BattleTech
Also by Philip A. Lee
BattleCorps Anthology
BattleTech: Counterattack
BattleTech: Slack Tide
BattleTech: Onslaught: Tales from the Clan Invasion!
BattleTech
BattleTech: Hunting Season
BattleTech Anthology
BattleTech: Legacy
BattleTech: Gray Markets
BattleTech Magazine
BattleTech: Shrapnel, Issue #2
BattleTech: Shrapnel, Issue #3
BattleTech: Shrapnel, Issue #4
BattleTech: Shrapnel, Issue #5
BattleTech: Shrapnel, Issue #6 (The Official BattleTech Magazine)
BattleTech Novella
BattleTech: A Splinter of Hope
BattleTech: A Splinter of Hope/The Anvil
Shadowrun Anthology
Shadowrun: Drawing Destiny
BattleTech Hunting Season
Philip A. Lee
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
I. Hunting License
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
II. Fox Hunting
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
III. Open Season
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Epilogue
About the Author
Battletech Glossary
BattleTech Eras
The BattleTech Fiction Series
To David Crockett, who handed me my first BattleTech novel many years ago and started me on this crazy adventure.
Acknowledgments
A lot of people helped this book reach your hands, and a few of those who deserve special recognition are:
Jason Schmetzer, who bought my first BattleCorps story back in 2010. This novel is ultimately his fault.
Herb Beas and Ben Rome, who entrusted me with shaping the story that eventually became this book.
Randall N. Bills and Kevin Killiany, for laying such fertile groundwork in Pandora’s Gambit and To Ride the Chimera, the two Free Worlds League novels that preceded this one.
John Helfers, for his sage editorial advice.
Ray Arrastia, for all the late-night talks at gaming conventions where we mused about the future of BattleTech. I look forward to having many more of those in the years ahead.
Brent Evans, for moral support (despite him not being a fan of the Free Worlds League).
Craig A. Reed, Jr., who always has a “You’ve got this!” when I need it.
Ashleigh Felton, for invaluable insight on air demonstration squadrons.
And last, but certainly not least, my wife, Carrie Landers. Without her support, not a single word of this book would’ve been written.
Prologue
PHEASANT RIDGE HUNTING PRESERVE
NEW DELOS
ORIENTE PROTECTORATE
FREE WORLDS LEAGUE
4 AUGUST 3146
Philip Hughes sighted an aging, wrinkle-lined eye down the barrel of his shotgun, led the flushed pheasant just so above the treetops, and pulled the trigger. The report deafened despite his hearing protection, but the anticipated burst of chestnut feathers never occurred, much to his dismay. A trail of downy secondary feathers betrayed the pheasant’s flight back into the underbrush. It was far too late to take another shot.
He grunted and lowered the shotgun. Getting rusty in my old age. Eight decades have certainly taken a toll on the old reflexes.
“Almost had it, sir,” one of his perpetually optimistic valets congratulated from the gaggle of other hunters shooting at game nearby. “I’m sure you’ll bag the next one, no question.”
The young lad, Joel, meant well, but Philip had no stomach for empty sycophants today, well-meaning or otherwise. Something gnawed at his gut, a sense of foreboding that he’d neglected something important, forgotten to cross some t’s, dot some i’s, or perhaps left some vital Irian Technologies business unfinished before coming on this trip. Perhaps it was the weather, the darkened cloud-blanket covering New Delos’ whitish-yellow sun from sight.
Something in the air tingled like the static electricity preceding a lightning storm, only there was no storm on the horizon, just a grayish murk that spoke of a soft drizzle.
A few drops of rain splashed amid the gray fringe on Philip’s balding, weathered pate. “Well, Mr. Collins. I think this sprinkle is a not-so-subtle hint that it is time to take a break.” He held the scattergun by the barrel and handed it to Joel with a casual smile. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the little boys’ room.”
Joel held up an index finger. “Shall I fetch—”
Philip waved the boy off. “I don’t need bodyguards in the bathroom, even if it is outdoors.”
He didn’t wait for Joel’s flustered reply before wandering off into the trees for some privacy. In all honesty, he had no need to relieve himself, merely a sudden desire for solitude. A few moments alone, to work through this sour mood, would do him good.
The Pheasant Ridge preserve was his favorite hunting ground, one of the few things that could convince him to leave Jessica’s side. But this time he’d come here at her behest.
He had protested the trip at first, but not even a director on the board of IrTech, the oldest BattleMech manufacturer in the Free Worlds League, could truly deny a request from his wife—Jessica Halas-Hughes Marik. She was the Captain-General, the most powerful person in the entire Free Worlds League. She alone had possessed the strength of will to reforge the fractured League into something greater than the sum of its parts—despite the wayward provinces who still refused to join—and few had the strength to oppose her. Even for something so simple as a hunting trip.
Still, as Philip breathed deeply in the rainy air, he admitted to himself that the months-long trip away from home had done him some good so far, the sense of foreboding aside. He paused several meters from the edge of the forested cliff and looked out on the scene splayed out before him. The broad mountains in the distance, the endless stretches of evergreens, the ponderous, serpentine river winding far below… Not even the gloomiest weather could truly destroy the beauty of this part of New Delos.
Alas, he was too old to try his hand at hang-gliding or BASE jumping. Those were more his son Christopher’s affair. But if he could soar across the valley like the eagle that was House Marik’s sigil, what a glorious sensation that would be…
Some aspect of this grand vista pricked his heart with guilt. There were better, more important things he could—should—be doing at that moment. Hunting game on this idyllic planet felt like the height of decadence when the Free Worlds League balanced on the precipice of war against its prodigal provinces. He should have been at Jessica’s side, should have pushed IrTech to incre
ase production to ensure that the Free Worlds League Military remained flush with BattleMechs, tanks, and other materiel. But she had insisted he go: he’d not gone out hunting in far too long, and the League would not fall apart solely because the Captain-General’s spouse went on holiday.
There was nothing more to be done about it for now, though. Perhaps Jessica had prescribed this getaway precisely to remind him what was important. After all, she had always been the wiser of them. She always knew exactly what he needed and when. It was just another aspect that made her not only the perfect mate and companion, but the perfect person to guide the League itself to its destiny. Philip, by comparison, served as Jessica’s cheerleader, and that role suited him perfectly.
Then where had this guilt emerged from? Perhaps it wasn’t about this indulgent vacation at all.
A flock of dark pheasants flittered across open expanse above the valley, which struck some resonant chord within him. A reflective soul-searching seemed to rise up from the rainy wind itself.
I’m a good man, he told himself. I am. I have to be. If I wasn’t a good man, Jessica would never have stayed with me this long. Am I a perfect man? Absolutely not. I might’ve cut some corners here and there; I’ve made a few enemies. Who hasn’t? Can even the most saintly of us truly get through life without ruffling some feathers? But I generally do good things. I am moral and upstanding at my core. My legacy is unimpeachable.
He breathed in, confident that he might return home and make the right decisions—for the League, for IrTech, for Jessica, and for himself.
Though the moment of introspection filled him with a newfound sense of direction and purpose, something stirred…
The scattergun report from behind startled—nearly made him soil himself as he jumped in surprise. But with a quick glance over his shoulder, he caught sight of a pheasant falling from the sky, twisting amid a spume of brown feathers. Philip smiled. In the distance, he heard Count Gavin Stewart exult at finally scoring a kill on this hunt.
Another distant crack cut through the light hiss of rain. As Philip turned to see who had scored the hit, he noticed a tingle on the back of his neck. A wispy feather, or an insect tickling his exposed skin.
Damn bloodsuckers were already at it this year, and in the rain, no less. He slapped at the back of his neck, expecting to feel a splattered mosquito; instead, his fingertips brushed something they could not identify.
He tugged, and whatever it was slid out of his skin with a pinprick. Such a tiny yet horrifying thing: a hollow sliver of glass the size of a needle. And it was already dissolving in his hand, like spun-sugar candy in the rain.
He blinked and turned around, scanning the nearby trees and brush for any sign. His pulse skyrocketed. Vision blurred. Colors—different shades of overcast New Delos gray—started to smear like vaseline on a camera lens.
Just beyond the tree line, a human-shaped shadow lingered. From the garb alone, Philip knew this was no member of his hunting party. Her ghillie suit blended into the underbrush, but she made no pretense of hiding any longer.
“I knew someone would come for me someday,” Philip said weakly, shutting his eyes to the noise of a whooshing drumbeat building inside his head. “Who sent you? The Regulans? The Steiners? Someone from Kallon Industries?”
The shadow said nothing, remained motionless in its silent menace, a malevolent statue. For a moment, in his whirling delirium, Philip thought he had imagined her. But then the very real, very human shade blinked and merged back into the forest.
Philip tried closing his eyes, but they refused to obey. He tried to stagger away from the cliff’s edge, but his balance was all wrong. Tried to shout for help, but his jaw remained clenched shut.
His pulse slowed. Gray crept into his vision, and he lost his war with gravity.
With barely a gasp, he tumbled backward.
Solid ground beneath him no more.
Panic gripped him.
In New Delos’ gravity, the fall from such a height would not take long. His last few terrified thoughts went out to his surviving children—Julietta, Elis, Christopher, and Nikol—and to his dear wife Jessica.
For a few seconds of free fall, Philip Hughes understood his daredevil son’s preoccupation with extreme sport. The deathly rush felt like freedom. A release from earthly obligation. A taste of what the birds they’d hunted experienced every single day.
I am a good man, he reminded himself. A good man.
As the ground approached, Philip Hughes, heir of the IrTech fortune, consort to the Captain-General of the Free Worlds League, grasped all thought of his beloved wife and carried it with him down to his grave.
Part I
Hunting License
1
OFFICE OF THE WARDEN-GENERAL
ATREUS CITY, ATREUS
FREE WORLDS LEAGUE
8 AUGUST 3146
Awaiting the arrival of her next meeting, Warden-General Nikol Halas-Hughes Marik shifted in her not-quite-comfortable seat at her far-too-large desk and focused on the national-defense reports that required her immediate attention. She brushed an errant lock of reddish-blond hair from her attentive jade-green eyes while reviewing a final summary of Duke Fontaine Marik’s short but unsanctioned military campaign against House Steiner’s Lyran Commonwealth.
So many lives lost, but Parliament will never censure Fontaine for this, Nikol thought, shaking her head. The duke was a Marik by blood, one of the last true heirs of House Marik’s lineage, so a slap on the wrist would accomplish nothing. Nikol, on the other hand, was only a Marik because her mother—Captain-General Jessica Halas-Hughes Marik—had married into the Marik family to add legitimacy to her unofficial claim on the prestigious Marik name.
As Warden-General, the Captain-General’s direct liaison to the League Central Coordination and Command, the nation’s military council, Nikol needed to provide the LCCC’s members with a full analysis of the after-action report, now that Fontaine’s troops had stood down and tensions along the Lyran border had cooled.
She had to admit—at least on paper—that the duke’s rationale for his personal war against House Steiner possessed merit. Lyran forces had occupied Tamarind, the capital of the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey, and Fontaine had fought to regain his ancestral fiefdom and restore a military buffer between Tamarind and the Lyran Commonwealth border. But in doing so, he had appropriated personnel, materiel, and funds better served for other conflicts, battlefields that would prove more dangerous to the League than a provincial capital remaining behind enemy lines for a handful of years. The BattleMech regiments Fontaine had thrown against the Lyran border were originally earmarked for rotation to other fronts.
Nikol tried to compartmentalize her feelings about the whole conflict, but failed every time she pictured her thirty-seven-year-old brother Christopher getting shot at on Tamarind, a world hundreds of light years away from here on the League’s capital, while she sat safely and securely at a desk. Fontaine had taken Christo under his wing, and if reports from the duke himself were any indication, her brother had acquitted himself well during the fighting. The MechWarrior in her respected and admired Christo’s prowess on both political and martial battlefields, but the sister in her longed to see him safe and sound in the near future. They been close growing up, him being only a year older than her, and she missed his company.
That reminds me… I still needed to find the perfect birthday present for Father. He was becoming increasingly harder to buy presents for each year. Whatever could I give him that he doesn’t already have? She could get him a new hunting rifle or an antique aircar, or maybe even a rare artifact from pre-spaceflight Terra, but those all felt impersonal. None would quite convey how much she loved him. The perfect gift with the right personal touch was out there somewhere. All she had to do was find it and give it to him once he returned home from his hunting expedition on New Delos.
Her personal assistant, Adamina Stewart, ducked her inside the office door. “Ma’am,” the pallid, raven-h
aired young woman said, “General Kirkland is here to see you.”
Nikol nodded. “Send him in.”
General Wilburn Kirkland entered with a stiff gait, in an impeccable dark-blue duty uniform with insignia from the Fusiliers of Oriente. Everything about the late-middle-aged officer spoke of propriety and etiquette, from the calm in his bright grayish-blue eyes to his short, well-kempt brown hair and clean-shaven face. Simply from the way he stood at attention even for a routine meeting as this, Nikol understood why her mother had handpicked him to command her personal bodyguard regiment, the Ducal Guard.
“Warden-General,” he said with a curt nod. “Nikol, as always, it is good to see you.”
“Likewise, Wil. You have something to report?”
“I do.” He held up a hand as though to forestall a question. “And let me preface this by saying that I’m not trying to scare you. I merely felt it was my duty to personally pass on something that was brought to my attention.”
Given that Kirkland’s duties largely consisted of the physical security of the Captain-General and her family, Nikol jumped back to a horrific night nine years ago. An assassin had infiltrated her home on Oriente, murdered her elder brother Janos while he slept, and nearly did the same to her elder sister Julietta. An inquest found that the palace’s security team had done their due diligence; the shadowy killer had exploited a theretofore unknown weakness in the palace’s physical security, a hole that had since been plugged.