and I thought, damn, I’m go-

ing to need some eyes on the ground, so I looked for you. Called

you over a few bands, checked the scanner to see if anything that

could be your vehicle was on it, but I couldn’t pay much attention,

because there were so many of them. They were waiting, they

knew what has happening above and they were just waiting to

clean us up below. I got off a few shots, I think I hit some of them,

but I never saw any of them go down. They were coming from all

angles, I was about to be hemmed in, so I moved. Moved east, fast

as I could go. The comm was a mess—I’m sure you heard it—just

a bunch of random voices yelling, no one making sense out of

anything. And I wanted to turn back, to find some of you, but I was

already limping, I didn’t know how far I could go. So I kept moving

east. And they didn’t pursue, or at least I didn’t see them.”

Buell paused long enough to take a breath then kept talking.

“And I made it here, and as far as I know I didn’t bring any of them

down, and I didn’t know if any of you made it out. But at least you

did. At least someone besides me.”

Glover was suddenly calm. His eyes looked right at Buell. “You

know there’s more than me. You’ve heard them on the comm.

We’re going to have a good force at Riga. And if you’d turned back,

if you’d gone back in, all you would have done was make sure that

we had one less ’Mech in Riga. It was chaos back there, we weren’t

going to win any ground. In Riga, we can get something done.”

Buell nodded, his head feeling oddly numb as he did. “The way

they fired … they knew everything. They were so accurate when

they fired.” He shook his head. “They hit Verren like she had a

tracking device in her cockpit. It was the worst ambush I’ve ever

seen.”

Glover was fidgeting again, his leg bounding like his shoe had

springs on the bottom. “Yeah, yeah, it was bad,” he said. “It wasn’t

the way it should’ve been. But that was yesterday. Or the day be-

fore, I can’t keep track. Now it’s today. What are we doing today?”


Buell shrugged. “I was trying to get to Riga.”

Glover smiled. “Me too. So will these people help us get there?”

“They say they will. But I don’t know why they would.”

“It doesn’t matter why as long as they get us moving.”

“So what do we do to make sure they’re really going to help us?”

Glover suddenly stood still. “We act like we believe them. We

pretend we’re all on the same side. Then we see where that gets

us.”

v v v

The workshop was glorious. Sparks flew, metal clanged, people

ran from place to place barking questions and orders, and the

whole room thrived with activity and life.

All of which left Ingrid terrified. Before now, her entire resistance

life had been conducted through whispers in dark rooms. At these

meetings, she spent much more time looking for Blakist opera-

tives than she did looking at the face of whomever she was talking

to, afraid that every whisper of treason would reach the heavens

and bring down the wrath of the occupiers. The workshop, in its

few hours of life, had contributed more noise to the planet than

their years of whispering. How were they not found within the first

ten minutes?

It had now been ten hours since the adept’s Falconer was dragged

underground. She couldn’t believe they even had this space, but

someone in the past ten years had asked what they would do if

they needed a place to conceal a ’Mech, and in that decade they’d

come up with this—a silo whose walls had been coated with lead

and insulation so that no one on the outside could discover what

was happening inside. So far it seemed to be working.

Even though she felt as if Blakist soldiers were sure to storm the

silo at any moment, she couldn’t help but take a minute to admire the

machine. It wasn’t the most elegant ’Mech she had ever seen—the

low-slung torso and the triangular legs with their wide feet made it

look like it was using a walker—but the squat arms, one with a PPC,

the other with a gauss rifle, more than made up for its gracelessness.

She imagined what this machine could do to their enemies—stomp-

ing on their patrols, blasting through their barracks, and blowing

each and every local administrator straight to hell.


It had better blow up something. The past decade had provided

very few opportunities—they had no allies, no help but each other.

They had caused minor annoyances here and there, but some-

times she wondered if the Blakist authorities even knew there was

a resistance. Or if they knew but didn’t care.

She looked at the sparks flying from the right leg of the Falconer.

If they didn’t know before, she thought, they would know once this

thing was set loose. Provided the repairs held.

There wasn’t much time. The Falconer would need to be on the

road soon if it was to make it to Riga, and the silo, which had

been waiting patiently to fulfill its mission, would not survive the

’Mechs departure. They planned to have the ’Mech blast its way

out, taking the whole thing down and hopefully burying any evi-

dence of their activities beneath the rubble. It would be an isolated

casualty of the Com Guard invasion.

They had to choose a rendezvous spot, a place they could bring

together the Falconer and the Darter without attracting the atten-

tion of the planet’s masters. They had to get the adepts off on time

and safely. After that …

If they succeeded, it would be their biggest coup by far. What

happened after that shouldn’t matter.

She’d been trying to convince herself of that since Carl first

described what they were going to be doing, since the eventual

outcome was clear to her once he finished talking. She’d already

made the big choices in this affair—everything after that was just

making sure it wasn’t in vain.

v v v

The sun was setting. They hadn’t given Buell and Glover a room

with a window, but they’d at least moved up to one with a skylight.

Buell could have kept his eyes on his chronometer just as eas-

ily, but for some reason he found himself staring at the skylight,

marking time by watching the color fade from the sky. The darker

it got, the more edgy he felt, until he was shifting in his seat as

much as Glover. He imagined the two of them looked like mental

patients.

The door to their room opened. The woman—she’d told them to

call her Ingrid—was back. She looked at Glover first.


“Your car is almost done,” she said. Then she looked at Buell.

“Your job is trickier. More specialized parts. But they tell me they’re

on schedule.”

Both men nodded, and Buell even managed a smile. “Good,” he

said. “Thank you.”

Ingrid looked back at Glover. “There is one last question about

the car.”

Buell rolled his eyes. She’d done this three times already, asked

Glover about some of the finer points of repairing his Darter. Glover

answered each question the same—it wasn’t his car. He’d man-

aged to salvage it in the chaos of the landing. They probably knew

more about its workings than he did, so whatever they decided to

do with it would likely work out fine.

But there was something different this time—a wary look in Ingrid’s

eyes. Buell didn’t know what it meant, but he took note of it.

“The onboard electronics are all configured to Blakist settings

and channels.”

Glover grimaced. “I know. They didn’t do me much good while I

was on the run in that thing, but I didn’t have time to pull over and

set things right. I was driving blind.”

“We could return it to factory settings if you’d like and you can

program it from there.”

“That would be fine. I don’t know how to mess with Blakist stuff

anyway.” Glover smiled at Buell. “You’d think they would have

kept at least some of our software when they broke off. But I guess

they have to do their own thing—ComStar stuff is just a contami-

nation to them.”

“All right,” Ingrid said. “It’s almost dark. We’ll be moving your

vehicles shortly, so it won’t be long before we make the final ren-

dezvous. Prepare yourselves.” She left before either adept had a

chance to say anything more to her.

“She takes her business seriously, doesn’t she?” Glover said af-

ter the door shut.

“I imagine that ten years under Blakist occupation will wipe the

smile off anyone’s face,” Buell said. “It’s amazing there’s any re-

sistance at all on the planet. If we’d have known—if we could have

contacted them before the landing… ”


“There’s no way we could’ve found them,” Glover said. “Buried

as deep as they are. Anyway, it seems like a pretty ragtag opera-

tion—a few farmers on the outskirts of town. I don’t know how

much they could have done for us.”

“You may be right,” Buell said, but he wondered. These “farm-

ers” were repairing his ’Mech, and they had complete confidence

that they’d be able to handle the job. Where did they get that kind

of knowledge? Where would they even get the parts?

It would be nice to have time to get those questions answered,

but he hoped to be in Riga by morning. There wouldn’t be time for

chat. And even if he had all the time in the world, he didn’t know

how much information he would ever be able to pull out of Ingrid.

v v v

Ingrid didn’t know how they got the ’Mech from the silo to the

rendezvous point, and she didn’t want to know. If anyone had told

her how they intended to do it without being spotted, she likely

would have immediately seen a dozen holes in the plan, and she

would have been so worried about the ’Mech being detected that

she wouldn’t have been able to keep her mind on her own job—

getting the adepts where they needed to be.

The others had come up with a plan on their own, and somehow

it had worked. The ’Mech was in a small clearing in front of her,

nothing more than a faint, dangerous silhouette. It looked won-

derful to her, but no doubt looked even better to the adept riding

with her.

His feet were on the ground before the skimmer stopped mov-

ing. He ran ten paces toward the Falconer, then stopped.

“That’s incredible. When I walked away from her—I figured I’d

never see her again. And here she is. And you say she works?”

It was a foolish question, but Ingrid could forgive it. “Yes. Of

course. Maybe not like new, but much better than it was.”

He shook his head. “How … I mean, I don’t mean to be rude,

but how did you … well, you seem like farmers. How did you fix

this?”

“The less you know about how we work, the better. For all of

us.”


“I mean, it’s not like you could have just bought the parts. Or had

the right parts just sitting in storage. You had to get the parts from

somewhere, and how many options do you have? I mean, really … ”

His face fell. His enthusiasm disappeared as his mouth turned

into a rounded “o.” He looked, Ingrid thought, ridiculously young.

But at least he was smart enough to finally realize what she as-

sumed would be fairly obvious.

“There’s only one place you could get parts, especially this quick-

ly. You took the parts from them. From their workshops.”

She didn’t respond. There really wasn’t anything to say.

“You wouldn’t have had time to plan a break-in. So you must

have an inside man. Someone who walked in and took the parts

for me. But they watch those parts carefully, every nut, every bolt.

Your inside man—they’ll know when he went in, when he went out.

They’ll trace it back to him—then they’ll try to use him to get to all

of you! This—this one thing could … it could … ”

The realization made him speechless. It also made him motion-

less, and there was no time for that.

“We did what was necessary. Go make it worthwhile,” she said.

He looked at her, and she could see he wanted to thank her or

hug her or some such nonsense. What she had to say next would

get rid of that impulse.

“You need to know something. The other adept—he was lying.”

“Lane?” the young adept frowned. “About what?”

“About his car. We went through the records, saw what it had been

doing recently. He used the systems.” She paused. “Including the

spotting gear.”

“The spotting gear.”

“Yesterday. About five hundred kilometers from here. He had all

the systems turned on and was using them expertly. Guiding sev-

eral missiles to their destination.”

Abruptly the adept in front of her plopped to the ground. He sat

there, legs akimbo, staring at nothing.

“You must know that’s how they did so much damage to your

landing force. Insiders. Saboteurs.” In spite of the grim news she


was delivering, she smiled crookedly. “Would that our insiders

were half as effective.”

The dazed adept offered no response.

She let him sit for a time, but her patience quickly grew thin.

There was no time. However, when she spoke, she made her voice

as gentle as possible.

“All we have are the tools we are given—or the tools we take. In

front of you is a powerful tool. You are on Terra. Sacred soil. But

you will do it no good if all you do is sit on it.”

The adept blinked once, then pushed himself to his feet. He

walked like a drunk, but he walked toward the ’Mech.

Just short of it he stopped and turned. She tried not to show her

exasperation when he looked at her.

“Thank you,” he said. “Stay alive.”

“You too,” she said, then turned to leave before the ’Mech pow-

ering up drew attention to the clearing.

Her words of farewell had been honest—she truly hoped the ad-

ept would survive to Riga and beyond.

But it was a hope burdened by reality. She climbed into her skim-

mer to return to her farm and whatever fate the morning would

bring.

v v v

Behind Buell was a trail of bodies. People who had died in the

skies above Terra, near the Somme, and now in Bremen. The in-

side man, at very least, would likely be dead before the next day

was over. He didn’t know how long the rest of them would sur-

vive.

Verren had died. He had seen the shots that got her. The mis-

siles that targeted her cockpit. And then he had turned to see a

car—a Darter, most likely—and he thought: That’s the Blakist bas-

tard. That’s the one who tagged Verren.

He ran west-northwest, once again moving through grassy

plains, once again keeping a careful eye for any other vehicles

or lights. All those dead, and he hadn’t done anything while he’d


been on Terra. Not a damn thing. Now, thanks to what Ingrid told

him, he had a chance to strike a blow against the Blakists—if he

could bring himself to do it.

The voices of the dead and soon-to-be-dead screamed in his

ears. Verren’s face hovered in front of him. He knew he had no

choice, but for a few more minutes he’d pretend that he did.

He’d had some time to think since he’d gotten the Falconer mov-

ing. He was pretty sure what was going to happen. There wasn’t

much he would have to do, just wait and let events happen. Let

one more disaster happen.

He wished he didn’t believe Ingrid. But he did. Immediately. He

knew her sacrifice. He owed her his trust.

It finally started just after midnight. He’d been on the road over

two hours, running briskly, drawing near Hamburg, when a call

came over the comm.

“All right, Buell, I’ve got you on my scanner,” Glover said. “Do

you see me?”

Buell didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

“Okay, okay, I know I’m being informal, but it’s just you and me

out here right now. We can stand on formality when we get to

Riga, you know what I mean?”

Buell checked his scanner. The small scout car was indeed show-

ing up, a few kilometers away. He’d have to be careful—the Darter

could easily outrun him if he gave Glover the opportunity. When

he replied, he strained to make his voice sound natural.

“I hear you. It’s going to be a long night—I probably won’t have

the energy to be formal.”

As he said that, he tried to remember the last time he had slept.

It probably had been while he was in space. He hadn’t slept yet on

Terra (the time he spent sedated didn’t really count, he thought).

Maybe he’d rest after they took Riga. Maybe there’d be a rolling

barracks where he could grab a nap and rest peacefully over the

Terran ground. But that was at least twenty-four hours away.

The ground kept passing under him. Glover, like a good scout,

bobbed and weaved in front of Buell, keeping an eye on things,

letting Buell know if he saw anything interesting. But it was late

and most of the countryside was empty, so Glover fell into a pre-


dictable pattern. Buell watched that pattern sadly for a good half

hour before he finally decided to act on it.

“Remember when we talked a few days ago?” he said. Talking to

Glover was a foolish thing to do—he couldn’t imagine any good

would come of it—but he had to do it. “We talked about what we

would see, all the places we’ve heard about. Geneva, the Alps.

Maybe make it to Prague. Like we’d be taking the whole planet

the minute we landed on the ground. We thought—dammit, Lane,

we acted like we thought we could end the whole conflict just by

taking Terra.”

“We can still take it,” Glover said. “Battered but unbowed, you

know?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen at Riga. We’ll show

up, give whoever is there a fight. But we’ll have to be working

together. We’ve got plenty of them to fight. We can’t be fighting

each other.”

“You said it. Unity.” Glover’s voice sounded different. Maybe it

was just static, or maybe he was starting to get worried. Buell

knew he needed to wrap this up.

“You were tagging units for the Blakists. When we landed. That’s

why the missiles were so accurate. That’s why Verren … ” He swal-

lowed. “I know you did it. That’s why I’m doing this.” He paused as

he prepared to fire. “I wanted you to know.”

He was ready on the trigger, but he didn’t fire yet. He gave Glover

a few seconds for some final thoughts. He hoped he wouldn’t

waste it on an empty denial.

He didn’t. “Well, good for you,” Glover said, his voice a tone

Buell had never heard. “Score one for the infidels. A few thousand

for us, one for you.”

Buell fired. The shots ripping through the night would light up

the skies. The explosion that followed would make an even bright-

er beacon. But the countryside remained empty.

He walked the rest of the night alone. He’d just littered the road

behind him with one more body. He moved forward because he

had to. There was too much death behind him for him not to see

this through to the end.

case white - pt 04 - backroads at night - battletech.pdf

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