Close quarters

by Victor Milán

  "You don't like the lines," she breathed. "I've got you, you bastard."

  She had released her grip on Pretty Tony, who was sitting up, massaging his wrist, looking at her strangely. "Cassie? What the hell are you talking about?"

  She was looking around. The lines came into this building ... right there. "Fire axe," she said.

  "What?"

  "Get me a fire axe. There was one in the case two flights down."

  "Hey, I'm ranking man here—"

  She turned her glare on him. Her eyes, normally a smoke-gray not much different from today's sky, were almost blue. "Get it."

  The lance corporal scrambled up and disappeared by the stairway. Cassie hunkered down to track the Wolverine in glimpses and laser-flash as it stalked the district, clearing out pockets of resistance. Just when she thought Pretty Tony had done the sensible thing and kept on running, he emerged from the darkened doorway with axe in hand.

  She laid her rifle down and took it from him, then crawled along the parapet to the point where the power lines entered the building. She braced, took a two-handed grip on the axe and raised it over her head.

  "Won't you get electrocuted, Cassie?" Heriyanto asked nervously.

  "I don't know," she said, and swung.

  Sparks exploded around the axehead as it smashed through insulation and cable. Huge blue sparks popped out at her like angry wasps. The wooden handle must have been a good-enough insulator, for the woven metal cable parted and dropped into the street. Grinning like a wolf, Cassie let the axe fall after it.

  "Now what?" said Rusty, peering over the edge at the severed cable.

  "Now we find a—a mop handle," Cassie told him. "And then we go hunting."

  * * *

  The 'Mech's footsteps, reverberating like thunder between the buildings flanking General Tso Street, were accompanied by the dull crackling of pavement giving up the ghost beneath the monster's fifty-five tons. As it neared the corner, Recruit Cassie Suthom popped around and spanged a shot off the glacis of its chest armor.

  The bullet could no more damage the behemoth than would an equal weight of spit, much less catch the attention of the warrior piloting the machine. Cassie's intention had been to put it right through the Mech's transpex faceplate, but she was a poor shot. The monster may not have noticed the puny bullet, but it did pay attention to the tiny, impertinent figure in baggy Liao battledress.

  The little laser-bulb tracked, fired. The beam exploded concrete where the figure had stood just a moment before, but the figure was no longer there.

  The monster hesitated, then rumbled forward. There were certain ... proprieties ... to thirty-first century warfare that must be observed. One of them was that a worthless little gnat of a groundpounder shouldn't dare to challenge the invincible might of a BattleMech—nor the invincible ego of a MechWarrior. It did not happen.

  By now Cassie was running flat-out down the next street over, backtracking the direction the monster had been heading. Hearing the thunder of its footfalls nearing the corner behind her, her heart fluttered in her chest like the wings of a frightened dove. She felt wonderful.

  For thirteen years the nightmares had haunted her. Now she was striking back against the steel demons who had robbed her of her Daddy and her house and her childhood. She might die—that laser finger might reach out and change her instantly to a steam-blasted, flaming, tumbling rubbish doll any time now. But live or die, she was no longer helpless. She was exhilarated.

  She ducked into a doorway just as the 'Mech rounded the corner. It stood, casting around for its impudent foe.

  Cassie knew that the killing beam of its laser moved at the speed of light, though she wasn't sure what that meant, except pretty damn fast. But the monster's response time wasn't so hot. From her perspective, it was dead slow.

  She stepped into the street, shouldered her rifle, fired at the thing's head, chambered another round, fired it too. Then she lowered the piece and waved her hand in the air.

  "Hey," she shouted, "Hey! Over here, you big slugface. Hey!" She could barely hear her own voice over the ringing of the shots in her unprotected ears. But just now she didn't need to hear to know she had the monster's attention. Moving in that man-underwater manner, it swiveled its torso, raising its right hand.

  Like a rat, she darted back into the doorway, which was dim and stank of varnish and disinfectant. Apparently somebody in this crudhole still gave a damn, which would have been almost funny if she'd had time to think about it. Stairs disappeared into the murk to her right, but Cassie bolted straight back to the rear door, reaching it at the same instant the autocannon burst hit the front.

  Glass shards and flame and explosive stink and raw shattering noise pursued her. She let the solid-metal rear door slam on them all, crossed the narrow, reeking alley in two steps, and blew in through another door. Down another cramped corridor that didn't smell half as good as the last one, out into the street where she'd left her squaddies in ambush. "Hey," she shouted as she ran across the street toward the apartment on whose roof she'd halfway baked her audacious plan of attack. "Hey, get ready!"

  No answer. Her buddies had abandoned her, one and all.

  No surprise. Nor bitterness. They didn't owe Cassie anything. Nor she them. Like her, they were just a bunch of street trash, losers by definition, who had managed to get the hard but damned near unguided arm of Liao law laid on them through bad luck or stupidity. Forget them. Whether the plan worked or not, they were just window dressing anyway. Their pitiful single-shot rifles couldn't hurt the monster any more than hers could.

  She stopped before the apartment building, looked upon the street. She hoped the Wolverine pilot realized she'd kept running and would follow her around the corner.

  But he surprised her, the 'Mech coming through the same buildings she had. First came an almighty crashing and banging, and suddenly there it was, looming up nine times the size of life in a giant cloud of dust and debris. The Wolverine was raising its autocannon-hand even as it appeared.

  Cassie stood a moment, gaping in horrified dismay. Then survival reflexes honed sharp by years on the street took over. She dove away from the burst of cannon fire, rolled as fragments whistled over her, then regained her feet and darted over to the mop handle she'd left lying in the gutter.

  The weight of the severed power line that had spot-welded itself to the steel-frame head was surprising when she hefted the handle. Since it wasn't spitting sparks at this moment, she had no way of telling whether it was live or not. Well, only one way to find out ...

  The monster had turned to track her, still aiming the autocannon. The pilot must have learned that she was too shifty to nail with the laser, but figured that sooner or later the projectile spray would catch her. Or better yet—

  With a vast creaking and groaning, the 'Mech raised its right foot, strode forward to crush the insolent little bug. Cassie hefted the mop-handle like a spear, taking care to keep the unshielded cable clear of her. Then she did the last thing in the world a Mech Warrior would expect from a groundpounder caught in the open by a BattleMech: she charged.

  Cassie ran into the shadow of the vast upraised foot. As it descended, she screamed and hurled the mop-handle upward and past it, straight at the great round joint of its knee.

  With a cascade of sparks, the live power line flash-welded the metal giant's knee joint. Not much, but just enough to lock the joint.

  In fighting a larger opponent—which in Cassie's case was just about anybody—she had been taught by Guru Johann to always go for the joints. A lesson that seemed to apply here.

  The 'Mech pilot obviously had no idea what this impertinent insect might be up to until his machine tilted forward to put its weight onto a leg that utterly refused to extend to accept it.

  The moment she released the mop handle, Cassie dashed away up the block, sprinting thirty yards before spinning to watch the Wolverine topple with majestic slowness into the apartment building. The structure collapsed right down the mi
ddle, chunks of cement block splashing like water from the awesome impact. Cassie just stood there flatfooted, gaping.

  After a while the catastrophic rumbling and crunching noises subsided. There was silence in the street, except for the rustle and thud of occasional pockets of loose debris falling and random pings as metal cooled.

  Cassie was completely stupefied by what she had accomplished. Never had she actually expected to bring the monster down. Instead of being jubilant at her victory, she felt totally at a loss.

  "Not bad," she managed to croak at last.

  No sooner had the words left her mouth when Cassie felt a shadow fall across her. She whirled, only to see another of the monsters standing right behind her. So enthralled had she been in watching the Wolverine's fall that she hadn't noticed anything else.

  A thunder of multi-ton feet, and then another giant 'Mech appeared at the far end of the street, beyond the fallen behemoth. Cassie realized that her victory's sheer unexpectedness had made her very stupid indeed if all it did was let her get surprised by a hundred tons or so of metal.

  She sprinted toward a doorway. The monster's machine gun snarled behind her, pitting cement in front of her feet. She stopped.

  There was no place to run. The 'Mechs were in danger of crossfiring each other if they used their heavy weapons. On the other hand, they could totally fill the street with machine-gun bullets bouncing like the steel balls of the game that had given Pachinko his name—and no more feel them than hail.

  I'm gonna die, she thought. It was the logical sum of her childhood nightmares. Now the moment had come and she wasn't really afraid. Angry, yes. But mostly just drained, and eager to get it over with.

  Thirteen years was a long time to run.

  With a convulsive motion she drew her kris, though she wasn't sure what she was going to do with it. Maybe finish herself off and deny the monsters the satisfaction. At least die with Blood-drinker in hand.

  "Come on," she yelled, waving the wavy blade at the nearer monster. "What are you waiting for, you big puke? Finish it!"

  A sound made her turn. There was a man standing on the prone monster's hip. He was tall and brown, and his eyes and the hair hanging lank and wild around them were black. He wore the cooling vest and shorts of a Mech Warrior and held a pistol in his hand.

  The man jumped to the pavement and stalked toward her. Cassie dropped into a pentjak guard stance, kris held over her head, blade forward, as if it would do any more good against his bullets than against the metal giants.

  "You little bitch," he said in heavily accented English, which was the lingua franca of the Inner Sphere. She understood it, as she did Chinese, pidgin Malay, and the Japanese her mother had insisted she learn and use at home. "I'm gonna teach you a lesson you won't forget."

  From a loudspeaker mounted on the 'Mech behind boomed a series of what Cassie thought were words. She couldn't be sure; they sounded like a market woman chopping up a chicken on the block, with rising-falling tones added in. Not so many as in Liao Mandarin, but there. The dark man stopped, raised a fist, and shouted back in what sounded like the same tongue. Cassie saw that he was young. Maybe not much older than she.

  As he started forward again, she took up the slack in her stance.

  A whistling scream of a kind that had already become too familiar rose over a wet wind filled with the smell of smoke and burned propellant and lubricants and a tang of the roast-pork smell of burning human flesh. Her peripheral vision caught another 'Mech settling down out of the sky to her left, in front of the building the Wolverine had walked through to get at her. She paid it no mind. Another few steps and the angry 'Mech jock would be in blade range.

  Machine-gun fire cracked from the newcomer as its metal feet crunched down. The bullets struck between Cassie and her advancing antagonist, stinging her legs with cement dust. His, too, from the way he jumped.

  "Back off," a woman's voice said from the speakers of the new 'Mech, which was lighter than any of the others, but looked bigger than the Stinger. Like the Stinger, it carried an oversized weapon in its right hand. The weapon was pointed downward at the pavement, not at Cassie. "She's a POW, Wolf."

  The dismounted jock turned to the new 'Mech. "I didn't know we were takin' prisoners this trip. If we are—this puta's mine."

  "No way, Bobby. You're a Caballero now, remember? We don't torture our prisoners."

  "But she trashed Skin Walker!" he screamed in almost-frothing rage.

  "More reason to keep her alive," the female 'Mech pilot said. "How often does a lone groundpounder down a 'Mech? Much less a skinny little militia conscript who can't weigh forty kilos soaking wet. She's got talent."

  The 'Mech turned its round head to gaze down at Cassie. "What's your name, troop?"

  "Suthorn," she replied. "Cassie Suthorn." She was supposed to give her rank and all that, she knew. But none of it seemed to matter just now.

  From off toward the city center came the sound of heavy firing. "We're wasting time, Patsy," Wolf screamed. "Let me waste her before the Lousies are all over us like stink on a goat."

  "Collate," snapped the woman. "Recruit Suthorn, I am Lieutenant Senior Grade Patricia Camacho of the Seventeenth Reconnaissance Regiment. Do you surrender yourself to me?"

  Cassie rocked back on her heels. She could hear Bobby the Wolf growling to himself like his namesake. His hatred for her beat from his dark features like heat from a stove.

  "It'll mean leaving your home and all your friends and family behind," the woman said, not unkindly. "But you don't have much choice, hermanita, 'cause we don't have much time."

  Cassie gazed up at the 'Mech. Guru was dead. Her mother ... the mother who had loved her and cared for her and sheltered her from harm had no more survived the pirate raid of thirteen years ago than had Manoc Suthorn. Cassie felt nothing for the walking, talking shell that remained. There was no one else.

  With a flick of her wrist she sent her kris spinning upward. She heard servo whines as various 'Mech-mounted weapons zeroed in on her.

  Blood-drinker spun down. She caught it by the tip and extended it hilt-first toward the 'Mech standing over her.

  "I give up," she said. "Do what you want to me. I can't stop you."

  Cassie's legs gave way then, and she collapsed like an abandoned rag doll. She was aware of the 'Mech stooping over her, reaching for her with a humanoid hand. And then she whirled downward into blackness.

  Part Two

  Survivors

  4

  New Horizons

  Somewhere in the Periphery

  30 June 3056

  Deep in swamp, a monster's footprint fills with water. Next to it a woman hunkers, nearly naked in the stunning, humid heat of this forgotten world on the edge of known space, assault rifle resting across lean, hard thighs. She reaches a hand down to feel the edge of the cut. The soil here is black and comparatively solid, or it would never have borne the seventy-five-ton weight of the behemoth who left the track. Ground seep has filled it.

  The print is round and cloven-hoofed, so big around she could lie in it with arms and legs outspread and not come close to touching the edges. Weeds have sprouted through the compacted soil at the bottom of the print to thrust their I heads above the brown water. The edges of the print are rounded. It is not recent. It tells her nothing she does not already know.

  She raises her head and smiles. Among humankind her smile is reckoned beautiful. But hardly anyone would describe this expression that way. The print reminds her of what she has come for, makes it real and immediate.

  She is hunting 'Mech.

  Mercy is not her companion.

  The footprint was left by a Marauder. Among the most dreaded of Inner Sphere BattleMechs, the Marauder is a foe even a Clan Omni has to respect, seventy-five tons of malice and thermonuclear flame. Cassie has long since learned the hard lesson that if there are gods out there somewhere in the blackness between stars, they don't listen to big, nasty girls who carry guns and knives for toys any mo
re than they heed the cries of little girls with pigtails and teddy bears. But she still murmurs a fervent prayer that the Marauder will be hers.

  A voice in her ear says, "Come again, Abtakha?"

  Her lips say, "I'm moving in on the basura now," but no sound emerges from her mouth. She is subvocalizing for the tiny microphone patch taped to her throat.

  "Be careful there, Abtakha," comes the voice of Captain Badlands Powell, the Scout Platoon CO, in her right ear. A ceramic dot speaker the size of a thumbtip is taped to the mastoid process right behind the ear, transmitting its vibrations directly into her skull. Someone could have his cheek pressed to Cassie's and still not hear a thing.

  A momentary flick of tension at the corners of smoke-gray eyes. Nine years in the unit, and she is still an outsider. They call her Abtakha, the Clan word for a prisoner adopted into the unit that has captured her. Actually, it's a Clan loanword, one of the things the Clans gave the Seventeenth Recon Regiment on Jeronimo, along with a world of hurt. Be that as it may, the term accurately describes the status of Lieutenant Junior Grade Cassie Suthorn.

  "Right, Badlands," she says. Rising, she moves on toward a stand of palmack, the big, fleshy green leaves seeming to shoot straight up from the mud, their fringes looking as if they've been chewed on by the small, toothy creatures that inhabit the swamp. Her exposed skin is painted with a mottle of green and brown to break up her silhouette, her only clothing a strip of camouflage cloth around her small breasts and a thong bottom. A small, lightweight pack carrying her communicator and other essentials rides her back. Her feet are bare of her usual sneakers; the mud would only suck them right off or, at best, load them up into gobs of weight.

  Cassie believes in traveling as light as possible. The baggy battledress most Inner Sphere groundpounders wear in swamp conditions does little to fend off the crawly sucking things that live there, though it did provide excellent cover for the local leech equivalents. As for the omnipresent thorns, they don't bother her. She flows between them like smoke.