by Ian Douglas
Was it even possible to trust someone who'd broken his oath of allegiance?
As Katya had.
She shook the nagging thought off. "Where's Braun?"
Darcy's LaG-17 Fastrider, a meter shorter than the heavier Ghostrider turned on spidery, lightly armored legs. The two 50-megawatt lasers, extending like mandibles from either side of the bullet-shaped fuselage, contributed to the ugly, insectlike appearance of the machine. Perhaps unintentionally, those lasers were pointed right at her.
"Fifty meters back, last I saw of him. Captain."
Damn. She should have ridden closer herd on Braun, instead of trusting Darcy to keep an eye on the kid. She shifted frequencies. "Braun? This is Alessandro. Are you okay?"
"Affirmative, Captain," Braun's voice came back. "Just slow going, is all."
"We're at the rail cut. Snap it up. We need your passenger."
"On our way."
She turned, pointedly ignoring Darcy as she surveyed her surroundings again. The sky was clear and green and filled with the hard white light of Marduk. At dusk, she knew, to the north against the pale-shifting glow of Eridu's aurorae, the sky-el could just barely be made out, a silken thread stretched taut between heaven and earth, but it was lost now in the day-glare.
She checked her internal clock. Their movement through the jungle had taken longer than expected . . . but she'd allowed plenty of leeway. Twenty minutes to go. No problem. Chung reported that the switch house was empty, as expected. It housed the automatic circuitry for controlling a siding switch, visible a hundred meters up the line as a prominent Y in the rail.
Beyond that, higher up against the purple mass of the Equatorials, was a saddle-shaped notch through the mountains called Grimalkin Pass. It was a narrow valley with sheer slopes; the siding spur was designed to route southbound monorails off the main line as northbound monos were coming through the pass. The switch house contained the automated circuitry for reading the relative positions and speeds of the monorails, and for controlling the switches.
Sinclair had insisted that their raid take place at this particular siding spur. The rebels didn't want to totally disrupt the only monorail link between Eridu's south polar zone and Babel, for that would be both political and economic suicide. If they could divert the monorail onto the siding, they could restrict any damage to the spur rail and keep the main line open.
The constructor stepped with cumbersome daintiness from the wall of trees and onto the rail cut. With four dish-footed, elephantine legs, broader and squatter than it was long, it had once been a Kawasaki KC-212 heavy cargo transporter, an eighty-ton monster commonly called a Rhino. Now its belly lift and gripper arms had been removed, armor plate had been bolted to the body, and a pair of 50-megawatt lasers in crude ball-and-socket turrets had been mounted on either side of the body.
"We're here," Braun called. "Where do you want us?"
"Drop Simone anywhere. Move it! There's not much time."
"Rog."
The four-legged beast settled back on its haunches, then jerkily lowered itself to within a couple of meters of the ground. A hatch in the belly split open and Simone Dagousset dropped to the rock. She wore dark brown skintights and boots, with a helmet over her red hair, protecting her head against the glare of Marduk. Her lower face was covered by a breathing mask, connected by hoses to the life support pack she wore strapped to her chest.
"The building's clear. Simone," Katya said. She used her internal taccom channel. Simone had a radio transceiver implanted in her skull. "Hit it! We have fifteen minutes."
Simone replied with a wave and dashed across the clearing, vaulting the maglev rail and disappearing toward the domed building.
"Okay," Katya said. "Lee, you cover Simone. Everybody else, take your positions."
Fifteen minutes . . .
They'd rehearsed this a dozen times in the past couple of days in virtual reality simulators. As Chung stood watch by the small domed building, the other four striders took up positions in the jungle, two to either side of the siding switch.
"Captain?"
Eight minutes. God, don't let something go wrong now!
"What is it, Simone?"
"I'm into the program, no static."
"And?"
"I'm reading the target, ten kilometers north and coming fast."
"Get ready to throw the switch."
"Uh, I thought I should tell you. From the data I'm reading here, there are two cars on the train."
That rocked Katya back for a moment. Two cars! Sinclair's intelligence had predicted that the comel was to be transported to Luxor aboard a single monorail car—a ten-meter-long self-powered vehicle that might carry thirty or forty troops as guards, if HEMILCOM was expecting trouble, which, please God, they weren't. But if a second car had been attached . . .
"Might be extra troops riding shotgun," Chung said. "The comel could be important enough to them."
If that was all that was on the second car. But it was up to Katya to decide, and right now. She didn't like the unexpected twist in the plans, especially this close to zero. Her instincts were telling her to abort the op. That second car could be carrying heavier backup than her tiny command could take on.
But then again, this was their only shot at a comel. What would she do, go back and tell Sinclair, "Sorry, Travis, but I was afraid there was something nasty in that second car, so I aborted"? Sinclair would understand completely and tell her it was okay . . .
. . . which made her that much more determined to carry out the mission.
"Go ahead with the program," she told Simone, deciding. "The rest of you, keep sharp. If that second car is armed, I want it disabled with the first shot."
The others acknowledged. What else could be done? Not a damned thing.
"Simone here. I'm ready to cut in."
Three minutes. "Wait one . . ."
A minute thirty, and her sensors were detecting a shiver in the air. "Okay, Simone. Throw the switch."
There was a click and a high-pitched whining sound. A portion of the rail ten meters in front of Katya's position separated, then slid to the right, linking up with the dead-end spur. Scant seconds later, she picked up the bulk of the oncoming monorail, a dull-gray, ultrasleek shape, a flattened cylinder with a low-riding, jet aircraft's nose. The hull spilled over well to either side of the slender maglev rail, hugging it in a cocoon of electromagnetic fields that supported the vehicle, frictionless, above the rail, and hurled it forward at speeds approaching four hundred kph.
It was not going nearly that fast now, however. As soon as Simone had thrown the switch, the fact would have been sensed by the monorail's computer and the drive fields reversed to slow the big machine to a stop. It still took a considerable distance to slow such mass, however, and the train was rushing toward the warstrider ambush with seemingly unstoppable momentum. Katya wanted to say something, "Get ready" or "Stand by" or something inspiring, but she knew there was nothing to be said. With a buffeting wind that lashed the vegetation around her, the monorail rushed past her hiding place, smoothly gliding off the main line and onto the spur. Its speed was now no more than fifty kilometers per hour, and Katya could easily see details of markings and external fittings on that streamlined hull. She saw the second car, almost seamlessly joined to the first, and with heart-pounding relief saw that it was not, as she'd feared, a military design with armor or gun turrets, but a simple cargo car, windowless, with a wide loading door along the side.
When the end of the second car cleared the switch, she gave the order. "Fire!"
Rudi struck first from his hiding place on the far side of the track, his Swiftstrider's Cyclan Arms high-velocity autocannon opening up with a steady thud-thud-thud followed almost instantly by the far louder slam-wham! of detonating 18mm shells. Braun, hidden to Rudi's left, opened fire a second later, his twin lasers slicing through the lead car's ceramiplas hull like a hot wire through butter. The monorail shuddered, lurched to the side, then came down on the rail
with an ear-piercing scream.
"Captain! The laser safety! Captain!" Lipinski's shrill mental shout reached her at last and she remembered to arm the Ghostrider's laser. A second later, a bolt from the LaG-42's chin turret struck the monorail close to the joining of the two cars, opening up a jagged hole a meter wide.
Lightning played across the lead car's skirt and arced along the rail, and then the vehicle's power failed while it was still drifting forward. The streamlined nose came down on the spur rail, hard enough to buckle it, and there was a piercing shriek of ripping metal. The second car's momentum kept it moving forward, crumpling the stricken lead car with a crash like thunder.
Katya understood now Sinclair's insistence on diverting the monorail first onto the siding. The lead car was twisting the maglev rail out of shape as it rode it to the ground. Scraping along bedrock, the car began spilling over, toppling away from Katya's position. To her left, Darcy's LaG-17 was already out of the jungle and advancing toward the crumpling wreck, its twin fifties alternately loosing pulses of coherent light into the hull, which was splitting now, from front to back. With a final, grating shriek of tortured metal and ceramics, the monorail came to a rest, its nose buried in rubble and the lead car lying all the way over on its side. The second car was still powered. Katya could hear the protesting whine of its gyros trying to keep its mass upright.
"Hold your fire, Darcy!" Katya called. "Everybody, hold your fire!" The comel would be well protected within some kind of transport container, but it still wouldn't do to destroy the prize they were trying to capture in fire or explosion.
The second car, teetering half on the rail and half off, was opening up, its cargo loading door sliding back. She saw movement inside. . . .
"Scatter!" Katya yelled suddenly. "Take cover!"
Troops were spilling from the second car, men in the black armor of elite Imperial Marines. Worse, though, was the black, nightmare shape heaving itself out of the vehicle, a knife-lean shape bristling with weapons, supported between powerful legs that held it five and a half meters above the ground.
It was a Kawasaki design, a KY-1001. The common name was Katana, after the traditional Japanese great sword. Massing thirty tons and armed with multiple lasers, autocannon, and missiles, it was one of the deadliest of the Empire's top-line, two-slotter warstriders.
And it was sprinting straight toward Katya's position.
Chapter 13
The soldier is the army. No army is better than its soldiers. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country.
—War As I Knew It
General George S. Patton, Jr.
C.E. 1947
At a range of twenty meters, Katya triggered her left-side Kv-70 weapons pack, unleashing a hissing barrage of grenades and M-21 rockets. She knew the grenades would be useless against the Katana's armor, but they might distract the thing for a moment, and they would certainly give the Impie Marines boiling around the monster's feet something to think about. As for the rockets, they were crude, unguided packets of high-explosive, but at practically point-blank range they could hardly miss. Explosions flashed and snapped across the Katana's left leg and torso, stopping its headlong charge, then forcing it back a step to keep its balance. On the ground, the phalanx of armored troops was shredded as grenade blasts tore through its ranks. Some men folded and collapsed like string-cut puppets; most scattered, seeking cover.
Lipinski fired the LaG-42's chin turret laser a moment later, the beam sharply delineated by the boiling cloud of smoke and dust raised by the rapid-fire blasts. Durasheath armor glowed white-hot beneath the laser's caress, then exploded in liquid splatters, leaving a fist-sized hole in the armor covering the left leg actuator assembly.
Katya saw the telltale shift of the Katana's main gun, a 150-MW laser jutting from beneath the hull in savage, priapic mockery. In strider close combat, maneuver was the key to survival. Operating more on instinct than thought, she threw herself to the right; the LaG-42's shocks and parahydraulics shrieked protest as the top-heavy machine nearly overbalanced. The Katana's laser fired in the same instant, the beam slicing past the left side of her hull and striking flame from her left weapons pod.
Darcy's Fastrider was in the fight now, standing fifteen meters to Katya's left, legs flexed sharply to lower the hull almost to the ground. The LaG-17 was pitifully outclassed by the nightmare power of the Katana, but he was loosing bolt after bolt of coherent light into the monster, concentrating on the relatively thin armor covering its right leg. The Katana sidestepped as two solid hits gouged into durasheath close to the back-angled knee, then unloosed a flurry of shots from the paired 88-MW lasers turret-mounted on either side of its hull. Explosions cracked and hissed about Darcy's Fastrider, but he was already in motion, charging toward the monster in a desperate bid to get beneath its arc of fire.
Scant seconds had passed since the Katana had first appeared. Rudi Carlsson's Ares-12 Swiftstrider was only now circling past the front end of the monorail's wreckage, trying to get a clear shot at the Katana, while the elephantine bulk of Braun's Rhino came around the back. With odds of four to one, it might be possible to—
The clumsy Rhino staggered as two bolts lanced from the open interior of the monorail car in quick succession, striking the constructor in its belly. Katya groaned. A second black-armored nightmare was rising out of the wreck. Smaller and leaner than the Katana, massing only twenty-two tons, but faster and nearly as deadly as its larger consort, the KY-1180 Tachi mounted a twin 88-MW laser in a flat dorsal turret and carried Mark III weapons packs mounted at either hip joint.
Darcy's Fastrider collided with the Katana, the shock sending both of them crashing to the ground. The Tachi fired again as it stepped clear of the monorail car, and a slab of makeshift duralloy armor dropped from the quad legged constructor's ventral side as mounting bolts exploded. Braun swung the Rhino to face this new threat, its side-mounted lasers tracking and firing in a deadly one-two, but the Tachi's reply was a shrieking barrage of rockets with armor-piercing warheads, slamming in full-auto fury into the clumsy, four-legged behemoth. Internal explosions rippled through the Rhino's hull; its right-side laser turret shattered in a dazzling eruption of flame and spinning fragments trailing smoke.
Damn! Katya triggered a burst of M-21 rockets from her right weapons pack at this new threat. Rhino conversions might be effective enough against legger infantry, but they'd never been meant to stand up in combat against top-of-the-line Imperial warstriders. A lucky burst smashed the Tachi's right hip joint. Rudi's Ares-12 opened up with its Cyclan autocannon a second later. High-explosive shells slashed into the KY-1180, toppling it against the monorail with a splintering crash.
Rudi's light machine was hit in the same instant: a rapid-fire burst of eye-searing white flame whiplashed into the Swiftstrider with a savage chain of explosions that blasted away the leg actuator assembly in hurtling, smoking fragments, then ripped its right leg from its torso.
The shot, Katya saw, had come from a plasma gun, a massive, two-meter-long squad-support weapon only marginally man-portable. "Rudi!" she yelled over the tac channel. The Ares-12 was toppling slowly to its right, smoke pouring from the gaping hole where its hip assembly had been. "Punch out! Eject!"
There was no reply as the eight-ton machine slammed into rock. She opened up with both of her Ghostrider's machine guns, hammering off 15mm explosive rounds from the guns mounted in each Kv-70 pack. MG fire was almost useless against heavily armored warstriders, but it could be devastating against combat-suited infantry. Twinkling detonations smashed solid rock to gravel, sliced the plasma gunner's cuirass open from shoulder to leg, and nearly tore him in half.
Turning slowly, she walked that twin stream of stuttering, full-auto death across the line of Imperial Marines, cutting them down like a scythe slashing down wheat. Her external mikes picked their screams, masked by the roar of heavy weapons fire. A rocket-propelled grenade streaked low across the fie
ld, slammed into her left leg, and glanced off without exploding. She flicked left and chopped down the gunner, almost regretting it; the guy's antiarmor round hadn't had time to arm itself, so close was his target. His mistake cost him his life.
But she couldn't concentrate on the marines, not now. The Katana was already struggling back to its feet. Bringing a fallen warstrider upright after it had been knocked down was always tricky, requiring the pilot's full concentration. Katya pivoted hard, then sent the last of her rockets screaming into the rising machine. Explosions flashed across the KY-1001's hull. The concussion popped an access hatch in a puff of smoke, exposing the colorful bundles of circuit wiring and parahydraulic tubing stuffed beneath the stricken machine's skin. Broken wiring sparked and smoked.
Lipinski still had control of the Ghostrider's main gun, but Katya could show him where she wanted him to shoot.
"Targeting!" she yelled, and in her mind's eye a bright red set of brackets closed on the gaping, sparking wound, which slashed across the Katana's dorsal hull centimeters from the blister housing one of its two pilots. "Hit him, Georg!"
The laser fired, the hundredth-second pulse flashing into the open panel with a sputtering eruption of molten insulation and circuitry. Warnings flashed across her visual display. "We're gonna lose the laser!" Lipinski yelled.
Then the laser circuit went dead as the core overheated and the cooling jacket ruptured. Steam clouds enveloped the Ghostrider in white mist as coolant gushed past melted seals and boiled into the open air.
She shut down the circuit and kept advancing. On the stricken Katana, lightning arced and snapped between the smoking crater in its hull and the ground, and then Katya was hurling the yammering fury of her machine guns at that pried-open chink in the bigger machine's armor. She was so close now to the fallen hulk that shrapnel pinged and ricocheted off her own hull. The enemy strider started to rise once more, and then an internal explosion savaged the Katana, slamming it down, tearing a twin-88 from the side of the fuselage and peeling back a meter-wide strip of duralloy like cardboard.
