His goal now was Cemetery Ridge, less than two kilometers ahead. Simulated explosions flashed and thundered to left and right, and Grayson physically ducked his head to the side. Even in simulation, it was possible to get so caught up in the excitement, in the fluid movements of the scenes on screen, that the players flinched and ducked as rounds came too near. Another round exploded close by, and this time red warning lights winked on his primary display; his Marauder had just taken some heavy damage and was limping now, its right leg actuator nearly crippled.
Press on! Press on! Past the wreckage of the National Tower now and up the gentle slope beyond. According to the computer-simulated views relayed from his hold-out forces south of Gettysburg, Wolf's force had swarmed across the valley and was now rampaging in among the trees on Seminary Ridge. Most of Grayson's 'Mechs on that front had broken and fled or been reduced to smoldering pieces of simulated wreckage, but a few continued to snipe at the enemy as he advanced. Was Wolf completely unaware of the threat in his rear? The Confederates had been under fire for several minutes already; Wolf must know....
Ah! Some of the Union 'Mechs were turning now, taking up position in a battle line facing east now, instead of west. The movement was ponderously slow, however, and markedly disjointed. It took time, precious time, to reverse an army's course and attack towards its rear, especially when it was already engaged along its front.
On the third day of the real battle, Lee—unable to turn either enemy flank by his attacks of the day before—had made a suicidal gamble, sending some twelve thousand of his remaining fresh troops in a massed direct assault across that open valley, an attack that would forever afterward be immortalized as Pickett's Charge. Doomed from the beginning, the advancing Confederates had been cut down in row upon bloody row by concentrated fire from the crest of the ridge. Only a few hundred Confederates actually made it as far as the stone Wall running north and south along the ridge, a place called The Angle—and of those who actually managed to scramble across the wall, not one made it back again. Perhaps sixty percent of the men who'd made that heroic charge were killed, wounded, or captured, with fewer than five thousand Confederates returning to their lines unhurt at the end.
Grayson had been determined to avoid the mistake Lee had made on the third day at Gettysburg. To his way of thinking, you never charge an entrenched enemy unless you outnumber him by at least four to one, and even then you'd better have a damned good reason. Now, however, chance and maneuver had played a fascinating trick on the two simulation combatants; Wolf, playing Meade, was charging Cemetery Ridge from the west, just as Lee had done in the real battle.
And at the same time, Grayson, playing Lee, was charging the same ridge from the east. It was a race, and whichever one reached the crest first would be in a position to loose a savage and devastating fire on his opponent below and on the other side....
* * *
Lori Kalmar Carlyle didn't like crowds, and, besides, the throng in the arena would have made it impossible to concentrate on the game. She'd decided instead to watch the battle not from one of the spectator seats, but in an office elsewhere in the building. While the room's wall-sized vidscreen gave her a good overall view of the terrain map, scattered now with hundreds of tiny, moving BattleMech images and computer graphics that showed movement and objectives, she actually had a much better view on a small hand computer screen resting on the desk. Tuning in a close-up angle of Grayson, she studied his face and smiled. The look of sheer, intense concentration was one that, after thirty-some years of marriage, she knew very well. She could see his head bob and weave from side to side as he fought his 'Mech, maneuvering it up the reverse slope of the ridge at the van of a long, strung-out line of BattleMechs wreathed in flame and flashing explosions.
He also looked tired, drained dry by the sheer power and focus of his concentration.
"This is certainly one for the strategy books, Linda," an announcer was saying in a voice-over. "The two armies have maneuvered around each other's flanks, completely reversing their initial positions. The Confederate forces under Colonel Carlyle are now advancing toward Cemetery Ridge from the east, while Wolf's Union force is advancing toward the same position from the west. I've never seen anything quite like this."
"That's right, Rob. It looks to me like the main bodies of both armies are going to collide right at the top of the ridge...."
Other displays were showing the audience, which was in a manic frenzy as the action on the simulated battlefield heated up. Some people were standing now on their seats, jumping up and down and screaming at the tops of their lungs. Lori could see fistfuls of C-bills exchanging hands as wagers grew larger and larger. The people who ran Glengarry's organized gambling, she thought, must really be cleaning up with this event.
The contest was obviously coming to its climax, with the battle to be settled one way or another in a epic BattleMech clash within the next few moments. Lori decided she wanted to see the finish in person, even if it meant going down and mingling with the crowd.
Switching off the screens, she walked out of the room and down the hall. Her ID would be her pass for a seat, even if she had to fight someone for it.
She wanted to be there in person, though, when Grayson won.
* * *
"There!" the leader of the two assassins said, grabbing his partner's shoulder and pointing. "That's her!"
"Where? I don't see—"
"In that aisle, on the left, coming down to the front." The assassin had been using a small set of electronic binoculars to scan the crowd. "See her? Use your scope, for God's sake!"
Pardo swung his rifle to the left, scanning across the massed faces of the crowd. A memorized face flashed briefly across his imaging screen, vanished, then popped back into view as he reacquired the target.
"Well, well, well," Pardo said with a grin. "Our secondary target! She's making it easy for us!"
"Bitch must've been hiding out someplace."
"Typical politician, huh? She just shows up for the applause and the speeches at the end. Can I take her down?"
"Primary target first. We gotta be sure of Carlyle, or hitting the bitch doesn't do us a damned bit of good."
"You're the boss." Pardo swung the deadly rifle around again, until the back of Grayson Carlyle's head once more filled the targeting screen.
"Right, Pardo! Put him down! Now!"
Pardo's finger closed on the trigger....
8
The Residence
Castle Hill, Dunkeld
Glengarry, Skye March
1342 Hours, 18 March 3057
His Marauder took another hit, a dazzling blue bolt from an enemy PPC, and Grayson instinctively flinched and ducked slightly to the right—
—and in that instant, his main computer screen flashed white as the glass surface disintegrated in a fine spray of shards, the monitor's plastic frame shredding and the electronics inside the case exploding in hissing sparks and hurtling fragments of circuit board. Something slammed into the smooth shiny surface of the console enclosure at Grayson's back, and he felt the hot wind as dozens of projectiles whizzed past his head with the high-pitched buzz of a swarm of insects.
Operating on combat-honed instinct, Grayson followed through with his initial flinch, diving forward and to the right just as a second swarm of deadly projectiles blasted his keyboard into hurtling plastic shrapnel and wildly scattering keys. He hit the floor hands first, dropped into a shoulder roll, and somersaulted beneath the overhanging edge of the terrain projection table as repeated blasts slammed through the noncorporeal holographic imagery and into the tough plastic surface of the tabletop itself.
He collided with the table's base, housing the projection electronics, and scrambled back another meter as fire continued to strike the table top centimeters above his head. His hand dropped to his sidearm, a KK98 laser pistol in the synthleather holster strapped to his leg. Drawing the weapon, he snicked on the power switch, but he couldn't shoot back, couldn't e
ven find the target without exposing himself to that deadly hail of fire.
A burst missed the table and struck nearby, sending tiny, spent gray projectiles skittering across the floor. Flechettes—three centimeters long, probably fired from an autoshotgun of some kind. Each was a tiny arrow made of lead, with fins at the end to stabilize their flight. Fired in clusters of twenty or more at a time from each shotgun shell, they were deadly at ranges of a hundred meters or less.
Gunshots thundered, the steady, slow thud-thud-thud of an autoshotgun, and this time the fire was being directed at the audience.
The audience! People in the stands were screaming, shrieking, the crowd dissolving into raw panic. Grayson steeled himself. He couldn't cower here beneath the table and do nothing.
He felt a warm wetness on his left hand and looked down. Blood covered his left arm, soaking through the sleeve of his tunic. He'd been hit but hadn't even felt it....
* * *
Pardo swept the aim of his weapon across the crowd, seeking the secondary target. Damn-.... where was she? He was pretty sure the primary had taken the hit, even though he'd rolled out of reach beneath the table. He'd seen blood fly as Carlyle jerked and went down. Now he had to kill the woman. But where was she?
* * *
Lori Carlyle had dropped and rolled with the first shot, a combat instinct impossible to overcome. By the time she'd risen to her knees, her Imperator 9mm autopistol drawn and with a round chambered, the gunfire was scything into the crowd all around her. She stayed where she was, safe behind the shelter of the crowd barrier that separated the main arena from the seats.
But the rest of the crowd was directly in the sniper's line of fire. People jammed into the seating area against Lori were dying horribly ... in bloody clumps. An overweight woman in a fashionably ornate tan and orange jumpsuit threw up her hands and sagged backward against the people behind her, her clothing and her chest shredded in a bloody spray; an older man gaped at the scarlet fountain where his arm had been; a teenage boy dropped at Lori's side, his face ripped up and back from his skull
"Down!" she yelled at the people around her, trying to lift her voice above the thunder of the mob. "Get down behind your seats!"
She might as well have been shouting at a storm. The people who moments ago had been seated behind and to either side of her were screaming wildly, mindlessly pushing and shoving in a desperate attempt to escape. Lori was in terrible danger at that moment, not of being shot but of being trampled to death as the panicked crowd stampeded in every direction. The man who'd lost an arm vanished, knocked down by the surging crowd. Several bodies slammed Lori back against the unyielding plastic of the barrier and she gasped, unable to move, unable to breathe. She considered firing her pistol above their heads, but that would only have increased the panic. And in any case, the people squeezing against her had no place to go.
More gunfire thudded across the mob, and the screams increased in pitch and intensity as a weapon intended for use on the open stretches of a battlefield was unleashed against the packed crowd in the arena. Lori tried to push herself up above the sheltering barrier, both to breathe and because she wanted to see. She was pretty sure the shots must be coming from one of the media balconies suspended above the stadium seats, but she had to see to be sure.
A man pressing against her side shuddered, his blood splattering across Lori's head and shoulders. The pressure of the crowd increased, and she felt a sharp, biting pain in her side. . . .
* * *
Jaime Wolf, seated at his gaming station just thirty meters across the table from Grayson Carlyle, had also ducked with the first shot, but trained ears and instincts told him none of the gunfire was coming his way ... at least, not yet. Drawing his sidearm, an old but serviceable Mark XXI Nova laser pistol, he switched it on and waited for the cycling chamber to power up. When he heard the high-pitched tone of a ready charge, he eased his eyes up above the level of the table, taking advantage of the illusory miniature hills and forests still projected upon it.
He sought the origin of the autoshotgun fire. It was coming from high up ... yes! There! The media balcony, almost directly across the stadium from where he was seated. At this distance—well over one hundred meters—he couldn't make out details, but he could see the telltale shadow of a man's silhouette, crouched above the stock of a weapon as he fired it into the crowd to Jaime's right.
Carefully, moving slowly so as not to attract attention, he raised the Nova, gripping it solidly in both hands as he braced his forearms against the edge of the table. He took a breath ... held it ... and squeezed.
* * *
Pardo yelped as his leather jacket flared in a burst of incandescence, flame bursting from his right shoulder and smoke curling from his long, smoldering hair. "Ayiee! Boss! I'm on fire!"
"It's Wolf!" The other man leaned past him, aiming his needler. The handgun gave a ragged, fluttering sound as it spat a burst of high-speed slivers toward Wolf's side of the table, but the mercenary had already dropped from view when the packet scoured the edge of the table where he'd been hiding an instant before.
The man looked to the left, where a bloody gash had been carved through the struggling throng of civilians. Raising his electronic binoculars in one leather-gloved hand, he scanned the sprawled bodies and the writhing wounded but couldn't see Carlyle's woman. He couldn't see Carlyle either, though Pardo had been certain of a hit. Damn! He had to be sure....
* * *
Grayson had decided that his wounds weren't serious, though loss of blood was certain to slow him down in another few moments. He had to act now. From the shape and timbre of the sounds around him, the unseen gunman had been firing into the crowd and abruptly stopped.
Judging by the angle of the incoming projectiles, the gunman was up high, probably in that media balcony suspended above the arena seats directly behind Grayson's gaming station. Quickly, he checked the settings on his KK98, making certain that the selector was switched to the standard setting. He would have preferred using more power to ensure a kill, but in this situation he couldn't depend on accuracy so he would have to settle for as high a volume of fire as possible.
Kicking off hard from the base of the table, Grayson slid several meters across the slick floor, his laser pistol clutched in both hands and already seeking a target. As soon as he cleared the edge of the scenery table, he drew down on the large window of the media balcony and triggered his first shot, an intense flash so brief it was more felt than seen. A rising hum told him the weapon was recycling; one and a half seconds later a green light winked on and he fired again. And again....
* * *
The dead weight of a man's body rolled off of her as the tide of panicked civilians ebbed up the steps and bleachers. Gasping, clutching her side in pain, Lori finally pulled herself upright just in time to see both Wolf and Grayson firing their lasers at the media balcony. Leaning against the crowd barrier, she raised her Imperator, aimed at the balcony, and opened fire.
* * *
A palm-sized portion of the balcony window two meters away turned frosty white, then shattered from the diffused heat of a laser pulse. Another laser pulse scored a black streak across the ceiling. A bullet smashed glass; a second punched through the structure's thin metal side and blew out a lighting fixture. The balcony sharpshooter's box had turned into a target—and a deathtrap.
"C'mon, let's get the hell outta here!" Pardo shouted. The side of his face was cruelly blistered where that first laser bolt had seared past just centimeters from his skin; his jacket was still smoking where he'd been grazed. As he rose from his hiding place behind the opened portion of the window, another laser pulse flashed, and Pardo clutched at his face. "My eyes! My eyes!"
There was no time to waste. Coolly, the other man tossed his needler to the floor at Pardo's feet, peeled off his gloves, then drew his other weapon, a heavy, military-model TK70 laser pistol. "Goodbye, Pardo."
He fired, sending a bolt squarely into the gunman's chest; on
e-tenth of a megajoule in a tenth-second pulse dumped energy equivalent to twenty grams of exploding TNT into the target. A fist-sized crater opened Pardo's chest in a burst of vaporizing blood and tissue.
Laser bursts and bullets from the arena continued to smash glass and pock random holes in the balcony wall. Ducking low, the laser still in hand, the man palmed open the door and backed out.
A railed walkway provided access to the enclosed balcony from a lounge area beyond the arena's curving, inner wall. Four Gray Death Legion troopers were just emerging from the lounge, laser rifles at the ready.
"Don't shoot!" the man shouted, still crouching, his TK70 held with the muzzle aimed at the ceiling. His voice cracked. This had been too close! "Don't shoot!"
"Drop the weapon!" an angry-looking soldier with sergeant's chevrons barked, and the man could feel the aim of the military laser rifles as he let his weapon fall to the walkway with a metallic clatter. "Hands up! Up! Up!"
The man complied. "I got him!" he said, breathing hard as he slowly straightened upright. "I got him, Sarge!"
The sergeant advanced, keeping the muzzle of his rifle centered on the man's head. "Got who, you son of a bitch?"
"The gunman, Sarge! I got him! He's inside!"
Doubt crossed the soldier's face behind the transparent visor of his helmet. "Who are you?"
"May I?"
"Careful! No sudden moves!"
Very, very slowly, the man reached into a pocket in his jacket. Then, holding it daintily between thumb and forefinger, he even more slowly withdrew his ID card, which he handed to the sergeant.
The other two soldiers pushed past and vanished into the balcony. One emerged a moment later, his face ash white. "Jesus, Sarge!" he said. "It's a mess in there!"
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