Close quarters

by Victor Milán

  The Coordinator's Rest was a towering hollow cylinder, terraces rising up an atrium a hundred stories high. The elevators were spindle-shaped pods that rose up tracks on the inside of the atrium. Illuminated only by work lights, it was a weird echoing vastness, like some surrealistic mine.

  Behind Cassie came gunfire, more screams, and then a blast that shook the whole structure. Sanchez had forced her way into the auditorium and with dying fingers had triggered the five kilos of plastic explosive in her satchel.

  Dix and five others reached the nearest elevator with Cassie. They crowded inside, hit the express button for the top floor. The doors whispered shut. Acceleration pressed them down as the pod sped upward.

  Through the transparent elevator walls, Cassie saw muzzle flashes blossom below like fire-flowers as the DEST team fired up at them.

  A bang. Patricio clutched his thigh and slid to the floor, leaving behind a red smear on the glass.

  * * *

  As commandos, the DEST agents had been trained since recruitment to think in snaky terms. The habit of deviousness was hard to break, which was probably why the elevator was passing the sixtieth floor before anybody thought of cutting the power.

  * * *

  The red floor indicator had just flickered past seventy when it died. The pod's overhead light went out. For a moment the only illumination came from strands of trouble lights that trailed down the atrium like self-luminous, deep-sea life forms.

  The overhead came back, dimly, as the pod's emergency backup battery came online. Cassie looked at her five comrades still on their feet. Then she looked down at Patricio.

  The young White Mountain Apache shook his head.

  * * *

  While his hit team cooled their heels on ground level, twenty commandos waited with their master on the upper levels. It was not that Ninyu felt the need of bodyguards; if anyone wanted trouble with him, it was his intention to fully accommodate them, a sword in his hand, a smile on his scarred lips. But his people wanted to guard him. In accordance with his laborious attempt to learn the unfamiliar, human skills—ninjo skills—at his father's behest, Ninyu permitted them to do so. They took it as high honor.

  Warned by communicator of what was on the way, five DEST agents were waiting outside the elevator when the pod finally coasted to a stop on the eightieth floor. The door slid open. All five DEST operatives fired their leveled Shimatsus instantly.

  Their magazines were empty before they realized that only a single terrorist was in the pod, sitting on the floor. He was thoroughly riddled, and thoroughly dead. From his face he might almost have been Japanese.

  The five crowded into the pod, scrutinizing it as if expecting to find the other reported terrorists somehow concealed in the tiny space. Then one of them pointed upward to the hatch open overhead.

  They were all craning to look up when a black-clad foot brushed Patricio's arm. His hand turned over, and his dead fingers released the safety lever of the white phosphorus grenade they had been clutching.

  39

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  November 2, 3056

  Clinging like baby opossums to the outside of the pod, the Scouts rode the elevator to a stop. DEST commandos on a higher floor spotted them and began to fire. Absalom Sloat, the unparalleled tracker who had never adjusted to the Regiment's urban surroundings, slipped away and vanished into the abyss below with a despairing diminishing cry.

  The others swarmed quickly over the rail onto the floor above and vanished in the shadows.

  * * *

  Caballero Second Battalion MechWarriors on the Compound's south side spotted the fight by the river wall. Force Commander Bar-Kochba sent Lieutenant JG Bodine leaping to the rescue in his Jenner. The rabbi's own Warhammer and Marsh Waits' Marauder came rumbling after.

  By the time Bodine's Jenner jumped over the leafless maples that rimmed the plaza before the Citadel, Great White's left arm had been blown off and its left knee actuator frozen. But the Mad Cat stood among the smoking hulks of four attacking 'Mechs, and its pilot was truly the Tiburón of old, spinning the 'Mech's torso this way and that, flipping its good arm over its back to keep pouring fire on the antagonists circling it like jackals.

  * * *

  The three-sixty view strips gave the Ghost 'Mech pilots eyes in the backs of their heads. But when a massive battle—into the blazing guts of which you might be ordered at any moment—was raging to your front, you tended to keep your eyes on the action.

  The rearmost BattleMech of the forces assaulting from the west was the Ghosts' lone and lowly UrbanMech. The first its pilot knew of the mercenary force that had blasted its way out of the Siriwan Kurita Opera House Tubeway station six minutes before was when Alacran's PPC bathed his machine in yellow ion fire from behind.

  * * *

  With the arrival of Modine's comparatively intact Jenny and the two big 'Mechs from Bar-Kochba's Second Battalion, and several other Caballero machines pulling back from the battle in the west to counter the new threat, the assault off the Yamato was quickly broken up. Three Ghost light 'Mechs broke away into the Fab buildings near the 'Mech barns to the north to continue the fight until they were hunted down. The rest just smoked.

  With a tortured groan of heat-warped metal against impact-deformed armor plate, Colonel Carlos Camacho turned Great White's cratered fuselage to face Bar-Kochba's Hammer of God.

  "Why did you interfere, Rabbi?" the Colonel asked quietly over the commlink. "My son is dead."

  "Your sorrow is mine," Bar-Kochba said. "Father Montoya will say Mass for your boy, and I shall say Kaddish. But you must go on. The Regiment needs you."

  Don Carlos sighed. He no longer wished to die. All he wanted was the chance to weep and light candles over his son's body, and then to sleep.

  "You're right," he said. "I have a duty to the only family I have left."

  He punched up a different circuit. Zuma's rich baritone filled his ears, singing El Camino Real de Guanajuato.

  "Zuma," he said. "Forgive me for interrupting your song."

  "Yes, mi coronet. What do you wish?"

  Don Carlos drew in a shuddering breath. "Sing for me, Zuma," he said, trying to keep his tears from choking him. "Sing Patsy's song."

  * * *

  The red glare of emergency indicators filled the cockpit of Tai-sa Eleanor Shimazu's Mauler. Not all the glow came from the warning lights; she could smell her hair beginning to smolder in the heat that filled her cockpit. She was engaged with two Caballero heavies at medium range, and the only thing holding her 'Mech upright was the futile anger inside her. Anger that she desperately wished she could vent against the mercenary warriors who had been her friends.

  It's Sumiyama whose skin you want to watch crisping in plasma fire, she thought. But the yakuza boss sat smug in his distant tower, above it all, laughing. Untouched, untouchable.

  She already knew the river assault had failed. The warning cry from her Second Battalion—"Gaijin 'Mechs in our rear!" was still reverberating in her ears when Unagi called her.

  "Tai-sa," the light-'Mech pilot said. "Tune to the Ca—the gaijin general freak."

  She did, in time to hear the Chief Aztech's voice ring out, bold as a trumpet: "Presentando Patricia Camacho, jla Capitana!"

  He began to sing, of another cloudy day, in the mountains of a world named for the Christian Saint Jerome.

  "Isn't that the song their Colonel would never let them sing?" Unagi asked.

  "Yes," Lainie said, almost inaudibly. "It is."

  A single tear rolled down her right cheek. She imagined she could hear it hiss away as steam when it fell below the rim of her neurohelmet.

  Unagi's voice was saying something. She didn't hear. All she could hear was Patsy's song.

  It was the funeral dirge for the Ninth Ghost Regiment. Whatever befell the Caballeros from here on, her brazen, brawling, shameless yakuza boys and girls could never beat them.

  Only one
thing remained to her to do.

  * * *

  Cassie thought her team had finally run into luck. No DEST commandos in black suits appeared above them to toss grenades down on their heads as they raced up the stairwell.

  She soon found out otherwise. The stairs ended at floor 99. "Damn!" she said.

  The others looked at her. Dix was still with her, as were Jimmy Escobar—barely breathing hard—McTeague, and the rangy white-blond Mangum.

  She gestured at the door with her machine pistol. "They'll be ready for us."

  Mangum chuckled. "Who wants to live forever?" Escobar muttered something in Zuñi.

  "Well, I was plannin' on taking a shot at it," Dix said, "but plans change."

  Cassie took out another Willy Peter grenade. She pulled the pin, held it for a conservative two count, popped it out the heavy metal fire door, and slammed the door again.

  The moment the grenade went off, rattling the door in its frame, Cassie bounced the opening bar with her rump and spun out, MP ready.

  She was just in time to watch a blazing DEST agent pitch over the rail and plummet down through the atrium like a meteorite.

  "Now, that's something you don't see ever' day," Mangum said from behind her.

  The others burst out of the stairwell and spread out. The darkened terrace around the door glimmered with a galaxy of blue-white phosphorus stars. Cassie was cautious not to touch any of them. The white smoke they gave off seemed to claw at the lining of her nose and throat.

  From the far side of the abyss muzzle flashes bloomed.

  * * *

  The rooms of each floor of the Coordinator's Rest radiated outward from a walkway that ran around the atrium. Cassie charged clockwise along it. Behind her Dix, Escobar, and Mangum traded shots from the cover of the elevator stage with the DEST commandos across the well of blackness. McTeague ran with Cassie toward the stairs on the far side, hoping they led up.

  Halfway around, a door flew open as they passed. A blade flashed in the ghostly utility-light glow. McTeague screamed and fell with his head split open and Cassie's machine pistol was kicked from her hand the instant she brought the weapon to bear.

  A pair of black-clad commandos slid out, splitting to prevent her from breaking either way along the catwalk. Both wore pistols in shoulder holsters. In true ninja fashion, they preferred to use their swords.

  Anticipating their taste for swordplay, Cassie had come prepared. She reached behind to the light ruck on her back, pulled open a zipper on an extra pouch affixed to the bottom. Five kilograms of steel ball bearings fell thudding and clinking to the floor.

  The DEST members refused to be daunted by any such childish trick. Both charged. The female's feet immediately flew out from under her. She sat down hard.

  Slipping and sliding, the male got close enough to Cassie to aim a wild diagonal swipe at her. She simply sat down beneath it, folding herself to the carpet amid the dully shining metal marbles.

  He recovered and lunged at her, raising his sword for an overhand stroke. The split-toed foot of his DEST suit came down on ball bearings. He overbalanced and began to topple forward, windmilling his arms for balance as he ran helplessly toward her.

  She grabbed the front of his suit, put a hand in his crotch, and, adding ever so slight a set of vectors to what he already had, helped him to the waist-height guardrail and up and over it.

  The firefight was still in progress, and quite one-sided, if volume of fire was any indication. But the Caballero scouts were raised to hunt the way their Mech Warriors were raised to ride. Hillbillies, Dispossessed Cowboys, truculent hill norteño's, Pueblo Indians, outcasts despised by their proud equestrian cousins, they hailed from the poorest regions of hardscrabble planets, where stalking skill and the ability to bring down game with one well-placed shot often made the difference between survival and starvation.

  Unlike most footsloggers of the Inner Sphere—including the vaunted DEST super-commandos—the Seventeenth's scouts didn't like a free for all, at least when it came to gunplay. They liked to pick their shots, and they didn't like to miss.

  The female commando had found her feet again and was circling with her sword held out in front of her. Body language made it clear that her view of reality had been seriously compromised. A lowly gaijin woman, an honor-lost money soldier at that, was not supposed to take on one of the Dragon's finest armed with a sword—the soul of any true Draconian—with bare hands and win.

  She dropped into a low stance, as if figuring that would help her cope with the treacherous footing. Cassie drew Blood-drinker. Sitting, she spread her legs wide in a split-stretch, leaned forward between them, the kris held crosswise in her right hand, the left hand forming a tiger claw: harimau.

  The DEST woman faked an overhand cut, whipped her sword into a backhanded transverse slash. The ninjato, hand-fashioned in alternate layers of soft and brittle steel according to nearly two millennia of tradition, could slice through Blood-drinker like rice paper. The wavy blade was not of the finest steel.

  But it was never Cassie's way to oppose edge to edge, strength to strength; her lifelong obsession with hunting 'Mechs had taught her the futility of that approach. Instead, Blood-drinker caught the commando blade flat to flat, guiding it over and past Cassie as she ducked into the stroke. Her left hand caught the woman's arm and spun her hard into the safety wall.

  The commando was good. She kept her head, and her recovery time was near-instantaneous. The dice rolled her way; the rubber soles of her soft black boots found bare carpet beneath. She turned with her back to the wall and her swordpoint toward Cassie.

  From her cross-legged position Cassie unwound herself to come upright, then twisted into a stance facing her opponent as she began to circle her counterclockwise. The swordtip dipped briefly, then came up to point again at her eyes.

  "Your tricks won't help you, gaijin," the woman said in a voice muffled by her faceplate. She pivoted to keep facing Cassie. "I'll cut you to pieces."

  Cassie had orbited until she stood with her right shoulder against the safety wall running around the outside of the atrium, from the depths of which urgent, confused voices echoed. She expected to be shot at any time, but right now that was out of her power. She was focused wholly on her foe.

  The woman in black rushed her. Catlike, Cassie jumped back. Blindingly fast, her opponent cut for her face with a one-hand wrist-flick.

  Cassie felt something like a fingertip brush her left cheek. Then there was the sting of air invading an open wound, and wetness down her chin.

  There were steel balls underfoot, rolling. She rode them, let them add distance between her and her foe. Then she went down on her butt, all asprawl.

  With a triumphant scream the DEST woman launched herself at Cassie, stepping straight onto the ball bearings. She lost her balance, flew forward.

  Cassie's fall was faked. She caught the woman with a straight-legged stop-kick to the solar plexus. Even with the body armor it doubled the DEST woman over. Cassie let her hip play hub and the commando play wheel, rolling her opponent on over her and hard onto the floor.

  With the air knocked out of the woman. Cassie leapt on her like a tiger. Her opponent was somewhat larger and stronger, but that didn't matter. Cassie strode her, grabbed her faceless head, and pounded it three times against the outer wall. Then she twitched the sword from feeble fingers, pitched it over the rail.

  A black-gloved hand clawed for her eyes. Cassie caught the wrist, rolled off the woman, used her body mass to lockout the elbow, then broke it with an elbow smash of her own. The woman in black grunted.

  Stoic though she was, the pain-shock momentarily immobilized her. That gave Cassie a chance to get an arm around her neck and drop her into unconsciousness with a sleeper hold.

  She pulled the heavy autopistol from the commando's holster, stuck it down the front of her pants. She stood up, quickly spotted Blood-drinker, recovered it.

  She tucked the kris back in its sheath and drew her Nambu-Nissan.
The shooting from the stairwell had inexplicably ceased. Now there was a sudden loud flurry of shots from the stairs she had just left, the flash and crack of a grenade, and screams.

  Figures ran toward her. She raised the pistol. "Don't shoot, Cass," a voice panted.

  "Dix?"

  "You got it." His tall form resolved out of the gloom. The even taller shape of Mangum materialized right behind him, dragging his right leg.

  "DEST fellers across the way pulled back up the stairs," Dix said. "Jimmy bought it." He looked at her face. "You're losin' blood."

  "Either I'll have a chance to make more," she told him, "or it's all gonna come out. Either way, I can't worry about it now."

  "Don't wanta break up the party," Mangum said, teeth clenched behind smiling lips, "but all the DEST commandos in the world just came crawlin' up our buttholes. Don't reckon our old pal Willy Peter'll hold 'em forever."

  Cassie pointed to the operator, who was beginning to stir and moan. "Bring her," she said. "And watch the ballbearings."

  Dix frowned. Then he shrugged and slung his piece. Leaning down he pounded the woman's head once against the floor for luck. Then he hauled her arm back in a hammer-lock and picked her up bodily.

  Cassie led off toward the far stairs. Five black-clad forms were strewn around it like discarded dolls, testimonials to the efficacy of aimed fire.

  She moved to the side of the door, turned the handle and threw it as far open as it would go. Light streamed out, but no gunfire. As the door swung back she dropped to the floor and rolled across the dwindling opening with her pistol held out before her.

  The stairwell was empty. Apparently the defenders had decided to await them in the penthouse itself.