She forced her mouth to grin. “You didn’t really think we’d get the afternoon off, did you?”
Malvina Hazen drew in a deep breath, redolent of the sweat that bathed her body, the smell of diesel fuel and scorched lubricant seeping in through the ’Mech’s seals, the smell of the autumn forest that could not quite be dispelled by the others.
“Gyrfalcons—forward!” she screamed.
Black Rose stood up to its full height, strode from the trees, spread its wings and set off down the brushy fore-slope at a spine-jarring run. Vehicles and ’Mechs erupted from the woods to either side of her. Even over the thunder of the massed charge she heard the whistle as her three remaining JESII launchers, parked in a valley clearing behind her, loosed their overwhelming salvos toward the front rank of buildings.
Charging, the Gyrs withheld their fire. No point expending ergs without good marks to aim at. But neither did any fire greet them.
Two hundred forty long-range missiles crashed down among the buildings. Roofs were holed, walls collapsed in cascades of bricks and dust and smoke. Flames reared up, roaring like awakened beasts.
A long line of vehicles interspersed with BattleMechs and Industrials swept forward across the open space, infantry riding the tanks, Elementals on the ’Mechs. A softball field backstop was crushed by a hundred-ton Mars assault vehicle. The gaily painted bleachers splintered beneath the feet of machines that walked like men.
A rumbling-rushing noise commenced, grew, rolled across the sky above Malvina’s head like a giant cannonball in a wooden chute. She screamed in impotent fury as a heavy artillery barrage smashed down behind the ridge. Huge orange fireballs rolled up the sky, trailing black smoke, as her strategic missile
carriers blew up beneath the expert Republican counterbattery fire.
Then from the gutted apartment blocs—and where they had fallen, from the buildings behind—a hellstorm of fire gushed out and over the charging Gyrs.
A Bellona that had surged disrespectfully out in advance of Malvina leapt into the air on a column of flame as if its forty-five tons were no more than a stone. Secondary explosions plucked it apart in midair as its stored LRMs and flamer fuel blew.
Cursing, Malvina darted aside to avoid the flaming liquid: the last thing she needed now was excess heat.
She caught some anyway as an autocannon blast opened up the battle armor of the Elemental riding on her left shoulder and spilled fluid fire down theShrike ’s back armor. She slowed to keep her temperature levels under control. She restricted herself to firing measured bursts from her dual 10-centimeter autocannon until the fuel burned itself off.
Fifty meters to her left, MechWarrior Tyrus’Cougar staggered as a hypersonic nickel-ferrous slug from a BattleMech Gauss rifle took it just to the left and below its protruding cockpit. It fired back with its LRM launchers and the large pulse lasers in its arms. A PPC bolt struck. The right arm fell away in a shower of sparks.
The Falcon ’Mech seemed to erode in sprays of heavy autocannon fire. Laser flashes sublimated armor from it in puffs of vapor. Its left-shoulder LRM storage exploded. Its upper structure wrapped in yellow flames and streaming smoke from every joint, theCougar fell forward. Tyrus did not eject.
And then the Northwinders charged Malvina.
Out of the rubble, Highlander ’Mechs and vehicles appeared as if materializing and rushed to meet the oncoming Gyrs. From the cover of the ruins, unpowered infantry raked Falcon infantry off the backs of vehicles and shot down their dismounts caught in the open. Elementals sprang to burn them and blast them from their hiding places. VTOLs appeared from the east, skimming the red clay chimney pots of Weston Heights, and clawed the Elementals from the sky with lasers and autocannon.
Falcon helicopters swept in to engage. A furious VTOL dogfight twisted in the sky, slashed across by missile trails and punctuated with gouts of yellow flame.
As above, so below. The lines came together, passed and turned to rend. Falcon and Northwinder ’Mechs blasted smoking chunks from each other at touch range. Armored fighting vehicles circled and shot, engines snarling like rabid wolves. Big Gnome power-armor suits rushed out to strike the smaller Elementals with lasers and short- range missiles—or grapple them. Malvina’s aide-de-camp Star Captain Matthias Pryde crushed the driver’s cage of a Fusilier Shandra scout car in hisUller ’s right fist.
TheUller reeled as a huge shell from an SM1 tank destroyer shattered its right hip actuator. Another tore away its right-arm LB 5-X autocannon and ammunition box. Then the light BattleMech was knocked to pieces by a long-range missile salvo from both racks of a First KearnyRyoken II.
“Stravag!”Malvina screamed. As theUller collapsed like a broken toy, she turned to attack her ADC’s killer. A shadow crossed her cockpit on the left.
Malvina stepped forward with her right foot to turn her ninety-five-ton ’Mech toward it, then flung up the Black Rose’s left arm as something flashed down at her from above.
Impact rocked theShrike and clacked Malvina’s teeth together hard. An enemyHatchetman had sunk the depleted-uranium blade of its handheld weapon deep into the barrel of her outer autocannon.
With theShrike ’s three-fingered right claw, Malvina seized the hatchet haft just above where the enemy ’Mech gripped it, yanked it out of her autocannon, and flung both weapon andHatchetman away together.
Tara Campbell braced as best she could as herHatchetman hurtled backward. It landed on its posterior on bare ground with a thudding crash. It slid several meters before stopping.
A few flakes of snow had begun to drift, lazily from the sky.
A few red flickers on her display indicated minor damage from the impact. Nothing that would affect performance. Likewise her own status: she guessed some bruises on rump and ribs.
That would change quickly if the monstrous winged BattleMech turning ponderously toward her actually brought its weapons to bear. With all her superb skill, Tara scrambled theHatchetman to its feet.
She did not know what the monster was. Not even the master merchant’s voluminous info-dump had contained much data on newer Jade Falcon BattleMech types. She knew—couldsee —it was an assault ’Mech, and at the high end of that weight range. More importantly, she knew from reports from prior worlds on the Falcon hit list that this was the machine of none other than Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen. The stylized black rose insignia confirmed it.
Brutal, confused swirl though it was, the battle was clearly going the way of Tara’s mixed force of Highlanders and Garryowens. The defending troops had employed an ancient trick of waiting for the assault they knew was coming from the woods in buildings justbehind the outermost ones. The apartment blocs shattered by the last salvos of Malvina’s looted JESIIs had been utterly empty.
Then Tara’s troops had rushed forward to catch the Gyrfalcons in the open with all the fury of their fire. Tara had not ordered the countercharge; she presumed her soldiers were overcome with impatience to avenge their brothers and sisters who had been so systematically stamped out by the advancing Falcons, and eagerness to show that Clanners were no more mettlesome than Northwinders and Skye-folk. She felt some of that as well—which was why she had not tried to halt it.
And it seemed the chance for the killing stroke against the Gyrfalcons, to whom Tara’s people had dealt the second bone-breaking blow of the day. Then the Countess spotted the tall, winged BattleMech striding through the smoke and dust and decided to stake all on a kill shot of her own.
Unfortunately, Malvina had sensed the hatchet descending and blocked it from crushing her in her cockpit. Now it was she who would put an end to Tara Campbell, if Tara did not take quick, decisive action.
Raising the hatchet, Tara charged.
Wide-eyed, Malvina Hazen watched the enemy machine attack a BattleMech more than twice its mass with its ridiculous, primitive hand weapon cocked. It was an act of mad courage she would expect from a Falcon, not a bellycrawler.
But based on ice-cold calculation: the Spheroid’s sole chance of survival was getting too close for
Malvina to use Black Rose’s weapons—and the hatchet could disable even her far larger ’Mech with a single shrewd or lucky stroke.
The attack’s sheer unexpectedness gave Malvina no scope for maneuver, skilled as she was. All she could do was grab the hatchet-haft again as that blade expanded toward her viewscreen. She cocked the Shrike ’s left elbow back and swung the arm toward theHatchetman , intending to press the muzzle of her remaining autocannon to the lesser ’Mech’s chest and blast it into smoking chunks with hundred-millimeter shells.
But theHatchetman wrapped its manipulator-tipped left arm over and around theShrike ’s right upper arm,
