by Victor Milán
He retrieved the neurohelmet set. Inside the cockpit was a mess. But the squeamishness had been trained out of him long ago, by harsher teachers than his great-grandmother.
At eighty tons the IIC mark of Phoenix Hawk was the classic Hawk on steroids. He was familiar with the basic modularized Clan control systems, and he had trained on simulators of just this model. He could drive it, except—
Like all BattleMechs, the Phoenix Hawk was secured by having its neurohelmet keyed solely to its assigned pilot’s brainwave patterns. It would respond to those patterns and only those unless reprogrammed. Overriding that protective system was an exceedingly difficult, tedious prospect.
From a pants pocket he took a device molded of off-white plastic, just smaller than his hand with fingers pressed together. He slid into the pilot’s couch and pressed the device against the inside of the neurohelmet. He pressed a contact pad on the white plastic object. A red light appeared.
’Jacking a BattleMech was highly tedious unless one’s employer provided one an exceedingly specialized, rare and classified piece of equipment. Then it wasn’t much challenge at all.
But it did take time. He forced himself to refamiliarize hands and feet with the analogue controls. It was not the return of the Demon or its friends that troubled him.
It was whether he’d get control of the purloined assault ’Mech in time to do any good. Because he could see from his vantage point that the final assault had begun in earnest. And things did not look good for the home team.
* * *
“Skye Six, this is Skye Prime,” said the command post operator in Tara Campbell’s headset. Despite being crouched down fighting for her life, the Countess felt a stab of pride: the commo tech managed to maintain professional steadiness in her voice, despite the fact that her own existence was now measured by how long it took one of Aleks Hazen’s furiously attacking Zetas to cross the crest of the hill and take a shot at the fat, flimsily armored command crawler. The way things were on the hill, it would not be long. “Message incoming for you.”
For a moment Tara’s eyes were dazzled as some kind of warhead flashed nova right above her cockpit. The windscreen pitted but did not crack.
“I’m a little busy for chat, Skye Prime,” she radioed back, trying to blink away maroon dirigibles of afterimage. Had it been Duke Gregory on the horn he would have come in directly on the exclusive high-command push.
“Sender identifies herself as Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, commanding the Steel Wolves,” the voice said. It seemed to waver slightly.
34
Weston Heights
Skye
15 August 3134
The whole world seemed to waver around Countess Tara Campbell. “What?” she shouted.
“New London spaceport traffic control reports a force of unidentified DropShips approaching Skye on a trajectory that will bring them into atmosphere moving west above Thames Bay, Six.”
Just when I thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, Tara thought. “Put her on, Skye Prime.”
A moment; the white noise background subtly shifted value. Then a low, silken voice: “—Kerensky calling. Have you decided to pull your thumb out of your—”
“This is Countess Tara Campbell,” Tara broke in crisply. “So you’ve come to join in feasting on Skye’s corpse, have you? Are you the Steel Jackals, now, to feast on Falcon leavings? You’ve been skulking long enou—”
“Softly, softly.” The insufferable bitch actually chuckled. “Is that any way to talk to your prospective savior, Countess, dear?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Kerensky? I don’t have much time—”
“No. You don’t. So listen fast and decide faster. We’re here for one thing: to drink Jade Falcon blood. My terms: amnesty—”
“Never!”
“Shut up and hear me, little Countess! Amnesty for me and my people while we remain in Skye system. Also what isorla we can grab from the Falcons. And afterwards—any generosity The Republic might care to extend will be appreciated.”
The Falcons had surged halfway up the slope in a maelstrom of noise and dust and flame: a dozen BattleMechs, untold vehicles riding turf-tearing treads or blasts of driven air, endangering the unpowered Clan infantry running flat out among them, as Elementals bounded in and out of the scrum. In its midst waded Aleks Hazen’s ’Mech, outrun by Zeta warriors who had lunged impatiently in front of him at his command to charge. He withheld his own fire, clearly saving himself for Tara Campbell.
Tara’s own forces were being pushed back. Slaughtered might be the word. She felt craven for cowering still in safety, yet her sole motive was to live long enough to die with her BattleMech’s hatchet buried in the head of Aleksandr Hazen’s ’Mech.
Yet now, the bloodstained claw of the costar of her deepest, darkest nightmares—Paladin Crow was the other—was extended toward her holding. . . .
. . . Hope?
“What do we get in return for that generosity?”
“Salvation. Decide, Countess. Take your time: five seconds.”
Clearly she must consult Duke Gregory before making any decision so momentous. “Yes,” she said.
“Your word on the amnesty, Countess. Swear.”
“I swear on my honor as Countess Northwind—amnesty, damn you!”
“Bid well and done, sweet enemy.”
A brain-searing crack split the sky as a lone Jagatai aerospace fighter streaked overhead, supersonic out of the east—blasting windows out of a quarter of New London—low enough that Tara’s eyes could actually make out the snarling metal wolf’s head painted on its airfoil undersurfaces. All action stopped on the battlefield as heads raised to stare.
Drive thunder drowned even the din of mechanized carnage. Blazing comets passed overhead, headed west and somewhat south: DropShips, descending rapidly to land. Not even Anastasia Kerensky was reckless enough to risk her ships in a direct duel with the Falcon landing craft. She did seem intent upon landing close enough to threaten them with a quick march of her forces.
The Falcons had to respond. Tara saw battle machines bearing the Turkina Keshik insignia turn away to race back to defend their landing zone. Beckett Malthus would not care to risk his ships.
But Aleksandr Hazen’s Turkina’s Beak warriors turned their faces forward and grimly pressed their advance. Aleks was just the sort of action-trivid hero to consider even his means of escape fair price to pay for victory and a world—or even glory, curse him. Tara did.
“I just sold my soul,” she said to herself, microphone squelched, “to the ravagers of my home world. And they’ll never get here in time.”
A shadow swept over her from behind, upheld by lightning, so huge Tara cringed within her cockpit, fearing irrationally it was about to crush her. The squashed, vaguely aerodynamic oblong of a Broadsword BattleMech-carrier DropShip, an armored ovoid, overflew the battlefield at less than five hundred meters. It flayed the Falcons with missiles, lasers and particle projectors, as its own antimissile batteries exploded Falcon salvos and its massive armor shrugged off the lashings of energy beams. A single hatch opened in its flat belly. A squat black figure fell from it.
Blue-white jets flamed from the plummeting BattleMech’s sides. It slowed, but was still moving fast when it hit—right through the pitched roof of the seminary structure that had miraculously survived until now.
The Broadsword swept on, black smoke streaming from smashed hardpoints but not sorely hurt, to pass out of view along the trail its comrades had blazed. Other BattleMechs fell from it, into the houses behind Turkina’s Beak. The near wall of the seminary building bulged, and then a Ryoken II BattleMech strode forth in a cascade of bricks. Flashes rippled ’round it as its pilot blasted loose the explosive bolts which had clamped the short-burn-time rocket booster packs to the machine.
“Sorry,” Anastasia Kerensky radioed. “Had to break my fall. Put it on my tab.”
The BattleMech strode straight toward Tara’s Hatchetman
. Her belly clenched: her body awaited treachery. Instead the Ryoken II halted a few meters away.
For a moment the two women warriors stood, confronting one another directly for the first time.
As if to mark the occasion the fighting ceased in the general area of the seminary structure. As intact Republican vehicles and BattleMechs came up to form a line on the hilltop flanking the two women, the Falcons formed a similar line facing them from below.
A hawk-head ’Mech stepped to the fore. Its whole body seemed to lean forward to thrust the autocannon and large lasers which were its arms toward its foe. A scarred and blistered insignia of a steel fist gripping a white lily was recognizable on its chest. The enemies appraised each other.
“Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen,” Tara said, voice booming fiercely through her Hatchetman’s external speakers. “You and yours have fought superbly. Now spare your Clan further waste of brave warriors. You cannot win now, even if I fall. Agree to end this now, and to depart Skye system at once, and the Falcons may withdraw safely, with all your weapons and gear. My word of honor as field commander of The Republic’s armed forces on Skye.”
An amplified chuckle greeted her. “Your honor I trust as my own, Countess Tara Campbell. But what of the Wolf who stands at your side?”
Reflexively, Tara glanced at the image of the modified Ryoken II. Her reflex was to say, I will answer for her as well—although her desire was to say, take care of her. Either might provoke her volatile enemy to turn on her, sparking a three-way battle that could see the Steel Wolves in possession of Skye.
Aleks saved her. “In any event, I must decline your offer with thanks, Tara Campbell. When have you known a Clan warrior to count the odds? Let us play out this game.”
“On your head be it,” Tara said. She added in a quick hiss over the radio, “He’s mine.”
“I’d as soon pluck one Falcon as another.” The Countess could almost hear her archrival shrug. “Knock yourself out. I’ve got your back.”
Undeterred by having just received possibly the least-reassuring reassurance in the history of human speech, Tara Campbell keyed her command channel, and cried, “In the name of Devlin Stone—charge.”
She obeyed her own command, throttling her Hatchetman into a full-speed run right at Aleks Hazen’s unfamiliar ’Mech. A beat, and both battle lines followed. Nasty Kerensky had her speakers on. She was laughing.
Aleks Hazen’s armament was powerful: if he simply stood his ground and fired he could take Tara’s BattleMech apart with his weapons before she could reach him. Instead, he ran to meet Tara, unwilling to stand while his warriors charged. Or that was how intel analysts explained it later, backed by reams of sociocultural analysis by all the best experts.
The Hatchetman shook convulsively to autocannon impacts. Tara’s cockpit filled with red glare as if her foe’s large lasers were shining their hell light right inside, from all the telltales warning her of danger and failures. She kept the ’Mech moving forward first with consummate skill and then pure will as it stumbled, slowed.
But Aleks was not shy about closing with her. Her whole ferro-glass viewscreen seemed to fill with the image of that hawk head, almost lost in the glare of laser beams and muzzle flame. She cocked her huge hatchet back another few degrees and brought it down, falling into the rushing ’Mech as much as striking with it.
She saw blue lightning arc as it sank home in the cockpit’s center. Felt a terrific jar of impact transmitted up the Hatchetman’s arm. Then another fearsome clangorous impact as the running ’Mechs collided.
Her vision blanked. She was falling—
Approaching up the slope behind the rushing Falcons like a latecomer to the dance, Paul Laveau saw what Tara, her ’Mech lying with its limbs all tangled with its erstwhile foe’s, could not.
At their beloved leader’s fall the Zetas went berserk. But rather than trying to generally engage the Republican battle line, they converged on their beloved commander’s fallen ’Mech. Their only desire now, Paul guessed, was to recover Aleksandr’s body and ward off the disgrace of having it fall into enemy hands—or, infinitely worse, Steel Wolf claws.
But vengeance did not fail to occur to them. A camouflage-painted Zeta Shadow Hawk IIC closed quickly upon Tara’s prone ’Mech, preparing to destroy her with its powerful laser battery and advanced tactical missiles. Determination not to defile Aleksandr Hazen’s corpse was likely all that was keeping the Zeta MechWarrior from pummeling her already.
What the Wolf Bitch—There’s a woman who knows how to make an entrance!—might do or not do to save her enemy and ally was moot: she was dueling coolly with a pair of tanks and a light ’Mech of a design unfamiliar to Paul. Though his stolen Phoenix Hawk was an assault ’Mech, Paul did not trust its armament—a pair of 10- centimeter autocannon and a machine gun, useless here—to neutralize the Shadow Hawk before it killed Tara.
He jumped.
“Tara!” he called over his loudspeakers. “Move!”
Tara Campbell felt as if she had been beaten with bats, but her breathing was normal if hurried and no blood seemed to be coming out anywhere but her left nostril. Her vision blocks blinked once and came back on as her external audio pickups relayed a warning in a familiar—if impossible—voice.
“Paul?” she said. She was already responding. Using arm and hip actuators, she rolled her Hatchetman right off Aleks’ fallen machine. Unfortunately, the depleted-uranium blade of her hatchet was stuck in the ’Mech’s head. Nor could her ’Mech readily let go. She found herself on her back, stuck tight as a Vulture stopped to take aim. Worse, a big Falcon Phoenix Hawk IIC was jumping in its eagerness to be in on the kill. She rolled the Hatchetman wildly, trying to bring its torso-mounted weaponry to bear on an attacker. It was hopeless.
The Phoenix Hawk smashed the long slender “toes” of its feet through the top of the Vulture’s fuselage, peeling open the cockpit in a death-from-above attack. The Vulture toppled to its right.
The Hawk, knocked off its jump-jet thrust-columns, somersaulted over an astonished Tara in her Hatchetman.
“Watch that last step, Countess!” the inverted ’Mech said to her in Paul Laveau’s voice. Its eighty tons landed on its winged back with a crash that lifted Tara’s fallen ’Mech half a meter off the ground.
The movement worked her hatchet free of the cockpit that served as Aleks Hazen’s tomb. She scrambled her machine to its feet.
Without concern for their own survival, every Turkina’s Beak BattleMech, vehicle, Elemental and foot soldier in view seemed to be converging on their lost leader—and Tara. For the moment, though, the avenging fury of their fire was focused exclusively on the ’Mech that had committed such an inexplicable act of treachery.
The Phoenix Hawk IIC lay supine, arms outspread, immobile. Then it vanished amid a storm of dirt and sod thrown up by volleys of rockets, short range as well as long. Dazzling beams of colored light stabbed and crackled into the maelstrom.
Rippling flashes illuminated the cloud of dirt and smoke as ammo stored in the fallen BattleMech’s torso lit off. It had a CASE system to vent ammo explosions out the back—but the armored hatches covering the vents were jammed, pinned closed against the soil of Skye by the ’Mech’s eighty tons.
“Paul!” Tara screamed. But he was beyond her help now—and she needed help herself just now, as a Star of enemy ’Mechs, led by a Black Hawk bearing what looked like Ghost Bear emblems as well as Falcon ones, switched fire to her. Her Hatchetman rocked as an Elemental battle suit landed on her right shoulder and clung like a giant stinging insect. It began ripping open her cockpit armor with its manipulator.
A blue beam touched it from behind the Hatchetman. The battle armor came apart in a ball of black smoke and red flame, surrounded by a buzzing blue corona. Tara felt her short hair stand on end from her sweat-wet scalp as side current from the particle beam fluxed through her cockpit.
The squat shape of a seventy-five-ton Ryoken II materialized at the Countess’ shoulder.
A metallic wolf’s-head emblem laughed on its side armor. “That should ensure you keep your end of the bargain,” Anastasia Kerensky’s voice said in Tara’s headset. “Not that I trust your naive honor any less than that gallant, dead nitwit did.”
Shoulder by shoulder the two women, mortal enemies until mere moments before—and no doubt again, in not much more time—fought the fanatically onrushing Zetas. Step by step they gave ground. Not even Anastasia Kerensky’s Wolf pride mandated she throw her life away for the dead husk of a Falcon hero.
Firing died away on the scarred and smoldering hillside as the Zetas swarmed around Aleksandr Hazen’s ’Mech. The Phoenix Hawk lay ignored by his side, a smoking, shattered wreck. Looking at it, Tara felt a stinging in her eyes.
Elementals tore open the smashed cockpit with their hand-like manipulators. Gently, they extracted the body of their commander. They gave it into the open right palm of the Black Hawk with the Ghost Bear insignia, which knelt to receive it. Then they retreated among the houses of Weston Heights, where smoke and explosions indicated their comrades were skirmishing with the Steel Wolves BattleMechs hot-dropped in their rear.
Ever the cagey battle leader, Anastasia Kerensky had ordered only a handful of her troops dropped: just enough to threaten Aleks’ rear and make clear even to stiff-necked Jade Falcons that the battle here was lost. But not enough to weaken her attempt to pirate a few of the valuable Falcon DropShips. She was content to leave the fighting for the moment to the Steel Wolves, and agree with Tara Campbell’s command to her exhausted Highlanders and Garryowens to cease fire.
When Aleksandr Hazen’s honor guard vanished, she turned her ’Mech to face Tara’s and popped the hatch. The Ryoken II was savagely scarred by beam and blast; its right hand, which Anastasia lifted in mock of the Highlander salute, had been half melted by particle beams.
Tara likewise turned her Hatchetman and opened her canopy. For the first time the two long-time antagonists looked at each other in the flesh.
