Reach? Over the Omni? “What variant is Cho running?” Nikolai asked, moving to the corner of the room where technicians monitored tactical screens, tapping directly into the Blackjack’s systems.
“Alternate configuration `C’, with double long-barreled autocannon.”
A 3D, then? But only a single large laser? “Give me guncam feeds on monitors two and three.”
New screens winked to life, showing fields of white interrupted by frosted conifers and tall, gangly winter hemlock. The image swung drunkenly as the Blackjack stalked forward, swinging its arms around to the right…in time to catch a blur of highly-polished metal erupting through a waist-deep snowbank.
A laser mounted on the back of the enemy `Mech’s right arm slashed angrily below the camera’s eye. On the Blackjack’s wire-frame schematic, the leg darkened by several shades of gray as armor puddled to the ground. The BattleMech retreated before Cho angled in with his autocannon.
“Freeze that image and clean it up,” Nikolai ordered.
One of the techs did so. It was a Phoenix Hawk, all right. No mistaking the lines. But not a 3D; the armor looked reinforced, and more angular than the traditional design. Wide intake ports on the jump jets. Better weapons, obviously.
“Upgrades,” he spat the word out with a bad taste. General Motors had been busy, it seemed. It would make the OmniMech’s job harder, but would not make the difference.
Except that Sao-wei Cho kept reporting a difficulty in acquiring solid target lock. “It keeps ghosting my sensors,” he complained, suffering long-range strikes against his chest, his arms, and then a shoulder-to-shoulder slash that burned deep enough to melt through part of his engine shielding.
His return fire was sporadic, and mostly ineffectual. Flechette munitions sanded some armor from the `Hawk’s left side, a bit more from each leg, but more often than not Cho ended up carving local conifers into kindling. Usually right behind where the Phoenix Hawk had been standing a moment before.
Nikolai stabbed angrily at the communications board, opening a direct channel to his test pilot. The officer was lower-grade, it was true, but his performance bordered on the embarrassing. “Quit sniping with that hùn dàn pilot and stand up to him!” It was rare for an administrator to intrude on any live-fire situation, but there was more riding on this than Cho’s reputation alone. “Force him to stand and fight.”
It was a gamble, playing with a `Hawk that way. Fifty percent faster and sixty meters of greater reach with its jump jets, Nikolai risked letting the redesigned `Mech slip behind Cho where it could do a lot more damage.
Then again, as the Omni lost more armor from his left leg and lower waist, its rear-facing armor might just be stronger than whatever it had left up front.
The Phoenix Hawk let him come. It raced onto a dry expanse of hard-packed dirt and loose rock, swept clean of snow by the hard winds, and waited for the Capellan pilot. If Cho expected a great advantage in closing—or any advantage, for that matter—he did not see it. His autocannon continued to miss as often as not, while the Phoenix Hawk struck at him again, and again. One ruby lance cut deep enough to silence one of Cho’s autocannon, halving his effective weaponry.
The `Hawk had to be heating up by now, not that General Motors’ MechWarrior ever let on as he continued to fire the `Mech’s large laser with regular accuracy. It sparked a thought that worried at the back of Nikolai’s mind. “Give me a thermal profile of that machine,” he requested, feeling a dead weight settle deep into his gut.
“It will switch Cho over as well,” Xou started to explain, but the overseer pro-tem cut his manager off with a raised hand.
“Just do it!” he yelled as the Blackjack charged forward.
No, the `Hawk did not appear to be running hot. In fact, its entire heat-dissipation system appeared to be banked toward minimal output. It was a thermal image that Nikolai recognized. So did the computer. Which was why it kept bouncing over to the Vindicator 3L variant.
Stealth armor!
“Cho! Cho! Break off from that `Hawk.”
His order went out a few seconds too late. Medium lasers and machine guns tore at the Blackjack with savage strength. The ruby fury of its large laser slashed hip to shoulder, finishing off the OmniMech’s armor.
Then another laser lance skewered the Blackjack just to the right of centerline. This time the enemy pilot found Cho’s ammunition bin for the Blackjack’s autocannon. Lacking cellular ammunition storage equipment, which could have channeled the destructive force out specially-prepared blast panels, the resulting fireball tore through the OmniMech’s entire chest cavity. Golden fire erupted in a catastrophic failure of the fusion reactor system, and the guncam screens washed to static.
For a moment Nikolai thought he had lost his man as well as his machine.
Then the camera’s eye switched to the safety network built into Cho’s ejection seat. Nikolai watched as the crash couch rocketed up and away from the exploding `Mech, leaving behind a mushrooming cloud which was all that was left of several million C-bills of Capellan state property.
Likely all that was left of Nikolai’s corporate career as well. He might be leaving Warlock, all right, but as something other than a civilian. Sending Cho in unprepared. Interfering with a live firefight. The Capellan state did not look kindly on failures of this magnitude. And the military would look for any reason not to blame their own man.
“Overseer,” the communications technician said quietly, as if worried about disrupting the moment. She tapped the side of her headset. “We have a new transmission from the Intruder. They…they congratulate us on a well-coordinated exercise. And ask if we would like them to pick up our MechWarrior before he freezes to death.”
Nikolai gripped the sides of the workstation as if his life depended on it, propping himself up, unsteady on his own legs. He had been staring at the
