by Ilsa J. Bick
Merrick’s vision sparkled orange, went red and then black as a wave of nausea clogged his throat. Gagging, Merrick tried taking shallow breaths, praying that, God, please, please… But every breath was a fresh agony, and then it was harder to breathe, like trying to stuck air through a straw from thirty meters under and now he tasted something brackish and salty, something sludgy and thick pooling in the floor of his mouth, and he vomited out a spray of bright red blood.
Got the lung. Merrick labored to pull in air. Lung’s been hit, I can’t breathe… He tried not to panic, but he was drowning and suffocating at the same time; he could feel the blood boiling out of his mouth and going down his throat…
You’re going to die right here, right now, if you don’t focus!
Okay, okay; he tried marshaling his addled thoughts, grappling for some mental handhold. His cockpit, yes, his cockpit was breached; the stench of the bog billowed in, mixing with the acrid tang of disintegrating armor and spent munitions. A goddamned piece of ferroglass tacked him to his couch like a note to corkboard. Sounds roared into his breached cockpit; the air was alive with the screams of men, the hollow whump-whump-whump of weapons’ fire. Something very bright, very red cut seams in the air directly over his head, and then he heard fresh screams, caught the unmistakable oily smell of roast meat.
The Pack Hunter. His thoughts were sluggish, slow as molasses on a cold morning. Yes, the Pack Hunter was behind and to the right; it must be directing fire, lasers, at the ridge. But the machine hadn’t moved to flank him so he knew that the Pack Hunter was stuck, too.
Then he heard voices. Somehow the Fury’s men had a way to go in and out of the valley; soon they’d fall upon him, hacking him and his fallen ’Mech to shreds the way holovids always showed cavemen swarming over a fresh kill. He braced himself because, by God, he was a warrior and he’d fight until his last breath…
But the killing blows never came; the river of sound parted on either side and flowed past, and he realized then that the Fury had made a big mistake—because now, even though he was filled with so much pain he wasn’t sure how he was still conscious, and even though every new breath was a fresh agony and he wasn’t sure if he’d drown or suffocate first, he saw something else. Red and jittering, as intermittent as a visual stutter—for an instant, he thought he was blacking out for sure, but then he realized that, by some miracle, his targeting systems were still intact.
His katana blade was useless, its tip aiming for some spot high in the sky, but he still had the PPC married to his ’Mech’s left arm, the one that was still free. This was his best and only weapon, but could he still move it? He sipped in air, gagged. Then, grimacing with pain, he inched the Rokurokubi’s left arm up a fraction, then another… just needed clearance, that was all, just one chance…
Something fizzled in his ear, and then he heard the Pack Hunter’s pilot: “Merrick-san! Merrick, if you hear me, go for the ridge with your PPC, go for the ridge, but low, aim low! Do you copy? Do you…?”
Copy that. Woozy with pain and loss of blood, Merrick took aim—and fired.
Much, much later, when Merrick awoke drugged to the hilt and sprawled in a nest of intravenous lines, with a tube stuck in his chest and another down his throat, he discovered three things. One was that the Pack Hunter hadn’t sunk nearly as far as the Rokurokubi, and so had activated its jump jets at the precise instant that Merrick sent PPC bolts slamming into the bluff. The Pack Hunter’s jets didn’t blow the ’Mech free, but they did boil the bog and the Fury’s men in flashes of superheated plasma so hot that what the jump jets didn’t broil, the steam did.
The second was that Merrick’s PPC blasted a horizontal trench directly beneath the granite-strewn ridge, and the Pack Hunter, catching the movement of the Rokurokubi’s left arm, had let fly a full spread of its eight extended-range microlasers and single PPC at exactly the same moment. The energy weapons’ fire cored into the bluff; the cliff buckled, blew apart; half came sheeting down in a slurry of stone and chunks of earth. An Arrow IV tank hurtled barrel-first into the quagmire; a river of bodies hit the bog; and as some men clutched at handholds, the Pack Hunter’s pilot fried them with lasers to smoking, black, twisted corpses.
And this third: as the Fury retreated toward the distant humps of the Bourges Mountains, the Pack Hunter’s pilot saw men running and others hanging on for dear life to a second Arrow—and a man perching atop a Schmitt, the unmistakable silhouette of a ten-gallon Stetson held high, yippee-kay-ay.
But that was all later. For the time being, Merrick did the only thing he could, given the circumstances. He fainted.
Bourges Mountains along the Dover Coast
3 June 3135
As the hours passed, the sun slanted toward the horizon, and Buck didn’t show, Crawford knew they couldn’t wait any longer. So, nerves jumping with anxiety, they descended a rock-strewn pass corkscrewing between jagged spires of black basalt. Then they waded into a meadow tangled with fronds of browning seagrass, bent nearly horizontal by a strong wind whistling in from the sea just beyond. Then Crawford saw a ribbon of cobalt edging the horizon and knew: They’d made it.
Their luck still had to hold. Just another hour, maybe two, and then he and what was left of his command would load into a DropShip that squatted on a gleaming ribbon of sand beach at the base of a bone-white cliff. They’d leave, take their chances that Sakamoto hadn’t blown their remaining JumpShip to hell and back; and if he had, they’d take their chances out in space, because Crawford would be damned if he came back to Ancha and let his people be slaughtered.
I should never have ordered my men to hold their fire, never. His brain was gummy with fatigue; every step he pushed his battered, scarred Black Knight, he imagined that this, surely, would be the great machine’s last. His body bounced and bumped in his command couch because his shock-dampening systems had been damaged. He felt every bang and jolt down deep in every joint, every bone, like an arthritic. His air-purification system was at half capacity and his cockpit was stuffy; what little clothing he wore—his skivvies, a cooling vest—rancid with sweat.
The Combine had caught him off guard, but he’d followed Katana’s orders to the letter: keep it simple, take a couple of potshots, don’t do any real damage. Only that strategy evaporated as a lance of Combine aerospace fighters and a lance of his men went head to head, and the Combine shot to kill.
After that… well, that they’d gotten away at all was dumb luck; that they’d come so far without a repeat performance was downright miraculous. Crawford’s eyes crawled over the survivors of his tattered unit. Besides the four ’Mechs, he’d scraped together five ragged infantry squads. Those who could, clung to the legs of the ’Mechs; their two people movers were crammed with wounded. He had three Bellona tanks, out of ammo, with two working lasers between the three—and that was it. Oh, yeah, Buck and his men, he couldn’t forget them; but, of course, Buck was a day behind and probably dead.
He’d not heard boo from Magruder on Sadachbia. When his weekly message to her via JumpShip hadn’t arrived, Magruder would’ve sent a reconnaissance mission to see what was going on. But she hadn’t, so either Magruder was fighting for her life, or she was dead. Thinking about her got rage simmering in his gut, and there was one thought that pulsed behind his eyes, like a headache that just wouldn’t go away: Fusilli had been wrong. Crawford didn’t know what that meant. The most reliable of spies could be compromised, and false, misleading information planted. Sakamoto, or Bhatia perhaps, might have been tipped off, and Fusilli fed shit.
But how, when Fusilli was so sure; his sources checked out… it was all too tidy, too damn easy…
He wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until a weary voice sounded in his helmet: “Stop, Andre. Let it go.”
Chinn, bless her; she’d fought hard and well. “Thanks, Toni, but…”
“But what?”
“Nothing. I…” He broke off as another voice—male and downright cheery—said: “Crawford, come on in; the wat
er’s fine.”
Crawford bit back a sniping reply. His eyes picked out the unmistakable brilliant emerald-green of the Bounty Hunter’s Marauder II silhouetted against the far horizon, dead ahead. Crawford said, “Where the hell have you been?”
“You told me to make sure the coast was clear. I’ll remind you that I don’t have jump jets, and crawling down to the beach took time. Wouldn’t do to come this far only to have to go back, right? Anyway, the ship’s prepped and ready to go.”
A half hour later, Crawford was looking down at their DropShip, squatting on the beach as foamy waves retreated into the sea. Measho’s Kat was out of missiles, so Crawford ordered him, the wounded and the men on foot down the cliff first. The Bounty Hunter’s Gauss rifle was nearly exhausted, but he still had his two PPCs and lasers. So he, Chinn and Crawford covered the convoy’s rear. Every three seconds, or so it seemed to Crawford, he had Chinn and the Bounty Hunter run long-range scans (his were on the fritz) while he toggled up mag and seismic readings, looking for the telltale signs of troops he was sure would show up at the worst possible moment—when his people were on the path with no cover.
An hour into it, his mag readings jumped, and three seconds after that, Chinn sang out, “Incoming!”
“There!” The Bounty Hunter now, to his immediate left. “Ten, twelve and two, sixty true! Fighters!”
A surge of adrenaline kick-started Crawford’s heart. No, no, not now, not now! The familiar red grid of his targeting system winked onto his HUD even as he was scouring the sky. There they were, big as life and a hundred times as deadly; five fighters, their contrails stitching through the blue sky like the weave of an exotic blanket.
Five. Crawford had to close his eyes a second. Oh, my God. How had they known where to find them? Maybe not such a mystery; the sea was the only place left to run. His people were sitting ducks.
He pivoted his ’Mech, saw the Lilliputian figures of his troops jumping off and scrambling over the meadow like flushed quail, making for the path down to the beach—and safety. “Measho! Get my people into the DropShip! Go, go!”
And then he was turning, springing forward, Chinn and the Bounty Hunter on his heels and fanning out, dashing into open terrain to draw the fighters’ fire. Overhead, the fighters—three Sholagars and two heavier, less maneuverable but deadly Onis–broke formation the way streamers from a sparkler track in multiple trajectories, rolling, banking, swerving, spiraling through the dome of the sky in a dance of death.
“No, you don’t; oh, no, you don’t!” Crawford’s lips peeled from his teeth in a snarl as he fired his lasers, scoring the air with ruby-red destruction. It wasn’t the kind of fight he did well or liked best; no way was he going to be able to punch or kick those fighters from the sky, but if they were going to die, he’d go out with a bang.
To his right and left, Chinn and the Bounty Hunter were angling off, their weapons blazing; and then Crawford caught the hum of lasers from behind him, the staccato fire of autocannon, saw flashes of tracer fire sputtering across the sky, and knew the DropShip was in the fight. He left his external mikes on, heard the scream of long-range missiles whirring overhead, and he let loose with both lasers. The fiery streams crossed in an intercept: a fireball pillowing in successive bursts as the lasers caught the missiles, burning them from the sky. Shrapnel whizzed in a starburst, arcing in all directions; Crawford felt the explosive thunder boom in waves along the ground, shimmying up his ’Mech, rattling the cage of his cockpit.
A fighter—the Oni that had launched the strike—broke right as the DropShip opened fire again. Autocannon slugs carved the left wing from the fighter’s nose. The Oni’s remaining engine roared and the plane banked hard right and then twisted into an inverted spiral, somersaulting like an acrobat that’s missed the high wire, angling for the ground, fiery nose first, plowing into a Sholagar immediately below. The fighters splintered; flaming debris showered down, igniting the meadow grass in a wide parabola, and Crawford watched in horror as the Sholagar’s fuselage, its cockpit trailing fire, bulleted for the beach.
“No!” he cried, spiraling left, snap-firing both extended-range large lasers at once. He missed… but then an arrow of blue energy unfurled like the tongue of a fiery snake—the Bounty Hunter, to Crawford’s right. A PPC bolt slammed into the Sholagar ; the saucer-shaped fuselage tumbled left and wide like a tiddlywink and burst, harmlessly, against the sea.
No time for thanks; there were too many fighters, and Crawford was running hot as it was. Too many. Crawford wasn’t bothering with aim so much anymore as keeping a spray of laser fire arcing through the sky, varying his angle and trajectory so the fighters had to keep dodging. Two down, three to go—but they were still too many. Crawford’s systems shot into the red. Through his external feed he heard something that chilled the blood in his veins; the dying shrieks of his men, trapped on the cliff.
Then fire cored into his ’Mech’s damaged left leg: an Oni on an attack run. A slag of armor melted away, puddling onto the grassy meadow. The grass was tinderbox-dry, and in a flash, there was smoke and lapping flame as the fire spread. Crawford’s ’Mech lurched; a warning alarm shrilled as the lower leg actuator balked, then froze. The cockpit temperatures soared, and his DI began to tick through the autoshutdown. Cursing, Crawford flipped to manual, brought his weapons back online. No matter what, no matter what… Then something in the cockpit fizzled in a spurt of flaming sparkles that dazzled his eyes. Clots of smoke wove a gray miasma that bound his throat and stung his eyes—and then he had an idea.
“Chinn, Hunter! Angle off, angle off!” Then, as the two BattleMechs sprinted right and left, Crawford flipped his flamer to high and scoured the grass as far as he could in a wide, guttering arc. There was a dry crackling sound like the crinkle of cellophane as the grass ignited. The wind coming from the sea did the rest, snatching pillars of churning black-and-gray smoke and sending them boiling into the sky as the grasses caught, spewing fire and ash. A Sholagar that had been close behind the Oni on a strafing run punched through a black wall of smoke, and the Bounty Hunter hammered the fighter with a burst of Gauss rifle fire that was so close it made Crawford’s ears ring.
Just two fighters left now: an Oni and a Sholagar. But Crawford had lost visual as the sky disappeared behind a pall of smoke. All the fighters had to do was arc up and then come in from the sea, but it bought them a few more precious seconds.
Then he heard Chinn’s sobbing breath in his ear: “Andre, I’m down to my last rack; my temperature’s molten, and I’ve lost my left large laser. We’ve got to get down… now.”
“I know. Measho, what’s your status?”
Measho’s reply fuzzed with static. “Nearly there… you’ve… down… now!”
“On my way!” shouted Crawford, but he knew he was lying. I can hold them off, let Chinn and the Hunter… But then it was as if some fickle god wasn’t quite done, because the wind changed direction for an instant, nudged aside the dark, obscuring curtain of smoke, parting it down the middle like a hot knife slicing butter. And then Crawford gasped, unable to believe his eyes.
There, far away, was a balloon of dust and dry grass boiling across the meadow—and then, in the next instant, the dust resolved, coalesced… into a Schmitt tank. The vehicle roared across the field, wheels churning earth and grass as the tank raced for the fire that was still raging across the field. But the tank wasn’t firing, and in another instant, Crawford saw why: its missiles were spent, and men clung to the turrets in a hodgepodge of arms and legs, and for dear life. And that one, unmistakable sign: that damn ten-gallon snapping to and fro like a banner.
Buck, my God, my God , they made it, they…
And then Crawford saw the fighters break their attack wedge and streak for the tank. No, no, no! Already pivoting, Crawford switched to an open channel. “Buck, Buck! Head for the fire, head for the fire, we’ll cover you, we’ll…”
A scream of fury spiked into his brain. “Nononono, no, you DON’T!!” And then Anton
ia Chinn was racing across the field, plunging into the smoke and fire.
“Chinn, no!” Crawford roared, but he was too slow, his ’Mech too battered, the lower leg actuator groaning with effort. “Chinn, come back, that’s an order!”
But Chinn’s Thor sprinted across the flame, eating up distance and moving with speed and terrible grace that were at once deadly and utterly beautiful. Chinn’s voice crackled with urgency. “Crawford, go! I’ll cover you! Get out of here! Go, go!”
“Toni, you can’t, you…!” His throat, raw from smoke, closed off, and he choked.
Before he could suck in another breath, he heard the Bounty Hunter say, “Go, Crawford,” and despite everything, Crawford heard an eerie, preternatural intensity that was absolutely lethal with menace and determination. “You can’t do any good anyway. Leave her to me.”
Many months later, Crawford would turn that statement over in his mind again and again, looking for the nuance that betrayed the lie. But that was far in the future, and this was now.
Dazzling spears of laser fire danced around the two ’Mechs. Chinn’s Thor was the more agile, and she dodged, returning fire from her remaining laser. But the Marauder was hit by a scarlet lance of laser fire that burned armor at its left shoulder and sent it reeling to the side, its back-canted birds’ knees locking as the machine betrayed its fatal flaw. Instead of tumbling, the Marauder staggered and swayed dangerously to the left.
“Keep going, Chinn, go,” grunted the Hunter, and Crawford imagined the man, ashen-faced, struggling to right his compromised machine. “I’m there, I’ll be right…”
A suck of air, and then a dull boom, and Crawford saw a swarm of thirty missiles spewing from the nose of the remaining Oni toward the Marauder. Without thinking, Crawford cut loose with his lasers as the Hunter raked the missiles with his PPCs and Gauss rifle. Some of the missiles detonated, fragmenting around the Hunter in a flaring halo, while others gouged troughs of destruction around the massive machine. Crawford couldn’t tell how many hit the Hunter, but the massive machine jerked, first right, then left, flailing like a drowning man in a whirlpool, and then, as the fighter howled toward the ’Mech, the Hunter swung his Gauss rifle and battered the fighter from the sky.
