From a pants pocket he took a device molded of off-white plastic, just smaller than his hand with fingers pressed together. He slid into the pilot’s couch and pressed the device against the inside of the neurohelmet. He pressed a contact pad on the white plastic object. A red light appeared.
’Jacking a BattleMech was highly tediousunless one’s employer provided one an exceedingly specialized, rare and classified piece of equipment. Then it wasn’t much challenge at all.
But it did take time. He forced himself to refamiliarize hands and feet with the analogue controls. It was not the return of the Demon or its friends that troubled him.
It was whether he’d get control of the purloined assault ’Mech in time to do any good. Because he could see from his vantage point that the final assault had begun in earnest. And things didnot look good for the home team.
“Skye Six, this is Skye Prime,”said the command post operator in Tara Campbell’s headset. Despite being crouched down fighting for her life, the Countess felt a stab of pride: the commo tech managed to maintain professional steadiness in her voice, despite the fact that her own existence was now measured by how long it took one of Aleks Hazen’s furiously attacking Zetas to cross the crest of the hill and take a shot at the fat, flimsily armored command crawler. The way things were on the hill, it would not be long. “Message incoming for you.”
For a momentTara ’s eyes were dazzled as some kind of warhead flashed nova right above her cockpit. The windscreen pitted but did not crack.
“I’m a little busy for chat, Skye Prime,” she radioed back, trying to blink away maroon dirigibles of afterimage. Had it been Duke Gregory on the horn he would have come in directly on the exclusive high-command push.
“Sender identifies herself as Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, commanding the Steel Wolves,”the voice said. It seemed to waver slightly.
WestonHeights
Skye
15 August 3134
The wholeworld seemed to waver around Countess Tara Campbell. “What?” she shouted.
“New London spaceport traffic control reports a force of unidentified DropShips approaching Skye on a trajectory that will bring them into atmosphere moving west above Thames Bay, Six.”
Just when I thought things couldn’tpossiblyget worse, Tara thought. “Put her on, Skye Prime.”
A moment; the white noise background subtly shifted value. Then a low, silken voice: “—Kerensky calling. Have you decided to pull your thumb out of your—”
“This is Countess Tara Campbell,”Tara broke in crisply. “So you’ve come to join in feasting on Skye’s corpse, have you? Are you the Steel Jackals, now, to feast on Falcon leavings? You’ve been skulking long enou—”
“Softly, softly.”The insufferable bitch actuallychuckled . “Is that any way to talk to your prospective savior, Countess, dear?”
“What the hell are you talking about, Kerensky? I don’t have much time—”
“No. You don’t. So listen fast and decide faster. We’re here for one thing: to drink Jade Falcon blood. My terms: amnesty— ”
“Never!”
“Shut up andhearme, little Countess! Amnesty for me and my people while we remain in Skye system. Also what isorlawe can grab from the Falcons. And afterwards—any generosity The Republic might care to extend will be appreciated.”
The Falcons had surged halfway up the slope in a maelstrom of noise and dust and flame: a dozen BattleMechs, untold vehicles riding turf-tearing treads or blasts of driven air, endangering the unpowered Clan infantry running flat out among them, as Elementals bounded in and out of the scrum. In its midst waded Aleks Hazen’s ’Mech, outrun by Zeta warriors who had lunged impatiently in front of him at his command to charge. He withheld his own fire, clearly saving himself for Tara Campbell.
Tara’s own forces were being pushed back.Slaughtered might be the word. She felt craven for cowering still in safety, yet her sole motive was to live long enough to die with her BattleMech’s hatchet buried in the head of Aleksandr Hazen’s ’Mech.
Yet now, the bloodstained claw of the costar of her deepest, darkest nightmares—Paladin Crow was the other—was extended toward her holding....
Hope?
“What do we get in return for that generosity?”
“Salvation. Decide, Countess. Take your time: five seconds.”
Clearly she must consult Duke Gregory before making any decision so momentous. “Yes,” she said. “Your word on the amnesty, Countess. Swear.”
“I swear on my honor as Countess Northwind—amnesty, damn you!”
“Bid well and done, sweet enemy.”
A brain-searing crack split the sky as a loneJagatai aerospace fighter streaked overhead, supersonic out of the east—blasting windows out of a quarter of New London—low enough that Tara’s eyes could actually make out the snarling metal wolf’s head painted on its airfoil undersurfaces. All action stopped on the battlefield as heads raised to stare.
Drive thunder drowned even the din of mechanized carnage. Blazing comets passed overhead, headed west and somewhat south: DropShips, descending rapidly to land. Not even Anastasia Kerensky was reckless enough to risk her ships in a direct duel with the Falcon landing craft. She did seem intent upon landing close enough to threaten them with a quick march of her forces.
The Falcons had to respond.Tara saw battle machines bearing the Turkina Keshik insignia turn away to race back to defend their landing zone. Beckett Malthus would not care to risk his ships.
But Aleksandr Hazen’s Turkina’s Beak warriors turned their faces forward and grimly pressed their advance. Aleks was just the sort of action-trivid hero to consider even his means of escape fair price to pay for victory and a world—or even glory, curse him.Tara did.
“I just sold my soul,” she said to herself, microphone squelched, “to the ravagers of my home world.
And they’ll never get here in time.”
A shadow swept over her from behind, upheld by lightning, so huge Tara cringed within her cockpit, fearing irrationally it was about to crush her. The squashed, vaguely aerodynamic oblong of a Broadsword BattleMech- carrier DropShip, an armored ovoid, overflew the battlefield at less than five hundred meters. It flayed the Falcons with missiles, lasers and particle projectors, as its own antimissile batteries exploded Falcon salvos and its massive armor shrugged off the lashings of energy beams. A single hatch opened in its flat belly. A squat black figure fell from it.
Blue-white jets flamed from the plummeting BattleMech’s sides. It slowed, but was still moving fast when it hit—right through the pitched roof of the seminary structure that had miraculously survived until now.
TheBroadsword swept on, black smoke streaming from smashed hardpoints but not sorely hurt, to pass out of view along the trail its comrades had blazed. Other BattleMechs fell from it, into the houses behind Turkina’s Beak. The near wall of the seminary building bulged, and then aRyoken II BattleMech strode forth in a cascade of bricks. Flashes rippled ’round it as its pilot blasted loose the explosive bolts which had clamped the short-burn-time rocket booster packs to the machine.
“Sorry,” Anastasia Kerensky radioed. “Had to break my fall. Put it on my tab.”
The BattleMech strode straight towardTara ’sHatchetman. Her belly clenched: her body awaited treachery. Instead theRyoken II halted a few meters away.
For a moment the two women warriors stood, confronting one another directly for the first time.
As if to mark the occasion the fighting ceased in the general area of the seminary structure. As intact Republican vehicles and BattleMechs came up to form a line on the hilltop flanking the two women, the Falcons formed a similar line facing them from below.
A hawk-head ’Mech stepped to the fore. Its whole body seemed to lean forward to thrust the autocannon and large lasers which were its arms toward its foe. A scarred and blistered insignia of a steel fist gripping a white lily was recognizable on its chest. The enemies appraised each other.
“Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen,”Tara said, voice booming fiercely through herHatchetman ’ s external speakers. “You and yours have fought superbly. Now spare your Clan further waste of brave warriors. You cannot
