Patriot’s Stand

by Mike Moscoe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Patriot’s Stand

  A Roc Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by WizKids, LLC.

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 0-7865-4529-9

  A ROC BOOK®

  Roc Books first published by The Roc Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ROC and the “R” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Electronic edition: March, 2004

  1

  Near Falkirk, Alkalurops

  Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

  3 April 3134; local spring

  Grace O’Malley loosened the straps on her harness, rested her elbows on the open cockpit of “Pirate,” her MiningMech, and focused her binoculars. A quick sweep of the Gleann Mor Valley before her showed no sign of the raiders whose arrival she dreaded.

  Lately the chatter on the Net had been scary. Usually, Grace ignored Net gossip, but Allabad, the capital of Alkalurops, had dropped off-Net a week ago with no explanation. Then hysterical postings and phone calls started pouring in about BattleMechs stomping through houses, tanks shooting up shops, and off-world troops hijacking ’Mechs—followed by that town dropping off the Net. Now the Net blackout was about to overwhelm Grace’s hometown of Falkirk.

  The evening before, her friend Gordon Frazier, mayor of Kilkenny, not two hours’ drive south, slapped up a hasty e-note that BattleMechs and a whole lot of other armor were coming up the south road from Amarillo. Grace had called Gordon, but by then both voice and data links were dead. It looked as though Falkirk was on its own and raiders were coming to swipe Pirate.

  Last night’s town meeting in Falkirk had been the shortest since Grace had been elected mayor. Some citizens were for running, but most agreed: “Alkalurops takes care of itself.” The vote was to fight. That didn’t surprise Grace. For much of the week, Mick’s ’Mech Maintenance Mavens had been adding armor to the six local ’Mechs and jury-rigging weapons like the Gatling gun made of six hunting rifles that was now strapped to Pirate’s right arm. John Shepherd, the local gunsmith, had specially loaded them with high-powered, steel-jacketed shells.

  Grace shook her head as if to clear it of a bad dream. Since she was a kid, her mom had told her how ancient Ireland once trembled at the name of Grace O’Malley, the pirate woman. Grace had even named her MiningMech Pirate “because he steals metal and hydrocarbons from the ground.” But real pirates! She’d hoped never to face anything like this in The Republic of the Sphere.

  She also hadn’t expected the HPG interstellar com grid to go down two years ago. On an out-of-the-way planet like Alkalurops, that meant the news talkies spent more time on local chitchat. But even with trade disrupted and metals and coal fetching below-market prices, it seemed like a small price to pay for being left alone.

  Once again Grace swept her binoculars over the Gleann Mor Valley, this time slowly, almost lovingly. This was her home. She’d grown up here, like her mother and grandmother before her, going back almost to the firstlanders. The valley hadn’t changed much in all that time. It showed red and brown where native plants still held on, and green where Terran plants were slowly replacing them. In the spring air, the yellow of Scotch broom outlined the road from the south and sprang up in patches elsewhere. The mountains of the Cragnorm Range, only ten or fifteen klicks away, showed Scotch broom as well as the purple of heather. Behind Grace, the foothills of the Galty Range would show the same hues if she twisted in her cockpit to look. Instead she glanced north, up the valley to where the gray of Falkirk’s stone buildings stood in the lee of Wilson Crag. Around the cliff were the large green circles of irrigated land, growing the Terran wheat, corn, barley, and oats that were sold outside the valley. Small gardens adjoining the houses provided all the vegetables the inhabitants needed. Falkirk was comfortably independent—or had been last week.

  Now Falkirk needed help, so two days ago Grace sent out a call to all the small holdings in the mountains and towns beyond. She was more than grateful for the signs of digging beside the road in front of where she stood. Yesterday Chato Bluewater had led in two dozen Navajos from the White River Valley, on the other side of the still snow-capped Hebrides Range. Now they were working on a defense strategy that Chato had assured Grace would work, although she wasn’t sure what it was.

  Yesterday, while Pirate was in the shop having the Gatling rigged, the Navajo, aided by anyone willing to pitch in, had dug, strung line, and done other strange things. Grace watched and scratched her head. “How do you stop a ’Mech with a rope?” she called out.

  Chato smiled softly at the question. “You fight the white man’s way. We’ll follow the warpath with the spirit of Coyote. Let’s see whose path the MechWarriors wish they hadn’t crossed.”

  Grace had never heard him use words like “white man” before. Then again, she’d never been on the “warpath” with him. A bit uncomfortable, she answered with “They’re not warriors, just raiders. And I’m not a white man, I’m a Scotch-Irish woman.”

  “You are the mayor of Falkirk. That’s enough to make you a white man to me,” Chato said.

  He laughed as Grace shot back, “Only on Thursday evenings during the town meetings.”

  But Chato quickly grew serious. “You are the one these hardheaded miners accept as their war leader. Put on war paint, Chief, and let’s see how good your braves are.”

  Grace made grumbling noises at him—she’d never worn makeup in her life. With her creamy complexion set off by flaming red hair, she didn’t really need it.

  “Dust on the horizon.” The voice of Dan McLeod snapped her back to attention. He was in his AgroMech, to her left, his machine listing a bit with the weight of the field burner now hanging from its left arm. Normally, the burner was used to clear native vegetation to prepare a field for Terran crops. Now the burner was equipped with a high-speed pump, and the hump of a two-kiloliter feed tank towered over Dan’s open cockpit. Grace had heard that BattleMechs tended to heat up in combat. Dan’s burner would help that along, big time.

  Grace turned her binoculars south and leaned far forward. In the cockpit, Pirate’s gyros protested her off-balance weight adding to the new front armor. Grace dropped her right hand back into the cockpit and used the joystick to edge the drill bit on Pirate’s right arm out to balance her against the fifteen-meter-tall granite pinnacle she was hiding behind.

  She returned her attention to the main road. Yep, she could see a dust cloud out there now. The road was straight, generally five klicks or more from the mountains, but below Grace a dry ravine forced it closer to the foothills. A spring gully-washer would have put the road under three meters of raging water, but there hadn’t been a thunderstorm for more than a week. At least the dust gave warning even if the dry ground made it easier for the raiders to bounce around off-road.

  Grace pulled a mirror from around her neck and aimed it at the valley to give Cha
to a warning flash. Someone emerged from among the brush and cheat-grass and waved a shirt back.

  Now Grace cinched her harness. A quick check showed her neurohelmet was in place and none of her cooling lines were kinked. She brought Pirate’s engine up from a fuel-saving idle to ready power. Working the pedals with care, she spun him around on his left heel to face the other ’Mechs and fifty men and women with rifles and the improvised rocket-firing tubes Mick called bazookas.

  Projecting her voice as her father had taught her years ago, to carry to the crew two stories below and the ’Mech pilots with idling engines, Grace shouted, “What do you say we spread out some?” Even shouting, she made sure her words came across as a suggestion. Chato might call her Falkirk’s war chief, but this bunch were not soldiers. That they followed her suggestions more often than not made her their leader. If she shot her mouth off too much, they’d pick a new mayor.

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Jim Wilson, owner of about half the irrigation circles around Falkirk. He closed up the newest AgroMech in town, its paint now marred from the additional armor welded to its front. As Wilson led the way to a pile of rocks a klick south, his son followed, piloting a similarly up-armored AgroMech that wasn’t all that much older than Pirate. The Wilsons’ rifle cabinet had been emptied to provide the barrels for the Gatling guns that both ’Mech MODs carried. A dozen tenant farmers with gopher guns and two rocket launchers trailed them.

  Owen McCallester, who had never forgiven Grace for beating him out of the mayor’s job when his old man died, nodded to Dennis Brady, and the two troublemakers plodded a klick north with most of their own mine workers. Their ’Mechs’ engines struggled even as they waddled; both men had insisted Mick weld armor to the front and back of their century-old machines.

  That left Grace with Dan’s AgroMech and its flamethrower, along with a score of town craftspeople and merchants, armed with whatever was handy. Most rifles had hardly been used except for plunking at rabbits and gophers during the annual sharpshooting competition at the Highland Games. The shooting was never much to brag about. The competition was always late in the day, after the racing and tossing the caber and way too much drinking. Grace didn’t consider mixing drinks and loaded guns all that safe, but the schedule was sacred, unchanged for hundreds of years.

  Everyone was sober today, even Greg McDougall, who’d never met a glass he didn’t love more than his poor wife.

  “Keep down!” Grace shouted. “They’re coming up the road. We’ll take them where it curves right into us.”

  “And won’t that be a surprise for them,” Dan said, grinning through the faceplate of his bulky helmet. The others laughed. Grace closed Pirate’s cockpit and spun the ’Mech into position.

  We’d better surprise ’em. Otherwise, we’re toast, she thought.

  The concrete road supported Captain Loren J. Hanson’s Koshi comfortably. The advance had gone well this morning. He’d set an easy pace because after a week he didn’t want to break anything on the last day. Word from his XO—his executive officer and second in command—was that the JumpShip had loaded the loot from Allabad and was ready to jump to the secondary pickup point. The mission here was snatch, grab and raise scatter-hell. The Colonel had made it clear he didn’t think that should cost the Roughriders any major casualties. So far it hadn’t.

  L. J.’s targeting-acquisition screen flashed, letting him know it had found what he’d expected. He tightened his harness straps as he checked his cooling lines. No problem. Keying his mike, he announced, “Looks like the locals have got themselves an ambush up ahead where the road runs close to the foothills.”

  “Nice of them to come out to meet us.” Sergeant Jack Godfrey chortled. “Think they baked a cake?”

  L. J. frowned. Sergeant Godfrey had a big mouth, but he did know how to put his Condor Multipurpose Tank’s pedal to the metal, and this was Hanson’s Roughriders.

  Not L. J.’s Roughriders. Great-grandpa Hanson had commanded when the Roughriders made their name. L. J. was just a distant great-grandkid by a daughter who’d chosen medicine over ’Mechs. Grandma was still a fine doc when it came to patching up the occasional casualty, but L. J. had earned his commission with sweat and hard work. This was his first independent command. No doubt the Roughrider HQ staff was wondering what he’d bring back.

  So far he’d captured just one BattleMech to go with ninety or so late-model IndustrialMechs. Even with the client claiming half, Maintenance should be able to turn out some decent ’Mech MODs. After the long peace, they would be welcome additions.

  L. J. eyed his screen. Six IndustrialMechs were scattered on the ridge above the bend in the road, along with enough metal for three or four dozen hunting rifles. The locals would probably run after the first volley. With half his ammo expended, was it worth a fight this far from the pickup point?

  “Topkick.”

  “Sir,” Sergeant Major Vincent Tanuso responded immediately.

  “On my order, take the hoverbike team and investigate the town. There’s nothing past it but mountains, so it’s as far as we go. If you spot any decent-looking ’Mechs, acquire them. If not, raise scatter-hell and fall back on me.”

  “Yes, sir. Corporal Mavy, with me.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “The rest of you: This may be a hastily improvised ambush, but the only decent ’Mechs in town could be up there. Let’s see if any are worth painting in Roughrider colors. Keep your eyes open and your fields of fire covered.”

  “Yee-haw!” Godfrey whooped. “Let’s put the spurs to ’em.” His hovertank surged ahead.

  “Take it down, Roughrider,” L. J. growled, and the hovertank on point slowed to keep pace with the measured tread of L. J.’s Koshi. “No need taking unnecessary heat into a ’Mech fight.” L. J. wanted to get as close as he could, to see if the IndustrialMechs were worth a fight before he got into one.

  L. J. studied the ground ahead. The road was lined with ditches on both sides. They were dry now, but the green along the verge showed there had been water. The landscape was rolling, giving plenty of dead ground. The bushes were low, mixed with clumped grass. Few places to hide there. Ahead rose foothills covered in purple and green, cut here and there by tree-lined creeks or sharply banked gullies. That might limit a pursuit. Then again, maybe the terrain would help him cut off a prize. Rocks and boulders jutted up to protect shooters. So far this planet had produced only slug-throwers fit for killing small furry things. They hardly scratched a BattleMech’s paint.

  Don’t get cocky, kid, L. J. reminded himself. A cakewalk was nice, but cakes could hold surprises. Approaching the curve, L. J. spotted three fairly new ’Mechs and ordered his topkick off. “Sergeant, just tap the town if there’s nothing worth taking. We may have some gear here for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” came back fast.

  That left L. J. with just his own Koshi, a Spider, and Godfrey’s Condor tank, with two scout rigs to fill the intervals between the three. Time to get this battle going.

  “I make our opposition as six IndustrialMechs and a few dozen infantry. Godfrey, bear to the right and see what you can do to those two. Webrunner, you have the left pair. I’ll take the middle ones. Scouts, look for crunchies trying to cause trouble and stand by to take down any ’Mechs we disable. We’ve got them outnumbered two to six. Let’s do it by the numbers, Roughriders,” he ended.

  “Roughriders!” came back in an enthusiastic shout. He pitied the poor dumb slobs up the hill, thinking that a ’Mech with a claw or drill gave them any chance against real BattleMechs piloted by MechWarriors.

  “Advance on the enemy to the left, now,” L. J. ordered, and throttled up his BattleMech. Beside him his team spread out, the Spider’s long strides eating up the distance to the target. Beneath his Koshi’s feet, brush crumbled. Footpads sank a good ten centimeters into the hard dirt under the light BattleMech’s weight. It was good to be loose; L. J. echoed Godfrey’s yell.

  “Damn,” Grace breathed softly. “
So much for surprise,” she said into her mike. “Here they come.”

  “How’d they spot us?” came over Falkirk’s public channel.

  “You clomping around raising dust would warn a blind Brit.”

  “I’m out of here.”

  Grace had to stop that. “Start running and they’ll shoot you in the back. Stay down. Hold your fire,” she ordered. Then she realized she was issuing orders and tasted the surprise. Well, this is a battle. Somebody had to give orders. Real orders, not polite suggestions. She glanced around. Surprise of surprises, people were doing what she’d told them, huddling in place. Maybe these eejits could tell a good idea when they heard it.

  For a better view, she raised Pirate from his squat behind solid granite. The raiders were about three klicks out. A hovertank with a horrifyingly long gun cut through the tall grass, heading for her left, sending dirt and rocks flying as it made S-turns. A tall ’Mech with small wings trotted at the Wilsons. A shorter, ugly thing with scads of rocket launchers on its elbows was headed straight for her.

  Someone with McCallester fired off one of Mick’s bazookas. The tank in front of them vanished in a sheet of smoke and flame. A ragged cheer was cut short as they realized the tank had fired a salvo of its own rockets. The tank was already out of the smoke cloud and gunning for the foothills when the rockets started hitting. One smashed into the boulder Brady was hiding behind. The rock shattered, sending shards in all directions. The miner’s ’Mech fell back on its ass. Count on Brady for slapstick. McCallester brought up the rocket thrower on the left arm of his MiningMech and fired. The rocket went wild, corkscrewing for parts unknown.

  Grace held her breath, expecting the next salvo from the tank to shred both ’Mechs, but the tank suddenly lost interest.

  A Navajo appeared as if from nowhere and tossed a satchel charge at the tank. The explosion blew the tank sideways but didn’t seem to faze it. The tank’s minigun cut a slash in the valley floor as it went for its attacker, but the Navajo had vanished back into the ground and another was up, shooting a rabbit rifle at the tank. Even at this distance, Grace heard the shot ricochet off the rocket launcher. Damn, even the missile boxes are armored. Don’t those things have any weak spots?