Battletech hour of the w.., p.1
BattleTech: Hour of the Wolf, page 1
BattleTech: Hour of the Wolf
Blaine Lee Pardoe
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. The Prodigal Children Return
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Interlude
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Interlude
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Interlude
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Interlude
II. The ilClan
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Interlude
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
About the Author
Battletech Glossary
Battletech Eras
The BattleTech Fiction Series
To my grandson, Trenton Davis Hester: may all your hits be crits! I promised him that I would do what I could to “make BattleTech cool again.”
To him, and all of the fans in this book: “You’re welcome!”
To my mother, Rosalee Pardoe, who passed away during the writing of the last chapter of this book’s first draft. I miss you more every day, Mom. While you never liked reading BattleTech, I think you would have liked this one.
Acknowledgments
At a BattleTech writer’s summit, we decided it would be best to expand some of the stories and scope, so parts of the original draft of this book ended up in Divided We Fall, Rock of the Republic, Icons of War, and Children of Kerensky. I highly recommend that you read those books before this novel. While not required, they will give you a more complete story. Hour of the Wolf, however, is intended to be a story all on its own.
This novel wraps up a storyline we started in 1989, one I was honored to be a part of all of the way through. To say this is a massive undertaking would be an understatement. As such, it was impossible to tackle alone. Fortunately, I had good warriors in my keshik fighting by my side.
Our rocking creative and editorial team spent two years hammering out the key elements of the new era and some of the events in this book. Special recognition goes to:
Brent Evans
John Helfers
Ray Arrastia
Philip A. Lee
Jason Schmetzer
Michael A. Stackpole
Loren Coleman
Randall N. Bills
The fans of BattleTech are part of what makes it great. The following fans of BattleTech volunteered their names to be in this book. A number were “volunteered” by the creative team as well, or simply honored because they rocked. The Kickstarter backers are marked with a “(KS).” They are all canon now! Seyla!
(KS) Robin Apel
(KS) William (Will) Arnold
(KS) Ian Butler—Brigadier Graham Badinov
(KS) Andreas Büttner—Druss Ward
(KS) Colby Cram
(KS) Dr. Randolph P. Checkers, Esq.
(KS) Craig Evans—Pharaoh
(KS) Kevin Markley
(KS) Eris Griffon
(KS) Raymond Guethler
(KS) Justin Hall
(KS) John Healy—Physician Hobgood
(KS) Spencer Huff—Khalus Pryde
(KS) Aleksey Kopysov—Kaor
(KS) Chris Kornfeld
(KS) Aaron Krull
(KS) Andrew Krull
(KS) Jason Mayberry for Kai Nihari
(KS) Brendan (Bren) Mayhugh
(KS) Jason Mischke—Stroud
(KS) Daniel Nichols—Janus
(KS) Matthias Pfaff—Amanda McKenna
(KS) Shawn Rains—Colton Mcleod
(KS) Marvin Sims—Marv Roshak
(KS) Aaron Tarr—Star Colonel Kalidessa Kerensky
(KS) Jakapan Thunpithayakul
(KS) Christopher Toh—Merlin Buhallin
(KS) John Traver—Jack Traver
(KS) Jathniel Velazquez—Jathniel Kerensky
(KS) John Watson
(KS) Michael Mahoney—Sorsha
(KS) Lyle Wojciechowski—Star Colonel Havi Bekker
David Abzug
David Baker
Agustin Sierio Barj
Matthew Behrens
Ted Burger
Billy J. Caldwell
Kim Chapman
John “Fratricide” Craig
Paco Cubillo
Amy Delaney
Benno deJong
Stephen Dukes
David DuJordan
Adolfo Fernandez
William Fife
Noran Ghall
Oliver Haake
Thomas Heath
James “Tanker” Herring
Dirk “Derek” Kobler
Jean-Jacques Labbé
Jeff Lamm
Chew Hwee Leong
Joshua Adam Lonbom
Brianne Elizabeth Lyons
Dean Manning
John McNary
Jared Micks
Ed Miller
Joe Mooney
Rolf Peter
Max Prohaska
Andrew Quay
Krzysztof Strato Raczyński
Keith Richmond
Jamie Rife
Andrew Roy
Sebastian Schröder
Rowland Seckinger III
Volkmar Seifert
David Skinner
Jeremy Spurlock
Travis Sumpter
Lonnie Tapscott
Paul Tomaszewski
Cory Vigdal
Josh Waltz
Powers Wartman
Ben Weingart
Shawn “Gorilla” Willett
Ludvig Yabar
Sharizal Zarie
Introduction
Excerpt from: Terra Fallen: The Rise of the IlClan, by Dr. Randolph P. Checkers, Esq. (The Institute of Inner Sphere War Studies, 3161)
“The road to Terra is a thousand points of light in the night sky.”
—Nicholas Kerensky
To fully appreciate the events that unfolded on Terra in the spring of 3151, it is necessary to recap the entire journey of humankind into space.
Between 2690 and 2765, the Star League was the manifestation of humanity at its pinnacle. Each of the ruling lords of the Inner Sphere’s Great Houses were united under a single interstellar government that brought peace and stability for generations. The ills of humankind were put to rest. Innovation and prosperity ushered in a golden age.
Then came Stefan Amaris, the Usurper, who assassinated the ruling Cameron family on 27 December 2766, and seized power through a bloody coup in the heart of the Star League, Terra. Our brightest period was snuffed out by its darkest villain. There is a bit of cosmic justice there.
Aleksandr Kerensky, Commanding General of the Star League Defense Force, fought a bloody and vicious twelve-year war to reclaim his beloved Star League from Amaris. When he did, he realized the House Lords were falling back into their old animosities and rivalries. Rather than see his army used or destroyed in that looming conflict, he gathered his forces and set out on an Exodus into the vastness of space on 5 November 2784.
Without the SLDF to keep the peace, the Star League dissolved, and the Great Houses declared war on one another. For centuries, the House Lords battled each other in the Succession Wars, each trying to establish themselves as the new First Lord of a Star League. None succeeded.
Meanwhile, Kerensky’s SLDF fought their own civil war on planets far from the Inner Sphere. Under the general’s son, Nicholas Kerensky, the Clans emerged near the beginning of the 29th century. Named for fierce animals and ideals, the Clans were forged in the fires of war. Successive generations of Clan warriors were genetically bred, and their technology surpassed that of the Inner Sphere.
The Clans knew they would eventually return to Terra. According to the Founder, the first Clan to capture Terra would become ilClan—the Clan above all Clans—and would lead the united Clans in reestablishing the Star League and ushering in a new golden age.
In 3049, the Clans returned to the Inner Sphere in a stunning invasion, conquering a large piece of it during their single-minded drive toward Terra. But the techno-religious cult ComStar stopped the invaders short of their objective by challenging the honorbound Clans to a proxy war for Terra on a single planet, winner take all. On the agricultural world of Tukayyid, ComStar’s military forces defeated the Clans and forced a fifteen-year term of unsteady peace starting in May of 3052.
Stunned by the return of Kerensky’s SLDF descendants, the Inner Sphere created its own “Star League,” little more than a fragile alliance, which struck back at the distant Clan Homeworlds. In 3060 they eradicated one Clan, the Smoke Jaguars, almost entirely. For a time, the threat abated as the Clans st
Then came the Jihad, a holy war waged by the Word of Blake, a separatist faction of ComStar that sought to bring all of the universe under its authoritarian rule. The Inner Sphere burned, and entire planets were eradicated in nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks, types of warfare not seen in centuries. No realm was spared, and at times it seemed the guttering light of the Inner Sphere might be extinguished forever.
Then one man, Devlin Stone, united humankind, ended the Word of Blake’s atrocities, and formed the Republic of the Sphere. Centered on Terra and patrolled by the Knights of the Republic, Stone beat swords into plowshares better than any man before him, and there was peace for the universe for the first time in years. Some Clans, such as the Snow Ravens and the Ghost Bears, settled in the Inner Sphere and Periphery, and integrated with struggling Inner Sphere governments. But Stone ultimately disappeared; secretly having himself cryogenically frozen, should he be needed in the future. Then again, that is the popular version of the story.
The hyperpulse-generator network, which maintained interstellar communications throughout the Inner Sphere, collapsed on 7 August 3132 due to sabotage by unknown forces, cutting off 80 percent of Inner Sphere worlds from each other. Messages that would have been transmitted in seconds had to be physically carried by JumpShip to their destinations, sometimes taking weeks or months.
The sudden lack of communication rekindled old fears and hatreds, fueling conflict more than ever as suspicions grew and rumors flew about who had perpetrated the Blackout and why. The Great House leaders, and their intelligence services, were suddenly blinded and instantly paranoid. Some leaders took advantage of the communication collapse to settle old grudges. As the Blackout dragged on for months, then years, rearming was inevitable.
Everyone saw the Republic of the Sphere as ripe for conquest or sought to settle centuries-old scores with their rivals. Old enmities flared among the Great Houses once more, and wars broke out, most feasting on the worlds of the Republic. Humankind had endured war so long that it was part of our culture, which made the Republic a natural target. Stone’s dream of peace was consumed in the flames of war. Historians call it the Dark Age, a term both sorrowful and fitting, a testimony to how numb we had all become to war and the chaos it brings.
The Clans, specifically the Jade Falcons and Wolves, once more turned their attention to Terra, entertaining thoughts of becoming the ilClan and forging a new Star League. Whichever Clan conquered Terra first would rule over all of the Clans and the Inner Sphere for the first time in history.
As an eleventh-hour defense, the Republic erected a technological barrier, Fortress Republic, which made jumping into its dwindling space—and therefore close to Terra—impossible, as ships that attempted to jump bounced back to their point of origin, mangled and broken. Then Devlin Stone returned from cryogenic sleep after fifteen years, prepared to save what was left of his empire, but found that little remained of the once mighty realm he had created.
There was a certain inevitability about the approaching storm. By 3150, it was clear that the Clans were coming to Terra, relentless and bent on fulfilling their destiny. It seemed that the end of one age was upon humankind, and a new era was about to begin—though for the betterment of civilization or its destruction, none could say…
Part I
The Prodigal Children Return
Prologue
DOMINION INTELLIGENCE BRIEFING ROOM
ASGARD, RASALHAGUE
RASALHAGUE DOMINION
16 DECEMBER 3150
Khan Dalia Bekker listened as the head of Clan Ghost Bear’s Watch, Star Colonel Havi Bekker, finished his summation on the recent movement of Clan Wolf forces.
Things are unfolding rapidly, Dalia thought, leaning forward in her tall-backed chair. Speed was always the foe of the famed Ghost Bear patience.
The Khan had called Havi Bekker into the intelligence briefing room to provide analysis based on some startling reports. The circular room had a white-and-black marble shelf around the perimeter to display the masterpieces of the Ghost Bears. The room’s colorful artwork—all painted, sculpted, and woven by Clan warriors—offered Bekker little comfort this morning. Still, as her green eyes fell on the artwork, pride swelled in her chest. Only the Ghost Bears encouraged their warrior caste to explore the arts, and as her eyes swept each piece, perfectly displayed against the mahogany wall panels, she felt as if her whole caste was in the room with her.
Havi Bekker sat at the end of the long rectangular table, opposite of Dalia, in a maroon leather chair. Prince Hjalmer Miraborg, with his immaculate short hair and light complexion, sat to her right. SaKhan Roy Jorgensson sat on her left, almost a negative of Miraborg. His hair was reddish-brown and only rarely encountered a brush. His jaw always had three days’ growth of red-tinged beard. Where Miraborg looked stately, Jorgensson always appeared as if he had just come from a battle.
Havi Bekker rarely displayed emotion. His face was ruddy, somewhat dark, with a small pink scar on his chin. It struck Khan Bekker as odd that Havi looked the part of a spymaster somehow, as if he had been bred for that role. His face does not reveal secrets, or convey any sense of emotion.
At Havi’s conclusion, Dalia took a moment before hedging. “That intel is most intriguing.”
Hjalmer glanced over at her, then back at Havi. “You are a master of understatement, Khan Bekker. If this information is true, Clan Wolf is mobilizing its entire touman.”
Roy Jorgensson jumped in. “They have done this before, when they relocated from their former occupation zone to this ‘Wolf Empire’ Khan Ward forged.”
Havi shifted uneasily in his chair. “With all due respect, saKhan, during that migration, we were unaware of their destination. This time, there is only one place they could take all of their front-line units, technicians, and equipment.”
“Terra,” Dalia said. The word hung in the air like the fading echo of a tolling bell.
“Aff,” Havi replied. “And this mobilization seems thoroughly planned and coordinated. Clan Sea Fox is providing additional JumpShips to expedite the move. It is clear this plan has been in place for some time.”
Dalia nodded. I expect nothing less from Alaric Ward.
“They are stripping all garrisons from their planets?” Prince Miraborg asked.
“Almost,” said Havi. “The units left behind are solahma for the most part, and some ungraduated sibkos—but there are very few. They are leaving their civilian populations, but taking their technician caste. It appears they are going all-in on seizing Terra.”
“Can they defeat the Republic of the Sphere?” saKhan Jorgensson asked.
“From our estimates, it would be a close match between their military forces,” Havi admitted. “There is a distinct chance that the Wolves can prevail. Their constant military operations have forged their ranks into seasoned veterans. The Republic has only a few experienced units.”
“Any signs of activity from the Jade Falcons?” Dalia asked.
Havi shifted again at the mention of the Falcons. “We are hindered with this accursed HPG Blackout, so there is a considerable delay in gathering and transmitting our intelligence data. That said, the Falcons have only shifted a few units closer to Terra—not the large-scale mobilization we are seeing from Clan Wolf.”
