The Dervish’s chest caved inward over the fusion reactor. Golden fire blossomed inside the mangled cavity. It spread quickly. The ’Mech’s head split open as the warrior ejected, rocketing up and away from the dying machine.
It was the last thing Kelly saw before the fusion-bright flare consumed the BattleMech. The force of the explosion blasted apart trees and scorched a great deal of underbrush to instant cinders. It rocked her JagerMech back on its heels as the ground trembled violently.
“Kelly!” Roland’s voice crackled to life over her comms system. “Flash and smoke near your position. Can you see it?”
“Not anymore,” she said, voice-activated mic picking up her reply.
Spots swam before her eyes, and she blinked away the aftereffects of the glare. A few curly strands of her platinum-blond hair tickled along the side of her face. No reaching them through the heavy neurohelmet she wore, but a practiced head shake matted them against the sheen of sweat on her forehead.
Whatever had been sniping at her with lasers had taken off. The Dervish was also gone except for pieces and parts scattered around a smoking crater. A leg, severed mid-femur, leaned up against a bamboo thicket. There was a titanium strut impaled through a nearby banyon. A few determined licks of flame crawled along the scorched trunks of some ironwood, but she doubted it would go much farther. The jungle was far too wet from the recent days of rain.
Kelly throttled forward, cautiously. Suddenly, new warnings screamed for attention as a rust-painted Vindicator shoved its way through the bamboo, stepping out into the hole in the jungle cleared by the explosion. She brought up her autocannon, but the wailing cut off as the other ’Mech dropped its targeting lock and paused, ready but waiting. An orange and black tiger striping covered half of the BattleMech’s chest, like a pelt draped over one shoulder, but no insignia that she could see.
Kelly paused, fingers caressing her triggers. The Vindicator took advantage of her hesitation and dove back into the jungle thicket. Northeast. Toward the DropShip.
The last one.
Roland had given her a moment to collect herself. “One of ours, or one of theirs?” he asked now.
“Ran across one of both,” she said. Then sighed. “It was a Guardian,” she admitted, swallowing against a sour taste. “First FedCom.”
“Damn it, K.” He didn’t sound mad at her, but at the Fates in general. They had tried so hard not to engage the Guardians. “Well, that tears it.”
It was Roland’s one fault, Kelly thought. Holding onto an idea of “us” versus “them,” or Federated Commonwealth versus the Marik-Liao alliance. That might have been true six months ago, or even six weeks, when the alliance offensive was chewing through the Sarna March. But Katrina-verdammt-Steiner tanked that idea when she called home all Lyran commands and the local defensive network fell completely apart. So bad, in fact, that a few stragglers got left behind in the confusion, including seventh company of the Third Donegal Guards.
Roland’s company had been deployed to Gan Singh, to try and coordinate with the First FedCom RCT. Only the Guardians were already gone. All they found were a few forgotten warriors—cast-offs or AWOL, didn’t matter—butting heads with local militia-turned-mercenary.
The Donegal Guards company either missed the recall order, or it had never been sent once General Hammerskjold decided to cut his losses and return to Lyran space.
Kelly could only wish him a prime location in the deepest circle of hell.
A new silhouette flashed across her tactical screen as Roland limped his Penetrator up from behind. It looked quite a mess with its right leg fused into an awkward steel crutch and several lengths of mossy vines draped over its ruined arms.
“What are we waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s go, K.”
She very nearly smiled at his forced esprit de corps. But six dead friends and four MIA in the last five days was enough to sour anyone’s mood. From city to spaceport to remote landing zone, Seventh Company had tried to make rendezvous with any number of outbound DropShips. Always too late. Always forced back by Capellan or mercenary outfits with greater firepower or a larger expense account.
But not this time, she promised herself. Please.
Throttling forward into an easy walk, she took the lead against his best speed of thirty kilometers per hour. They struck along the trail blazed by the fleeing Vindicator, and crossed their fingers.
For the next ten minutes their luck held. No weapons sniped at them from the dense jungle. Roland pushed his Penetrator up toward forty kph as the trail made for easier travel. Kelly began to hope.
“Think we can afford passage?” she asked. Neither of them speculated the DropShip captain might call allegiance to any one faction of Gan Singh’s three-sided battle. These days it seemed “every man for himself” was a predictable situation.
“We can barter against any ransom paid by the Third Donegal. We can deal away what’s left of the Penetrator.”
He’d never once threatened to put a debt against her JagerMech. The Penetrator was a newer and much more valuable machine, but hers had been in the Van Lou family for three generations. Leased into Lyran service, but still hers. Roland would rather give up a piece of Lyran state property, and suffer the reprisals, than divorce her from a piece of family heritage.
It was the kind of thing he did without thinking, and for that if nothing else Kelly would stick by her hauptmann’s side no matter what.
That’s what kept her anchored at his side when the sky fell in on them a moment later.
There was very little warning. A glimpse of smoke through the tree canopy from one of the Pandora jungle’s many logging slash burns. A tremble in the ground that might have been artillery fire, might have been the first powerful flare of a DropShip’s fusion drives lighting off. A screen of ironwood bounced back their active sensors until the last moment. Then they pushed through, and into the chaos of battle.
The DropShip
