A new threat icon flashed for attention. Maria brought her Jupiter around to face the new opponent even as her combat computer made the identification. A Shockwave: half her mass and twice her speed. Most common variant mounted an Ultra autocannon, a ten-tube missile rack and a large laser, but a dialog box warned that the versatile design had been observed in combat mounting everything up to Thumper artillery. Her computer wouldn’t commit itself to a hard ID of the load-out until the enemy ’Mech fired, but eyeballing the Duchy medium, Maria bet she was facing an off-the-shelf plain vanilla.
Carrying a jockey with a death wish, she amended as the smaller machine charged.
The hangers-on who’d been using the Shockwave for cover evidently shared her assessment. An armored personnel carrier peeled away from its heels, scuttling to her left on a cushion of air as a chopper rose from low ground cover and swung wide to her right—splitting targets bent on getting around her to link up with the local garrison. Maria’s targeting computer didn’t ID the APC, but tagged the VTOL as a model mounting a small laser. Ignoring the gnats, she focused on the BattleMech.
“Come to Mama,” she coaxed.
The Shockwave jockey held on to his missiles. His large laser and autocannon fired in unison, scoring a gouge of molten armor across her Jupiter’s chest and peppering its legs with shot. Cosmetic damage.
Maria unleashed her twin PPCs a half heartbeat later. One blue-white beam went wide, grazing the smaller ’Mech’s right shoulder. But the second went true, savaging the Ducky’s left leg.
The Shockwave almost went down, its knee actuator bending nearly backward under the heavy stream of charged particles. But the pilot lunged the machine through a stagger step that kept it upright and moving.
“Good driving,” Maria admitted, noting her target’s pronounced limp. He wasn’t going to be making sudden left turns.
A sudden wave of heat washed through the cockpit as a damage alarm hooted.
“What the hell?”
Sweeping her scanners left, she tracked the exit arc of the chopper she’d ignored a moment before.
“Talon Charlie One to Talon Actual,” Maria snapped at the mic as she ran her eyes over the damage schematic. “Be advised the Duckies have some modified ordnance. A chopper that should have a small laser just beaned me with a medium.”
“Armor,” Cass’ voice came back instantly. “They had to trade out armor for the gun. Hit it with a stick and it will come apart.”
“Roger that.” Maria acknowledged the obvious advice as though it were wisdom. “Just expect anything that looks harmless to pack more punch than it should.”
“Shoot everything,” Cass replied. “Got it.”
Maria slammed against her harness before she could reply, the straps digging into her flesh. Long-range missiles; nine hits.
“You do not shoot while I’m cracking wise,” she snarled at the Shockwave.
She kicked her assault ’Mech forward, closing on the smaller machine at a walk.
Eyes on her targeting screens, she noted a smattering of yellow lights across the wire-frame diagram of the damage display at the edge of her vision. Nothing serious. Yet.
A Kelswa tank that had been using the Ducky ’Mech for cover edged into view and cut loose with its brace of autocannon. The shells spread wide, scattering damage across her Jupiter’s lower torso and chest. Again nothing vital, but the yellow lights were starting to spread.
If she wasn’t careful the little nips would add up to a big bite. And she hated big bites.
The APC scuttled out of some hidey-hole to her left. No personnel carrier should have been that close to BattleMechs trading fire. And—now that she was looking at it—she saw that the APC moved wrong. The lesson of the overgunned VTOL fresh in her mind, Maria triggered all four of her autocannon at the potential Trojan horse.
The hovercraft slewed sideways, shuddering under the solid wall of raging impacts. Its yaw came dangerously close to a flip before it righted itself.
The fact that it hadn’t dissolved in a cloud of shrapnel convinced Maria her suspicions were correct. She watched it for a long second as it staggered for cover, the rips in its skirt sending whirlwinds of dust in all directions. Black smoke belching from every opening convinced her the little machine was out for the count.
Her pause cost her more armor as the Ducky Shockwave took advantage of her distraction to land another double salvo. Large laser and autocannon—both solid hits dead center on her chest. Close enough to the low-slung cockpit for shrapnel to etch the ferroglass canopy.
With a feral snarl, Maria unleashed her long-range missiles. Thirty away and thirty hits, covering the medium ’Mech in smoke and flame. Pyrotechnics, she realized. The enemy machine was still intact; still a viable threat.
Not for long.
Pushing her sticks forward, Maria accelerated, bringing her ’Mech to a full run as she closed on the enemy. On any given battlefield there were lots of ’Mechs faster than her Jupiter; fifty-four kilometers per hour was not an impressive speed. But one hundred tons of hard metal charging at fifty-four kilometers per hour was close enough to an unstoppable force that the difference didn’t matter.
A gun nest she hadn’t seen opened fire. Maria gave the troopers points for moxie as the small shells pocked and scarred the battered armor along her Jupiter’s arm and leg. Not threat enough to be worth a shot.
The Shockwave came clear of the smoke looking altogether too whole to have taken the brunt of her missile salvo. Missiles ineffective, heat too high to risk the PPCs…Keeping the main throttle to the peg with her left hand, Maria cupped the control of the autocannons in her right. Aiming the quad battery of autocannons at a full run was more art than science. She looked wide, all but ignored the targeting reticule as her hand and eyes worked in unconscious concert. Good tone. She pressed the studs and the medium ’Mech staggered back, dancing under the hail of depleted uranium projectiles.
The infantry gun crew continued to pump rounds into her back as she bore down on the doomed Shockwave. Her right missile rack rocked, a warning light announcing its elevation ring was damaged. Their next shot earned a red light as the round split a rear plate and took out a heat sink.
Maria grunted. Those ground pounders were earning their pay.
Ahead of her the Shockwave turned its stagger into a retreat, backing away from the onrushing Jupiter with surprising agility over the broken ground. But not with enough speed. She was going to close on this Ducky joker and smash it with her ’Mech’s bare hands.
The medium ’Mech launched a final salvo of missiles. The staccato explosions across her ’Mech’s chest and shoulders threw Maria left and then right; she bit her tongue when her head snapped back. She cursed. Too cocky: she’d thought she was too close for the long-range missiles to be a threat.
In a second they won’t be.
A clang! of metal on metal rang through her cockpit and Maria was thrown forward against her harness. In the half second it took her to realize what had happened, it was too late: her Jupiter was going down.
The APC—the smoking hovercraft she’d thought was dead—had charged from the side in a last-ditch suicide attack.
The transport hit the inside edge of her ’Mech’s left ankle actuator, an impact that did little damage in itself. What had tripped her, literally, was her right leg hitting the APC as it swung forward. The sight of the twisted wreckage bouncing in front of her was little consolation.
Designed to smash the armor on enemy BattleMechs, her Jupiter’s arms were more than enough to cushion a fall under most circumstances. But charging forward at full speed was not most circumstances. It was all Maria could do to shield her forward-thrust viewscreen as her assault-class machine plowed face-first into the rocky soil.
The black earth turned the curving canopy into a mirror. Maria shook her head at her reflection, more than a little surprised to still be in one piece.
Mostly one piece.
Damage alarms hooted. What wasn’
t red on the damage display was yellow, except for her left arm from the elbow actuator down. The dead black told her she’d lost both weapons and mobility for the duration.
Her big worry was the reactor core. The wire frame made clear the housing was damaged, leaking heat at levels that threatened the BattleMech’s myomer musculature. And with two—no, four—heat sinks gone, her cooling system barely had what it took to keep her machine from shutting down.
Can’t use the PPC I’ve got left with that heat, she inventoried as she levered her right arm to push the BattleMech to its feet. Two out of four autocannons online and a missile rack. If I don’t try to run, I’m good to go.
Well satisfied with her survival, Maria shoved the Jupiter’s right fist into the ground until her viewscreen came clear of the dirt.
Through the mud-smeared ferroglass she saw the feet of the Shockwave close enough to touch.
“Oh, sh—”
Dormuth
Mandoria, Marik
Julietta Marik pushed the walker ahead of her, shuffled to catch up, then stood, resting her weight on its cushioned handles, as she gathered herself for the next step. Looking ahead, she estimated she was about forty meters from her destination. Nothing after negotiating the long curving stairs and the sixty meters of polished Mansu-ri marble behind her. Forty meters. She was fewer than three hundred shuffling steps from the memory room.
The memory room.
That’s how Julietta Marik always thought of the inner chamber Rikkard had made his own, adjacent to the command center of the Spirit Cats on Marik. Though in reality the room had more to do with turning points than memories.
She had expected to die in that room, gallant young Captain Tilson of her guard notwithstanding.
Star Colonel Rikkard had expected to die too. Though not in that room at that precise moment—was it only nine months ago? So much can happen in nine months. The most basic building block of all human life, nine months: the journey from conception to birth of a baby. Julietta could recall when the thoughts associated with that analogy would have made her blush. Death and resurrection seem to make one less a prude.
Julietta pushed the walker ahead another hand span, then shuffled a foot forward to catch up with it.
Star Colonel Rikkard had expected to die—had expected his people to die—as the result of her mother’s betrayal. Instead, he had persevered. The Spirit Cat leader of the Nova Cats—Julietta suspected she would never fully grasp the subtleties of the distinction—had formed an intricate alliance with another Clan, and seemed to be forging something unique.
Someone, half in jest and wholly wrong, had called Marik the Nova Cat Occupation Zone. The citizens of Marik might not yet be in agreement, but what had been theirs was being reborn; not into a Clan-occupied world, but a Clan world. Of course, she had an advantage in seeing this future: she was not looking at the world around her, she was looking into Rikkard Nova Cat’s eyes. The vision there was plain.
Push, shuffle, rest. She made her way forward.
Marik was only one world, but it was steeped in the spirit of what it meant to be part of the Free Worlds League. It had been one of many hearts that had made the nation strong. Now it was a world shared by three cultures and—though she doubted any of the three fully understood—they were being forged into something new.
Under Rikkard’s leadership, the reforged Marik would be a heart of the new Free Worlds League. She was certain of it. Just as she was certain some of those in the current Free Worlds League would never recognize the rhythm of that new heart’s beat.
The first time she had seen this outer chamber—the last time as well, before the Star colonel had sent her home to her mother in defeat—she had been impressed by the beautifully grained burnt-sienna marble. Now, as she watched the toes of her soft shoes appear and disappear from beneath the hem of her simple shift—Something I would not have been caught dead in nine months ago—she marveled anew at its luster.
Where did they come from? she wondered. The technicians and builders and cooks and polishers of floors who followed the wave of warriors. Not to mention the children. One saw the warriors arrive, their number and strength widely advertised; and then, sometime later, their entire support infrastructure was just there. In place and functional with no great fanfare.
Push, shuffle, rest—Julietta made her way across the wide room. She knew there were more accessible buildings available for the Spirit Cat nerve center; but she understood this underground chamber was the only one that could be the heart of the Spirit Cats on Marik.
Push, shuffle, rest.
Her mother had expected Marik to fall into Oriente’s lap—or had that been Nikol’s assessment? ClanSea Fox was supposed to see the economic advantages of dealing with Oriente rather than the Spirit Cats. Jessica had expected Rikkard and his people to be isolated, and to wither in their isolation. She had underestimated Clan solidarity; and had not realized that the Spirit Cats had sought sanctuary because they thrived on isolation. Enclaves of Nova Cats in the Inner Sphere had long been isolated from the larger Clan, and some of those independent groups had undergone a transformation: no longer able to envision their future as traditional members of the Nova Cat Clan, they sought a separate life elsewhere. Their blood remained the blood of the Nova Cats, however; there was not, and might never be, a Clan Spirit Cat.
Now there was no Oriente garrison on Marik. What her mother had intended as a prison had become a hothouse, nurturing the Spirit Cats in their rebirth.
A young warrior hurried past. Intent on his own business, he swerved wide enough to comfortably pass her as he strode toward the command center.
On Oriente, someone overtaking her would have asked after her health or offered to help or to fetch whatever she was looking for. On Marik it was a given that anywhere she was, was where she wanted to be. If she was going somewhere, it was understood she had the ability to get there unassisted or she wouldn’t have begun the journey.
Underlying the brusque courtesy of the Clanners was the assumption she was capable. What had always looked, when she had observed from the outside, like a complete lack of consideration for others was in fact a fundamental respect for an individual’s ability to take care of herself.
Though she could not yet say she was used to it, Julietta had to admit the lack of hovering well-wishers, each trying to think of some way to be of use, was peaceful.
“Ah,” Rikkard welcomed her across the threshold of the command center with a single syllable.
“Ah,” Julietta agreed.
With no break in her three-count rhythm, she altered her course until she was headed toward the open door of his inner office.
“There is a purpose to your visit?” Rikkard asked.
“There is a purpose to my journey,” Julietta corrected, keeping a watchful eye on her feet. “To prove I can do it.”
Rikkard said nothing, but from the corner of her eye Julietta caught at least one approving nod from a Clansman at his duty station.
There was a single chair in the inner office, Rikkard’s, and Julietta ignored it. Pushing her walker until it was braced against the wall, she swung down the shelf hinged to its frame, converting it into a chair. Reversing herself, she was seated comfortably by the time Rikkard finished whatever business held him in the command center.
“There is an elevator,” he said, an indication he was concerned she’d overextended herself. An unaccustomed and effusive display of compassion by Clan standards.
“There are also two delightful elemental warriors, Sigrid and Penelope, whom you’ve assigned to carry me around like a baby should I need their services,” Julietta pointed out. “Those options did not suit my purpose.”
Rikkard nodded, accepting the argument.
A half hour of small talk dispensed with in a few seconds. Julietta smiled to herself. No wonder you think Inner Sphere courtesies to be a waste of time.
“I received a letter from my mother,” she said. “Which I suppose you know,
since your courier delivered it.”
Rikkard didn’t answer.
“You no doubt also know it was long—for my mother—and included an inquiry after my health,” Julietta said. “And concluded with a question about when I intend to return to Oriente.”
“I do not know,” Rikkard corrected. “I did not read it.”
In any other culture, the use of the singular pronoun would have implied he’d had others read the letter and report to him. But the Star colonel was Clan. Julietta knew that if he’d wanted to know what was in her letter, he would have read it himself and told her he had done so.
“What would not have been obvious, to someone unfamiliar with my mother,” she said aloud, “was that she was asking for a report on events on Marik and information as to your intentions.”
“Indeed?”
“Indeed.”
She waited, content after her long struggle to reach the office to simply sit and listen to herself breathe.
“Your mother, Captain-General Duchess Jessica Marik, believes you are her eyes and ears among the Spirit Cats,” Rikkard said at last. Julietta suspected his stringing all of her titles and names together in one sentence indicated how seriously he took Jessica.
“That is what she believes,” she agreed.
“Is she correct in this belief?”
Julietta smiled, letting the lids of her eyes half close. She felt very like a cat.
“Oh no,” she said. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Breezewood, Kwamashu
Duchy of Andurien
“Maria!”
Casson stepped up the gain on his radio, straining for any sound on his friend’s frequency. The hiss of static filled the speakers. More significantly, the dozen tiny sounds of a working cockpit did not. It wasn’t Maria who had gone silent; her radio was no longer transmitting.
To Ride the Chimera Page 14
