Close quarters Read online

  37

  Masamori, Hachiman

  Galedon District, Draconis Combine

  2 November 3056

  "Captain, the tidal bore has passed."

  "I can see that," Tai-i Roger Hanson said. He rubbed his sandy-bearded chin and slowly grinned.

  It had been a nervous time waiting among the godowns of the seedy Two Moons district southwest along the Yamatq from HTE Compound. Now that the brutal flood tide had passed, the wait was over. Hanson felt relief and a warm spreading prickle of anticipation.

  The bottom of the Yamato was soft; his special company consisted of most of Third Battalion's light and medium 'Mechs, none heavier than his own fifty-ton Trebuchet. He would lead twelve machines wading laboriously upstream, with nothing approaching cover once they got in sight of their objective. Facing them would be elements of a regiment of mercenaries already aroused by the efforts of the rest of the Ninth and firing from defilade.

  What he was so eager to commence looked like suicide.

  The Trebuchet had the appearance of a stout man wearing an ancient sallet helmet. It waded into the chill, now-sluggish water with a certain gingerly air, like a middle-age sarariman who belonged to a polar bear club, out for some frigid skinny-dipping. The other 'Mechs followed, clambering or jumping down from the crumbling cement docks.

  Captain Hanson, who raised prize salukis in his spare time, was not much daunted by the ordeal awaiting him. He had been through the hell of the Clan invasion, and had won a challenge death-duel with a Ghost Bear in a Fenris. The upside of his desperate mission was that if he could catch the gaijin paying too much attention to the assaults from west and south, his little force might effectively take them by surprise in a rear attack, with the usual devastating morale effects.

  Besides, he'd been through his share of city fighting. From almost three klicks away he could actually see flames pouring from the windows of a burning skyscraper, saw the heat-shimmer above what seemed the whole of downtown Masamori. He knew his lightweights were lucky to be out of that.

  Leaning his Trebuchet forward against the slow roll of Yamato-san, he led his troops to the attack.

  * * *

  The arrival of the Ghost reserves caught Lady K by surprise as she was accepting command of the battalion from Gavilan.

  Bronco's western flank was anchored by Lieutenant Annie Sue Hurd in her Rifleman. Kali had been holding Hurd back out of the thick of the savage streetfight for medium and long-range firepower support. As a result, when the Ghost Second Battalion's lead lance of four heavy and assault 'Mechs came over the rise from the traffic circle, Hurd was the first Caballero they encountered.

  "This is Avengin' Annie," Hurd broadcast. " 'Mechs attacking from the west; I see a Marauder, a JagerMech, a Charger, and an Atlas. There are others coming on behind. I call it at least a company."

  "Clear out of there, Annie," Lady K ordered.

  The rest of Bronco was already hard into it with the Ghosts. If the new assault couldn't be delayed, it would roll right over them. Hurd turned her Little Sure Shot to face the advancing BattleMechs.

  "Sorry, Lady K," Hurd said, "Cannot comply."

  She concentrated the fire of her paired autocannon and large lasers against the legs of the JagerMech, the least threatening of the lead lance. It was also the lightest armored, and consequently the one she judged the most likely to get hurt in the time she had.

  * * *

  The borders of Lainie's HUD abruptly turned red. "I'm being painted," she said over the company band.

  A Company was pushing east toward the walls again, driving the Gaijin before it. After a brief but brutal slugfest, the mercenaries had pulled a fast fade. Several of the more impressionable Ghosts had hooted triumphant derision, believing the foe to be on the run.

  Lainie shut them up in short order. The Caballeros were retreating rapidly, but they were still sticking and sniping as they went. Her people had hurt them bad, but had taken a mauling in the process. As far as Lainie could see, the gaijin remnants to their front were retiring in good order, having accomplished as much as they could have hoped to.

  And they hadn't taken themselves out of the fight yet Shifting her Mauler against the buildings on the south side of the street, for what shelter they might give, Lainie searched the surrounding streets and buildings with both her eyes and 'Mech sensors. She saw no enemy machines at all. In truth there weren't a lot of places on the wide business district thoroughfare for something the size of a BattleMech to hide. But someone was unmistakably lighting her up with a TAG infrared beam—and she was caught mid-block the way van Doom had been.

  "Tai-sa," Moon said, "you must withdraw."

  "Negative! Company A, prepare for antimissile defense, and find me that spotter?"

  "Arrows incoming," Usagi reported from his Javelin.

  Lainie saw the smoke vines rising from behind the walls and frowned. It was unacceptable to be taken out of the fight at this stage. Fate had betrayed her.

  The Ghosts fired ferociously as the mercenary missiles streaked down toward their commander's 'Mech. This time they missed altogether.

  Shig Hofstra's Kintaro darted in front of Revenge and leapt. Lacking jump jets, the 'Mech used only the strength of the myomer pseudomuscles in its legs. That sufficed. Both big enemy missiles struck it in the chest, blew it open, and sent it smashing back into Lainie's 'Mech.

  Lainie fought but couldn't stay upright. Her Mauler fell onto its back, buckling the blacktop, the impact knocking her senseless despite the protective cushions around her.

  BattleMechs clustered around her. "Tai-sa—" Moon said.

  As Lainie came back to herself, a shape that had tugged unacknowledged at the periphery of her vision resolved itself suddenly in her mind. "The parking garage!" she exclaimed, struggling her 'Mech to its feet.

  "Tai-sa?" That was Buntaro Mayne in his Phoenix Hawk, whose left arm had been blown off.

  "Parking garage, third floor!" Lainie pointed her right large laser at a ten-story structure seven hundred meters northeast. By chance none of the Yamato-style skyscrapers had been built in its immediate vicinity. It commanded an excellent view both of the Compound and the streets approaching it. "Don't stand there gaping, you fools, look."

  They did. Just in time to see the drooped beak of the pesky Raven ducking back out of sight. The beam Lainie squirted at it just missed.

  "Tai-i Mayne!"

  "Hai!"

  "Take three light 'Mechs and get me that damn Raven."

  * * *

  The Atlas' large laser penetrated the armor of Little Sure Shot's head, filling the cockpit with terrible ruby glare. Strapped into the passenger seat, Bunny Bear burst into flames. Avengin' Annie cried out, more in grief at the loss of her beloved friend than from fear for herself.

  The Marauder's PPCs followed up the laser hit. Lieutenant SG Annie Sue Hurd vanished in a painless flash, before she could register that the smell in her nostrils was her own flesh burning.

  * * *

  "Uh-oh," Raven said—to herself, thumbing down the suppress button on her radio. That red-haired witch had more lives than the old three-legged tortoiseshell born on her daddy's ranch. And like that venerable barnyard scrapper, the Ghost commander didn't have any quit in her. She came up brushing away what was left of the Kintaro that had saved her and then pointed straight at Raver.

  Raven wheeled, bolted, the ferro-fibrous bird feet of her machine striking keening sparks off the cement floor of the parking garage.

  A pink flash lit her display. From behind her came a bang, followed by big lumps of cement raining down on the back of her 'Mech. That damned Shimazu woman had taken a potshot at her for good measure.

  Raven grinned tautly under her neurohelmet. Hell, she'd liked the Drac colonel and the other Ghosts she'd met; so did most of the 'lleros. But Caballeros lived by a simple rule: Come to hurt us, you'd best be prepared to tussle, 'cause we'll try our damnedest to hurt you first and worst.

  She ran between s
quat cement pillars toward the down ramp. No more than a scattering of cars were parked on this floor, most of the garage's patrons being day shift Middle-Class types who'd been caught home by the sealing-off of the Murasaki district. Raven hoped they were insured.

  She heard a thump behind her, saw movement to her rear in the viewstrip. She wheeled, with the two medium lasers in her right "wing" snapping.

  A Ghost Jenner had jumped onto the open deck of the garage. It stood with knees bent so that the missile launcher above its forward-thrust head would clear the ceiling. Its own medium lasers flared back. Raven's viewscreen automatically dimmed. When it brightened, a fresh furrow glowed white in Raver's beak.

  The Jenny was no heavier than Raven, and its frontal armor wasn't quite as good. But with four Victory medium lasers and a Telos SRM quad launcher, it boasted substantially better firepower than Raven had, though her six-pack launcher was Narc-assisted. Much of a Raven's 35 tons was taken up by fancy sensing, sighting, and target-designation electronics. It was not a dedicated hassler like the Jenner.

  Besides, the Jenner's presence proved that the Ghosts knew where she was. Others would undoubtedly be looking to enter the garage at ground level. They'd take her from behind if she tried to slug it out.

  For luck, she fired an SRM salvo at the enemy 'Mech, then wheeled and ran. Her 'Mech had poor rear armor—with some divots knocked out of it already—and was slower than a Jenny to boot. But Raven O'Connor had been herding giant, long-horned Rangers in an AgroMech since the age of nine. She'd pit her shiftiness on the concrete floor—slick to metal 'Mech feet even where it wasn't smeared with grease from notoriously leaky Drac crankcases—against the Ghost's laser wattage and speed any day.

  Besides, she had an ace up her sleeve. If she only got a chance to play it.

  Darting, weaving, skidding madly around cement pillars while laser beams cracked past her ears, Raven raced for the ramp.

  * * *

  "Don Carlos?"

  The commander of the Seventeenth Recon sat in the cockpit of his command Mad Cat, standing before the steps of Uncle Chandy's Citadel. The C3 displays kept him as informed as possible of the chaotic passage of the battle. He had just directed Captain MacDougall to bring what was left of First Battalion back inside the Compound. His mind was lucid today; he felt none of the terrible lethargy that had gripped him during the Word of Blake attack.

  "Yes, Zuma," he replied over the communicator.

  "Coronel, Lady K has asked me to give First Battalion a song."

  Camacho nodded. It was not an unusual request. The 'lleros often asked their chief balladeer and master-of-trades to bolster morale with his songs in tough situations. The Chief Aztech was already at work repairing Second and Third Battalion 'Mechs damaged by the Ghosts hitting the south wall. But he could have his assistants rig up a mike, and sing as he worked.

  "Of course, Zuma," he said, mildly surprised. "You don't need to ask."

  "But patron," Zuma said, "there is a particular song which I wish to sing them."

  "Which one?"

  "The one I've written in honor of your daughter, Patricia."

  "No. I am sorry, but that I cannot permit."

  A pause, crackling and singing with distant energy-weapon discharges. "Very well, patrdn. Zuma out."

  Don Carlos sighed. He drummed thick-gloved fingers on the arms of his narrow command couch. He was impatient for the culebras to come and get on with it.

  Because there was a reason for his return to mental clarity. He had finally come to terms with his grief and self-doubt.

  Despite Cassie's harangue, he had decided that today was a good day to die.

  * * *

  Her darting, erratic progress having frustrated the Jenner jock into standing stock still to try to put some solid hits into her, Raven had actually managed to extend her lead a hair by the time she reached the second floor. Instead of coming down the same ramp, she lit out across the echoing chamber for another.

  As the Jenner pounded down the ramp behind her, Raven eased off the throttle until she saw the Ghost 'Mech's feet come into view. Then she thumbed the trigger hard.

  At the foot of the ramp the Jenner tried to turn too quickly, skidded, almost fell over the rail out into the street. But Raven wasn't quite that lucky, nor was she in any position to help the Jenny along with a short-range missile or two. The Ghost jock regained control of his machine and came drumming in pursuit.

  In the rearview portion of her three-sixty strip Raven kept a careful eye on the Jenner's progress. When it passed beneath a cement joist with a yellow bar painted on it, she uncovered a button on a special unit taped to the arm of her seat. When the enemy reached a blue marker, she hit the button.

  Sixteen shaped charges strapped to a four-by-four array of cement pillars went off with a rippling crack. At the same time other precisely placed charges cut joists and steel beams in the ceiling.

  The Jenner vanished in an earthquake rumble and a cloud of dust as a several-hundred-ton section of the third floor fell on its head.

  * * *

  Raven hit the ground floor at a run. At the base of the other ramp, a Javelin, a Locust, and a seriously hunched-over, one-armed Phoenix Hawk stood in a clump peering up, as if trying to figure out what the awful racket was.

  Twenty-five meters away an exit opened to the street. Raven went for it. The three Ghosts reacted quickly and smart, just shooting, not chasing. Raven felt hits rock her 'Mech, saw red lights spray across her boards like self-luminous paint. She gritted her teeth, keeping Raven upright through sheer force of will.

  She had just reached the striped wooden barrier when a shot from one of the Phoenix Hawk's lasers fused her right hip actuator. Inertia sent Raver hurtling forward to shatter the barrier and plow a furrow in the street outside with its beak.

  * * *

  The hammered remnants of Adelante and Bronco collapsed back on the Compound. Battalion commander MacDougall faced a final problem: getting non-jumping 'Mechs, including her own Atlas, safely inside.

  At the base of the wall First Battalion turned and lashed out at its pursuers. The Ghosts, who thought they had finally broken their enemy's spirit, faltered and halted.

  While Bobby the Wolf was out doing a little headhunting, his Cochise had for the most part done little but engage in a staring match with the Ghost C Company. Now, while the huge gates opened with glacial deliberation, he led the surviving jump-capable 'Mechs of First Battalion in a whirlwind attack to keep the Ghosts off-balance.

  Stalled several hundred meters from the Compound, the Ghosts concentrated their fire on the gates, but Bobby's slash at their flanks quickly broke up that concentration. Kali MacDougall's Dark Lady was the last machine to lumber out of the firestorm into the temporary shelter of the Compound. Then, as the gates wound shut again, Bobby Begay's impromptu combat team soared over the wall.

  * * *

  With a hiss of heated air, the fallen Raven's hatch popped open. Raven O'Connor clambered out, yanking off her neurohelmet. She tossed it aside and sprinted for the shelter of a shop whose windows had been melted out by a grazing strike from a PPC.

  The one-armed Phoenix Hawk emerged behind her, straightened, then stood gazing down at the fallen BattleMech.

  A whistle of jump jets. A Wasp with yellow and black stripes On its chest and its right-arm laser sheared away dropped onto the Phoenix Hawk from above. Armor buckled, and the PH went sprawling.

  Buntaro Mayne rolled the PH and tried to bring his large laser "rifle" to bear on his attacker. The Wasp lashed out with a foot, destroying the weapon in the Hawk's grasp.

  "Better pack it in, good buddy," came a voice from the Caballero 'Mech's loudspeakers. "I got the drop on you."

  "Cowboy?" the Phoenix Hawk's speaker boomed. "Cowboy Payson?"

  "Buntaro?"

  Buntaro Mayne laughed. "I guess you still haven't learned your lesson, Cowboy," he said, and launched his 'Mech in a charge against the other warrior's machine.

 
* * *

  As the Ghost Second Battalion and the battered First advanced on the wall, Lainie ordered the Third's two companies to step up the attack in the south. Not as surprised by Caballero seishin as the young samurai had been, she felt— briefly—in her gut the need to squeeze any advantage she could grab until the blood ran out.

  She had the gaijin withdrawing—fine. Even if the maneuver was planned, the fact of retreat had a marked effect on morale. She would jam the attack to them as hard as she could.

  Beaten bronze evanesced into plasma at the first kiss of PPC beams. Beneath the veneer, however, the gates were hundred-ton slabs of ferro-fibrous armor plate. From either side heavy weapons-fire flayed the advancing 'Mechs—all the more reason to throw everything she had into the defenders' faces. She had to make them flinch back from the walls. Then she could jump 'Mechs inside, including assault-class Victors and Katana and one lifter-equipped MAD-5D Marauder. Her earthbound heavies could rumble through as soon as the gates or walls were breached.

  And if the scratch company wading up the Yamato hap* pened to arrive at a propitious moment—she actually smiled, despite the pain in her soul and mangled hand. Even the bravest troops had been known to shatter like a dropped sheet of glass when caught from behind while locked in battle.

  * * *

  The Wasp brought its elbow down hard on the Phoenix Hawk's round head, denting it and jarring Mayne enough that he relaxed his grip. Then Cowboy pulsed his Rawlings jump jets to lift him off the pavement, clutched-in the gyros to snap him upright.

  The Phoenix Hawk started to climb to its feet. "You can't win, Cowboy," Mayne said over his loudspeaker. "My machine's twice as heavy as yours."