Didn’t the FedScum have their hands full enough with their civil war? They had to make Nikolai’s life on this ball of ice more difficult?
Nikolai swallowed dryly. Help, he knew, was at least three hours away at the garrison post of Yumen. Where soldiers of the Confederation were treated to such luxuries as cafeterias, nightclubs, and the Canopian pleasure circus currently on-world. Ceres Metals’ usual overseer, Nikolai’s boss, was there as well. No doubt enjoying himself. Which meant that responsibility for this breech would land squarely on Nikolai’s shoulders.
“We have a visual,” one of the techs called out.
Out of reflex, Nikolai looked out the large ferroglass window fronting the room. Snow flurries occasionally pelted the glass, driven horizontally by the sharp, arctic winds. Some of the larger flakes stuck, melting into long runnels that trickled toward the bottom edge. Visibility was intermittent, up to five hundred meters. Any DropShip visible by the naked eye would be landing right on top of them!
He moved to an auxiliary station where the technician had selected for penetrating radar. The computer painted an amber silhouette over the green-black scope.
Spheroid vessel. Military design.
Nikolai scrubbed his palms against the side of his trousers, drying away nervous sweat. Running the Blackjack’s retrials by himself should have been another small stepping stone toward advancement. This was shaping into an administrator’s nightmare.
Then the computer tagged the vessel as an Intruder—at 3000 metric tons one of the smallest spheroid-class assault DropShips one could find.
“They assault Warlock with that?” he asked aloud. A determined band of Capellan space-scouts could hold off any military force arriving in an Intruder. It could not even transport a single BattleMech.
Correction: it might hold one `Mech if the cargo bay was refitted and you didn’t load too much tonnage in the way of spare parts. Which was apparently the case, Nikolai saw, as a large shadow detached itself from the hovering DropShip and landed under its own jump jet power. The computer was having trouble placing it. Identification jumped back and forth between an old PXH Phoenix Hawk and one of the Confederation’s newer 3L Vindicators.
“Where did that monster set down?” Nikolai asked sharply. “Is the DropShip landing anything more with it? Where is our garrison support?”
These people were not military-trained, and had not responded with good Capellan discipline to the emergency. But they knew how to get data when an oversight manager asked for it.
“Two hours for Yumen garrison,” Fen Xou reported, answering Nikolai’s last question first.
“DropShip is standing by. No other forces deployed,” a technician at another workstation reported. “Enemy `Mech is within two kilometers of our live fire range.”
Within two kilometers of Sao-wei Cho Tah Men’s Blackjack, then! “Have Cho move to intercept,” he ordered. Perhaps all was not as dark as he’d feared.
“We are receiving a transmission from the Intruder.” A communications tech held up her hand for attention. “Vessel identifies itself as General Motors Flight One-one-three-eight-special. With…with the compliments of Governor Giovanni Estrella De la Sangre.” She frowned. Then, “Message repeats.”
General Motors? Nikolai sneered. Worse than the enemy, then. It was their competition.
“Whatever game this Estrella De la…whoever…is playing, I want that BattleMech destroyed. ”
The BJ2-O was on the grounds for its live fire retrial after all. And bringing the venerable Blackjack design back to the attention of the Confederation Armed Forces, with the military’s recent infatuation with new technology, could not hurt the reputation of Ceres Metals.
Or his own reputation, for that matter. Nikolai suddenly envisioned this as his ticket off Warlock, the frostbitten zhì-chuāng of the St. Ives Commonality. Away from the snow and the icy winds and the long hours spent proving (or finding flaws in) someone else’s designs. A post on beautiful, warm Capella would not be too much to expect. Even the world of St. Ives itself would be acceptable. With a nice promotion. Surely he could bargain that in as well.
Dreams which lasted until the Blackjack OmniMech finally made contact with the foreign machine.
“A Phoenix Hawk,” Sao-wei Cho reported. “The computer cannot fix on the variant, but I recognize its profile. Something different… Tā mā dè! It has reach!”
Reach? Over the Omni? “What variant is Cho running?” Nikolai asked, moving to the corner of the room where technicians monitored tactical screens, tapping directly into the Blackjack’s systems.
“Alternate configuration `C’, with double long-barreled autocannon.”
A 3D, then? But only a single large laser? “Give me guncam feeds on monitors two and three.”
New screens winked to life, showing fields of white interrupted by frosted conifers and tall, gangly winter hemlock. The image swung drunkenly as the Blackjack stalked forward, swinging its arms around to the right…in time to catch a blur of highly-polished metal erupting through a waist-deep snowbank.
A laser mounted on the back of the enemy `Mech’s right arm slashed angrily below the camera’s eye. On the Blackjack’s wire-frame schematic, the leg darkened by several shades of gray as armor puddled to the ground. The BattleMech retreated before Cho angled in with his autocannon.
“Freeze that image and clean it up,” Nikolai ordered.
One of the techs did so. It was a Phoenix Hawk, all right. No mistaking the lines. But not a 3D; the armor looked reinforced, and more angular than the traditional design. Wide intake ports on the jump jets. Better weapons, obviously.
“Upgrades,” he spat the word out with a bad taste. General Motors had been busy, it seemed. It would make the OmniMech’s job harder, but would not make the difference.
Except that Sao-wei Cho kept reporting a difficulty in acquiring solid target lock. “It keeps ghosting my sensors,” he complained, suffering long-range strikes against his chest, his arms, and then a shoulder-to-shoulder slash that burned deep enough to melt through part of his engine shielding.
His return fire was sporadic, and mostly ineffectual. Flechette munitions sanded some armor from the `Hawk’s left side, a bit more from each leg, but more often than not Cho ended up carving local conifers into kindling. Usually right behind where the Phoenix Hawk had been standing a moment before.
Nikolai stabbed angrily at the communications board, opening a direct channel to his test pilot. The officer was lower-grade, it was true, but his performance bordered on the embarrassing. “Quit sniping with that hùn dàn pilot and stand up to him!” It was rare for an administrator to intrude on any live-fire situation, but there was more riding on this than Cho’s reputation alone. “Force him to stand and fight.”
It was a gamble, playing with a `Hawk that way. Fifty percent faster and sixty meters of greater reach with its jump jets, Nikolai risked letting the redesigned `Mech slip behind Cho where it could do a lot more damage.
Then again, as the Omni lost more armor from his left leg and lower waist, its rear-facing armor might just be stronger than whatever it had left up front.
The Phoenix Hawk let him come. It raced onto a dry expanse of hard-packed dirt and loose rock, swept clean of snow by the hard winds, and waited for the Capellan pilot. If Cho expected a great advantage in closing—or any advantage, for that matter—he did not see it. His autocannon continued to miss as often as not, while the Phoenix Hawk struck at him again, and again. One ruby lance cut deep enough to silence one of Cho’s autocannon, halving his effective weaponry.
The `Hawk had to be heating up by now, not that General Motors’ MechWarrior ever let on as he continued to fire the `Mech’s large laser with regular accuracy. It sparked a thought that worried at the back of Nikolai’s mind. “Give me a thermal profile of that machine,” he requested, feeling a dead weight settle deep into his gut.
“It will switch Cho over as well,” Xou started to explain, but the overseer pro-tem cut h
is manager off with a raised hand.
“Just do it!” he yelled as the Blackjack charged forward.
No, the `Hawk did not appear to be running hot. In fact, its entire heat-dissipation system appeared to be banked toward minimal output. It was a thermal image that Nikolai recognized. So did the computer. Which was why it kept bouncing over to the Vindicator 3L variant.
Stealth armor!
“Cho! Cho! Break off from that `Hawk.”
His order went out a few seconds too late. Medium lasers and machine guns tore at the Blackjack with savage strength. The ruby fury of its large laser slashed hip to shoulder, finishing off the OmniMech’s armor.
Then another laser lance skewered the Blackjack just to the right of centerline. This time the enemy pilot found Cho’s ammunition bin for the Blackjack’s autocannon. Lacking cellular ammunition storage equipment, which could have channeled the destructive force out specially-prepared blast panels, the resulting fireball tore through the OmniMech’s entire chest cavity. Golden fire erupted in a catastrophic failure of the fusion reactor system, and the guncam screens washed to static.
For a moment Nikolai thought he had lost his man as well as his machine.
Then the camera’s eye switched to the safety network built into Cho’s ejection seat. Nikolai watched as the crash couch rocketed up and away from the exploding `Mech, leaving behind a mushrooming cloud which was all that was left of several million C-bills of Capellan state property.
Likely all that was left of Nikolai’s corporate career as well. He might be leaving Warlock, all right, but as something other than a civilian. Sending Cho in unprepared. Interfering with a live firefight. The Capellan state did not look kindly on failures of this magnitude. And the military would look for any reason not to blame their own man.
“Overseer,” the communications technician said quietly, as if worried about disrupting the moment. She tapped the side of her headset. “We have a new transmission from the Intruder. They…they congratulate us on a well-coordinated exercise. And ask if we would like them to pick up our MechWarrior before he freezes to death.”
Nikolai gripped the sides of the workstation as if his life depended on it, propping himself up, unsteady on his own legs. He had been staring at the death of his career. Now he shook himself out of it, his corporate survival instincts kicking in and recognizing that—for whatever reason—a possible lifeline was being thrown to him.
By the enemy. The competition.
What was General Motors up to?
This was the most unlikely raid in the history of Warlock, if not the entire Confederation. Was there something larger in play here? He perked up. There just might be a chance to salvage something from the ruins.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, thinking it out. “Tell them we are happy to have them return our test pilot. And if…” What was the name? “If Gioavanni Estrella De la Sangre has further need of Ceres Metals, then Overseer pro-tem Nikolai Kwiatkowski stands by to receive word.”
“Governor De la Sangre’s representatives are standing by at your convenience,” the tech said after relaying the overseer’s response. Putting one hand over her wire-mic, she looked askance in his direction. “Sir, what is this about?”
“I think,” Nikolai said cautiously, “the most bizarre inter-corporate memo ever placed.”
Which put Ceres Metals, and Nikolai, in one hell of a bargaining position. Warm offices on Capella might not be in the offing any longer, but neither, he hoped, was a cold cell on Sian. He could get used to life on Warlock. Either way, he decided, after this the job would be one hell of a lot more interesting.
He just needed to keep his head above water, and one hand in the deal.
MCKENNA STATION
by Kevin Killiany
McKenna Maritime Academy
McKenna Shipyards, Over Kathil
Capellan March, Federated Commonwealth
7 December 3062
Armis Tolan hated planets.
Which surprised no one; dirtsiders expected asteroid miners to hate planets. What they never understood was why.
Most thought it was the openness, as though anyone pasted to the side of a rock could understand what open space was. Others thought it was being on the ground itself, but the novelty of walking on an unbonded particulate surface had paled halfway through his first visit to a planet at age five. It wasn’t even the weight, though the monotonous drag distorting vectors at the bottom of a gravity well was annoying.
It was the atmosphere that scraped spacer nerves raw.
Even indoors, concealing the oppressively opaque sky, the air was wrong. Wild fluctuations in humidity, sometimes as much as two or three percent, shrilled failing life support to nerves reared in space, while airborne grit screamed overloaded filters. But worst by far were the uncontrolled breezes; each random breath had his every reflex leaping for a hull patch.
Armis could not understand why anyone would intentionally live on a planet.
Though he did concede some worlds were beautiful, viewed from a sensible distance. Kathil, for example. At the moment it covered half his field of vision with bright golds and greens punctuated by brilliant white bands of suspended water vapor—clouds, he remembered. Nearly four thousand kilometers below him, it seemed close enough to touch.
Any other cadet would have taken a sled for the nine hundred meter trip from the loading gantry to the palette, but the Tolans had been asteroid miners for thirteen generations. Unless the task called for a vehicle, Armis simply free-jumped across distances that most people wouldn’t chance without a shuttle.
Few miners left the asteroid fields to crew civilian DropShips or the JumpShips that plied interstellar space, binding the Sphere together. Fewer still went to Maritime Academies like McKenna, putting in the years to earn their Merchanter’s papers—certification to tech the Kearny-Fuchida drives.
Most asteroid miners left their home systems because they wanted new and different lives. Others were like Armis—younger sons and daughters looking for a new system in which to establish their claims.
Every ship’s Captain knew the legends, that a miner was only passing through. But folklore also had it that miners were tireless workers and pragmatists who would spend decades finding just the right asteroid field and give good value for their wages as they searched.
The legends, like all broad statements about a race or culture, were only true just often enough to keep them in circulation, which suited Armis just fine. Because of them miners were always welcome, and a miner with his K-F tech license from McKenna could pick his JumpShip.
Or he would have, before the situation became so complex. Now the merchant fleet, usually neutral in all conflicts, seemed polarized by the brewing political upheaval. Even among the Merchant Cadets, Armis found himself expected to declare for one side or the other—as though a miner would care who the dirtsiders took orders from. He refused, of course. He’d even concealed his home system to prevent the others from assigning him an allegiance he didn’t feel.
Swinging his arms with the unconscious calculation of a lifetime in space, he imparted spin. His view shifted from Kathil to the palette of machine parts he’d been assigned to secure. Today’s exercise had the cadets rounding up cargo that had drifted free of the loading bays. Armis had never heard of such an event in real life, but perhaps DropShip cargo handlers were more lax than miners.
Content the palette was where it should be, he didn’t counter his spin, letting inertia carry him in slow rotation. McKenna Station and the Shipyard were out of sight “beneath” his boots, of course, but he could see the flares of several worksleds nearby.
Most of the other cadets were working in teams—SOP on salvage/rescue. That no one wanted to team with Armis had not gone unnoticed. Admin had specifically ordered the team retrieving a near-by water cylinder to keep an eye on him.
These two, both planet-born, had taken a sled. Armis noticed that contrary to Academy regs, each wore mailed fists below their merch
anters’ patches. Lyrans. One of them was a sharp-faced woman whose name he’d forgotten, but the other was Brogden Baylor, the closest thing to a friend Armis had.
A giant of a man, over two meters, Brogden was from the Odessa system. Armis knew that system had been mined out for easily accessible metals generations ago. Just as his was, or would be within a few years. However, he’d heard several systems in the Timbuktu region were showing promise, yet were still wide open. If he wanted to get posted to a JumpShip headed that way he might have to declare himself a Lyran at some point.
A ship burned a quick course correction about sixty clicks out. A Mule-class DropShip, from the size of the flare, not a troop ship.
Which was a strange thing for a merchant cadet to worry about.
Even at McKenna, where ship building tied it closely to the Federated Commonwealth, wars and the rumors of wars had seemed distant things. Stations, after all, were neutral territory. Particularly stations as vital to the entire Sphere as McKenna Shipyards.
That sense of isolation had been disturbed a week or so ago when Admiral Kerr, executive officer of the WarShip Robert Davion, had put off the ship’s Captain and over half the crew and taken the vessel out of dock. He’d blasted a DropShip that had challenged him to scrap and two other ships had pounded each other to ruin arguing over his right to take command.
Since then the ships around McKenna, both military and civilian, maintained an uneasy peace. Ostensibly they were all loyal to the Federated Commonwealth, but arguments and debates over who was the rightful ruler choked the comm channels.
Armis caught a glimpse of the WarShip on his next rotation. At this distance it was only a silver spark, of course, moving slowly up from the planet’s south. Its transpolar orbit would fly by a few hundred clicks above their geosynchronous path, ten, maybe twelve, degrees behind the station.
In a position to keep an eye on things.
Some planet-born cadets insisted they couldn’t tell a ship from the starfield beyond it, all the points of light looked the same to them. But none of them had any trouble spotting the eight-hundred-meter WarShip on its thrice daily rounds.
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