Close quarters

by Victor Milán

  A burst of gunfire sent stucco dust spouting from the wall beside the door. "In here," Cassie said, jerking her head at the stairwell. Dix yanked the door open and propelled the unmoving DEST woman onto the steps. The three crowded inside.

  For a moment they crouched, panting. Cassie pointed to Mangum's trouser leg, which was shiny and sodden with a dark stain. "How about you?"

  His grin was mostly snarl. "Shoot, I always wanted to be that one-legged man in the proverbial ass-kickin' contest."

  "I didn't know you knew any words that long," Dix said.

  "What? 'Shoot?' "

  "Can you two hold here?" Cassie asked.

  Dix looked at Mangum and shrugged. "Till they pry our cold dead fingers off the triggers, anyhow."

  "One way or another," Cassie said, "this won't take long." She grabbed the woman by the empty scabbard still slung across her back and dragged her up the stairs, looking like a cat carrying home prey bigger than it was to show the folks. Her comrades stared but didn't ask what she was doing. Exactly like a cat, Cassie walked her own way and gave few explanations.

  "They're all just waitin' on you up there, hon," Dix warned.

  "I know," Cassie said. She drew the woman's pistol with her left hand. Then she stooped, fed her hands under the unresisting commando's arms from behind, and stood up, holding the now semiconscious woman in front of her by the armpits.

  "That's why I brought a friend."

  40

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  November 2, 3056

  With the ballad of their lost heroine ringing in their ears, the Caballeros rolled to the attack as if by a single accord.

  The bold stroke led by Gavilan Camacho wasn't capable of doing much actual damage—but Napoleon Bonaparte had not been blowing smoke when he said that, in war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one. In fact he'd been committing one of his rare understatements.

  Such elements of the Ghost Third Battalion as had not already been thrown into the pot just shattered. The Drac Mech Warrior knew, intellectually, that there was no way a reinforcing BattleMech army could suddenly turn up to aid the besieged gaijin. But rationality vaporized when 'Mechs appeared in the rearview with guns blazing.

  Deru kugi utareru, ran a Japanese proverb much beloved of generations of Coordinators: "The nail which stands out shall be hammered down." The yakuza lived by a simpler creed: "Better to be the hammer than the nail." In their hearts, the Ghosts could not help but magnify the pitiful handful of Locusts and Stingers—and one Scorpion—into God's Own hammer.

  In an army in combat, panic spreads like flame across spilled gasoline. South of the Compound Ghost Second Battalion MechWarriors saw Third Battalion flying west as fast as their jump jets would carry them. When the mercenaries suddenly came swarming over the wall at them, they could think of no good reason to stay and be slaughtered.

  * * *

  The battle rests in the Virgin's hands, now Don Carlos thought, as the reports of Ghosts on the run came flooding in. He popped the seal on his canopy, undid his safety harness, and climbed down his 'Mech ladder to the ground.

  Hachiman Taro EMTs in oddly flat metal helmets were just prying the pilot from the wreckage of his son's Shadow Hawk with giant hydraulic jaws of life especially designed for use with BattleMechs. Don Carlos broke into a clumsy, weeping run.

  He stopped just short of the party of medics. The shattered form they were laying on a gurney was much too small to be that of his son.

  A female medtech with an untended shell-splinter gash across one cheek gently lifted off the helmet. Gray-shot red hair spilled out.

  "Marisol?" Camacho whispered.

  Lieutenant Colonel Cabrera reached out for him with bloody fingers. "Carlos?" she said. She choked, coughed blood. It poured over the front of his cooling vest as he gathered her in his arms. "Sir," the injured medic said, "she's badly hurt—" Don Carlos glared her back. "Marisol, what are you doing here?"

  "I—could not let you throw your life away. I wanted to atone for what I did to you."

  He huddled her head against his chest. "There, now. Don't talk."

  She clutched his arm, pulled herself up to face him. "I betrayed you, Carlos," she said, "but I did so out of love. I knew if ... I didn't do something, you'd never—"

  Her voice began to fade, and as it did she began to slump back onto the gurney.

  "Knew you'd never ... retire and take me back to ... Galisteo with you."

  Her fingers began to lose their grip on his sleeve. "Carlos, I love you," she whispered. "Kiss me, mi amor. Kiss me and say you forgive me."

  "I forgive you, Marisol," he said. "I love you."

  He leaned down to kiss her blistered lips. When the kiss ended, so had her life.

  * * *

  A hell of fire gushed at Cassie like a volcano's glowing cloud when she kicked open the door. The DEST woman's body jerked to sledgehammer impacts. Cassie leaned into the firestorm and drove herself forward with strong legs and willpower.

  Because the stairs ran up the outside wall, there was no way for the half-dozen commandos waiting for her to surround the door. That was what kept her alive long enough to fight back.

  They hadn't used a lot of subtlety; aside from the odd pillar there was no cover in the half-finished penthouse. They had ranged themselves standing or crouching at various distances from the stairs, Shimatsu 42s trained on the door.

  One stood not three meters ahead and to the right. Cassie raised the Nambu-Nissan and squeezed off the instant the three big white sight-dots appeared before her eyes.

  A blacker dot appeared dead-center of the black-suited man's faceplate. The Mirza's armor-piercers worked as advertised, she was gratified to note.

  Another DEST member fired at her up from the left front. She shot him in the chest, once, twice, again. ISF bullets would not penetrate ISF armor. But they drove him back. His flexible ballistic cloth did stop the slugs, but not before they punched a good distance into his body. He went down.

  Keeping her face ducked down behind her human shield's lolling head restricted Cassie's field of vision. Feeling as though she were moving in slow motion, she concentrated on keeping her awareness unfocused, seeking targets with peripheral vision. She was aware of a tall solitary presence, dressed all in black like the commandos but with red head bare. The figure stood at the far side of the huge room with its back to the windows and a bank of electronic gear. White-smocked technicians cowered behind him.

  The Gestalt flash showed him in a posture of poised watchfulness, not threat. Good, she thought, don't make me shoot you. That'd only complicate things.

  Another DEST commando knelt to her right, trying to sight on her head. Barely able to see him past her shield, she pointed the Nambu-Nissan at him and sprayed shots. She saw blood mist behind his left shoulder, thought another round struck him mid-body. He went flailing over backward.

  Another commando ran around her left side, trying to get a shot at her behind his slumped comrade. Cassie pivoted counterclockwise as far as she dared. The woman's dead weight dragged down her arms. She emptied the ISF pistol at the running man's leg, hitting his knee from the side. That shot didn't penetrate either—but it smashed the joint just the same. He went down howling.

  Two final commandos blocked her shoulder to shoulder, their guns chattering thunder at her like Indra's own teletype. Cassie dropped her left-hand pistol and rushed them, feeling her human shield seeming to convulse in her arms. But it was only bullet hits; through her arms Cassie could feel that the woman's ribcage had gotten a kind of soggy, mushy feel to it.

  When she was almost on top of the pair she put a hand between her shield's shoulderblades and propelled the body toward the one on the left. Herself she hurled to the right, thrusting her own sidearm toward the man on that side and pumping the trigger frantically. Muzzle flash seared away her left eyebrow; primer residue stung her cheek. The noise of bullets rushing past her head at t
wice the speed of sound was like the crackling ripple of rebar popping in a highway bridge failing beneath at Atlas' weight.

  She landed to the side of the kneeling DEST commando, pistol still bearing on him, still firing. He was starting to look as if moths had been chewing up his tight black suit. Moths with red saliva.

  Her Nambu-Nissan clicked empty. The nearer commando was still kneeling, but something in his posture suggested that nobody was home anymore. He began to topple toward her as his comrade writhed out from beneath the dead woman.

  Cassie leapt up and ran at the last commando. She tore the sword from the nearer one's back scabbard in passing as he fell. She raised it above her head, point-down.

  The remaining opponent had fumbled his own sidearm from his shoulder rig. As he brought it to bear, Cassie brought the ninjato down with a piercing scream.

  Japanese blades were renowned for their ability to penetrate armor. The Smiling One did not equip his elite minions with pot-metal imitations from Sian. The swordtip punched through the armor atop the commando's head, through skull, brain, palate, jaw, and through armor again to jut three bloody centimeters below his chin.

  She let go the cord-wound sword hilt and let him fall, turning to face the tall man. He still had not moved. She unslung her rucksack, took out the compact holoprojector. Holding it before her in two hands, signifying intent by deliberately making it difficult to reach a weapon, she walked toward him.

  As she got closer she felt his dark gaze pushing at her like beams of force. Almost she turned and ran. Almost; but the Regiment was counting on her, and she had never let them down.

  Short of death, she never would.

  "You've come all this way," the red-haired man said, sounding almost amused, "to blow me up?"

  "Lord Kerai-Indrahar," she said, kneeling before him, "this is no bomb. It is evidence that irrefutably clears Lord Chandrasekhar Kurita of the suspicion of treason which has unjustly fallen on him."

  She bowed her head and held the projector forth. "I and my comrades have shed our blood to bring this evidence to you. Now I throw myself upon your mercy, and pray that as an honorable and magnanimous man you will view it before you pass judgement on my Lord Kurita or upon my humble self."

  * * *

  Ninyu Kerai Indrahar smiled with a warm sincerity that he knew would bring joy to his adoptive father's spirit, if only he could see it.

  "Indeed, my child," he murmured, "it is I who am unworthy of the honor you do me." And that's true, too, he thought as he slipped a tiny two-shot cone-gun out of his right sleeve.

  The next thing he knew his gun-arm was being twisted up behind him in a painful joint-lock and the impertinent young woman was clinging to his back like a monkey, with the tip of her wavy dagger jammed under the corner of his jaw hard enough to let blood out of him.

  "I don't swallow that samurai honor noise any more than you do," she hissed in his ear, "but I'm tired of seeing my friends fry and die. Now, shall we take it again from the top, you lowlife ninja son of a bitch?"

  * * *

  Striding alone between burning buildings, Lainie found she could no longer move Revenge's left arm. She kept her large right-arm laser hosing a Grasshopper sixty meters away while the heat rose up and up around her. Just before her reactor redlined, the Grasshopper pilot punched out. Half a heartbeat later its ammo blew.

  She felt no exhilaration at the kill. She barely noticed. Her being was focused on the Citadel rising before her. She intended to die upon its steps.

  She came to the great open space before the administration tower. The trees were as colorful as spring come early, but their branches bore flames, not blossoms.

  A figure resolved out of the smoke before her, a figure large enough to claim her attention. An Atlas, battered and grim.

  "Lainie," a familiar foreign voice said over her general freak, "you look like hell."

  The Ghost commander managed a croaking laugh. "You should see yourself, Kali. Your 'Mech looks like Benkei's meteor-battered backside."

  "You know as well as I do that this fight's over," the gaijin said. "Go back."

  "I must pass."

  "I can't let you."

  Lainie pounded the arm of her seat in rage. Heat-softened, the synthetic covering split and the interior padding began instantly to smolder. "Why must we kill each other? Why?"

  "I guess because we're so much alike, doll," the other said, " 'and 'cause we can't kill the people who made us what we are."

  The tears were pouring uncontrollably from Lainie's eyes. "Kali," she said, "good-bye." And she raised her 'Mechs good right arm.

  "Attention, all units of the Ninth Ghost Regiment," a brisk, dry voice said on the general frequency. "This is Assistant Director Ninyu Kerai Indrahar of the Internal Security Force. All Combine forces are to cease hostilities at once, on my authority. I say again: Cease fire."

  Epilogue

  Patsy's Song

  41

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  November 2, 3056

  The Marquis Redmond Hosoya, CEO of Tanadi Computers, did not know the reason for Ninyu Kerai's inexplicable broadcast. But he knew what it meant. Life had a brutal simplicity in the Draconis Combine—that was one of the traditions he was so fond of, after all. A wind that blew fair for your enemy inevitably blew foul for you. If Chandrasekhar Kurita's fortunes had reversed, it followed with relentless logic that his had as well.

  He called for a helicopter to land on the roof of Tanadi's proud bronze tower and whisk him away through the snowstorm to Rex Fillington Memorial Airport. There he boarded a small private jet with reverse-raked wings. He ordered the pilot to fly east with all due speed.

  He sat alone in the spacious cabin, drumming nervous fingers on the arm of his seat and ignoring a cocktail a steward had brought him. He watched the Trimurtis grow larger by the moment. They looked especially huge with the eerie light of sunset glowing in their cloak of fresh-fallen snow, and that heartened him.

  He was a prudent man, and he knew well how quickly fortune's wind could back and veer. He had made certain preparations to disappear into the great mountain range, to a subterranean hideout even satellites couldn't spot. He would bide there in perfect comfort and wait for the wind to turn again.

  As he comforted himself with these thoughts, a black, unmarked Sholagar aerospace fighter dropped from orbit. It rolled out level twenty-five kilometers behind the fleeing jet, well out of the unsuspecting pilot's visual range.

  The fighter's pilot switched on his radar. If the jet pilot detected it, he would think merely that it was the sweep of the traffic control beam from the popular resort town of Varner, fifty kilometers southeast. The Sholagar jock painted the jet just long enough for the seeker heads of four long-range fire-and-forget missiles to see their quarry and commit their destinies to it. Then he switched it off, pitched his nose up, and thundered back up into infinite night.

  The Board of Inquiry from the Hachiman Aeronautic Authority never found a cause for the tragic crash which claimed the life of the esteemed Marquis Hosoya. They chalked it up to pilot error.

  * * *

  The dune grass already seemed brittle and winter-scorched. The sun had sunk from view in the Shakudo, and the wind off the sea was bitter. Cassie found it hard to believe she'd been riding horseback in the surf just a week ago.

  "Everything about you was a lie, wasn't it?" asked the Earl of Fillington. Cassie nodded.

  She was walking along beside him with the skirt of her long white dress blowing about her legs. It felt strange to be dressed that way as herself, in the persona of Cassiopeia Suthorn. Cassie seldom wore dresses. Yet Uncle Chandy had suggested it, and Lady K had concurred.

  "Why did you come back, then?" he demanded bitterly. "To rub my nose in my own folly?"

  She stopped, turned to face him. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I suppose ... to tell you I was sorry."

  "Sorry?" he echoed, his tone become ac
id. " 'Sorry?' Your mercenary accomplices murder my people, and you think you can come here and tell me you're sorry? You abuse my confidence and my hospitality, you play shamelessly upon my sympathies, and all in the interests of that gross monster Chandrasekhar, and you think you can come here and say you're sorry?"

  "No," she said. "I'm not apologizing for any of that. I did that for the Regiment. What I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry that I hurt you."

  The Earl's handsome face went white above his lace collar. He raised a hand as if to hit her, but Cassie's eyes never left his. Only the color seem to shift slightly to the palest blue.

  He caught himself, looked at his hand as if he'd just discovered it sprouting from the end of his arm, dropped it to his side.

  "If I had tried to strike you," he said, "you'd have killed me, isn't that so?"

  "Yes."

  He took a deep breath. "Sometimes strong emotion tears aside a curtain within us, and we see things there we wish were not."

  She said nothing. She turned and resumed walking, hugging herself against the cold.

  After a moment he followed, catching up with long strides. "If it wasn't for the immunity Ninyu Kerai granted you, I'd see you and your friends prosecuted for killing my staff."

  "We only killed one," she said, "and he was an ISF spy. He was trying to kill me, by the way."

  "Yes." Percy stuck his hands in his pockets. "Ninyu admitted Gupta was one of his agents. Just a comment in passing when he found out the poor chap had bought it."

  His brow furrowed. "But I suppose you didn't really kill that large black fellow?"

  "Man Mountain's alive and charging ahead with his cooking lessons. He came through the battle unhurt." She looked up at him, and her eyes had paled again.

  "Since you're being so pious about lives being taken," she said, "what about my friends?"