TEXT: BATTLECORPS
  THE GHOSTS OF 
  HESPERUS
  by Jason M. Hardy
  
  BATTLECORPS
  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 2
  Melrose Valley, Hesperus II 
  Skye Province 
  Lyran Alliance 
  7 January 3065
  “Caught it right in the shin.”
  “Quiet.”
  “Sheared the leg off, a 
  little above the ankle. It fell 
  down the hill, almost rolled, 
  bumping and scraping all 
  the way. Shards of it are 
  probably still lying here.”
  “Quiet!”
  The lanky man blithely 
  kept talking, his words cut-
  ting through the white mist 
  of his breath. “He wheeled 
  his arms as he fell, trying 
  to regain balance or at least 
  slow the fall, but a few tons 
  of metal doesn’t stop so eas-
  ily, right? And it slid into a Black Knight. Holding his XO. Took him 
  out. That changed the whole tide of battle, that’s what I think. I think, 
  from this point on the slope, if the Black Knight could have survived 
  the hit, he’d be in great position. Could have lofted shots over the 
  entire valley. But instead, one of his own men downed him.”
  The shorter, balding man straightened a few strands of hair while 
  shaking his head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
  Korwyn rolled her eyes, squatting over the grey razors and 
  knifepoints that made up the rocky ground of Hesperus II. The 
  surrounding stark mountains dwarfed her, dwarfed the enormous 
  factory in the valley below her, dwarfed everything. She felt the 
  tight fabric of her leggings stretch around her calves. This was 
  only going to get louder. She tried to focus on the shattered ter-
  rain in front of her and shut out the two voices to her rear.
  “Of course I do!” the lanky man said indignantly.
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 3
  “No you don’t,” his companion replied. “First of all, you think a 
  ’Mech works like a plane? Sitting up on high lofting shells at tar-
  gets below?”
  “They’ve got long-range weapons. When the situation is right, 
  yes, that’s exactly what they do.”
  “Yeah, but that’s not how they really get you. That’s not how they fin-
  ish you off. They don’t just sit back and wait. They come and get you.”
  Korwyn decided to try one more time. “Would the two of you 
  please…”
  Both men held up their hands defensively and fell silent. For two 
  minutes. But at least when they started up again they kept their 
  voices down.
  “Anyway, the second problem is you don’t know your history,” 
  the stouter man said. Korwyn searched for a name to go with the 
  lumpy, pitted face—Edison? Anderson? It seemed like the kind of 
  thing she should probably remember.
  “I don’t know my history?” the lanky man—Pollard, a name 
  Korwyn knew too well—replied. “What do you think I’m doing 
  here?”
  “I’m actually not supposed to know what you’re doing,” Edison/
  Anderson said.
  Pollard waved his hands, the moonlight reflected in the blue 
  sleeves of his coat the only color against a background of tall, 
  looming grey rock and black sky. “Yeah, yeah, it’s all a big mys-
  tery. Look, I’m here because I know my history. I know about this 
  planet. Kor’s here for terrain, I’m here for history. So don’t tell me 
  I don’t know what I know I know.”
  Edison/Anderson fell silent, leaning on the rusted speeder he’d 
  used to take them to the valley, trying to parse Pollard’s words. 
  Korwyn enjoyed the quiet.
  The land in front of her was unremittingly hostile. The fourteen 
  battles fought here had scarred the earth more than cold winds 
  and heavy rains could on their own. A bowl of mountains circled 
  the lifeless valley, outsized spikes that made the buildings below 
  look like toys. The valley floor was studded by outcroppings tall 
  enough to make ’Mech navigation quirky but too short to provide 
  decent cover. A single paved road, so dark it seemed to pull in 
  blackness from the sky, wound to the greatest treasure on the 
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 4
  planet, one of the greatest treasures of the universe—Defiance 
  Industries’ ’Mech production facility. The massive building squat-
  ted heavily, emitting little light and less warmth. The visible walls, 
  tanks, rocket launchers, and defensive encampments that lay thick 
  around the square building sent the clearest possible message to 
  potential visitors. The building was why so many armies found 
  their way here; the thorny hedge of defenses was a significant 
  reason all fourteen armies met only futility.
  There would be a fifteenth try. Everyone suspected it, but only 
  Korwyn and a select few others knew it for sure. And Korwyn and 
  her talkative companions were here to assure this attempt suc-
  ceeded where more than a dozen armies had failed.
  “All right,” she said, finalizing her notes on this section, scanning 
  the nearly imperceptible differences between the places they had 
  been and the places they still needed visit, trying to remember 
  which way to travel next. “Let’s move on.”
  “You can almost see them, can’t you?” Pollard bounced from one 
  foot to another. Black eyes trembled like wobbling marbles on ei-
  ther side of his narrow nose.
  “I can’t see anyone,” Ellison (that, as it turned out, was his name) 
  said flatly.
  “You have no imagination. They’re all around! Hell, I can smell them. 
  Sulfur and phosphorous still swirling over their metal corpses.”
  When he said this, Korwyn could almost visualize the gases 
  swirling up into the thin nostrils at the base of Pollard’s hooked 
  nose.
  “That’s just fumes from the factory,” Ellison said.
  Pollard paused for thought. “Maybe the problem is that you live 
  with them. They’re around you all the time, so you don’t notice 
  them any more.”
  “Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
  “Right here. Right here!” Pollard pointed at a slope, a gentle de-
  cline, running down from bumpy foothills that appeared to be large 
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 5
  mounds of rubble. “Look, there’s a few Eridani ’Mechs, every last 
  one of them with their bland olive camouflage, fleeing out of the 
  mountains, Marik troops on their tail. The Light Horse forces are 
  wounded and outnumbered, gyros damaged so they’re stumbling 
  over pebbles. They’re on empty.”
  “Mmmm hmmm.”
  “Now, don’t get me wrong. Just getting into the valley wouldn’t 
  have guaranteed a Marik victory. They might not have even made 
  it to the Defiance plant. Still, they would have had a huge foothold, 
  a chance to gather themselves.”
  Ellison gave a moment’s thought to living under Marik rule, but 
  gave up when he couldn’t honestly say how it might have made 
  his life different.
  “But then the artillery fires up. The Marik forces had completely 
  overlooked the guns hidden in the crags there and there.” His arm 
  jabbed out again, one to the east, the other to the north, indicating 
  steep rock walls near the slope upon which they stood. “They blis-
  tered the ’Mechs, sending them scrambling, and by the time they 
  figured out what was going on the crippled Light Horses were on 
  top of them. Look, there, right there, that’s where a Cyclops, laser 
  damaged beyond repair, fell on a Stalker and just pummeled it 
  into the ground, beat it to smithereens right here.”
  “How do you know that?”
  “Because I know. Can’t you see it? Can’t you hear it, the met-
  al crunching and screeching, the pilot yelling into his radio for 
  help?”
  “I don’t hear anything.”
  “I do,” Pollard said stubbornly. “It’s all around us.”
  Korwyn finally broke in. “What are we supposed to be taking 
  away from this story?”
  Pollard held up one finger. “First, watch for hidden artillery.” A 
  second finger rose. “Second, proceed into the valley slowly.” A 
  third. “Finally, strafe our approach unmercifully before we move 
  in, bomb anyone in there to hell.”
  Korwyn snorted. “I need history to tell me that?”
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 6
  “Do they even use wheels on this godforsaken planet?”
  “Of course,” Ellison replied, and Korwyn thought she heard a 
  note of offense in his voice.
  “Not here.”
  Ellison shrugged. “Not on this exact spot. But trucks go back and 
  forth from the factory all the time, the guards patrol in skimmers. 
  You’ve seen the road, haven’t you? And besides, for the most part 
  the terrain’s just rough, not impassable.”
  Pollard grunted. “It’s hell, only cold.” He glanced toward Ellison. 
  “No offense.”
  “None taken. Please, feel free to continue insulting my home as 
  you prepare to blow it to smithereens.”
  Korwyn reluctantly glanced up from her surveying. Ellison’s 
  voice was advancing beyond customary agitation. She might need 
  to pay attention.
  Pollard had turned to face Ellison directly, arms flapping like a 
  descending vulture as he talked. “As I prepare to blow it to smith-
  ereens? Aren’t you helping? Aren’t we preparing to blow your 
  planet to smithereens?”
  Ellison didn’t respond. Pollard turned to Korwyn. “How well was 
  this guy vetted?”
  “Normal process,” she said, letting her mirrored eyeshades make 
  her look steadier than she felt.
  “Are we sure he’s okay?”
  “As sure as we are about anyone else we work with.”
  Ellison broke in. “You’re here, on planet, with me. You’re already 
  in the middle of your job. Shouldn’t you have worried about me 
  being clear a while back?”
  “Maybe. But if I want to worry about it now, I’m going to worry 
  about it now,” Pollard said with a regal air.
  “You’re doing it half-assed.”
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 7
  Pollard smiled, cocking his head to one side. “Really?”
  “Thinking I might be a double agent because I like my home? 
  Because I don’t want a part of it blown up? How simplistic can 
  you get?”
  “It happens.”
  “It’s not happening now. People far above you cleared me. I’m 
  cleared. Say what you want to say.”
  “What I want to say is you’re helping your home planet fall. To 
  lose a battle for the first time ever. It’s going to suffer, and that’ll 
  be your fault.”
  “My fault?”
  “Your fault.”
  “Not the fault of the aeros dropping the bombs, the ’Mechs firing 
  the lasers, the troopers throwing the grenades? Not the fault of 
  the generals giving them their marching orders?” Ellison clipped 
  his words, biting each one off sharply.
  Pollard waved his right arm in broad circles. “This is what I’ve 
  been telling you!” Breath rushed from his mouth in rapid puffs. 
  “They’re all secondary. What we do, right here, is the main thing. 
  We say where to drop the bombs. We tell them when to pull the 
  trigger. We’re in charge.”
  “You feel pretty good about yourself, don’t you?” Korwyn was 
  relieved to hear a little bit of calm mockery return to Ellison’s voice. 
  His face, though, remained knotted.
  Pollard shrugged. “I’m honest.”
  “He’s an egotist,” Korwyn said.
  Pollard didn’t so much as look at her. “She’s new. She doesn’t 
  understand. When the regiment comes down…”
  “Pollard!”
  Pollard finally glanced at Korwyn, surprised at the vehemence in 
  her voice. “What?”
  “Battle plans are classified!”
  “Yes. And?”
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 8
  “That means not giving out information about the size of the 
  force.”
  “What? Oh, all I said was ‘regiment.’ That doesn’t mean there’ll 
  only be one, that just means there will be at least one and I don’t 
  think that’s news to anyone.”
  “Still. You’re talking too much. Information’s going to slip out. 
  And that’s what you’re saying is so important, right?”
  Pollard grudgingly fell silent. For an hour, Korwyn listened to the 
  wind carving into the rocks’ hollow scars. 
   “You’ll get a lot of people telling you that that point, the south 
  pass, was where the sixth battle was won.”
  The landscape had gradually gotten Pollard talking again, first 
  in grunts as he pointed to interesting coves or ledges, then in in-
  creasing detail as the ghosts he saw reminded him of story after 
  story. Korwyn, at first glance, couldn’t tell what made the south 
  pass different from any of the other minor gaps leading into the 
  valley. Same rocks. Same desolation. Same sensation of walking 
  on an overgrown meteorite in airless space.
  “No one’s ever told me that,” Ellison said. He reclined on the 
  hood of the speeder, clearly ready to escort the visitors back to 
  their shuttle. Being out in this barren valley under the endless 
  mountain shadows was oppressive even for a native.
  “I’m telling you, me, right now. I’m telling you that people say 
  that. That’s where the defenders, the Force of Last Resort, sprang 
  their ambush, where the House Kurita troops were routed.”
  “Okay.”
  “No, not okay. It’s not right. That’s not where the battle was won, 
  not really.”
  Conversation paused. Pollard looked back and forth from Korwyn 
  to Ellison, his bushy eyebrows twitching. Korwyn ignored him. 
  Ellison shifted, and the speeder groaned beneath him. Neither of 
  them spoke.
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 9
  “Let me tell you where it was won,” Pollard finally said. “And 
  where it was lost.” He pointed to the sky. “It was lost up there.” He 
  pointed to the ground. “It was won right here.”
  “Right here? On this spot?” Ellison growled. “What the hell hap-
  pened here?”
  Pollard rolled his eyes. “Not here here. Not on this spot. This 
  planet. On the ground. They won it here before a shot was fired. 
  And the Combine lost it at the same time.”
  Ellison, at this point, knew where Pollard was trying to go. He 
  rolled his eyes. “Planning,” he said, hoping the cue might push the 
  other man along a little bit faster.
  “Yes. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Planning, intelligence, 
  wins battles.”
  Ellison feigned astonishment. “Does that mean you’re planning 
  a battle?” 
   “Shut up,” Pollard said, picking up steam. “The best MechWarrior 
  in the world can’t win a battle when the planning, when the in-
  formation is bad. Can you imagine trying to land here without 
  a detailed terrain map? Can you imagine not knowing where an 
  ambush might be waiting and walking right into it? That’s the 
  sixth battle for you. The Combine troops never found out their 
  enemy had increased their numbers, never knew where the ad-
  ditional troops were being positioned. So they lost. The Force of 
  Last Resort knew where the Kuritans would be coming from, knew 
  where to place their blows. So they won.
  “These warriors, they get all the glory, but they do nothing! They 
  push a few buttons, twiddle a few knobs, and suddenly they’re the 
  saviors of the galaxy! And us? We’re nothing. No one knows our 
  names. But planets rise or fall because of what we do.”
  “There’s that healthy self-esteem again,” Ellison said.
  “Are you quite done?” Korwyn snapped at both of them, but 
  mainly at Pollard.
  Pollard’s hand shot out like a wind-blown tree branch, jabbing 
  toward Korwyn. “You’re doing the job, and you don’t even know 
  how important it is! You’re deciding the course of history, right 
  here! Right now! Don’t you feel the weight?” 
  “Yes! That’s why I’m working instead of talking.”
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 10
  Pollard tilted his head, as if briefly considering whether Korwyn 
  had a point. Then he spoke again. “The job lies in understanding 
  the history, which is what I’m talking about. Understanding how 
  those other fourteen armies failed.”
  “And you have that understanding?” Ellison asked.
  “Yes!” Pollard yelled, his voice carrying far across the thin air. 
  “Haven’t you been listening? Look, take this spot right here. Tenth 
  battle. Third Succession War. House Kurita running rampant all 
  over, closing on the valley here, and Lyran reinforcements are half 
  a planet away.”
  “Let me guess,” Ellison said. “The Lyrans held them off.”
  Pollard’s eyes flared, his arms waved, and he skittered on the 
  rocks like a ’Mech with bad gyros. “Yes, yes, yes, but how? That’s 
  the question. Look, look, look, you have to look at the valley. Do 
  you see it?”
  Korwyn gave up trying to concentrate. Pollard was clearly too 
  agitated. She placed her hands, covered in black gloves, on her 
  hips.
  “Yes, we see the valley,” she said in the most soothing tones she 
  could muster.
  “Okay. So. You’re close to getting into the valley, but you haven’t 
  broken through the final line yet. You know reinforcements are 
  coming, and you have time to position yourself before they arrive. 
  What do you do?”
  “Seize the high ground,” Ellison said in bored tones.
  “Seize the… WHAT?” Pollard roared. “How do you think the re-
  inforcements are getting here? Subway? They’re coming from 
  above! Seize the high ground and you’re just waiting for the Lyrans 
  to drop on your head.”
  “Didn’t the Kuritan troops have their own air support?” Ellison 
  asked, and Korwyn thought she heard a note of genuine interest 
  in his voice.
  “Yes, of course, but you still don’t want your troops and ’Mechs 
  sitting out in the open, waiting to draw fire,” Pollard said. 
  “But you don’t want to be low, waiting for the defenders to roll 
  grenades down a hill at you,” Ellison countered.
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 11
  “Right. Which leaves you the middle. Especially if you can find 
  some concealed ledges or shallow caves.”
  “So they go to the middle. So what?” Ellison rolled his right foot 
  back and forth, rumbling over the speeder’s front.
  “So it takes time. You can’t keep accurate charts of these crags—
  with the wind, rain, ice, avalanches, and all those other battles, the 
  landscape’s always changing. Every time you dig in, you have to 
  explore the land anew.” 
  “Which is why you’re here.”
  “Which is why she’s here,” Pollard corrected, pointing at Korwyn. 
  “I’m the big-picture man.”
  “Uh-huh.”
  “So the Combine knows the reinforcements are half a planet 
  away, scrambling around their camp like dung beetles, and with 
  the time it will take for them to get mobilized and cross the planet, 
  they won’t arrive for a good two days.”
  “I’m with you,” Ellison said, though his closed eyes suggested he 
  may have been lying.
  “But word gets back to the Lyrans. They hear that the Combine 
  thinks they have two days to dig in. So they don’t pack. They dive into 
  their ships and get moving double-time, or triple-time. They order up 
  some supplies from near the plant—they’ll meet the supplies near 
  this valley, and re-up there, to replace everything they left behind.”
  Ellison made some noise between a grunt and a yawn.
  “End result? They get here in 30 hours. The Combine’s not 
  ready—they didn’t get any info on how the Lyrans were reacting. 
  The Lyrans had intelligence, you see, and—”
  “—the Combine didn’t. We got it,” Ellison said.
  “Again, intelligence won the day.”
  Ellison shook his head. “You act like war is black and white, like 
  you have information or you don’t, and the people with more au-
  tomatically win.”
  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. It is black and white. No grey.” 
  Pollard, unaccountably, started giggling. “Well, maybe there’ll be 
  a little grey. Soon enough. We think.”
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 12
  “Pollard!”
  Ellison sat up, suddenly interested. “What is he talking about?”
  “Nothing!” Korwyn said, but Pollard was already talking.
  “Shade of grey no one likes to see. Best guess is they might play 
  a role in the battle.”
  “All right, shut up! God, how did you ever get security clear-
  ance?” 
  Pollard held up his hands placatingly. “All right, all right, I’m 
  done.”
  “Honestly, for someone going on and on about the value of intel-
  ligence, you’re pretty stupid.”
  Ellison chuckled at that, but Pollard’s face drained of color.
  “I don’t believe anything I said stooped to the level of personal 
  insult.”
  Korwyn bit back a stinging reply, took a deep breath, and did her 
  best end the conversation. “You’re right. I apologize. Let’s finish 
  up, okay?”
  “Fine with me,” Pollard said, and sulked in blessed silence for the 
  remainder of the time on the planet.
  Pollard hadn’t talked enough to convince Korwyn, but he’d said 
  enough to make her want to believe he was right. He presented an 
  appealingly simple view of combat—the side with the best intel-
  ligence, the best information, wins. All the other elements—the 
  mechanical breakdowns, human bravery and cowardice, the 
  improvisation of a brilliant commander, the flounderings of a dull-
  ard—are taken out of the equation. Information wins, pure and 
  simple.
  She was in a DropShip high above Hesperus now, breathing 
  cleaner, fresher air than any she’d encountered during planetfall. 
  The endless hum of power and engines around her were a comfort 
  after the distant howl of Hesperus’ winds.
  
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  Ghosts of Hesperus • Page 13
  Her noteputer glowed softly, providing most of the illumination 
  for the bare white square that served as both her desk and her pri-
  vate dining table. All the data was entered, everything was ready. 
  It only needed to be sent.
  If Pollard was right—he wasn’t; she’d seen enough combat to 
  know he wasn’t—but if he was, she was about to win the fifteenth 
  battle of Hesperus. She was going to make two transmissions. 
  The first would go through official channels, a brief report on her 
  survey attached to Pollard’s strategic assessment. Then, simulta-
  neously, she’d send a second transmission, burying a short burst 
  of code in the mass of the larger transmission, hoping no one 
  would notice it was flying off at a slightly different angle than the 
  first transmission. This report would tell what she gleaned from 
  Pollard’s ramblings, what she could tell about his planning.  She 
  thought about attaching Ellison’s name to it (or, to be more pre-
  cise, his code name), but she didn’t know enough about him to be 
  sure a frame-up would stick. And she liked him for arguing with 
  Pollard.
  This was why she’d been placed here. A dozen long years among 
  the rebels of Skye, waiting for this opportunity, and it finally came. 
  The big one. The one that might make them finally pull her out. Or 
  kill her. Either would be okay with her about now, as long as she 
  was done.
  Her second transmission would pass through a few hands until 
  it was several steps removed from her. She hoped it could never 
  be traced back—but even if it could, even if they rooted her out for 
  what she was about to do, it needed to be sent. Trading herself 
  for the possible salvation of Hesperus was a trade she’d make any 
  day, any time. 
  The invasion would come. The defenders, if everything worked, 
  would know at least a little about what was coming. They’d bend, 
  Korwyn knew. There was no way they wouldn’t, given what she 
  knew about the oncoming force. But if Pollard was at all right, her 
  information would keep the defenders from breaking, and they’d 
  join the ghosts of fourteen other battles in keeping invaders away.
  The End
  
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