Close quarters Page 5
Along with emplacing the various remote-controlled sound and light pyrotechnics, Cassie has spent the last two weeks scouting safe pathways and marking them with Caballero transmitters. She has also been playing some games of her own.
"Will comply, Abtakha," Don Carlos says. "Now pull back. Your job is done."
"I'm sorry, Tiburón," Cassie says, reaching behind her ear. "I'm having some trouble with my comm unit. Your signal's garbled."
"Git ye gone, rude girl," she hears Buffalo Soldier say. Like her, he is an outsider, a non-Southwesterner. Like Diana, he is nearly human for a 'Mech jock.
No foxtrot way, Rastaman, she thinks. She plucks the dot speaker from her skin and tucks it into the little pouch sewn into her top where her communicator rides.
Her duty to the Regiment is done. Now it's time for her.
There are at least three pirate 'Mechs bubbling and burning in the lake. A Wasp is busy blowing up on the far shore, near the camp. The Quickdraw soars up on its jets again, and takes an LRM from the advancing Caballero company. Cassie must move quickly, or there will be nothing left for her.
That Locust has been crashing through the brush in her general direction. She frowns. It isn't as grand a target as the Marauder, no way. At the same time, it's far more dangerous to a groundpounder—fast and agile despite its lack of jump jets. And its cockpit is much nearer the weeds where an impertinent scout might think to conceal herself.
She stands, steps into the clear. "Hey, over here!" She raises her rifle and fires a burst at the 'Mech's head. The general uproar covers the sound of the shots, but the rattle of bullets off armor plate catches the pilot's attention. The Locust pivots, the underslung proboscis of its medium laser hunting around for whoever has been impertinent enough to attack it.
The laser spurts light. The flowering bush explodes in a gush of steam followed by smoke. Cassie is long gone, swimming with splashing strokes across a bayou. The 'Mech jock picks up her wake, blasts for her with its arm-mounted machine guns.
Hearing the whine of arm actuators, she has already gone deep. Small arms rounds lose most of their energy after two meters of water. A few spent rounds gurgle past her, trailing strands of bubbles through opaque water, but they lack the power to penetrate even her bare skin.
Moving mainly by memory and feel, her rifle trailing by its long sling, Cassie swims into another channel, crawls along the muddy bottom and up into the reeds of the bank. Through the waving tufts of long grass she sees the Locust standing above the bodies of the patrol she whacked. She raises her rifle, cracks a single shot into the left arm-mounted machine gun. Maybe she can break something, though that's a secondary concern.
The 'Mech turns. The laser turret can swivel, but the head/torso combo cannot. It must move its feet to change the pilot's field of vision.
Behind it an enormous splash. The Quickdraw, having managed to stay out of the way of Diana's incoming volleys of giant Arrow IV rockets by continuing to jump as high and as often as jets and heat sinks permit, has jumped into a direct-fire salvo of LRMs from the advancing 'Mech battalion. Strikes to the head and chest have not penetrated the heavy armor there, but they have tumbled the gyros, making the sixty-ton 'Mech topple off the columns of jump jet exhaust and lose lift. It has just plummeted headfirst into the swamp.
Ignoring the fall of his fellow Mech Warrior, the Locust pilot gathers up his 'Mech on bird legs and springs. The machine cannot actually jump, but it uses its myomer muscles to hop across the little arm of brackish water onto the strand of relatively solid land behind which Cassie shelters.
The pilot is good enough to pull off the maneuver, but he almost loses it on landing, lurching and swaying as one foot sinks in deeper than anticipated. The problem with the dodgy little Locust in these surroundings is that its birdlike feet make it a relatively high ground-pressure machine. The lordly Marauder, by whose old print Cassie had paused on her way in, could move its seventy-five tons of bulk through the muck with far greater aplomb. Its great, lily-pad hooves loaded the surface with many fewer kilos per square centimeter.
Hoping to catch his antagonist by surprise, the Locust pilot begins to rake the weeds at its feet with his machine guns. Canting way forward, the 'Mechs sends up a geyser of steam and hot mud from its laser for good measure. But Cassie isn't there. Even as dirty rain from the laser-blast into the bayou spatters the 'Mech's viewscreen like dark bird droppings, that annoying ping of a rifle bullet bouncing off armor plate is drawing its attention.
Deeper and deeper into the Great Murchison Swamp the Locust pursues its foe. A Locust is one of the fastest of all 'Mechs, far faster than any mere human. But this one is severely hampered by the need to follow trails delineated by the pirates' beacons. A mired 'Mech is a dead 'Mech. Especially with an enemy force of unknown but obviously substantial size crunching into the area.
Behind the Locust, a fierce but one-sided battle is raging. Cassie's noisemaker barrage started the hidden 'Mechs nicely for Diana's long-range destruction. The survivors have left their watery hideout to find themselves caught in a fire-sack as the three Caballero companies of First Battalion close a pincers around their clearing and the stagnant lake.
Probably the Locust jock is thinking himself well away from that fiasco. If it occurs to him—or her—that his naked prey is sticking conveniently close to 'Mech-safe ground, he probably counts himself doubly lucky.
Yes, up ahead ... there, from the far edge of a broad extent of marsh, the impertinent pedestrian is waving to the Locust. She salutes it with an unmistakable gesture of one finger, then turns and sprints for the concealment of a palmack grove at her back.
She has outsmarted herself. A beacon shines from the midst of that marsh, bright and reassuring on the Mech Warrior's tactical display. The Locust gathers itself, leaps again, landing with a titanic splash in the midst of the drowned field.
The impact must have just about driven the MechWarrior's spine out the top of his skull, but he is firing his laser and machine guns into the grove even as he hits. Thick boles fly apart in clouds of splinters. Huge leaves wilt in the heart and fray of the bullet-storm. In triumphant fury the Locust lays the stand of trees to absolute waste.
The outburst subsides. The Locust stands over the smoking wreckage of the little grove. The only sounds are the crackling of flames and the pinging of the heat sinks as they try to bleed off the waste heat from the Martell laser.
Suddenly the lone human breaks from the reeds almost at the 'Mech's feet, out of the submerged entrance of a swamp-otter burrow. Laser and machine guns blaze away, but she is already inside their effective arc. She is scooting between the Locust's legs and off across the marsh, half-running, half-swimming.
She's caught now, though, out in the open and too far from cover. The Locust pilot raises his right foot and clutches-in the gyros for a quick right turn, only to find that the 'Mech's left foot has sunk more than two meters in the mud. The beacon's reassuring message of safety was a shining lie. At least, it became that once Cassie moved it to the middle of a bog.
The little Locust's gyros torque it right off its feet. It spins around and falls into the mud, driving its laser into the muck like a spike. Its stubby right arm almost clips Cassie, who has characteristically cut things a little fine. The huge bow-wave of muddy water thrown up by the 'Mech's landing rolls over her like a tsunami.
She pops up immediately, though, mud-covered and grinning enormously. She pumps her right fist in the air and shouts, "Yeah!"
The Locust writhes like a snake with a broken back, but only succeeds in miring itself deeper. Cassie unslings her rifle, works the action, spinning an unspent cartridge away in a glittering arc, then shakes the piece to try to clear any mud that might have infiltrated during her swimming and burrowing antics. The presence of a den dug into the palmack stand by a two-meter swamp-otter was no more coincidental than the misplacement of the basura beacon. Cassie has been plotting this surprise for days.
With a hiss of air heated by
bleed-off from the laser, the main hatch opens. After first sprawling in the bog, the helmetless MechWarrior picks himself up, stares wildly at Cassie—standing with M23 ready in patrol position, not thirty meters distant—then turns to run toward the smoldering ruins of the grove. He runs with the loose-jointed vigor of the bone-scared, sinking halfway to the knee with every step.
Cassie lets him go, grinning at his bulky vest-clad back. The trophy is hers; he is irrelevant, and since he is wise enough not to threaten her in any way, he gets to live. At least until the Swampers catch up with him.
Her bare skin is warm, flushed, her whole body tingling with the triumph of another kill. Her prey was not as mighty as she hoped, but few groundpounders in the Inner Sphere can boast of bringing down a BattleMech without the help of power armor. She did not smash the beast, destroy it, as she burned to do. But that is an advantage in a way. A Shadow Hawk, Gabby Camacho's Red-tail, by the look of it, is already soaring her way, searching for the pirate 'Mech that escaped a battle now almost ended. Don Carlos and his Regiment are in need of new 'Mechs to make good the awful losses the Smoke Jaguars handed them.
Cassie wades to another palmack stand and sits down in the shade to await the confirmation and salvaging of her kill. She will miss the swamp, she thinks. This job has ended. After great debate Don Carlos has signed them on to a new gig back in the Inner Sphere. Garrison duty—on a Kurita world, of all things, distant from the Periphery and far enough below the truce line that Clan raids won't be a problem.
It will be a long time before she can again assuage her burning need to smash 'Mechs and humble their pilots.
With a roar of Chilton 360 jets, the Shadow Hawk appears above the high, bushy tops of a silura stand. It is indeed the ride of Force Commander Gavilan Camacho, the Colonel's son and commander of First Battalion. Cassie waves happily as the 'Mech settles down toward the beacon she has emplaced on the real safe ground beside the bog.
She has taken prey. Whatever else comes, tonight she will sleep without dreaming.
5
Imperial City, Luthien
Pesht District, Draconis Combine
27 August 3056
The room was dark. The plain white shoji—rice paper screens—that hid the ferrocrete walls reflected the dance of light from the shadow-show being enacted at the room's far end.
In its midst an old man sat watching, his long, hairless head slumped between sagging shoulders. His body, clad in a kimono of dark, lustrous silk, seemed to have melted into the motorized wheelchair that carried him. The colors of the puppets going through their motions on the holostage were reflected in eyes that were black and still sharp as an heirloom katana. He was eighty-eight years old and felt the weight of every minute like an ingot of lead.
The holodisplay showed a crowded, brightly lit auditorium. Metal beams exposed overhead testified to its impromptu nature. The place was obviously a warehouse of some sort, pressed into service. At its head was a podium.
At the podium stood a small, rumpled man, with thinning, disarranged hair and intense black eyes. He was framed by a giant full-body representation of the Kurita dragon, rampant, black against red. The man shook a pudgy fist at the audience and shouted.
"We demand the fall of the traitors who murdered Takashi, our noble Coordinator!" he roared in a voice of surprising strength. "Kokuryu-kai, the Black Dragon Society, demands bloodl"
"Blood!" echoed back the crowd, which was exclusively male and mostly dressed in the garb prescribed for members of the Draconis Combine's Laborer class. A closer look revealed the occasional merchant or minor executive in finer cut and cloth.
"We demand the removal of the traitors who mislead our current Coordinator Theodore, blinding him to the golden opportunity represented by the disorganization of our enemies. Now is the time for the Dragon to strike, and strike without mercy! Our cry is Hakko-ichi-u, the Eight Corners of the World under One Roof!"
The crowd responded with wild enthusiasm, jumping up and waving fists in the air. "Hakko-ichi-u! Hakko-ichi-u!" they chanted.
"Our enemies the Steiners and the Davions are in disarray!" the speaker cried, almost immediately silencing the clamor—this was, after all a Kurita mob. "Our brothers of the Capellan Confederation are poised to strike! What cannot we and they accomplish together under the guidance of the Dragon?"
Whether the man intended to supply his own answer to that question, or whether it was simply rhetorical, would never be known. Just then came an odd explosive sound on the soundtrack, halfway between a spit and a pop, and then the speaker's face collapsed in red ruin.
For a moment silence ruled the makeshift auditorium. Then the crowd broke like an ancient vase shattering against flagstones. Some ran toward the podium to aid their fallen leader. Others—either better informed or simply with keener instincts for survival—bolted for the exits.
Either course was equally futile. The first ones to hit the doors to the outside were slammed into them by the rest of the crowd, then crushed against the door by their frightened comrades to the rear. The doors had been blocked from outside.
The camera operator now panned around to show men and women with their faces obscured by black faceplates and their bodies encased in black clothing from head to toe. They moved through the great chamber, back to front, killing as they advanced—first with stubby, suppressed assault rifles, and then, when the frantic Black Dragons closed with them, with the katana worn in scabbards across their backs.
The man who watched made a sound low in his wattled throat as he stabbed a switch set into the arm of the wheelchair. The holographic image froze, showing one of the black-clad operatives outlined against the Dragon banner, sword upraised.
The lights came up. "And this is happening here on Luthien," the old man murmured.
The much younger man on his right flared aristocratic nostrils. "Our colleagues—" he said, referring to Daniel Ramaka's dreaded Internal Security division of the Internal Security Force—"permit a hundred flowers to bloom, so they can lop the heads off."
"Indeed." The old man swiveled his wheelchair to face the man who sat on his left.
"The holocamera operator was one of our agents, of course," the second man said. He was younger than the man in the powered wheelchair, with flabby cheeks, a moist mustache, and a black beret perched on lank black hair. He wore a mustard sports jacket over an open-collared white shirt. A white scarf was tied around his throat. "He was briefed to record every detail of the raid."
"So I surmised," said Subhash Indrahar, Director of the Internal Security Force of the Draconis Combine. He paused for a moment, studying the untidy man in the beret with his fiercely glittering eyes.
"Do you still recommend that we release this recording to the media, Mr. Katsuyama?"
Katsuyama bobbed his round head enthusiastically. "Indeed, Subhash-sama. Suitably edited, of course. It's beautiful, just beautiful. At one and the same time it emphasizes the insidious nature of the Kokuryu-kai and the futility of their actions in the face of our pervasive and heroic ISF operatives—"
The man seemed inclined to go on in that vein, possibly forever, but Subhash cut him off by pivoting his chair to suddenly face the man seated at his right.
"Migaki?" he said.
The third man was younger than either of the others, tall and slim and dressed in the most up-to-the-nanosecond style of high life on the Combine capital of Luthien: a brightly patterned happi-coat worn open over a gray Sun Zhang MechWarrior Academy sweatshirt, black silk pajama-style pants, split-toed white tabi socks, and geta clogs. He wore his black hair in a topknot so long it hung over one shoulder. He uncrossed his long legs—covering a pause to frame his reply, Subhash did not fail to notice—and then shrugged with apparent casualness.
"Emie-sensei's the expert," said Takura Migaki, head of the Voice of the Dragon, the propaganda division of the ISF.
Subhash waited, but his subordinate chief had nothing further to say. Despite his good looks and carefully cultivat
ed appearance of a carefree rake and dandy, Migaki was a man who never spoke a syllable by accident or default. His use of a nickname with the word for master or teacher, particularly delivered in his customary dry, near-contemptuous tone, was unorthodox, almost ungrammatical. So was employing an honorific when speaking of a junior. The effect was to emphasize both Katsuyama's mastery of the matter at hand and the eccentricity his dress suggested.
Subhash backed his wheelchair to a spot where he could view both men without needing to turn his head, though it taxed the waning muscles of his neck. In his day Subhash had been an athlete, a kendoka of great skill. It shamed him to have been brought to this helpless state.
Enrico Katsuyama was head of Benevolent Guidance, which handled media manipulation for Voice of the Dragon. He had been hand-picked for the position by Migaki, whose talent for propaganda was itself legendary; Migaki was the wizard who had dubbed Hanse Davion "the Black Knight," using the late Federated Suns' leader's own swashbuckling charisma to turn him into a larger-than-life villain in the eyes of the Combine's populace. Subhash Indrahar was not entirely comfortable with Migaki, though Migaki had never risen to the carefully dangled bait of hints that he might succeed Subhash in the Directorship, by means fair or foul. Migaki was just too smooth. But Subhash had no reason to doubt that Katsuyama was worthy of the position to which Migaki had promoted him. Migaki was too vain and careful to risk losing face by elevating an incompetent.