TEXT: BattleCorps
  BattleCorps
  ISLE OF THE 
  BLESSED
  Book One 
  Chapter 4: A New War
  Steven Mohan, Jr.
  
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  The Fox’s Den, The Mountain 
  New Avalon, Crucis March 
  Federated Suns 
  9 December 3072
  Jackson Davion’s boots echoed loudly in the cavernous vehicle 
  bay. He’d had the bay cleared of all personnel, even his security 
  contingent.
  Even after all this time there were still hard feelings.
  The woman who climbed out of the jeep looked far older than 
  Davion remembered. It wasn’t the strands of silver mixed in 
  with her raven hair nor the few extra kilos added to her slender 
  frame. 
  What had aged her in Davion’s eyes was the expression on her 
  lovely face, a certain hardness, as if the universe had shown her 
  more truth than she was quite ready to see. 
  No doubt that was true.
  After all that had happened he couldn’t believe he was looking at 
  Leftenant General Annette Leyland of the Fifth FedCom RCT.
  Atomic Annie.
  She climbed out of the jeep. Nodded to him. “Marshal.”
  Davion hesitated. And then he snapped, “I’m not quite sure how 
  to address you. You sure as hell don’t deserve the title, ‘General.’ 
  Would you prefer ‘Atomic Annie?’” He stopped abruptly, surprised 
  at his own bitterness.
  For a second Leyland’s mouth made a wounded “oh” and then 
  the hurt flashed to anger. “That is not my name. That’s just what 
  Victor’s little pets called me.”
  “It seems like they got that part right,” said Davion roughly.
  “You seem to forget, Marshal, we were on the same side.”
  “We were never on the same side,” said Davion coldly.
  “We both supported Katrina.”
  “You supported Katrina. I served the Federated Suns.”
  
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  “History has been kind to you, Jackson Davion,” Leyland said 
  acidly. “It gave you the opportunity to be noble.”
  “So bitter,” he said. He shook his head. “How can I trust you? 
  After what you did before.”
  “The Black Rats have changed, Jackson.” She gestured angrily. 
  “My God,” she said, her voice rising. “We came back. To stand 
  beside you. What more proof do you want?”
  “And as soon as you came back, what did you do? Use WMD 
  again—as your very first act.”
  “I just saved you,” she snarled. “I saved you.” She was turning 
  red. “I cleared out a Riga-class WarShip with my horrible, immoral 
  nukes and all you can do is stand there and complain about how 
  I did it.”
  She jabbed an angry finger at him. “Look, I did what I had to do. 
  Sometimes war requires uncomfortable choices, Jackson. You’d 
  know that if you fought it from the front lines rather than tucked 
  snuggly inside the Fox’s Den.”
  “What do you want?” An arctic chill ran through Davion’s words.
  “My regiment is here to fight under the banner of the Federated 
  Suns. We want nothing more than to free New Avalon from Word 
  of Blake.”
  No, Davion thought, you want a little more than that. You want 
  redemption. And you’ll start by forcing me to compromise my 
  own morals. War requires uncomfortable choices.
  “You turned atomic weapons on your own countrymen.”
  “Sometimes the rules don’t apply,” she snapped.
  She was wrong, Davion knew. The rules always applied. When 
  things were going badly wrong, when the temptation to compro-
  mise was at its zenith, that was the time when the rules mattered 
  most. 
  Still, something made him take a step forward and say, “You will 
  surrender all your nuclear weapons to me.”
  She scowled. “You didn’t seem to mind them when they were 
  destroying the Wobbie WarShips.”
  “This is not a negotiation,” said Davion tightly. “General.”
  
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  He looked at her and she looked at him.
  She shrugged, palms up. “I have no more nukes. I used them all 
  against the Wobbies.”
  Davion said nothing, considering. Intel said Atomic Annie had 
  six nuclear weapons remaining when she slipped into the mists 
  of history with the Black Rats. She’d used at least three on the 
  WarShips. Had the other three been vaporized along with the 
  Stingrays carrying them or launched fruitlessly into space?
  It seemed a likely scenario. Some of those fighters must’ve been 
  lost trying to punch through the Wobbie defenses.
  Davion still didn’t believe it. He just couldn’t make himself be-
  lieve she was telling the truth.
  He pursed his lips. “Very well,” he said, giving Atomic Annie both 
  things that she wanted even though she’d only asked for one.
  She came to attention and saluted.
  Davion did a perfect about face without returning her salute.
  The rules always applied and Davion had just shattered one of 
  the big ones. He’d enlisted the help of war criminals.
  And at that moment he knew he’d sacrifice far more than his life 
  to save New Avalon from Word of Blake.
  He’d sacrifice his very soul.
  
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  Camp Alpha Drop Point 
  200 Kilometers Southeast of Avalon City 
  20 December 3072
  The molten orange limb of New Avalon’s sun peeked above the 
  horizon, coloring the eastern sky a pretty tangerine. Zucker stood 
  on a low ridge and drew in the clean smell of dew-kissed grass.
  Below him, a wide, flat plain had been taken over by DropShips. 
  The vessels sat in rings of blackened grass where the backwash 
  from their thrusters had burned away the green. 
  The field was crammed with debarking ’Mechs, armor, and vechi-
  cles. The peaceful sounds of morning—bird song, the whistles and 
  clicks of insects, the wind rustling through the brush—gave way to 
  the clank of heavy machinery, the shouts of angry loadmasters.
  Below, the Forty-Fourth Shadow Division was debarking, backed 
  up by Bronson’s Horde. Zucker told himself he should be happy. 
  Perhaps, at last, they had the numbers to take charge of this grind-
  ing stalemate. Geist was promising it would be the final battle for 
  New Avalon, though Zucker had his doubts.
  He watched a Grand Titan debark from a Union. This machine 
  was not painted in the clean white of the true ComStar. It started 
  out pure ebony at the bottom of its blocky feet and slowly faded 
  to a smoky gray at the top of its heavily armored head, the whole 
  thing shaded with an unholy orange that called to mind perdition’s 
  flame.
  Worse was the emblem on the monster’s chest: a downward 
  thrust black broadsword with flaming batwings superimposed 
  over an inverted red triangle and the number “44.”
  Avitue’s Avenging Angels.
  Zucker licked his lips. 
   Avitue. No one had seen her yet, but there were plenty of stories. 
  She carried the name of a dark angel from Tamuldic lore. Avitue 
  was an alias for another unholy name.
  Lilith.
  The Titan’s paint job suggested that the name was not an ac-
  cident.
  
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  For this woman, this Avitue, was Manei Domini—a “Hand of the 
  Master”—a creature cybernetically enhanced to serve the Word, 
  a being that was neither quite machine nor quite human, but per-
  haps something more.
  Zucker shuddered.
  The wind shifted and he could smell the odor of burning grass.
  
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  Camp Alpha Drop Point 
  200 Kilometers Southeast of Avalon City 
  3 January 3073
  Sergeant Timothy Saxon of the New Avalon Cavaliers had no 
  idea what to expect after he was captured by Word of Blake. He 
  imagined all kinds of torture and depravity, nights of sleepless ter-
  ror and pain. Of course he was wrong.
  It was far worse than he could’ve imagined.
  They began by binding his arms and legs and blindfolding him. 
  They carried him to a shuttle and tied him down. When the shuttle 
  lifted, he slid sideways until the next prisoner. When the shuttle 
  suddenly changed course his stomach did a flip-flop and he threw 
  up all over himself.
  That’s how he rode to Valiant, muscles aching, jammed against 
  his fellow soldiers, and covered in his own vomit. 
  The next thing he knew he was being jerked to his feet, still blind-
  folded. He was shoved forward. Pins and needles rippled through 
  his sleeping legs and he stumbled, earning himself a vicious cuff 
  to the back of his head.
  Somehow he staggered forward.
  Until a hatch opened and he smelled an outhouse. Hands pushed 
  him in the back.
  He tripped over the hatch’s combing and slammed into the steel 
  deck, face first.
  And a voice said, “Welcome to Hotel Toaster.”
  v v v
  He could tell she’d been an aerospace pilot by the khaki g-suit she 
  still wore, though her right pant leg was stained black with dried 
  blood and the left side of the g-suit had been ripped to reveal a 
  generous helping of breast. Saxon didn’t ask how that happened.
  He didn’t want to know.
  Maybe she had been pretty once. Saxon wasn’t sure. He’d lost 
  all perspective. Her shoulder-length hair was the color of choco-
  
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  late. Her eyes were a translucent brown. But the right side of her 
  face from jaw line to her cheekbone was swallowed by an ugly 
  bruise just starting to yellow. 
  She was sitting on the deck, back against the far bulkhead, knees 
  pulled up to her chest. Their prison was some kind of maintenance 
  space, barely four meters by three. It was painted haze gray, and it 
  was absolutely empty, except for the young woman sitting against 
  the wall and a stinking pile of filth in the corner.
  It was roasting, at least thirty-five degrees and humid, which 
  only made it worse, like he was swimming through a sewage tank. 
  Saxon felt the thrum of machinery through the deck.
  “I’d like to talk to the manager,” he croaked, “I have a few com-
  plaints.”
  She laughed and her laugh was musical. He felt a sudden surge 
  of hope at the sound, so startling that his breath caught.
  She said, “I’m afraid Hotel Toaster isn’t much on customer ser-
  vice.” She stood up and shook his hand. “I’m Leftenant Paula 
  Kent.”
  “Sergeant Timothy Saxon.”
  She nodded. “So I’m senior.”
  He snorted. “I don’t, uh…” He shook his head. “Does that really 
  matter here?”
  She frowned. “It matters here more than anywhere.”
  He just stared at her.
  “Look. The Wobbies are going to do everything they can to strip 
  you of your humanity.” She pointed at the pile of shit in the corner. 
  “No toilets. Food at irregular hours. They wake you in the middle of 
  the night. There are beatings.” She faltered. Then she swallowed 
  and straightened her shoulders. “And worse.”
  He took a deep breath.
  “They’re trying to turn us into animals. And why?”
  And though Saxon had never considered the precepts of psy-
  chological warfare before, he suddenly understood. “Because 
  animals can be domesticated.”
  
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  She smiled and for the first time since being captured Saxon 
  thought he might make it. 
  “That’s right. Sergeant, you and I are a fighting force of the 
  Federated Suns. I want you to remember that. Because as long as 
  we believe it here,” she tapped her forehead with an index finger, 
  “it doesn’t matter what they do to us.”
  And after that she got him through the terror, the uncertainty of 
  being a prisoner of Word of Blake, days grinding into a week, and 
  then starting a second.
  Until one evening when he awoke to the sound of her sobbing 
  softly to herself.
  
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  14 January 3073
  The sound of Leftenant Kent crying scared him more than any-
  thing else could have. She’d always been the strong one, always 
  certain of what to do, even in the face of the Wobbie’s worst abus-
  es.
  His mouth tasted dry. After what she’d been through he couldn’t 
  imagine what could’ve broken her.
  It was pitch black, which Saxon supposed meant it was night, 
  though their captors didn’t follow any obvious patterns when 
  turning the lights on and off.
  He crawled over to the sound of her voice, touched her shoul-
  der. She pulled away, but he pulled her to him, wrapped his arms 
  around her. “Shhh,” he whispered. 
  She buried her face into his neck. He felt the slickness of her 
  tears against his skin, the heat of her breath. Her body shook as 
  she cried.
  “What is it, Paula?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
  He would’ve been very surprised to learn he’d just used her first 
  name.
  She drew in a deep, shuddery breath. In the darkness, he gently 
  stroked her hair.
  “I h-heard two guards talking.” 
  He could feel her shaking her head.
  “They got Jackson Davion, Tim. They killed him.”
  He shook his head. “No. That can’t be. Ol’ Jackson is safe in the 
  Fox’s Den.”
  “No. No, he’s been moving. They said they ambushed him. He’s 
  dead, Tim.”
  He felt a sudden coldness in his guts. Jackson Davion dead? 
  And suddenly Saxon understood how much of his own hopes had 
  been pinned on the wily old man. With Victor gone, with Yvonne 
  missing, Jackson was the one Davion still standing. 
  And now he was dead.
  
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  Suddenly his right hand was trembling. He closed it into a fist to 
  steady it. No, he thought fiercely. There is more to us than just one 
  man. There has to be.
  “There’s always hope,” he said.
  “No,” she whispered.
  And then there in the darkness, feeling her despair in the trem-
  ors that wracked her slender body, he leaned down and touched 
  her ear with his lips. Speaking a word, a single word, so softly that 
  no bug could possibly pick it up. 
  “Legion,” he said.
  Because it was pitch black, he couldn’t see the smile that stole 
  across her face.
  
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  Camp Alpha, Word of Blake Headquarters 
  200 Kilometers Southeast of Avalon City 
  16 January 3073
  Geoffrey Zucker was just bringing what was left of his Level III 
  back from another pointless battle with the Black Rats, when he 
  got word that Geist wanted to see him. The message sent a chill 
  running down his back. Geist had never been a nice man, but since 
  the destruction of Red Angel he’d become crazy-strange. Zucker 
  heard whispers. Of prisoners tortured and murdered. 
  Raped. 
  He suspected Geist had suffered a psychotic break.
  And now he wanted to see Zucker.
  He strode down a sidewalk, dark thoughts chasing around his 
  head despite the pretty spring day. The camp, such as it was, 
  was an old AFFS armory. It had long been empty of ordnance, of 
  course, but some of the buildings were still standing. Most im-
  portantly, it lay only a few klicks from the M11 and easy access 
  to Avalon City.
  So far Avitue had done nothing but sit aboard Mordred. There 
  was no sign that she knew or cared about the battle, which had de-
  volved into an occasional skirmish with Fed units when they could 
  find them, and lots of nerve-wracking waiting when they couldn’t. 
  And she hadn’t done anything about Geist either.
  Zucker wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Geist was a problem, 
  but Avitue just might be worse. Had Blake really forseen the Manei 
  Domini? Were they really a step down the path of righteousness?
  Zucker turned a corner and strode toward a white-washed stuc-
  co building that had all the charm of a brick. He double-timed up 
  the dozen steps and went straight to Geist’s office. 
  The pretty young acolyte at the desk nodded at him and said, 
  “Go right in.” She was maybe nineteen, blond, and built. But the 
  thing that bothered Zucker most about her was her accent: pure 
  New Avalon. So Geist was pressing locals into service—just ex-
  actly what kind of service was best not contemplated.
  Zucker rapped at the door and then pushed through. He caught 
  sight of another pretty young acolyte in a white robe sitting in 
  
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  one of the two visitor chairs facing Geist’s blond ash desk, but he 
  didn’t spend a lot of time looking at her.
  Geist sat behind the desk, hunched forward over some papers, 
  head bowed as if deep in thought.
  Zucker came to attention. “Demi-Precentor Zucker reporting as 
  ordered, sir.”
  Nothing. Geist didn’t move, didn’t even look up.
  “Sir?”
  No response.
  Suddenly Zucker realized that the papers on Geist’s desk were 
  stained with an irregular splotch of red. Zucker lunged across the 
  desk and jerked Geist’s head up. Sightless eyes stared through him.
  Someone had drilled a neat hole right through the center of his 
  forehead.
  Zucker heard a clunk behind him as if something heavy and met-
  al had been set on wood.
  He dropped Geist, whose head hit the desk with a clunk, wheeled, 
  and saw a black slug-thrower sitting on the corner of the desk, the 
  acolyte’s right hand resting on the weapon. He met her eyes.
  And then she said in a perfectly steady voice, “I’m afraid Precentor 
  Geist just wasn’t working out.”
  She was beautiful. Not the brassy beauty of the young thing in 
  the reception area, more of a wholesome girl-next-door beauty. 
  She wore her dark hair long, touching her shoulders. Her eyes 
  were translucent brown. And she had lovely skin the color of 
  cream, except on the right side of her face where a monstrous 
  bruise was starting to yellow.
  “Avitue,” he whispered.
  She bowed her head in acknowledgment. “You are perceptive.”
  Zucker turned to look at the body of the former commander of 
  Word of Blake forces in New Avalon. “You murdered him.”
  “He lost two WarShips and failed to bring the planet under con-
  trol. And his…appetites bring discredit upon our order. Surely 
  you’ve noticed.”
  
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  Zucker said nothing.
  She leaned back in her chair. “It was a problem you could not 
  solve and I solved it for you. Why do you object?”
  “Because—” he stopped, shook his head. “Shouldn’t you be hav-
  ing this conversation with Precentor McQuinn of the Thirty-First? 
  Or one of the XOs?”
  She snorted. “They are fools, Zucker. All of them. If they are quite 
  fortunate they will not end up buried in the same unmarked grave 
  as this one.” She jerked her head at Geist’s motionless body.
  His mouth tasted dry. “But I’m different?”
  She nodded. “Yes. You’re smart. And more importantly you may 
  yet prove to be useful.”
  He frowned. “How do you know?”
  She fixed him with a grave look. “All Manie Domini have an 
  auxiliary brain implanted here—” she touched her abdomen just 
  below her left breast, “—used for processing impressions about 
  human behavior.”
  Zucker’s eyes widened. “Really?”
  For a second Avitue looked every bit the dark angel her name 
  suggested, and then she burst out laughing. 
  Right then Zucker knew she was different than Geist. She would 
  be ruthless, but not because she was cruel. She would do it be-
  cause she had to.
  “No, of course not,” she said. “I found out about you the same 
  way anyone would—by asking and listening.” Her voice dropped a 
  notch. “I do hope you will eventually come to appreciate my spe-
  cial abilities,” she said. “As I respect yours.”
  The only thing Zucker could think to say to that was, “Yes, 
  Precentor.”
  She folded her arms across her chest. “Now. Tell me how this 
  war is going.”
  “I, uh—” Zucker took a deep breath to steady himself. “Y-you 
  want me to—”
  “Any time before the Third Transfer would be fine,” said Avitue.
  
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  Zucker swallowed. “Yes Precentor. We still control the skies, but 
  barely. Red Angel is gone and Divine Forgiveness hasn’t had a 
  regular maintenance upkeep in four years. Systems are starting to 
  fail. She spends two orbits out of three laid up in dock.”
  “We still have Mordred,” said Avitue.
  “Yes, but it’s a big world. And Jackson Davion knows it better 
  than we.”
  “Jackson Davion,” she whispered.
  “He’s safe in the Den. We can’t get to him.” Zucker shook his 
  head. “Not with effectively one WarShip to hold the system and 
  watch the planet.”
  “So we are forced into a guerilla war with an evenly-matched 
  force that knows the territory far better than we and has the 
  support of the native population. Is that the way you see things, 
  Demi-Precentor?”
  Was she trying to pin him down, make a case for disloyalty? 
  Had Geist told her something about his father? Zucker swallowed, 
  glanced at Geist’s body. No. Avitue didn’t seem to be too con-
  cerned about making cases. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said softly. 
  “So what is your prognosis?”
  It was a trap, Zucker knew it was a trap. But he didn’t know how 
  not to answer. 
  “We can’t win this war,” he said stiffly.
  She nodded. “Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s why we’re done 
  fighting this war. It’s time to fight another.”
  
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  The Fox’s Den, The Mountain 
  17 January 3073
  Keeping the Den supplied had turned into a nearly impossible 
  task. There had been a time when Captain Rolf Dreier had con-
  sidered himself a logistics officer. Now he thought of himself as a 
  smuggler.
  “Subaltern Tian,” Dreier called out to the khaki back retreating 
  down the long, empty hallway.
  The young woman turned. “Yes, sir?”
  “Subaltern, it has come to my attention that we are short on fresh 
  milk, eggs, chicken, bread—”
  “Sir, the merchants left in the City don’t want to ship to us. No 
  one wants to have a truck confiscated.”
  Dreier blinked. “So? We’re in the middle of the bread basket, are 
  we not? Negotiate directly with the farmers and have them deliver 
  in small shipments that aren’t so obviously intended for military 
  use. Do I have to think of everything myself?”
  “Yessir,” said Tian. “I mean, no sir.”
  She turned to leave, but Dreier stopped her. “Listen. I’ll give you 
  a chance to redeem yourself.”
  She looked at him expectantly.
  “I need you to scrounge up a couple bottles of Hebridan Estates 
  Merlot, 3015. It needs to be delivered to the Cantor site by the 
  twentieth.”
  Her jaw dropped open. “Hebridan Estates— Why don’t you just 
  ask for an Aegis-class WarShip.”
  Dreier fixed her with a steely gaze. “Can you deliver an Aegis-
  class WarShip?”
  “Well, I, don’t, uh—”
  “Then may I suggest, Subaltern, that you refrain from making 
  promises you can’t honor and instead focus on your duties.”
  The young woman licked her lips. “But this is impossible.”
  
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  Dreier drew a deep breath and his voice dropped to a conspira-
  torial whisper. “The wine is a surprise for Marshal Davion. He’s 
  carrying the entire burden of New Avalon’s defense on his shoul-
  ders and now the Wobbies are chasing him out of the Den. The 
  least we can do is provide him with a few comforts.”
  “But—”
  “Look, Tian. You and I will never pilot a ’Mech. We may never 
  even pick up a rifle. But we make it possible for the warriors to 
  do what they do. So don’t complain about impossibilities. We are 
  logistics officers. The impossible is our business.” Then he turned 
  and swept away.
  “Yes sir,” she muttered. Then, shoulders slumped, she turned to 
  go.
  Neither of them noticed the corporal stacking boxes in a storage 
  room just off the passageway.
  
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