Close quarters Read online

  Not that Cassie gave a frak about it. She didn't have much curiosity about anything not intimately connected with survival. She'd heard an explanation, though: Old Hsu from the neighborhood where Cassie and her mother had moved after the 'Mechs came claimed the government let people watch the show because watching the antics of imaginary round-eye royalty kept their minds off the antics of the Confederation's own rulers, notably Chancellor Romano Liao, who some said was as mad as a bagful of ruby-eye scorpions. That was shortly before the Special Services Branch of the Maskirovka disappeared Old Hsu for running off his mouth.

  He had it coming, Cassie reckoned—not that she had any love for the SSBs or any other brand of police. It was what he got for worrying about things that weren't important. It just set your mind in an uproar, distracted you from essentials.

  "Suthorn," Lance Corporal Sugiman said. "Take a look outside. See if you can tell what's going on."

  Cassie's blood turned to ice inside her. She didn't move. The monsters are out there.

  Sugiman frowned. He was ranking member of the little squad because the lance sergeant in command—a Capellan regular busted to the unit on a disciplinary—had ducked out fifteen minutes before, ostensibly to "check things out" himself. No one was expecting to see him again, at least not until after the raiders were safely gone.

  "Cassiopeia," he began, making two mistakes simultaneously: pleading and using Cassie's full first name, which she loathed.

  She shot him an obscene hand gesture. "Bug off, Pretty Tony."

  "But I'm in charge."

  A crash from the back of the shop. Instantly Cassie was on her feet, rifle ready. She didn't have to take it off safety because she hadn't remembered to put the safety on.

  When they were tumbled out of barracks at oh-dark-hundred this morning, that was how she had known they would be seeing real action that day: they'd been issued bullets. It was the first time any of the gutter-sweepings of the GRD had handled live ammunition, even including the several weeks of brutal hazing that had served as their basic training.

  Heriyanto came backpedaling out of the stockroom, sweat running down his neck, his nose mashed flat under the muzzle break of a stubby Tseng machine pistol.

  Four more figures crowded into the shop behind the Tseng-wielder, ballistic-cloth armor vests bulking out their uniform blouses and dark visors obscuring their faces: Maskirovka Guardsmen, the blunt end of the dreaded Liao secret police.

  Cassie felt sweat running down her cheeks and the back of her neck, which still felt naked without the comforting weight of the braid she'd worn since childhood. Two nightmares in one day was a lot even for her to stand up to.

  Another Guardsman stood behind the man with the gun, surveying the scene with gauntleted hands on hips. He was the shortest of the four, but not the least wide. On his collar were the green pips crossed by three transverse slashes of a force Leader.

  "Well, well, well," he rasped in a voice rough-hewn by a Guardsman's diet of arrack, bhang, and harsh Larsha tobacco, "what have we here?"

  "Look like shirkers to me, tuan," said the one who had her piece pressed into Heriyanto's pale face. The backs of her bare, pudgy hands were covered with ginger fur, like an orangutan's, but curly. Cassie stared in fascination.

  "What're you gawking at, guttersnipe?" a burly Guardsman demanded, backhanding Cassie across the face. She flew back into the shelves, dislodging her outsized tin hat and giving a nasty crack to the back of her skull. Vidchip boxes cascaded over her as sparks danced manic behind her eyes. The Guardsmen laughed.

  "Where's your sergeant?" the Force Leader demanded.

  "G-gone, tuan," Pretty Tony said. Tuan meant lord in Malay; it was local slang for "boss." Most of Larsha's variegated populace had roots in ancient Indonesia. "He, uh, he went out to check the situation."

  "Shut," the Force Leader said. Tony shut. "You—stand up."

  Numbly Cassie complied, simultaneously knocking a Daewoo radio off the shelf and over her shoulder; it shattered at her feet. She stared fixedly at the Guardsman's sleeve where it displayed the sword-arm patch of House Liao, the pips and triangle trim signifying SSB, to which the Guard belonged. Her face was hot, her vision blurred.

  She'd been only nine the first time one of her mother's many lovers raped her. Afterward he laughed at her and said that if she told anyone he'd make her Mummy disappear. He could do it, too; she'd seen this same green patch on his sleeve as he pulled on his jacket and buttoned it over his huge, hairy gut. Then he'd placed his visored helmet over his head and stepped from the shack into the monsoon rain that drummed against the tin and tarpaper roof and walls like demonic monkey fists.

  "Where's the proprietor, huh?" the Force Leader demanded. He was standing directly in front of Pretty Tony now, shouting up into the lance corporal's face. Tony was taller, but the Guardsman had a good twenty kilos on him. Plus he was a Guardsman. Street scum like Tony grew up dreading the Maskirovka Guard in their bones, even when they didn't have reasons as personal as Cassie's.

  "He was gone when we got here. Honest. Our lance sergeant told us to come in here, and hold, and then he left—"

  The Force Leader's gloved hand cracked across Tony's face. "Shut," he said again, then turned away from Tony to survey the squad huddled in the little shop on Marshal Chiang Avenue. "I know who you are," he said. "Don't think I don't. Glorious Redemption—what a joke."

  The other four Guardsmen all gave nasty laughs. "The Army and the Planetary Governor may buy that they can redeem the likes of you scum. I don't. I been dealing with your kind all my life. I know what you did. I think you came in here to hide from the fighting, and rousted out the shopkeeper so you could rifle his store. Am I right? Am I?"

  "No, honest—" Pretty Tony began. Without even looking, the Force Leader reached back and grabbed him by the lobe of his right ear. Thick-gloved fingers twisted. Tony dropped to his knees with a squeal.

  "Look around," the Force Leader said. "It's quite a little mess you made, isn't it?"

  He twisted again. Tony squeaked affirmation.

  "Now, this morning the PG issued an edict forbidding the people to evacuate the city. You don't believe the merchant scumbag who owned this hole had enough in his sac to defy our glorious leaders, do you?"

  Tony moaned. The Force Leader threw him to the ground and stepped over him to the holovid set, where Pachinko stood trembling like a reed in a stiff breeze.

  "What's this?" the Force Leader said, cocking his helmeted head to the side. "Davion trash? I don't believe it. You're all sworn to be loyal servants of the Chancellor, and you're watching this filth."

  Pachinko stuck out his underlip. "But the government lets them show it. How can it be wrong?"

  He was interrupted by a blow across the face that sent him to his knees. "Silence!" roared the Force Leader. He whipped a mirror-chromed snubnosed revolver from his belt and put a round right through the Archon Alison's angel face. The report was so loud Cassie wondered that the shop's front window didn't blow out.

  "Treason's what I say it is, you muck-apes!" he roared over the ringing in GRD 325's ears. "Your even daring to exist is an offense!"

  He looked around at them, the contempt shining through his opaque faceplate like the beam of a seven-centimeter laser. They looked back at him like animals awaiting ritual slaughter.

  The squad outnumbered the secret policemen two to one, and at least half of them had rifles in hand. Yet not one of the troopies made a move to resist.

  It was not just that three of the Guardsman were covering the room with their machine pistols, but that the people of the Capellan Confederation were used to obeying harsh demands. Larsha was a poor little garrison world, hard against the hostile Davion frontier and too close for its own good to the bandit worlds of the Periphery. Its government was repressive and corrupt even by Liao standards. Here, as throughout the Confederation, the most visible symbol of that repression was the faceless Maskirovka Guardsmen. To resist would be to overcome a lifetime of co
nditioning. That was a lot to ask, even of former street criminals.

  Not long after Cassie's twelfth birthday, her mother's lover tried to use her again, as he had so often. This time, she threatened him with Blood-drinker. He laughed until she laid the back of his hand open and told him she'd kill him if he tried to touch her again.

  He left, vowing to come back with his squadmates and make her disappear. Threats against her mother had less effect on her by that time.

  When Cassie told her mother what she'd done—and why—Alexandra Suthorn slapped her across the face. "You little fool," she said, her still-lovely face contorted with anger and fear. "Can't you leave well enough alone? Don't you know when we're well off?"

  Cassie left the house then, taking nothing but the clothes on her back and her kris. She never went back.

  The Force Leader thumbed the catch on his revolver, turned the piece sideways so the cylinder swung out. He ejected the contents—one empty, five live cartridges—into his gloved palm. He stuck one round back into the cylinder and slammed the weapon shut.

  "Let's play a little game, street scum," he said, rolling the cylinder down his left forearm. "A little Maskirovka roulette, eh?"

  He held the pistol behind the kneeling Pachinko's right ear. Pachinko squeezed his eyes shut. Tears leaked out of them. His lips worked silently.

  The gloved finger tightened on the trigger.

  The hammer snapped.

  The Force Leader's laugh was as jarring as the shot everyone had been expecting to hear. "Well," he said, "you are one very lucky young guttersnipe."

  Sobbing, Pachinko tried to climb to his feet. The Force Leader spun the cylinder again, cocked the weapon and pressed it against the bridge of the boy's nose, forcing him back to his knees.

  "Not so fast," he said. "I'm not done having fun yet. Let's see if you're really lucky, shall we?"

  The next instant, walls and floor began to shake violently, knocking more electronic gadgets off the shelves. A ripple of flashes lit the front of the building opposite to a roar like jackhammer thunder.

  Disregarding the Guardsmen and their weapons, the members of the Glorious Redemption Detachment ducked, instinctively seeking cover. The Force Leader waved his snubby in the dust-choked air. "What's going on?" he shouted over the whistling roar that rose around them like a typhoon wind.

  "SRMs!" Ba Ma yelled. "And them's jump jets. 'Mech coming!"

  For once he was right. A gigantic manlike figure, painted matte blue and gray, suddenly appeared in the air above the commercial buildings across the street and then landed in the avenue half a block away with a sound of shattering pavement.

  Deep inside Cassie Suthorn, something burst like a bomb and burned like a nova.

  3

  Kalimantan, Larsha

  Sian Commonality, Capellan Confederation

  19 July 3047

  Quick and fluid as a mongoose, Cassie stopped to snatch her antique rifle off the floor. She raised it to her waist and aimed it at the Force Leader. "All right," she hissed. "Out in the street—all of you!"

  He looked at her a moment, then laughed, throwing back his head so she could see his open mouth under the bottom of his visor. His teeth were stained and pitted with dark caverns.

  He was not the man who raped her. But he wasn't much different.

  Knowing the Guardsman's armored vest would stop a small-arms round, Cassie dropped the long barrel of her rifle and shot the man through his unprotected thigh.

  He screamed and fell, clutching his leg while Cassie worked the bolt and aimed the rifle at the apish woman, who froze in the act of trying to bring her Tseng to bear on the girl.

  "Out," Cassie repeated. "Now." The Force Leader writhed on the floor, crying.

  "But the 'Mech will see us," another Guardsman gasped. Cassie smiled. "That's the idea."

  "He'll kill us!"

  "He might miss. I won't." She jerked her head toward the injured Force Leader. "Take that trash with you. Go."

  Letting their Tsengs hang by the slings, the woman and the Guardsman who had spoken stooped, caught their leader under his shoulders, and hauled him into the street. Their two comrades followed.

  A machine gun crackled as the door shut behind the Guardsmen. Cassie lowered her rifle and looked around at her comrades, who were all gaping as if she'd suddenly grown horns.

  "Out the back," she said. "Hurry. We haven't bought much time."

  She made pitchforking motions with her rifle for emphasis, prodding the squad through the door to the backroom and out into the alley. The last one out, Cassie, paused and turned to look out the window.

  She saw a Guardsman scuttling across the street, hunched over like a crab, then a line of light stabbed down to touch him with a searing crack. He exploded in a gout of flash-heated pink steam and chunks of meat.

  Cassie turned and ran after her mates.

  * * *

  "Why'd you have to do that, Cassie?" Pretty Tony whined. His voice seemed to buzz up through the urine-stench and dingy light that filled the deserted apartment's stairwell like a swarm of mosquitoes. He was wheezing a little. They all were, after the four-block run from the electronics shop. "We'll get reported sure. We're all for the high jump, 'cause you shot that water buffalo."

  "Yeah," Tango said. "They musta read our names right off our blouses. They'll hunt us down once this is over, and then—"

  "Shut up," Cassie said without looking back to see how many of her squadmates were following her to the roof. She didn't care. She was the one who had broken free; she was the one who had made the move. She was done with fear—or at least done with giving in to it. She was past caring about consequences.

  The feeling of liberation was intoxicating.

  The door that gave onto the roof was supposed to be locked, but somebody had jimmied it long before this and it had, of course, never been replaced. Cassie pushed the door open and started out.

  What she saw next made her heart jump into her throat, abruptly teaching her a lesson about making assumptions. Standing there on top of another three-story building not five blocks away was a 'Mech. This one was much smaller than the Wolverine, more humanoid and with a single antenna protruding hornlike from its slanted, boxy forehead. Instead of having all its weapons built in, the 'Mech seemed to be carrying something like an outsized firearm in two-handed patrol position at about hip height.

  Cassie froze. "Stinger," Ba Ma said, ducking to peer under her armpit. "Twenty-tonner, light 'Mech. That's a medium laser it's carrying."

  "Pretty solid building if it ain't caving in," Heriyanto said.

  "See how he's standing on the ramparts? 'Mech jock's good," Ba Ma put in authoritatively.

  "That's a bank," Rusty said, pouting because Ba Ma had beat her to identifying the 'Mech. "I wish he would cave it in."

  "Why'd you bring us up here, Cassie?" Tango wanted to know. "That thing'll see us. We'd be safe in the street."

  "What?" Rusty sneered. "Tango thinking about anything but loot?"

  "His ass," Snake said.

  "What are we doing up here?" Pretty Tony demanded.

  With a bit of searching, Cassie found her voice. "You want to go scuttle around and wait to get stepped on," she growled, "go right ahead. I'm staying up here where I can see."

  "But that thing can see us," Tango hissed. " 'Mechs have all kinds of sensors and crap."

  Cassie felt her heart skip a beat, and just at that moment the Stinger's head swiveled to look straight at them ...

  Then tracked right on past. The next moment the BattleMech crouched, leapt into the air, its jump jets taking it southwest toward the center of town.

  Cassie felt a surge of something like triumph. The metal monster hadn't seen them. 'Mech's weren't all-seeing, after all.

  Somewhere deep inside she dared to suspect the behemoths might not be invulnerable either.

  "Come on," she said, and stepped out into such watery light as managed to make it through the thick, low-hanging clouds. Duckwalki
ng to keep below the parapet, she moved forward until she could peep over the edge.

  The district was mostly commercial and light industrial, with few buildings rising more than three stories; the skyscrapers were clumped downtown, toward which the bulk of the invading 'Mechs seemed to be heading. It also seemed to be attracting defenders from the opposite direction. The monsters were all busy shooting at each other, which suited Cassie just fine.

  "Looks like they want to hammer on the PG," Ba Ma said, hunkered down at Cassie's side. "Seat of Government is that way."

  "Wonder if they'll hit the Big Pink Whorehouse too," Rusty said from the other side of her. That was what everybody called Planetary Governor Pang's elaborate residence in the hills to the west.

  Just then, somebody gripped Cassie's upper arms, but even without looking or thinking, she broke the grip and twisted the offending hand back on itself. Guru Johann had been a practitioner of pentjak silat, but he'd also incorporated bits and pieces from other arts too, including aikido. Nobody touched Cassie without permission.

  There was a thump as a body hit the graveled roof. Glancing over, she saw Lance Corporal Pretty Tony lying on his back.

  He was pointing with his free hand. "That way, dammit! Look what you've got us into!"

  It was their old friend the Wolverine, stalking the streets two blocks away. Cassie felt a wave of emotions—anger, hatred, resentment, fear—boiling inside her like water in a pot. But as she watched the top of the monster's head vanish behind a taller structure, she felt those emotions distilling into determination to do something.

  Periodically they could see the flashes as the 'Mech blasted targets with its lasers, then pause as it came to an intersection. From out of nowhere a rocket came buzzing in to strike it in the chest. But the 'Mech showed no damage, only raised its right arm and answered with a rippling burst from the autocannon mounted there.

  The weird little bulb of a turret mounted right in front of what Cassie took for the beast's head pulsed brilliant light. A crack, and power lines strung across the intersection parted company with a building and fell into the streets, drooling sparks.