BattleTech Legends: Double Blind by Loren L. Coleman

Author:Loren L. Coleman [Coleman, Loren L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2011-12-07T00:00:00+00:00

BOOK THREE

“One who has few must prepare against the enemy; one who has many makes the enemy prepare against him.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I go to war only when I am ready.”

—from an interview with Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao, Sian University Press, 7 October 3057

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

DropShip Heaven Sent

Shervanis Spaceport, Shervanis Caliphate

Astrokaszy

The Periphery

28 June 3058

The loading ramp began to lower from the Heaven Sent’s main ’Mech bay down onto the pale golden sand of the Shervanis Spaceport. Marcus stood just inside the bay doors, out of the harsh sunlight but still awash in the heat that rose off the sand like a never-ending power spike from a ’Mech’s fusion engine. Sweat beaded over his skin and soaked his clothing. And I thought the Marantha tarmac was hot?

Half a kilometer to the east, directly opposite where he stood, the city of Shervanis sat squat and ugly. It was Astrokaszy’s largest city, but looked like little more than a kilometers-wide sprawl of light-colored adobe buildings and dark, narrow streets. To the south, just visible past the edge of the bay doors, Marcus could see the barren foothills that he knew from maps would turn quickly into the badlands. A five-kilometer wide strip of broken rock and treacherous ravines, the badlands were all that separated the sandy plains of the Shervanis Caliphate from the actual Shaharazad Desert.

Halfway between the outskirts of the city and the Drop-Ship a small Caravan approached, dozens of dark-skinned servants stooping under the weight of six canopied litters.

Marcus divided his attention between gazing out over the city and watching the caravan as he formed his first impressions of Astrokaszy.

Desolate, devastated, and dismal were the words that leapt to mind.

The trip from Marantha to Astrokaszy had come off almost without a hitch. Dorian Anastius, captain of the Canopus Merchant Class JumpShip Marathon, knew his trade. Or, better said, knew his trade routes. Even with such a remote destination as Astrokaszy, the seasoned spacer knew just how far to reach in a single hyperspace jump and what star systems offered the fastest recharge times along the way. Preparing to jump from the Marantha system with both the Heaven Sent and the Head of a Pin in tow on the twenty-ninth of May, Captain Anastius had promised Marcus a trip of four weeks, no more. And that would include the eight days it would take the DropShips to travel insystem from jump point to the actual surface of Astrokaszy.

If not for an unexpected glitch, the Marathon would have made it on the nose. As it was, she only missed it by two days.

Preparing for the third and final jump, the Marathon had developed a problem with the equipment used to reel in the ship’s enormous jump sail. A JumpShip unfurled its sail to collect the solar energy needed to recharge the Kearny-Fuchida jump drive, and no captain would simply abandon a sail without very good cause. It had cost them four days of station-keeping to repair the equipment and untangle the sail’s fouled lines.

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