Daughter of The Dragon

by IIsa J. Bick

  By now Jonathan was nearly even with the BattleMaster, coming up on the right side, and instantly he straight-armed his PPC, cutting loose with a blast of supercharged energy. The crackling bolt, bluer than the sea just behind, chewed through the Destroyer’s skirt, spilling its air, and the SM1 flipped once, twice, three times before Jonathan hit it again. A mushroom fire-cloud boiled skyward as autocannon ammo ignited, and the Destroyer blew apart.

  The roar of the explosion nearly covered the others, but Jonathan heard them just the same because they were the ones he was waiting for: a rapid-fire, staccato whumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhump! Not from behind, where the Locust, on its spindle-thin legs, was already sprinting for them; and not from the remaining tanks that were, even now, racing back for their base; but from his right, where the men had finished their work.

  A voice, male, not Kyle in his Locust but the BattleMaster’s pilot: “What the . . . ?” The ’Mech’s torso swiveled; Jonathan caught a glimpse of amber light, the stark silhouette of the MechWarrior, green shadows darkling over gray vest and bare skin. “Who . . . ?”

  And then the first shock wave hit as the ice protested, groaned—and began to break away.

  DropShip Dragon’s Pride

  Carillon Sector, Iwanji, Saffel

  The words hung in the air like ghosts and were so thoroughly stunning that Tai-sho Carol Worridge’s brain clicked out for an instant. Sakamoto, dead! If she hadn’t heard it with her own ears, listened as Black Wind’s pilot shouted out his report, she’d never have believed it.

  She came back to herself and looked around the bridge. A decision; they were waiting for her to lead them in battle. Yes, a battle—but with whom?

  A small voice that she recognized as conscience freed from tyranny: Follow your heart. Follow your honor.

  And then suddenly everything fell into place, and she knew what she must do. She turned to the communications officer. “Open a channel. Get me our troops.”

  Carillan Sector, Iwanji, Saffel

  “STERLING!” Parks bawled, and in the two years she’d known him, Sterling had never heard so much anguish in the man’s voice as she did then. “NO! Get out of the way, GET OUT OF THE WAY!”

  But she couldn’t answer, didn’t have time because she was twisting in midair, executing an aerial pirouette, twirling, the DropShip now behind and the missiles arrowing for her face. And then she did something Andre Crawford swore up and down ought to work, in theory. She brought all her lasers to bear, aimed for an intersection point, and snap-fired them at once—and prayed like hell her armor was as good as the manufacturer said.

  The laser fire coalesced into a fiery ball of ionization just as the missiles arrived. There was a tremendous blast as some but not all of the missiles detonated. A hail of raining armament boiled around her, and she was engulfed in a roiling ball of gas and fire. The flash was so bright her polarizing filters couldn’t snap into place quickly enough. But it didn’t matter. Her helmeted head snapped back, banging against her couch, and she was aware of a sensation of flying faster than a laser beam. She screamed—a long, drawn-out wail that cut out as her Ocelot crashed into the grove, snapping trees like twigs amid a tidal wave of sound.

  Then she must have blacked out because, when she came to, she was looking through a veil of smoke from dying circuitry that burned her eyes. But she wasn’t blind; no, there was no mercy for her here.

  Because she saw the DropShip, still coming, well enough.

  Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel

  Jonathan lumbered past the still-dazed and disoriented BattleMaster. Then time dilated and drew out, but not with the satisfying click that so often happened because, this time, Jonathan was the victim.

  He was already past the BattleMaster, nearing the widening fissure in the ice, or so he imagined. The vast, nearly featureless white of the ice pack obliterated landmarks, made things seem infinitely far away. The ice was quaking more violently now, rippling and bucking like something come to life. Off-balance, the Panther swayed, and Jonathan instinctively moved to correct. The next shudder sent him pitching forward, coming down hard on his Panther’s right knee and outstretched right hand.

  This probably saved his life because in the next instant missiles etched seams in the air directly over his canopy. The Bellonas were opening fire, and now the Destroyers got in on the act, punching out round after punishing round of autocannon fire at the Kuritan ’Mechs. The Raiders’ infantry had done their job at the cost of their lives, and clearly the tanks were to ensure that no one, not even they, left the ice pack. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw the missiles streak for the Locust, detonate along one of those spindle-thin legs, and then the Locust was reeling.

  His alarms screamed and, jerking round, Jonathan caught the flashing sputter of tracer fire. He threw up his left arm in a reflex, and the uranium-tipped rounds ripped into the Panther’s elbow, at the joint. He’d silenced his DI and hit the heat lockout override, but he knew the arm was severely damaged; the only saving grace was that his PPC was wedded to his right. But the muzzle of his weapon was jammed into the ice, useless to him, and he was out of time for fighting. No more mistakes, no more errors! Even as he heaved back, struggling to right himself, his mind was racing: Have to get up, get up, get up!

  The chasm ahead was pulling away from the glacier, and doing so with a preternatural swiftness that was otherworldly: first a half meter, then two, now four. The violence of the ice’s movement was so great the tiny forms of the troopers who’d planted their directed charges specifically to accomplish just this were jittering like insects on a hot skillet. Jonathan saw three hurtle into the yawning abyss; two more clung to the edges and were in shadow . . . Shadow? Yes, of course, he saw it now; the horizon shifting down, pushing up, the ice shelf where he stood calving away . . .

  “Go, go, go!” he screamed, not to the BattleMaster, whose pilot now seemed to grasp what was happening; not to the Locust, limping badly now, his advantage of greater speed gone, his jump jets discarded. No, Jonathan screamed at himself to get moving, move! Desperately, he banged his PPC to life; blazing hot energy puddled the entrapping ice, and he yanked free. Heaving his Panther to its feet, he threw out blasts of PPC fire in the tanks’ general direction as a diversion, the bolts going wide, and Jonathan not caring, not thinking but pushing his Panther into a flat-out, lopsided run. He felt the jarring impact as a missile clipped his Panther’s already-injured left arm, smashing through armor at the left shoulder, and suddenly that arm was no longer functioning. The impact pushed him back, to the right, and for a heart-stopping instant, as the view from his cockpit was replaced with blue sky, he thought his ’Mech would crash to the ice to lie on its back, like a helpless, overturned beetle.

  Then time ran out for all of them, every last one.

  With a terrific, alien groan, the mammoth ice block sheared away from its anchoring glacier. What nature would have done in another five years, or ten, now occurred with weird, supernatural speed. The sounds were deafening and almost indescribable—a bellowing roar; a massive, throaty rumble like a volcano belching out flame and molten rock from a heart of fire. Violent shudders rocked the tanks and ’Mechs; two tanks too close to the brink simply teetered back and then vanished, one still spitting out laser fire that harmlessly punched the sea.

  Jonathan felt himself falling—like being in a lift suddenly cut from its cable and going into freefall down an infinitely long shaft. His stomach lodged in the back of his throat; his head suddenly seemed to levitate away. With a scream, Jonathan hit his jump jets, hoping against hope that he wasn’t too late.

  Now there was the roar of his engines as superheated plasma rocketed out, each jet channeled through a venturi baffle, funneling power! A blurring rush of ice, jagged shadows along the sudden face of a cliff that hadn’t been there five seconds ago, and now a glimpse of deadly blue water below; and Jonathan was blasting up, up, up! And something else now: piercing screams in his helmet; the other two MechWarriors trapped in the
ir machines, going down, falling, hurtling toward death and a watery, dark grave—because neither had jump jets. And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had.

  Then, ahead, above, below, Jonathan saw white ice, running men and rage burned in his belly, roaring out of his mouth in a battle cry of pure, unadulterated fury! Try to kill him, try to beat him? Angling in, useless left arm hanging limp by his side, Jonathan aimed his jets, engulfing the troopers in concentrated balls of fire that instantly seared through their armor, charring the men black—and then Jonathan crashed down atop them, finishing off a last trooper who’d somehow escaped the ice and his fury with a single burst from his PPC.

  Gulping air, body still shaking with adrenaline and rage, Jonathan turned—and saw the ice simply fall away. The screams in his helmet suddenly cut out, as if hacked by an unseen hatchet.

  And then the ice, the tanks, and the ’Mechs were gone.

  DropShip Amagi over Iwanji Airspace, Saffel

  “Heavy fighting, Tai-sho.” The Amagi’s pilot was grim. “A DropShip as well. We will be atop it in seconds.”

  “Oh, God.” Crawford, by her side, and when their eyes met, Katana read his thoughts: Too late.

  Not after all we’ve been through, to have it end here, now . . . Two days ago they’d winked in at the same pirate point as Parks’ JumpShip, and already knew that Parks had deployed his troops. Since then, they’d been racing to catch up, pulling as many gs as the crew could tolerate. They’d been lucky; they’d met no DCMS DropShips, had taken no fire—but if Parks and Sterling were dead as well . . .

  She gave herself a mental shake. Stop. She wouldn’t let her people die in vain, not without giving her all. For now we see if Fate is with me, or against.

  She nodded at the pilot. “Open a channel. Broadband.”

  DropShip Dragon’s Pride

  “I see it.” Worridge felt the skin tighten over her skull. Another DropShip, and not one of theirs. She looked back over her shoulder at the weapons officer, a young chu-i with skin as white as porcelain. “Is it hot?”

  She saw the woman’s eyebrows fold into a frown. “Ie, they’re . . . they’re not,” she said, a trace of wonder in her voice. She glanced up. “They will be within range in the next forty seconds. Shall I plot a solution?”

  Dare I do this, dare I? . . . Worridge sucked in a breath and said, “Negative. Give the order: Cease all hostilities. I want . . .”

  But she never had a chance to say what she wanted because then the communications officer’s head jerked to attention. “Tai-sho! Incoming message, on all frequencies!” Then he gasped. “It’s Katana Tormark!”

  Worridge’s breath left her lungs in an exhalation of surprise. “On speaker.”

  The communications officer moved to comply. For a brief instant—the space between one beat of Worridge’s heart and the next—all she heard was the faint sputter of solar background interference. But then the strong, confident tones of a woman she’d never met but about whom she knew much filled the bridge.

  “This is Katana Tormark, Tai-sho of Dragon’s Fury. I would speak with you, Tai-shu Sakamoto. On your orders, you have carved a path of destruction from Shimonita to Dabih, from Piedmont to Al Na’ir. You have attacked my forces and killed my people—and yet I do not come for revenge. What your troops did was their duty; what they did, they did believing in your honor and in the Dragon. But there is no honor in brother fighting brother. We are not your enemies. What we have seized we have claimed in the name of the coordinator. We would join you, gladly, but your attacks on our people must cease, and we must discuss how this war will be waged. There is no honor in slaughter, and we would fight you with a heavy heart. But we will fight—and we will die if we must but as warriors, not savages.”

  A pause, then: “We would have your answer.”

  Silence.

  Worridge’s eyes met the pilot’s; she read . . . what? Admiration? Resolve? Then the pilot moved his head—not much, not enough for anyone who wasn’t watching closely to pick it up—but he gave an infinitesimal, a fractional nod.

  Yes, she knew what she had to do next. And about frigging time. She nodded at the comm officer. “Let us speak. And make sure everyone hears.”

  Carillon Field, Iwanji, Saffel

  Well, so she wasn’t dead. And neither was Parks, though he ought to be, the lummox. She still saw smoke and blue sky, but the DropShip had angled away. Her throat was raw; she’d be black-and-blue tomorrow; her Ocelot might never recover. And she’d for sure need a new cooling vest; there was dripping coolant everywhere. But there was nothing wrong with her eyes or ears, and she heard the same wonder in Parks’ voice as she felt herself.

  “Sterling,” he said, hacking, “you hearing this?”

  “I hear it.” Sterling backhanded sweat, blood and grime from her neck. “I just can’t fraccing believe it.”

  DropShip Amagi

  Katana was stunned. Sakamoto was dead. And now . . . She felt Crawford at her elbow. “You can end this,” he murmured. “Now.”

  “Hai. I can.” She squared her shoulders. “And I will.” She looked a question to her comm officer, and the woman nodded. Heart slamming against her ribs, Katana forced the tremor from her voice: “Tai-sho Worridge, you have my deepest sympathies. I would regret fighting you now, or in the future. If you would have me, I would be honored to join you—but only for the Dragon. If not, we will withdraw and battle you another day.”

  A long pause. Katana tried to still her mind, knowing that her weapons officer would warn her if they were being led into a trap. But her officer remained silent, and then Worridge was back: “Ie. You would honor us, Tai-sho. We await your orders.” Another pause, then: “What would you have us do?”

  Crawford’s gasp was audible, but Katana barely heard it over the sudden thundering of her pulse. Worridge, ceding command? To her? This wasn’t possible; how could . . . ?

  Confused, she turned to Crawford. A slow smile spread on his lips until he was grinning from ear to ear. “Well,” he said, and very nearly smirked, “you heard the lady. What would you have us do, my Tai-sho?”

  No hesitation now; she felt her resolve firm, nodded at her comm. “I am honored, Tai-sho Worridge. We will attack. There’s a planet to take, after all.”

  Yet the next voice Katana heard was not Worridge. It was a man, and there was no mistaking its ring of total authority: “Don’t you think you’d better consult with me first?”

  Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel

  The Raiders’ infantry had scattered, spilling onto an icy waste that would surely claim them. The MiningMechs were so much smoking rubble, and Jonathan thought those missiles well spent. For now, he swayed forward, his bad right ankle and all but useless left arm canceling one another out. Toggling his PPC, Jonathan swept a blue trough of destruction while the Hatchetman smashed other buildings to rubble. In a day the Raiders’ battlearmor power packs would be exhausted, and they’d have no base to return to. So, they’d freeze. A mercy, probably. Dying of thirst was so unpleasant.

  Then Jonathan stopped, listened to Worridge, then Katana—and then that man, a voice he knew . . .

  “My God!” It was the Hatchetman’s pilot. “That’s Theodore Kurita!”

  “Well, what do you know?” Jonathan said. A quick flick of his eyes told him his IFF was still, sadly, on the fritz. Pivoting, he brought his missiles to bear.

  “Just in the nick of time,” he said, and fired.

  37

  Imperial City, Luthien

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  30 November 3135

  Well? Katana thought as she stood in the massive, silent hall. Now what? She turned in a slow circle, taking in the immense space of the Throne Room, acutely aware of the way her clothes rustled, the slight scuff of her feet against polished hardwood and her eyes kept returning to the Dragon Throne upon its dais: a powerful presence even in the absence of the coordinator. She’d seen the throne in a documentary done back in thirty-three as part of a
series called Touring the Stars. Now, staring up at those swirling dragons and the mural immediately behind, Katana was awed to immobility.

  A voice, just behind her: “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Startled, Katana turned, gawped, then blinked. He’d come up on soundless, stockinged feet: Vincent Kurita in the flesh, resplendent in a kimono of peacock blue with chrysanthemums and five-clawed dragons done in gold embroidery and bound at the waist with a gold obi sash. Hastily, she bowed. “Forgive me, Tono. I was unaware of your presence.”

  “Oh, but you were,” said Kurita. He had a pleasing voice, soft and full, and his hazel eyes were clear. Kurita gestured at the throne and the dragon mural just behind. “When you gaze upon the Combine, you look upon us. To be aware of the vastness of the Combine is to open your mind to the corners of the known universe we inhabit and those we have yet to conquer. But,” he said, laugh lines appearing at the corners of his eyes, “we asked whether you thought it was beautiful.”

  “Hai,” Katana said, without hesitation. “Beautiful when it was made, Tono. But more beautiful now.”

  “Ah?” Kurita’s coal black eyebrows arched. “And how so?”

  Katana gestured at the mural. “The worlds the Combine lost when The Republic was born have been returned. What Tai-sho Sakamoto began, your son ended. Saffel has been conquered, as have Styx, Athenry and Pike IV.” She paused, thinking back to the campaign in which she, Worridge and Theodore Kurita had fought side by side before Kurita had called a halt shy of Dieron, a move she’d opposed, and demanded her swords. She eyed the coordinator. Well, and if he hears this as criticism, so be it. “But the Combine isn’t complete, not yet. Dieron waits on its coordinator.”