Close quarters

by Victor Milán

  There weren't a lot of bad guys shooting at them at the moment. One bunch was atop the wall, but they had abruptly lost interest in the groundpounders while volley-firing anti-'Mech missiles at the jumping Shadow Hawk. The scouts were taking some rounds from street level. But either not many intruders had gotten off the wall, or most of those who had were loose in the Compound.

  "PH coming," Private Patricio said, pointing into the sky to the west of them. A humanoid 'Mech was in mid-jump, raking the wall with arm lasers and its outsized laser rifle.

  "Looks like Don Coyote," somebody else said.

  Cassie glanced up. The rapid ruby pulses from the left arm had a bit of sputter to their cadence; the Adelante CO's Phoenix Hawk had been retrofitted with state-of-the-art beam weapons, but there was a control interface problem with the medium Martell pulse laser in its left arm. Definitely O'Rourke.

  The 'Mech touched down lightly in the narrow street next to the building into which Gavilan's Shadow Hawk had fallen. The PH had taken no fire in flight—not even elite DEST commandos were eager to match small arms against extended-range large lasers. The instant the 'Mech's feet touched blacktop, though, and its knees flexed to absorb the shock of landing, so many tentacles of white smoke tipped by starbright SRM exhaust flares were streaking toward it that it looked as if a giant white-phosphorous round had gone off atop the wall.

  The 'Mech became a giant human torch, standing in a lake of fire. "Sierra Foxtrot," Sergeant Dix said. "Infernos."

  "I'm shut down," Captain O'Rourke said over the commline. The young black norteño sounded as calm as if he were taking his 'Mech for an afternoon stroll along the banks of the Yamato. Don Coyote was always cool, always in control. Those traits had advanced him rapidly in the Caballeros, where they weren't always in long supply.

  Even if his voice didn't reveal it, though, he was in trouble. A jump and all that laser action had run his heat way up. Being doused with sticky napalm had pushed his 'Mech instantly past the red line. His Phoenix Hawk had not received double-capacity heat sinks yet.

  "Punch out, Coyote," Lady K urged. "Nothing you can do, and if your ride doesn't blow, we recover her when this little fandango gets over."

  Don Coyote didn't have his name for nothing. Despite being the most persistent of ranch pests, the coyote of ancient Terra had deliberately been brought along by the cranky, turbulent settlers who colonized the Trinity Worlds. The animal was a rasty, nasty, disreputable half-breed, outlaw to the core; so were the Caballeros. It was also noted for its cunning and unmatched survival skill. Alone of North American mammals, to say nothing of predators, the coyote's numbers had increased after the European colonization.

  Captain O'Rourke was brave when bravery was called for. He also knew when to beat cheeks. That was another reason Don Carlos had given him a company to command.

  The captain's ejection seat came shooting up out of the flames enveloping his 'Mech. The zero-altitude ejection system was supposed to propel you slightly backward—it was assumed that, if you had to punch out, there were likely Bad People in front of you. Unfortunately, so quick had been the inferno barrage and the overheating they caused that the Phoenix Hawk's reactor had shut down with its torso still angled forward. O'Rourke was projected straight up. His parachute blossomed like a ghostly flower.

  The breeze off the river caught it and carried it southwest—directly over the intruders. Muzzle flashes flickered toward the figure dangling from the chute, which was rapidly coming down in the street outside the wall.

  The Ninth Ghost Regiment's BattleMechs stood in ranks beneath the floodlights of the base in Masamori's southern suburbs like an ancient Chinese emperor's statue army. Moving past them, Eleanor Shimazu strode toward her Mauler.

  Just as she reached the foot of Vengeance, her ninety-ton war machine, a stocky figure stepped up to her and bowed. "Tai-sa."

  It was Moon, the Tosei-kai yakuza who had long ago appointed himself her chief aide, shadow, and bodyguard. "Yes?" she said.

  "We have received word from the Planetary Chairman, Colonel. He forbids us to move in support of Hachiman Taro Enterprises. The Civilian Guidance Corps is sufficient to the situation."

  For a moment she stood with one hand on the 'Mech's retractable ladder and the other at her forehead, clutching a hank of red hair. She gazed off across the long-grass flat that led down to the rocky verge of the Shakudo, invisible now in the blackness beyond the lights.

  There's treachery here, she thought. True to the traditions of soldiers and yakuza alike, she considered the deka— cops—little more than bullies with badges and guns. The Friendly Persuaders were well-armed, but there was no way they would be much use against what the Word of Blake would send against the HTE. The media would call the strike teams "terrorists" when the shooting was over, but they were in fact full-blown commandos, special-force elements of either the great army ComStar had assembled in secret before the Clan invasion, or their dreaded ROM secret police, both of which had fractured along with the religion itself after Precentor Martial Focht executed Primus Waverly for treachery.

  That useless worm Percy. "What exactly do the honorable Chairman's orders say?"

  "We are bidden to remain on alert," Moon said, "but no 'Mechs are to leave the base."

  Lainie smiled slowly. "Very well. No 'Mech will move." She began to unfasten the clasps on her suit. "Get me a squad of volunteers and transport from the motor pool. Body armor and small arms; same for me."

  She stepped out of the suit. The techs scurrying around the feet of the parked BattleMechs tried not to stare at the spectacle of their commander standing in the middle of the parade ground in her underwear. Physical modesty was not a big factor in the Combine, but Lainie was pushing the envelope here. As usual.

  "Have somebody go back to my quarters and get me some boots," she said, handing her cooling vest off to a pair of gaping ratings.

  Moon stood unmoving, gazing at her with heavy-lidded eyes. "And a pair of trousers, too," she added.

  * * *

  "The cabrones are shooting at him!" a scout yelled.

  "Don Coyote." For the first time the voice of Colonel Camacho spoke on the commline. "Don Coyote, come in, please."

  No response. There was a transceiver built-in to the captain's neurohelmet. It might have malfunctioned, of course. But with at least half a dozen assault rifles blazing at O'Rourke as his chute settled into the street, a darker explanation for his silence seemed more likely.

  Like a monster from an ancient Japanese horror film, a Shadow Hawk reared from the wreckage of South Fab Nine. Seeing the intruders blasting Don Coyote as the Mech Warrior hung helpless in his chute, Gavilah Camacho uttered a raptor's scream of fury as his Shadow Hawk lumbered forward, kicking the Fab's walls from its path, blasting the perimeter with everything it had: the autocannon in its left torso, the Doombud LRM launcher in its right, the Marty medium laser in its right arm.

  Figures in powder blue jumpsuits exploded away from the Fab's collapsing walls like frightened quail as the 'Mech barged on through. The Shadow Hawk altered course slightly, its immense right foot coming down on two of them. Shrill screams sounded, then abruptly cut off.

  Howling like wolves, the MechWarriors of the Seventeenth charged the south wall. It had been known since the Yom Kippur War almost twelve hundred years before that it was possible for infantry to hand armor a major hurting as long as they could afford to spend antiarmor missiles like firecracker strings. The problem that wrecked the Egyptians in AD 1973 was the same one confronted by the DEST commandos: they could carry only so many missiles. And the ISF strike force, traveling light, didn't have nearly so much logistical support.

  Missiles, inferno and armor-piercing, hammered into the charging BattleMechs, but their numbers prevented the intruders from being able to concentrate their fire on any one target, the way they had on O'Rourke's Phoenix Hawk. The missile volley passed like a Cerillos gully-washer, and did about as much to the Caballero 'Mechs.

  The D
EST body armor had enabled a few of the commandos to overmatch the gaijin scouts and the authentic HTE troops who opposed them. But against the energy weapons and huge projectile launchers of the 'Mechs, it was no more effective than a man's thin skin.

  The first battle of the Compound was over.

  25

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  15 October 3056

  The fighting was done. The killing, however, continued through the night.

  Some of the DEST force holed up on the ground floor of the office building directly across the street from the Compound's south wall, but the Caballero 'Mechs simply blasted them out. Skyscrapers on Hachiman were built to last, and Uncle Chandy owned that one. What damage was done could be repaired.

  A bigger problem was the unknown number of ISF commandos who had actually gotten loose in the Compound dressed as HTE security. Chandrasekhar Kurita ordered the facility sealed. Then squads of mercenaries, scouts, support troops, and dismounted MechWarriors, supported by BattleMechs, swept the entire Compound. They scrutinized the IDs of every HTE employee inside the wall—paying particular attention to the security troops—checking them against the personnel department's computers.

  All of which caused serious friction between regular HTE employees and the Caballeros. On three occasions legitimate Blues reacted with angry defiance when ordered to disarm and identify themselves by gaijin money-troopers. But the mercenaries weren't in a mood to play: three HTE security men died, and two got helicopter rides to Masamori Central Hospital with tubes in their noses. After word of these early incidents got around, everybody cooperated, cheerfully or not.

  Eleven infiltrators were located. At least, eleven men and women were found wearing black DEST body armor, or could not be accounted for by the Mirza's computer. All of them suicided, some by the time-honored expedient of biting down on a hollowed tooth filled with cyanide, others by offering resistance. These managed to take six more Blue troopers and five Caballeros with them, including two 'Mech jocks.

  There was a momentary flap twenty minutes after the DEST commandos in the skyscraper were massacred, when a couple of light trucks loaded with heavily armed Ghosts turned up at the front gate offering to help. Abdulsattah was reluctant to let them inside. Captain MacDougall vouched for them, and Colonel Camacho, roused from his funk, supported her. The DCMS regulars were admitted and set to guarding the infirmaries where casualties were being brought.

  The ID-checking operations were carried out carefully out of the line of sight of Colonel Shimazu and her MechWarriors. Neither Uncle Chandy nor the Seventeenth saw any reason to advertise possible ISF involvement, even to apparent allies.

  The perimeter surveillance cameras' memory clearly showed the large panel van that drove, apparently innocently, down the street that separated the Compound from an upper-Laborer housing complex inhabited by HTE employees. It had veered up onto the sidewalk and detonated, presumably by a driver willing to die for the greater glory of Blake. It had been loaded with an estimated three tons of that old standby, nitrate fertilizer soaked in fuel oil. The blast had wiped out half a residential block as well as breaching the north wall, giving the heaviest casualties of the whole battle to unsuspecting Workers and their families.

  Like the DEST commandos, the Blake raiders had quickly run out of rockets, which made their battle against Bronco Company notably one-sided. Some of the terrorists had faded into the housing complex, where the MechWarriors were reluctant to pursue them, not wishing to kill more innocents. By that point, though, with the outcome of the attack painfully apparent, the Civilian Guidance Corps had suddenly decided to take an active role in preserving the peace, and had moved in to mop up the raiders. They carried out the operation with their usual discrimination—firing at anything that moved—thereby causing many of the civilian casualties Uncle Chandy and the Seventeenth had tried so hard to avoid. But there was nothing the Compound defenders could do about that.

  The DEST strike was another story. As the Mirza's investigators pieced it together later, the Dragon's Breath had gotten to one of the legitimate security men on duty on the south wall that night. While the personnel on duty at the surveillance video monitors in the central Citadel had been preoccupied with the abortive action in the Tubeway and the all-out assault in the north, he had apparently disabled his partner and lowered a rope to the street. ISF teams dressed in HTE Security jumpsuits came swarming in. That was surmise—when the fight turned against them, the commandos had executed all the legitimate Blues in their hands, including the theoretical turncoat—but the theory matched the available facts.

  Several Word of Blake raiders were captured alive. Under interrogation they persisted in denying any knowledge of ISF involvement; they believed they had managed to smuggle themselves and their weaponry onto Hachiman despite the Combine's secret police. They had counted on their own scheme of infiltrating through the Tubeway. The van-bomb attack on the north wall had been designed as a fallback strike and as a diversion for the tubeway team if it were detected after penetrating the Compound.

  Nothing could be learned from the ISF dead. Incendiaries built into each DEST commando suit self-activated within minutes of the wearer's death, reducing corpse and equipment to a fused black mass.

  For the ISF, the whole Word of Blake attack had, obviously, been no more than a diversion. The Blakies were expected to fail noisily—their goal, after all, was to destroy an entirely imaginary research project—while the DEST commandos broke in and murdered Chandrasekhar Kurita.

  One more important question occupied the minds of everyone inside the Compound: would the failure make the ISF back off and reconsider its designs on HTE's owner and Chief Executive? Or would they try again?

  The answer seemed painfully self-evident. The Dragon's Breath would be back. And next time they would hit much harder.

  * * *

  "You stick that probe in there, man," Zuma said helpfully, leaning over Astro Zombie's hunched shoulder, "she's gonna smoke." The two chief technicians had an access panel popped on the side of the head of Winger's Jenner, trying to figure out what had happened. It was not a good sign when a single SRM hit took down a medium 'Mech.

  Cassie was up on a cherry picker in the mellow afternoon autumn sun. The breeze off the river still carried the stinks of burned insulation and human flesh. From up here the Compound showed little damage, save for the hole gaping in the north wall, and the smashed South Fab 9. She could just make out the burned patch where Captain O'Rourke's 'Mech had been hit by infernos. Ironically, it had not blown; it had already been recovered, having suffered mostly cosmetic damage.

  She leaned back with her elbows propped on the safety rail, unconcerned at hanging almost ten meters in the air. Caballero causalities had been blessedly light. One Aztech died in the Tube way station, Captain Juan Pedro O'Rourke bought it in his parachute, and casualties had been incurred in hunting down the DEST infiltrators. Funerals and a Mass of thanksgiving were scheduled for tomorrow.

  One prominent non-casualty was Lieutenant JG Nelson "Winger" Blackbird. The missile that struck his 'Mech's head hadn't even penetrated armor. But it had broken circuits and knocked crucial chips loose, completely shutting down all the machine's systems. Even the ejection seat was knocked out.

  The explosion also warped the hatch, jamming it so that Winger could not escape. He had spent the whole battle alternately screaming in rage and singing his death song, just in case the Blakies thought of firing infernos at him.

  Astro Zombie reared back in outrage at Zuma's presumption. He pushed the taped bridge of his glasses up his nose. "Nonsense. I know what I'm doing. I have a degree in electrical engineering from the Atreus Institute of Technology."

  "That's OK," Zuma said equably. "She don't know that. She's gonna smoke anyway."

  Astro Zombie snorted and stuck the probe in. Sparks flew, followed by a bacon-frying sound and brown smoke pouring out. The lights on the Chief Tech's test
board flashed once and died.

  Cassie snickered. "I don't know what they teach you kids in school these days," Zuma said, mournfully shaking his head. "You oughta know that they build these things with just the right amount of smoke inside. You let some of it out—whoosh, she don't work no more."

  Astro Zombie emitted a thin scream through his teeth.

  Zuma tapped an open-ended wrench on the armor plate aft of the open panel. "This mamacita's always been cranky," he said. "Shoot, I think she's probably one of the first Jennies ever built."

  "Don't be stupid," Astro Zombie said. "I've been all over this machine. None of the serial numbers is anywhere near low enough."

  "Oh, but see, she's just like my grandfather's old axe that had three new heads and six new handles. Everything's been replaced a couple times over, y'know?"

  The Chief Tech threw up his hands and stilted as far away as the four-meter platform would permit. Zuma looked at Cassie behind his back and winked.

  A call from the ground: "Yo, Cassie!" She twisted and looked down. Kali MacDougall stood on the ground, waving up at her.

  "I'm taking a break from the infirmary," the Mech Warrior said. "Want to walk?"

  Cassie glanced around. She took an active interest in BattleMech maintenance and repair on the principle that if you knew what made them run, you knew how to make them stop running. But the lessons to be extracted from this particular set of circumstances—that the mightiest war machines in history could be startlingly fragile if something popped their chips from their sockets and interrupted their delicate control circuits, and that old 'Mechs were just as cranky as old people—were already pretty apparent. The finer points of the post-mortem and eventual repair were beyond her competence—or her interest.

  She looked at Zuma. The Chief Aztech waved distractedly at her. "Later, 'manita," he said. Astro Zombie paid no attention to her. That was Sierra Hotel by her; he never did. It was widely accepted in the Regiment that the Chief Tech didn't like girls. On the other hand, there was no evidence he liked boys, either. The more scurrilous-minded enjoyed speculating about Captain Harris and the giant humanoid machines to which he devoted his every waking moment, of course, but that was just talk. Probably.