Still stuck in the hatch, Defoe panicked for a moment before remembering that when the scout took damage, the comm channels would switch onto the open speakers. The Pegasus could still receive from Regiment, but apparently no longer transmitted. He looked at the hole in the floor. Probably not a surprise. He started his wriggling again.
“Defoe, you bastard! You can’t leave me here!”
He stopped again. He was almost out. He could feel it. Almost through the gap. But Hutchins apparently couldn’t help himself. Run, his mind told him. Run, his body told him. Hutchins was dead. He was dead, too, if he didn’t move.
And move now.
He moved.
He pulled back into the cabin and stepped gingerly around the partly open hatch. The hot, bitter fumes rising from the hole in the floor made him dizzy for a moment, but he held on and set his foot on the other side, pushing off on the door to get himself upright.
He wanted to avoid looking at the remains of Benny’s command chair—and of Benny—but a sick, perverted urge overwhelmed him and he looked anyway. Just a set of legs, strings of clotted blood hanging over the edge of the chair seat, while the rest of the chair was simply gone, along with the upper half of Benny. Defoe felt his gorge rise but swallowed it back down.
Hutchins was little better. Arm gone above the elbow and Hutchins trying to hold the blood back with his sole remaining hand. His leg on Benny’s side was covered in blood, apparently the recipient of spalling and fragments from the bolt that took Benny. Hutchins’ face was pale and his eyes were rolled back in his head. He had stopped his screaming, but still he muttered, “You shit. You come get me.”
No way. Hutchins could not move from that chair and no way he could get through the narrow opening in the hatch. The urge to run started to rise in Defoe again.
Before Defoe could turn, though, the rain let up enough to show a ’Mech not more than a few klicks down the valley, making its way toward the Pegasus’ position.
On the console in front of Hutchins, a blue icon started to flash, a tiny square about a quarter of the way down from the top of the screen. It crept slowly toward the spidery X in the middle of the display, which represented the Pegasus. Weirdly, the same image appeared on the console in front of what little remained of Benny. The ’Mech was coming.
A reticule appeared from the edges of the display and shrank until it just fitted around the tiny blue icon, which then turned red. A mechanical voice said, over the cabin speakers, “Target locked. Missile battery ready to fire.” One of the buttons on the arm of Hutchins’ chair flashed rapidly white to red and back, then settled to a slow red flashing.
Defoe was not in the Line, but even he had had some rudimentary training on the weapons of the Borderers. Push the red flashing button and the Pegasus’ battery would launch one salvo of missiles at the marked target.
Training also told him that the tiny missile battery on the Pegasus would not do much against a ’Mech. Not to mention the target was well outside the battery’s range; hit must have damaged the targeting system as well.
Over the speaker, a voice said. “Burn 3. Burn 3. This is Hammer 1. We have baskets to give away. Need targeting updates. Respond.”
Defoe reached toward the flashing button but Hutchins’ hand knocked his away. He looked down at Hutchins’ drawn face.
“Mission. Recon. Report. Target for air wing. Shoot and we might … kill one, more behind. Need to report. Then shoot.”
Defoe slapped the back of Hutchin’s command chair. “No way. The entire transmitter section is a hole. I can’t fix it.”
He looked back. The hole was big enough. The components were all gone, but he had a full set of spares in the hardcart, which was untouched. But the backplane—the communications bus was gone, a fragment of the transmit section there, though the receiving section was clearly intact.
From the speakers, the voice droned on. “Burn 3. Hammer One. Report. Require targeting information.”
There was plenty of information, the various displays showing all of the hostile ’Mechs, most converging on the United Outworlds Corps fighter production plant, nine kilometers away. And one still trudging toward the Pegasus, locked in on the central display.
And no way to tell anyone.
That old poem ran through his head, “For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for the want of the shoe, the horse was lost—”
For the want of a place to plug in, the battle was lost.
Bus. Communications bus. Transmit and receive both use the same antenna, which is tied to the same bus. Don’t need to receive. Need to send.
No one had ever told him that this should work, but it should.
The remains of the panel could not be raised while the exit hatch was open, though, so he slapped at the access pad and nothing happened. He shoved on the heavy door and it barely budged.
He pushed again, harder, until he thought his back would break, but the thing barely moved. Way too slow.
He flipped down the jumpseat and sat in it, wedging his back against the panels behind him and his feet on the hatch. And pushed.
It gave, slowly, until it stopped with a click, now jammed neither all the way closed nor all the way open. No way he would be able to get out that way.
He stood up and looked out over the command chairs. He could probably climb out through the hole in the ferroglass, but Hutchins would never make it. And that took him closer to the ’Mech still coming up the
