by Victor Milán
Wolf Girl fell back across the next desk. Cassie came swarming after her like an angry monkey. Wolf Girl got a hand in the fabric at the shoulder of her black sweater and a boot in her belly and flung Cassie over her. Cassie struck the fiberboard wall of the cubicle and fell almost upside down into a swivel chair.
She was not stunned, and writhed around to get her feet beneath her as Wolf Girl sprang lithely onto the top of the desk and dropped into fighting position with right foot advanced and hands held at shoulder level.
With her feet on the seat of the chair, left foot forward, Cassie cautiously rose to a low stance. Wolf Girl grinned and jabbed for Cassie's face. Cassie ducked back on her rear leg, slipping the blow.
It was a feint. Wolf Girl twisted her hips counterclockwise and fired her right foot straight back in one of those Inner Sphere Taekwon Do Federation side kicks that was almost a back kick.
It was a very powerful shot, that would have busted any part of Cassie it struck and blasted her through the cubicle wall into the bargain. It was by nature a bit slow developing; Wolf Girl must have figured she had her opponent at a disadvantage, perched on that shifty chair like that.
But Cassie's pentjak training emphasized fighting from uncertain footing. She was right at home on the chair. She ducked low into a foreshortened lankah lipat stance, her hips perpendicular to her enemy and body bent so far at the waist that it was almost between her knees. The kick missed high.
Cassie spun, still staying low, bringing her right foot around, slamming her shin directly against the side of Wolf Girl's ankle. As the force of the sweep broke the contact of Wolf Girl's boot sole with the desktop, she put a hand on Wolf Girl's muscular rump and pushed.
Wolf Girl slammed forward as if she had a pivot through her ankles. She struck her short ribs on the edge of the desk, cracking bone and driving the breath from her body.
Cassie gathered herself to spring on her momentarily incapacitated opponent's back and break her neck. But by now the room had filled up with green uniforms and guns and a voice that shouted, "Freeze, bitch!"
29
Port Howard
Aquilonia Province, Towne
Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth
23 April 3058
The prisoners captured at Camp Mariposa were being held in a third-floor recreation room at the end of Jhe short arm of the Admin Center that was on the northwest corner, nearest the bay. The furniture had all been removed, mainly to give the six Planetary Police guards a free field of fire to massacre the captives if the order came down. The prisoners had been given blankets, from which they'd made pallets along the walls, leaving the center of the floor free for the children to play.
The kids were beginning to wake up and whine to be fed or taken to the bathroom, when the door slammed open. A voice shouted in Spanish, "Get down!"
Spanish was a language understood by every Caballero—at least, that much of it. None of the guards knew it, though. And even the youngest, children were Caballeros too. When ordered to get down, they got.
Which left six guards, mostly trying to blink back sleep themselves, standing alone and very flat-footed. Black-clad figures burst in the door and stepped to either side, and a storm of gunfire knocked the guards off their feet.
While Rooster and the other militia members of the strike team secured the room, the 'lleros embraced each other in tearful reunion. Clinging to his liberated family, Zuma Gallegos wept to learn that, of the three children who had been captured at Mariposa, the second-youngest, son Hilario, and been killed by aerospace fighters during the assault on the camp.
But there would be time for joy and grieving later. Embraces were broken almost as soon as made as the adults began to round up the children in preparation for moving them to the bunker levels below the Center. With a 'Mech battle liable to break out around the complex at any time, and no transport to hand, they didn't dare try to flee the building.
In the commotion, Lady K slipped from the room. Aside from the guards at the door to whom she nodded, no one noticed.
* * *
It had been intended that as soon as the infiltrators' presence was discovered, two lances of Harley Company should cross the Thunder and head toward the Admin Center to aid in the hostages' escape, leaving the third to cover them against forces moving up from the south. But they had been spotted themselves. Within moments after Cowboy broadcast his warning, Harley was under attack by a patrol of 227th Armored tanks that had come prowling up to investigate reports of strange events at the riverside sighting.
More tanks and 503rd Mechanized Infantry elements quickly joined the fight. Far from being able to go to the aid of their comrades on the far bank, Harley Company shortly found its hands full trying to prevent the Drac regulars from forcing their way across the railroad bridge to join the attack on the embattled Turanian Transport compound.
Seven 'Mechs had been manned by Caballeros and were headed south from Tower of the Elephant Elementary. But they were going to have their work cut out for them if they reached the central business district. Reports from resistance sympathizers indicated that a whole DCMS 'Mech company was stationed around the Admin Center, with possibly a second regular company and one of Black Dragon BattleMechs patrolling the downtown area.
Eleven reclaimed or stolen 'Mechs marched downtown from Dunsany Sports Palace. But they were intercepted by Date's Company of Black Dragon BattleMechs as they tried to cross the Route 55-Highway 1 interchange. Now the two forces were engaged in a surrealistic battle amid the ruined overpass and traffic jam.
* * *
"Any Caballeros listenin' in out there," Raven heard her husband broadcast from his stolen Spider, "if we don't get us a little help down here at the Yards, it's gonna turn out to be a mighty long day."
Her Raven had found a moment of shelter looking out of an alley mouth across Starry Wisdom Street at the TTC compound. She had been playing high stakes hide-and-seek with Drac BattleMechs for what seemed like hours already.
A 70-ton Archer had been among the 'Mechs the Dracs caught at Mariposa, which gave Raven something to do other than run around and report on enemy troop movements, which under the current circumstances were more depressing than productive. She had tagged two enemy machines with Narc pods, a Whitworth and a Kintaro, both bearing the Black Dragon insignia. She had seen the Kintaro pretty comprehensively smoked by short-range missiles, but had been driven away by a Crab before she could confirm whether it was actually disabled.
It didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference. The Drac 'Mechs just kept coming, and she was starting to see ones without the dragon-rampant symbol, which meant Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery regulars were joining the party. Which was especially bad since there was already at least a company of the Black Dragon 'Mechs stuck into the 'lleros in the Yard.
The Dracs had gotten over the eastern wall of the compound and were pushing through a park filled with semitractor trailers toward the airship barn at that end. Others were marching down the street of the Markbreit Select to attack from the north.
From the harbor just beyond the TTC docks Frenchfry's Spider erupted, dragging a trail of greasy water. Pulse lasers flickered from their central torso mounts, and Raven saw the welding-arc flare that meant the beams were scoring armor plate from the shoulder-housing of a Dragon.
Her husband was good at combat jumping in a 'Mech, even for a Caballero—he hadn't named his normal ride "Jumpin' Jack" for nothing. But his normal ride was gone, and he was fighting from an unfamiliar machine. He miscalculated, and hung himself out to dry a little too long.
The two arm-mounted lasers of a Quickdraw found the Spider's side as it descended rapidly back toward the waters of the bay. Vaporized armor jetted away, and even at this distance Raven could see her husband fighting to keep the machine on its thrust-columns. Then a long-range missile volley streaked toward the Spider from the Delta Dart launcher in the left side of the QuickDraw's chest. One rocket struck the Spider's right foot, shattering it and fl
ipping the 30-ton 'Mech end for end.
The Spider plummeted headfirst onto a concrete pier, and lay draped across it like a dead organic thing.
"Ahh!" Raven uttered a cry of agony.
But she was too much of a warrior to allow even her husband's death to distract her for long. In the three-sixty vision strip above her windscreen she saw movement behind her. Reflex kicked the Raven into motion, sending it scuttling out the alley mouth and crow-hopping sideways as four laser beams stabbed down the alley where she'd been hiding.
The damned Crab had found her again.
* * *
Watching his target fall, Taisuke Toyama grinned and pumped his fist. It was his first BattleMech kill.
Quickly he sobered, and in response to the words of praise his subordinate buso-senshi were pouring into his headset, he said, "It's what we're here to do. Keep moving!"
But he still felt the thrill of the kill inside, tingling in his belly. Even more gratifying, like a gulp of hot soup on a cold morning, was the growing certainty that his command, with the help of the regulars who had begun to arrive, would shortly crush the Yohei.
* * *
The non-regular forces on the east perimeter did not know of young Toyama's successes. They would have been little reassured if they had.
What they were confronting was an unexpectedly vicious frontal attack by an enemy they were told had no seishin, no warrior-spirit. At the same time the enemy air force, which they had been told was no threat to modern armed forces, had killed a regular battalion commander in his command 'Mech right before their eyes and was now busy tearing chunks out of the defenders, BattleMechs as well as hapless ground-pounders.
The vaunted aerospace fighters had shown up— finally—and while they were shooting down some of the enemy aircraft, the ludicrous and negligible enemy aircraft were also shooting down some of them.
Now came the most terrible news of all: there were enemy BattleMechs at large in the city behind them.
Even regular troops, even veteran troops, get antsy when an enemy gets in behind them. It is a deeply ingrained reflex, bred in for good reason: an enemy behind you can strike you down before you have a chance to defend yourself. But even more than a physical threat an attack in the rear is a morale attack. A man behind you feels like three, or even more.
Good troops can panic at the mere threat of an attack in their rear. The groundpounders on the line were not good troops. The Towne Guards were mostly bluster, the First Dragon's Joy troops unhappy conscripts whom the Caballeros had already gifted with the cruel nickname of "First Dragon's Tears."
Their morale had already taken body blows. At word of enemy BattleMechs in Port Howard they broke and ran.
* * *
"So you're the scout," Howard Blaylock said, turning Blood-drinker over in his hands. "Your blonde friend, my little playmate Kali, she talked about you a lot."
He grinned and laid the kris down on a table. "She told me you'd come and get her. And now here you are. Pretty funny how things turn out, isn't it?"
I will not cry, Cassie told herself. She had given up straining at the nylon passive restraints that bound her wrists behind her back after a few quick twists convinced her they were properly fastened. All she could do fighting the bonds was hurt herself to no purpose. She couldn't afford that.
She had to believe it still mattered.
"I did come and get her," Cassie reminded him.
"And now maybe it's time for her to come and kill you."
He backhanded her across the face. Her head snapped to the side. She turned her face resolutely back toward him.
Wolf Girl stepped forward between them. "Don't mistreat her. She's my prisoner. It isn't right."
Blaylock smiled thinly. "What's this? Straining at the leash?"
They were in Tai-sho Kusunoki's command center, as were six PPs, a small, impeccably dressed Japanese-looking man, Kusunoki's retainers, and Kusunoki himself, standing and staring at a large map display screen. Only the futon rolled up against the wall gave away that the room was also the General's living quarters. Evidently the reports that Kusunoki was not big on creature comforts were correct.
Wolf Girl set her jaw and said nothing.
"If you must play with your food, Blaylock-san," the General said over his shoulder, "why don't you do it elsewhere?"
"She's mine," Blaylock told Wolf Girl. "You have nothing. I'm the one who helped your sister, remember?
The woman lowered her good eye.
"Circumspection might be in order in ourtreatment of this prisoner, Blaylock-san," the dapper little man, Kimura, said. From lingering hints of inflection in his speech, Cassie made him as a yakuza—an atypically well educated yakuza, but yak nonetheless. "She seems to be highly valued by her associates. Alive and well, she might provide us a useful bargaining counter."
"I am so sick of you people!" Blaylock exclaimed, turning away and throwing his hands in the air. "You talk to me as if I'm some kind of half-trained domestic animal, you insist on my filling out a toilet-paper requisition form in quintuplicate every time I want to wipe my ass, and the next thing you know you geniuses've got money-soldiers and rebels crawling all over you like fire ants."
He wheeled back to face Kimura across the table, bracing himself on it on his knuckles. "Haven't you got the message yet? If you try playing hostage games with these people, it only makes them want to hurt you more."
Kusunoki turned his head, a look of irritation spoiling the perfection of his features. "Your impertinence—" he began.
"Tai-sho," one of the comm operators seated at a console before the General said. "We are receiving communications that the infantry has broken and is fleeing back toward the suburbs."
"Which infantry? Our infantry? DCMS infantry?"
"Iie," the comm tech said nervously. "The First Dragon's Joy and the Towne Guard."
"Tai-sho, Tai-sa Okabe reports that an enemy breakthrough may be imminent."
"So ka." Kusunoki shook his head. "There is no help for it. I must go and rally the troops myself."
He looked to Blaylock. "I leave you in Kimura-sensei's capable hands. Contain the situation here. Your head upon it."
Blaylock waved at Cassie. "It's a done deal, I tell you."
Kusunoki sneered. Then he swept out, his retinue in tow.
"Whew," Blaylock said. "That clears the air in here, doesn't it? Where was I? Oh, yeah."
He came to Cassie, crooked a finger beneath her chin, raised her face. "I usually go for the leggy blondes with big boobs, like your friend MacDougall. But I think you could be very interesting, for a little while. And when I get bored with your skinny little butt—-hey, who knows? I just killed a man for the first time the other day. Maybe it's time for me to open up still new vistas. The sky's the limit, when you're the man on top."
"No," Wolf Girl said. "You can't do that!"
Blaylock's eyes flared dangerously. He smiled with obvious effort.
"I can do whatever I please. And to show people what happens when something doesn't please me, I think I'm going to have those damned brats we took captive shot. That'll show Mr. Camacho Macho what happens when he screws with me."
Wolf Girl stood right in front of him. "You can't!" she screamed.
His right hand came out from under his coat-tails in back with a short barreled revolver. He shot her twice through the body. She staggered back against the table and collapsed to the floor.
"Don't scream at me!" Blaylock shrieked. He rolled open the cylinder of his revolver, spilled out all the contents, live rounds as well as spent casings. Then he began to pace as he stuffed fresh cartridges from his pocket into the weapon.
"Don't tell me what I can't do. Nobody tells me what I can't do."
He snapped the cylinder back in. "Oh, and about your slut sister. I've been meaning to tell you. I helped her, all right—helped her find meaningful employment in a whorehouse in McKellersport down in the Islands. I'm afraid she died as the result of a little rough
treatment she received while entertaining the fleet. But, hey—she probably liked it. You know how these bitches are."
Breathing hard, muscles trembling, Wolf Girl had managed to push her upper body up off the floor. Blaylock shot her in the back.
She leapt to her feet, snatched the kris off the table, hurled herself at Cassie. "Stop her! She's nuts!" screamed Blaylock. He snapped shots after her. The comm techs dove for cover.
Wolf Girl tackled Cassie and bore her down to the floor.
30
Port Howard
Aquilonia Province, Towne
Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth
23 April 3058
Together the women slid against a wall. Wolf Girl's arms were around Cassie. Cassie felt the knife's curved hilt gouge her rump, and then the tip slid between her bound wrists. It twisted, cutting flesh, and the passive restraint parted.
Wolf Girl kissed her on the lips. She tasted blood. Then the warrior-woman pushed herself off, jumped to her feet with surprising alacrity, turning and drawing s large autopistol from a cross-draw holster at her waist.
Blaylock bolted for the door. "Shoot her! Shoot her!" he yelled. He thew the door open and dodged out it.
His guards obeyed. Shooting deliberately despite the hits she was taking, Wolf Girl killed two green-uniformed Planetary Police before her legs betrayed her and she toppled to the floor.
Reaching beneath her for her knife, Cassie rolled over and launched herself at the nearest guard. She buried Blood-drinker in his groin and twisted his handgun from his grip when he bent over screaming.
Rolling onto her side, Wolf Girl shot a fourth guard. The fifth emptied his magazine into her. She slumped. Cassie shot the guard through the side of the head.
Mr. Kimura's hand came out of his tail-coat with a small gyrojet pistol. Cassie shot him through the chest. He glanced down at the stain spreading over his waistcoat with almost comic surprise, and folded to the floor.
The guard she had stabbed was still screaming. She yanked out her blade and shot him through the nape of the neck. Then she knelt to hurriedly wipe Blood-drinker clean on his green blouse.
