by Ilsa J. Bick
“Our passcodes won’t work. So we need you and…”
“Oh, all right,” Evans said, just to stop the man’s sniveling. Anyway, the fact that no one could access his DI was troubling. “Just let me throw on some clothes.”
Ten minutes later, they were in the DropShip’s bay. Evans’ ’Mech was rigid as a sentry in its couplings, the cockpit dark. The light tang of ’Mech coolant hung in the air, mingling with the sharper smell of scored metal. Evans frowned. “Where’s Jingo?”
The tech looked worried. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what the hell…”
“Look,” said the tech. “I can do the work, and if we get started that means we’ll both be closer to some shut-eye.”
“Fine, fine,” Evans cut in. He had a headache now, and his brain screamed for caffeine. Evans slouched into a lift; stepping in behind, the tech closed the cage with a clatter of metal joists and punched in his code. The lift rose with a slight lurch and a soft mechanical purr, its pulleys squalling thinly, and the bay deck fell away beneath them, darkening into shadow. At cockpit level, the lift bobbled to a halt. The tech pulled the cage aside and Evans tapped in his access code, pulled open his Panther’s hatch, and squirted through the narrow hatchway with comparative ease.
His cockpit, like most ’Mech cockpits, was configured to allow for maximum efficiency using minimal space. He duckwalked in, flicked on his ’Mech’s ignition switch, and flopped into his couch. As his systems flickered to life, Evans tugged his neurohelmet from a shelf just above and behind him, squared the bulky device on his head and thumbed on his gyro start-up control. He waited as the DI correlated data fed through his neurohelmet and verified that he was indeed Evans, then spoke the passcode he’d preprogrammed into the computer for voice match. When the DI agreed that he was indeed who he said he was, Evans punched up internal stats, studied the data as it appeared on his secondary viewing screen. Then he cursed. “You got me out for this? There’s nothing wrong with the couplings!”
“No?” the tech said, the word rising to an astonished question mark. “But twenty minutes ago…”
“Screw twenty minutes. Come on, see for yourself.” Evans heard the scrape of the tech’s boots over the Panther’s deck, a strange shuffling rustle like a cloth being snapped down, and just as he was about to screw his head around, his command couch jiggled as the tech came up behind and put a hand on his left shoulder. Evans gave the screen a backhanded wave. “See?”
“Why, yes, I do believe you’re right,” the tech said. Evans’ caffeine-starved brain only had a fraction of a second to register that the tech’s tone had changed: no question in it now, now it was—his gummy mind struggled for the word—smooth.
There was a blur of movement, something that flipped in and out of Evans’ vision so quickly that his brain never really registered the something as being there—and, suddenly, he felt the bite of wire around his neck, then the wire clamping down. Evans jerked, flopping like a hooked fish. Mouth gaping, tongue bulging, making awful gurgling sounds that got thinner and thinner until his mouth opened in a silent scream; he flailed, his legs dancing herky-jerky, trying to run somewhere, anywhere ; his fingers scrabbled for the wire, searching for a way to get free, get air, he needed air, his lungs were on fire. Dimly, Evans felt his hands slick with hot blood; then his vision grayed, and his lungs were burning up, his lungs were going to explode, and my God, he had to get air, he needed air, air, he had to get…
“Not on the controls, please,” Jonathan said as the first spurt of bright red blood sprayed from the carotid artery, the left. Damn neurohelmet; he’d had to flip the garrote, not over the MechWarrior’s head, but from side to side before crossing his hands and pulling. Ah, well, couldn’t be helped… With a quick, expert flip, Jonathan simultaneously disengaged the pilot’s neurohelmet and jerked him from his couch, spilling him facedown onto a thick canvas tarp Jonathan had spread not twenty seconds ago. The DI responded with a steady shrill of an alarm at the loss of neurocontact. Jonathan ignored it. He planted his right knee in the small of Evans’ back and pushed while simultaneously pulling back harder. Evans reared, but Jonathan rode the man like a bucking bronco. The wire sliced through meat, and Evans’ blood gushed, turning the canvas a queer, dull copper. Evans lurched and flopped—and then the air in the small cabin was filled with the overripe stink of feces and the ammonia tang of urine.
Jonathan’s nose crinkled. Death could be so messy. He’d debated: wire or knife? Both had their advantages, but strangulation was quiet, less likely to draw attention. Besides, the Thugee of Terra’s ancient India had been correct: Strangulation really was the most intimate way to kill, so sensual. Later, maybe, he’d mentally replay this and properly enjoy it, maybe with a recording of one of those young ladies from Luthien as background, yes, that young black woman with tawny legs and breasts that…
He was so lost in this reverie that he was mildly surprised to look down and find the pilot gawping, wide-eyed. Evans’ eyes were pocked with hemorrhage. He’d bitten down so hard that the last third of his tongue was held on to the rest by a shred of tissue. And his head was, well, unseated. Jonathan blinked, saw that the wire had cut through muscle and trachea, leaving the head tethered by the spinal column and little else. He relaxed, and the pilot’s head flopped, then slid right on the bloody stump of his neck.
Jonathan silenced the still-shrilling alarm with a slap of the hand. The alarm had been earsplitting, but he’d pulled the cockpit hatch closed; no one around anyway, and he’d also had the foresight to send the lift back down. Stooping, Jonathan twitched the tarp over the pilot’s body in a makeshift shroud. Then he reached left, unhooked a nylon mesh net designed to secure an emergency tool kit with room for a duffel. Jonathan knew from his weeks of listening to the MechTechs filing through the galley which MechWarriors carried an extra cooling vest. Evans was closest to Jonathan in build and weight. Bad luck for Evans; good for Jonathan. Yanking open the duffel, Jonathan extracted the extra vest, then cinched the bag, dragged out the tool kit, rolled Evans’ body into its place. Then he replaced the kit, draped the duffel over the blood-stained tarp, and rehooked the net. Tight fit, but it’d do. No time to dump the body but later, when he had time and, more importantly, space …
Stripping down to boots, skivvies and skin, Jonathan shrugged into the cooling vest. The cockpit’s air would stink awhile, but the ’Mech’s air purification system would help clear it eventually. Most of the blood had missed the canopy, instead puddling along the left deck. Using the jumpsuit, Jonathan swabbed up blood before wedging the suit under the command couch.
In thirty minutes he’d wiped the neurocircuits, then reconfigured them to recognize his brain wave patterns and voice. What a bit of providence that he’d had so much practice bypassing computer security codes! Brothers, especially older, crippled brothers, could be quite fetishistic about security, but Jonathan was nothing if not an avid, quick study. All Marcus’ secured accounts, chockful of little secrets, and lots and lots of cash. Lots. Jonathan’d had fun moving assets, setting up interesting dummy corporations, shadow beneficiaries: a paperless trail that would erase Marcus from the equation. If needed.
The pièce de résistance? Crawford. Why, the fool had practically begged him. “I want him dead.” Crawford had been crying; Jonathan could tell from his voice. “I want the son of a bitch dead.”
The fool had made the whole enterprise so easy. Killing was, after all, what Bounty Hunters did best. So, did Crawford want Fusilli dead because Fusilli might be a traitor? Or did he want Sakamoto dead because… well, just because? Who cared?
What a stroke of good luck little Toni Chinn had stepped into the role of doomed heroine. It had given Jonathan a chance to be oh-so-heroic; had made Crawford trust him. The hits he’d taken weren’t as bad as he’d made them seem; he’d just wanted to block Crawford’s line of sight so he could take Chinn down. And I would have, simply for the pleasure of killing Katana’s lover so she’d have only me… b
ut that accursed fighter beat me to it.
After he’d clambered into a wrecked fighter’s cockpit—scooping out the body in clumps; talk about mess–it was pretty easy to infiltrate Sakamoto’s lines. Wounded, of course: That had really hurt, using one of his knives to slash his leg and scar his face, but appearances, appearances. The fool medic had swathed him in bandages, and once aboard a medical ship, Jonathan had switched identities. No one caught on: not the medic, not Dr. Montgomery, not the master sergeant for whom he’d fabricated an expedient fiction about his prowess as a chef (helpful that he really did know his way around a kitchen). And not a soul thought twice about the name, a dead giveaway: Shujin Nanashi. Sergeant No-Name.
His one regret? Dumping that green armor. C’est la vie ; he’d buy a new set. For the time being, his ’Mech was safe and sound. Crawford was painfully gallant that way. Someone might hack the ’Mech’s computers, but he thought not. He’d rigged several trapdoors and then a fail-safe that would fry the system if tripped, and then, c’est la guerre. But, in the meantime, Crawford would get his wish.
And then? On to his wonderful, lovely Katana Tormark.
36
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
5 September 3135
The glacier calved with a thunderous roar, a hundred meters of solid, ancient ice slewing off its moorings to crash into the sea. And it was like something subterranean opened up, as if some nightmare emerged from an age when giants roamed, because the BattleMaster came, rising from the east: huge, awful, terrible. At the sight, Corporal Jason Whistler felt his gut clench. The temperature outside his battlearmor was a balmy minus twenty C, the tail end of summer and the iceberg season on the Dovejin Ice Cap, but beads of sweat filmed his upper lip, and fear flooded his mouth with a bitter metallic taste, as if he’d chewed aspirin. The day was cloudless, the sky a clear, lapis blue hemmed by the deeper, almost cobalt ribbon of the Dovejin Sea, studded with jagged, white, ice mountains of bergs cleaved from the remorseless advance of continental glaciers. The sun-glare was so bright the ice pack glittered like a field of diamonds, and the reflection bouncing off the BattleMaster was so intense Whistler would’ve been sun-dazzled and blind if his polarized faceplate hadn’t snapped to full. As their sled hurtled on its cushion of silent, compressed air, Whistler felt as if there was nothing at all beneath his feet or gripped in his armored hands: nothing but ice below and sea spread along the horizon—and Death straight on.
“Aw, Jesus.” McClintock, on Whistler’s left. “That thing is huge.”
“Okay, stow it, fellas.” A lieutenant—Whistler couldn’t remember his name—snapped. “Not like you ain’t never seen a ’Mech before.”
McClintock was sweating so much he looked basted. “Nothing like that mother.”
The lieutenant apparently decided not to debate the point. They were twelve in all, counting the lieutenant and driver: two to a charge, six charges. Their escort, four Bellona tanks and three SM1 Destroyers, was strung across the ice pack a good fifty meters ahead. The tanks were the best they had; hell, they were all they could spare. Whistler glanced over his shoulder. The base was two klicks away, off the glacier and on wind-scoured rock eroded by katabatic gusts from further inland. Beneath a shroud of black smoke, he saw sporadic seams of red laser fire, the crackling bright blue of PPC fire, the ’Mechs—a Drac Hatchetman duking it out with two MiningMechs, one retrofitted with a Gauss rifle, the other with autocannon and a rack of LRMs that were useless in close-up fighting. The refitted ’Mechs weren’t doing well and, even at this distance, Whistler saw a glint of naked titanium flashing along a MiningMech’s left knee. Raider infantry in battlearmor were in on the fight, milling around the legs of the enemy ’Mech like termites on a rotten, chewed-up log. Their pencil-thin streams of laser fire needled the ’Mech with about as much effectiveness as peashooters against a herd of rhinos and, in response, the Hatchetman reared back then slammed down one huge, armored foot—hard. Whistler swung his head back toward the BattleMaster, not because it was a better view. He just couldn’t watch his buddies getting squashed to blood-jelly.
The Dracs’ strategy was showy and pretty good. Anticipating defensive enemy fire, the Hatchetman had screamed from the sky, its lasers snap-firing before it even touched down just outside their base’s defensive perimeter. But the BattleMaster had chosen to land five klicks away at the very edge of the ice shelf, believing—rightly—that the Raiders would have to spare precious men and materiel to head it off.
If they stayed true to form, the Dracs—the ones here and the others Whistler believed had to be headed their way—would level the base. The base wasn’t big; maintaining it was outrageously expensive. But a base was a base, and when Bannson’s Raiders stormed Saffel, this particular base had revealed a hidden advantage that Whistler would bet his bottom stone note the Dracs didn’t know about.
Suddenly there were spurts of orange, like rapid-fire muzzle flash, and white puffs billowed on the BattleMaster’s left shoulder. There was a rush of white, something humming to his left, there and gone in an instant, the scream of six missiles catching up a second behind. One of the Destroyers swerved as geysers of ice and black smoke roared into the sky, exploding from the ice pack as if a series of long-dormant ice volcanoes had blown their stacks. The SM1 sped on, unharmed, and at first Whistler thought the BattleMaster’s aim had to be for shit; why the hell hadn’t it cut loose with lasers, sliced through the tanks’ skirts instead? Then Whistler thought, naw, the guy’s waiting for his buddies, probably. Just having fun.
But their tanks didn’t wait. At once, the air reverberated with the booms of autocannons and the clatter of machine guns. In response, their ice-sled skewed right, dropping back as the tanks shot forward, converging on the BattleMaster. Then, a tooth-rattling jolt, a bang, and Whistler felt the sled stutter, cant, then wobble; and then the driver shouted on broadband: “I’m losing it, I’m losing it!”
The lieutenant screamed, “Hang on, hang…!”
A blinding flash, and then compressed air spilled from beneath the skirt. The sled whirled, tilted, pulling Whistler from his feet before slamming him down hard, and then they were spinning, the horizon a mad, dizzying whirl, and the sled was tipping; they were flipping over, out of control…
“Everybody off now!” the lieutenant screamed, but what the centrifugal force of the spin hadn’t done, the men did now, letting go, leaping free of the spinning sled. Whistler saw ice rushing toward his face, tucked, and whammed against the ice. His battlearmor absorbed the worst of it, and in another second he pulled up in a crouch; saw the sled bounce twice, three times before coming to a rest, upside down. Whistler was gulping air, and for another instant there was nothing but the harsh rattle of his breath. That, and the ice quivering: vibrations from the BattleMaster that shimmied up his legs and into his skull, and made the ice pack wobble like a block of gelatin.
“Everyone okay?” the lieutenant barked. Nods all around. “Okay, let’s go, let’s move, move, move!”
They fanned out over the ice.
DropShip Black Wind
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
5 September 3135
The night was bad and got worse as ship’s dawn approached. He’d ordered the first drop—a BattleMaster and Hatchetman–ahead without him. Sakamoto gave no reasons; no one asked questions, and the only instruction the MechWarriors were given was to save the coup de grâce for Sakamoto. So, while Worridge led advance troops over Iwanji, and the BattleMaster and Hatchetman battled for the Raiders’ base, Warlord Sakamoto puked his guts out.
After, he shivered uncontrollably, gooseflesh stippling his flesh, the room spinning whenever he moved his head a millimeter left or right. Mystified, his doctor suggested Sakamoto sit this one out. Then Sakamoto threatened to cut off his ears, and his doctor gave Sakamoto a shot to help with the nausea, wished him luck and beat a hasty retreat.
Every step was an effort. Sakamoto’s legs were
rubbery, and his head felt hollow, as if his brain had been sucked out through his feet. But he made it to the ’Mech bay where the others—Kyle in his Locust, and Evans in a bloodred Panther–waited. Once inside his No-Dachi’s cockpit, Sakamoto flopped back into his command couch and lay there, sucking air. His vision was getting fuzzy now, smearing at the edges like runny chalk on wet pavement. He toggled his ignition switch with a finger attached to an arm that was heavy as a lead weight. It took him a long time to attach all the medical monitors to his thighs and shoulders, and he fumbled with his coolant cable, working hard to jam the cable into the port on his command couch.
Somehow he prepped his No-Dachi : fitted the bulky neurohelmet over his head, brought his DI to life, toggled his weapons online, performed the mandatory sensor checks. But he was only half aware of what was happening; his brain was sludgy, and he felt as if he was skimming the surface of reality, making contact for brief intervals before bouncing away again.
Just as he finished the last systems’ check and the bay cleared, a voice scratched in his ear: “Estimate optimal penetration in thirty-point-nine seconds, Tai-shu.”
Sakamoto’s throat worked in a dry swallow. “Very well,” he said, though things were far from well. When this was over, he would sleep for a very long time. In the meantime—he shook himself, smelled vomit and sour sweat—there were Blues to kill.
“Commence battle drop,” Sakamoto said, and watched as Black Wind’s hangar bay doors scrolled apart. The ice cap appeared: a glaze of white glittering against a background of cobalt blue sea stretching left to right as far as the eye could see. The docking clamps holding his No-Dachi in place opened. A jolt as the umbilicals connecting his ’Mech dropped away, and in the next second, the hangar bay passed before his eyes in a blur as Sakamoto fell to earth.
