Because that's the only logical and sensible thing for a Warrior of the Wolf Clan to do.
He twisted his gunbelt back down to a comfortable position and quickly assessed his position. His 'Mech stood beneath an overhang in the canyon wall that helped hide him from Glynis' overflights. Looking up he could see a 20-degree arc of the sky, which narrowed, her attack vector appreciably. With the rockfall to his right, the only open avenue of attack was for Glynis to come down the canyon from his left and try to strafe him with her PPC and forward lasers.
The NARC beacon indicator started to blink faster, building up speed little bit by little bit. Phelan put the Nova's back to the canyon wall, then swiveled the 'Mech's torso to the left. The little blue light flicked on and off with a faint click that came faster and faster.
Only have one shot with these missiles. Gotta make it good.
The light burned solid on.
The Visigoth swooped down the canyon like a hawk spotting a mouse. The PPC in the fighter's nose raked its blue beam along the canyon wall. Shards of stone shot down to rattle off the Nova's cockpit while hot rock-vapor drifted up into the air from the strike. On of the Visigoth's two forward lasers studded the canyon wall with a line of burning holes, while the other blistered armor from the Nova's torso.
Phelan tracked the Visigoth as it swept through the canyon. His autocannon fired first as the fighter came into view. The hail of slugs disintegrated the armor on the tip of the right wing, but didn't so much as make the craft shudder. Bringing the torso around to the right, he triggered a second volley, blasting more armor from the aft end of the fuselage, but it, too, had no visible effect on the Omnifighter.
Phelan almost took a stumbling step forward to send the missiles after Glynis, but she gave him no clear shot. She brought the Visigoth's nose up, kicking the ship into a graceful loop that skimmed it over the surface of the rockslide. Breaking immediately, she then executed a perfect barrel roll to the right, vanishing from Phelan's universe.
The NARC beacon slowed. "It's going to take forever to bring her down," he muttered. He glanced at his ammo indicator for the autocannon and triggered two volleys into the empty air. That took him down to his cluster munitions, which were the closest thing to birdshot a 'Mech could pack. "If I fill the air with this stuff, it'll do more overall damage."
As the NARC beacon's light began to quicken its pace, his heart began to sink. "It's still going to take forever, and she only has to get moderately lucky, while I have to survive her runs and knock her down. Dammit, she's not sloppy enough to fly into one of these canyon walls, and she flies too fast for me to waste these missiles on a chance shot." He ground his teeth with frustration. "If she'd only consent to become a stationary target!"
Suddenly the solution dawned, on him. As the NARC indicator pulsed faster and faster, Phelan reached out and hit the button, disabling it. As he swiveled the Nova's torso around to face the fighter's line of attack, he heard the rumble-roar of Glynis' engines filling the canyon.
At first sight of her, Phelan's autocannon bucked and roared. The clustered shell sprayed hundreds of metal fragments into the air, biting away bits and pieces of armor from the aircraft's wings, fuselage, and cockpit. In response, Glynis again triggered her PPC and twin forward lasers, but all three energy beams missed the Nova.
Phelan whipped the Nova's torso around and extended its right arm. Now or never! As Glynis started to pull the Visigoth's nose up, he launched his missiles. Without the NARC to guide them, they missed the Visigoth, streaking below past its belly.
However, they landed dead on target.
The score of missiles Phelan loosed hit the rockslide 200 meters in front of Glynis' fighter. The fiery explosions heaved huge chunks of stone into the air, directly in the Visigoth's flight path. At the speed her craft was moving, Glynis had less than half a second to react.
Her attempted roll was not enough.
One triangular rock sheared through the left wing as if the fighter was little more than a wood and paper model. That sped up Glynis' desperate roll, inverting the plane. It spiraled down into the rockslide and cartwheeled. When the Visigoth's right wing touched down, it crumpled like brittle bone, armor flaking off into a glittering cloud of useless ceramic. The fuselage split open right behind the cockpit, then the missiles spilling out of it exploded, obliterating any trace of the Omnifighter's existence.
* * *
Phelan looked up at the pyre burning on the rockslide. A piece of him wanted to mourn for Glynis, but he shut those feelings away. "This was a battle for a Bloodname," he heard himself say aloud. "She knew the stakes and wouldn't have shed a tear if it was me at the heart of that blaze."
But was a Bloodname reason enough to needlessly spill blood? And was killing for a title any more sensible than this Clan war against the Inner Sphere?
Phelan acknowledged those inner doubts with a nod of his head. "I am of the Clans now. Their concerns are my concerns." He started the Nova on the slow climb upward. "But their concerns are not my only concerns."
He smiled and headed off to see if, by some miracle, Glynis might have survived.
18
Firebase Tango Zephyr, Alyina
Trellshire, Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
9 March 3052
Kai studied the former firebase through the binoculars and felt his stomach tighten. Coil upon coil of razor-wire encircled the collection of quonset huts and low bunkers like a silver thorn thicket. Individuals manned the two watchtowers, though their weapons had been shifted around to cover the interior of the camp, not the killing ground surrounding it. A proudly waving ComStar banner topped the flagpole.
Through the field glasses, he could not recognize any single person, but he saw plenty of hobbled individuals wearing soiled remnants of Federated Commonwealth uniforms. Most appeared skeletally lean and walked with a listless shuffle that transformed them into zombies. Some tended a garden plot near the center of the camp while others worked in chain gangs improving and widening the dirt track leading up to the camp's double gate.
"How bad is it, Kai?"
He lowered the glasses and scratched at his beard. "It's bad, but not as bad as it could be. The camp guards appear to be locals, like Truper and Jocko, but the administrators are ComStar. I didn't see any Clanfolk, but that doesn't mean they aren't there."
Deirdre nodded as she gathered her hair back into a short ponytail. She tied it with a piece of string, then wrapped a dirty length of gauze around her head to obscure her right eye. "You think this will be enough of a disguise?"
Kai turned and smiled. She'd dressed in one of Truper's jumpsuits, which fit her like an elephant's skin would fit a yappy little dog. Along with the dirty rag wrapped around her head, it worked to hide all vestiges of her beauty. "If ComStar had fashion police, you'd be taken out and shot. I don't think anyone would recognize you. What about me?"
She squinted with her good eye, then gave him a grim smile. "The beard and some of your hair gathered into that topknot do make you look like a Kurita renegade. No one is going to connect you with either David Jewell or Kai Allard."
"Good." He tossed the binoculars back into the truck, then slid into the driver's seat. "Ready to beard the lion in his own den?"
She shifted the shoulder holster and pistol she wore to a slightly more comfortable position, though she still looked uneasy touching it. "Let's go now before I get some sense and try to talk you out of it."
Kai looked over his shoulder at the two body-bagged lumps in the rear. "Wouldn't matter. You'd be outvoted because they want to go home." He punched the ignition code into the dash-panel and the hovertruck rose on a cushion of air. Turning the wheel, he started it down the dirt track and on into the mouth of the dragon.
* * *
The dust cloud the hovertruck raised forced all the prisoners on the side of the road to turn away and cough out the choking haze. As much as Kai hated doing it to them, he knew it seriously reduced the chances of his being recogn
ized. The last thing he needed was to be identified while in the clutches of the enemy.
A tall Com Guard stopped the hovertruck at the gate. "What's you business?"
Kai jerked a thumb toward the bed of the truck. "Deliveries. Two ripe ones."
The man glanced back at the two bodies, then wrinkled his nose with disgust. "Take 'em to Building Three. That's the morgue and disbursement center." He signaled someone to open the first of the double gates.
Kai eased the hovertruck forward. After the gate behind him closed, the one in front opened. He steered the truck through and then toward the rear of the camp. "Remember, you don't say anything, okay?"
Deirdre nodded mutely and Kai smiled approval that she'd passed his test. He pulled the truck around to the small door beneath a huge scarlet number three painted on the front of the Quonset hut. He killed the engines, dropping the truck to the ground, then waited for the curling cloud of dust to settle a tan patina over the windscreen before he opened the door.
Deirdre followed him two steps back. Kai pushed the door open with his foot, then stepped inside to dust himself off. Deirdre slipped in behind him and slumped against the wall.
Three horrified ComStar clerks looked up at him as if he were a ghost. One man, clearly outraged as dust covered his papers, shot to his feet "Must you?"
Kai looked at him through narrowed eyes, then spat into his wastebasket.
Another man, older and wiser, pulled his compatriot back and forced him down into his chair. He looked up at Kai with a wan smile. "May I help you?" he asked in strained tones.
"Got two fer ya, see?" Kai sucked at his teeth as if trying to remove a bit of food stuck between two of them. "Bit messy and flyblown, but good ones."
The man's expression soured a bit. "You have two renegades?"
Kai nodded.
The man motioned Kai toward a chair beside his desk. Kai settled into it and slumped down so that the back of his head rested on the top of the seat's backrest, and his butt all but slid off the seat itself. He perched his elbows on the chair arms and his left hand strayed toward playing with a small ComStar flag on the desk.
The clerk moved the flag to the other side of the desk. "Do these renegades have names?"
Kai nodded.
The man waited for a bit, then cleared his throat. "What were their names?"
"Harry Truper and Dave Jewell."
The other two clerks turned to look at Kai.
Kai smiled and spat into the wastebasket again.
They went back to their work while the first clerk nervously punched the names into his computer. "Ah, Mister, ah, Harry Truper is a bounty hunter just like you."
"Not no more."
"Excuse me?"
Kai slowly levered himself up in the chair. "He's dead, see? Him and this Dave Jewell came to a shack me and the woman found after the Fedrats burned down our farm. They was planning to kill me and turn me in as Jewell. They said they'd use the woman and then cut her just like they did someone Jewell was running with before."
He glanced back cautiously at Deirdre, then leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially with the clerk. "They shouldn'ta said that. The woman ain't been right since some Fedrats took their liberty call out on her, without so much as leaving a C-bill behind, wakarimaska! She went and did for Truper, see, and I got Jewell after a bit of a gunfight."
They both looked over at Deirdre. Right on cue, she giggled a bit and sucked on her fingers.
The clerk shuddered.
Kai picked at one of his molars with his little finger. "Anyway, we thought they was renegades until we backtracked them and found their hovercar. I figgered we might'es well get some money for them. They are worth money, right?" With the last, Kai let his voice rise and tightened his left hand down into a fist.
The clerk nodded rapidly. "Once we've identified them, you will be paid."
Kai winced and made a "tch" sound by sucking at his cheek, then cracking the corner of his mouth open. 'Truper took one round through the face, and Jewell looks pretty gnawed on, wakarimaska! I got a bit angry, see, 'cause no one but no one, lays a hand on the woman 'cept me." He lightly punched the clerk's shoulder. "Same way with your missus, eh? Husbandly duties, right?"
"Er, right."
"Right." Kai smiled unevenly. "Look, don't know how much those wankers were worth, but this bounty-hunting stuff seems easy. We got Truper's truck and his gear. You got more assignments fer us?"
The man nodded and pushed an electrotablet toward Kai, then held out the light-pen. "Sign here and you'll get your money. One hundred C-bills is more than you should get, but you were so put out by these people."
Kai forced his eyes wide open. He knew that Dave Jewell, according to the warrant he'd destroyed, was worth ten times that amount, and he had a fair idea who was going to end up with the difference. He turned toward Deirdre and smiled. "Hear that, sweet? Seventy C-bills for those two. Your share is a whole twenty-five!"
She giggled again.
Kai winked at the clerk as he turned around. "Cute thing, but high finance is beyond her, wakarimaska! He gripped the light pen like a dagger and scored an X across the tablet.
The clerk smiled smugly and dug the requisite amount of ComStar scrip from a cash box in his desk drawer. He covertly slid that over to Kai, then handed him two more wanted posters complete with pictures of the individuals being hunted. Kai recognized one name as that of someone who had been with the planetary militia, but his expression remained blank.
"Since you have Truper's truck, you can keep his sector for searches. Good luck on these two." The clerk refrained from offering Kai his hand. "Two of my people have already removed the bodies from your truck, so you are free to go."
"Astral! I'll get these two wankers and we'll be back." Kai smiled and patted the man on his shoulder. "You'll be seeing lots of us in the future."
* * *
Back in the hovertruck, Kai started it up and headed out toward the gate. He drove slowly enough to scan the faces of prisoners working within the camp and outside on the road. Once through the twin gates and beyond where chain gangs were working, he increased his speed.
"How did they look to you, Doctor?"
She pulled the gauze from her head. "Malnourished. Some are obviously sick. I didn't see many with bandages, so either they sent the battle-wounded to a hospital ..."
"Or they've buried them somewhere." Kai frowned. "That's what I was thinking anyway." His gaze flicked to the rear-view mirrors, but the dust curtain let him see nothing of the camp. "I'm happy we've not been captured." .
"I second that." She shivered within Truper's outsized clothes. "What do we do next?"
Kai shrugged. "The way I see it, we, have two choices. The first is to run as far and as fast as we can."
"That has merit. What is the second?"
"They assigned Truper's old territory to us. Therefore we know of at least one place on this planet where the hunters won't find us."
She nodded, then looked at him sidelong. "Tough choice. I'll have to think on it. By the way, did you mean what you said back in the camp?"
Kai frowned, trying to remember exactly what he'd said. "You mean the part about you being cute?"
Deirdre shook her head. "No, the part about twenty-five of those C-bills being mine."
Kai smiled. "Go you one better, Doc. Nothing but a fifty-fifty split for the two of us. Let's see, I got seventy C-bills ..."
"Kai ..."
* * *
It amazed the ComStar clerk that Taman Malthus could study the stinking corpse of Dave Jewell without gagging. "That's him, Star Captain. There's your Dave Jewell."
The Elemental's head came up and the clerk regretted having drawn attention to himself. "You are in error, Acolyte." Malthus reached down and brought the body's right hand up into view. "This man has calluses on his right hand, suggesting it is the hand he used most. He was right-handed. Jewell was not."
The clerk swallowed hard. "That is not possible."
Malthus smiled easily and let the hand thump back onto the examining table. "It is. You yourself paid Dave Jewell money for bringing in his own corpse." The Elemental snorted, then shook his head. "This Jewell makes for most interesting prey, quiaff?"
The clerk nodded mutely.
Malthus closed the bag and wiped his hands on the clerk's shirt. "I will ignore the fact that you let your own greed blind you to what was going on here. That is ComStar business. I see no need to complicate things by notifying Demi-Precentor Khalsa."
"No, sir."
"Good. You said you gave the bounty hunter and his woman more targets?"
"Yes, Star Captain. They are working Truper's old territory."
"Excellent." Malthus steered,the clerk toward the door with a heavy hand on the back of the man's neck. "You will provide me with a map of your search sectors."
The Elemental glanced back at the two bodies stretched out on tables in the morgue. "That is what happens when you pit members of the criminal class against a warrior. Now we will show you freebirths how real Warriors deal with another Warrior. The bidding for this assignment will be fierce, but the hunt will be worth it."
19
Bethel
Capellan March, Federated Commonwealth
20 March 3052
Nicholas Chung fastened the straps of his safety harness across his chest. "I'll be decelerating to only a decimeter per second for docking. Please fasten yourself into the jump seat."
His passenger laughed lightly. "Come now, Chung, you need not sound like such an old woman. I've not lived this long to die from a bump when your DropShip docks with the JumpShip."
Chung hit a warning button on his command console's left side. It caused a series of five tones to sound throughout the ship, warning of an impending jump. "You may have been my commander on Spica, lo, those many eons ago, but I am in command of the Te Kuaiche."
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