Part II
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take
an interest in you.”
-Pericles
Chapter 7: Earning Your Keep
Kit kept the
Vindicator’s throttle dialed back to a brisk 40-kilometers-per-hour walk. There was no point charging into an engagement before you fully understood the situation, her grandfather had taught her that. No matter how eager you were for a fight.
And Kit was eager, eager enough to surprise herself.
The last time she had led her own unit out in the wastes of the seabed, she had wondered what they were even doing on the planet, seemingly nothing more than a showpiece meant to intimidate desperate villagers. Everything that had happened since then had made things more complicated, and she still wasn’t sure she had a firm handle on the situation she had gotten herself into by signing the contract on Calseraigne. But here, today, was something she was certain she did understand: a fight, in her ‘Mech, and against a real enemy.
The last time they had gone out into the wastes, she had had to reassure Tucker they wouldn’t be killing anyone. Today the odds were better than even that they would, and she felt ten times better. For a moment she wondered what that said about her, but there was no more than a moment for wondering.
“They’re still on a direct vector for the city, Captain,” came Miles Morency’s voice in her ear. In the background she could hear the roar of the Harasser hovertank’s fans as Miles’s brother Martin guided it over the desert, shadowing the enemy lance. “Best guess is three lights and maybe one medium… they’re clustered too close together to separate out seismic and magres.”
“Copy, Klicks,” Kit answered. “We’re moving out to block them. Just keep them on sensors for now. You’ll know your moment to get in the mix.”
The unidentified DropShip had landed in the salt flats of the former southern lakebed about an hour before. Whether it was the start of Calseraigne’s first pirate raid in years, the first Liao raid in even longer, or something else entirely, right now it didn’t matter much. Whoever they were, their intentions, though unannounced, were clear enough. The dry lakebed was the closest place to land a DropShip for an assault on the capital, except for the spaceport itself on the north side of the city, and even Calseraigne’s militia couldn’t have failed to notice an invasion force literally landing on their doorstep. Probably.
The first word of the mystery force’s arrival had been from one of the Rusters who had pulled up to the gates of the Kats’ outpost south of the city in a buggy. Kit had scrambled all her ‘Mechs and vehicles.. The latest report she had gotten from Corporal Palmberg, heading up the Kats’ infantry contingent and left to maintain communication with the Gee Pee, was pessimistic about the militia managing to organize any sort of response before the whole thing was over.
On either side of Kit’s
Vindicator marched “Lefty” Maier in the
Enforcer and Landry Tucker in the
Blackjack. A couple hundred meters ahead, rising in and out of view as they traversed the rolling undulations of the waste, her Bravo Lance of Smythe’s
Commando, “Siren” Jarvis’s
Wasp, and “Fuzzy” Farrish’s
Spider formed another loose three-’Mech wedge. “Alright, boys and girls,” she radioed, “Whoever this is didn’t come for a social call. The twins say we’re looking at a lightweight lance of ‘Mechs, and their pilots might even know how to use them, so… stay sharp.”
There was always a moment when she said these kinds of things to her unit, things commanders were supposed to say, that she felt a twinge embarrassment, as she wondered whether she said them for her unit’s benefit or for her own. Some of her people had more combat experience than she did, and in House military units. Purely as an individual, as a ‘Mech jock, she was confident enough in her skill. She knew she was far from the best, but she had been trained well and gotten out of some tight spots. In a cockpit, she felt at home - although out of one, in her nightmares, doubts mocked her. But there was no place for a lone MechWarrior except perhaps in arena gladiator fights, and her own brief gladiator career had been a farce. In real fights, MechWarriors were either leaders or followers, and every moment of every day she was aware that she had become a leader only because of very, very improbable circumstances without ever even getting the chance to be a follower first. Some moments, like this one, she was more aware of it than others.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to figure it out entirely on her own. “Smitty,” she radioed, “Switch to command frequency.”
There was a couple of seconds of silence and then Smythe’s drawl in her ear. “Tell me what you’re thinkin’... boss.”
Kit smiled slightly, knowing that her XO had just stopped himself from calling her “kid,” even though nobody else could hear their conversation. “Whoever this is,” she said, “They’re probably working off old intel. That means they won’t know about us. They’ll think the south end of the capital is undefended.”
“Yeah, safe enough bet.”
“So I’m thinking you take Bravo in head-on to surprise them, stop them short… then we’ll come in behind you to clean up.”
There was another pause as Smythe considered. “We have numbers on them. Could have Alpha hold the line while Bravo circles behind. Better chance of a clean sweep.”
“Whatever they’re here to do, it looks for damn sure like they want to do it in the city,” Kit pointed out. “First priority is to deny their objective, not to inflict maximum losses. My lance is too slow, we can’t take the risk of them just blowing past us.”
“Fair enough,” Smythe agreed.
“I’m sorry, Sarge, you’ll have to fight them almost fair for a minute, even with the twins joining in.”
“I know you’ll be right behind us,” Smythe reassured her.
She and Smythe relayed the plan to their respective lances and the Kats’ entire ‘Mech force accelerated to a run. Smythe and his two lancemates in their faster machines quickly outdistanced the three medium-weight ‘Mechs in Kit’s lance, and Kit started to second-guess herself. The risk in her plan was that it would leave Smythe’s lance to take on the enemy lance in a more-or-less even fight, or even at a disadvantage considering only the number of ‘Mechs, for a brief period before her slower lance could catch up and bring their superior firepower to bear.
There was no sound except the thumping of the
Vindicator’s feet as it loped across the lakebed in a spine-pounding run. Then Smythe’s voice crackled in her ear once more: “Contact.” His lance had met the enemy.
“Copy,” Kit responded, although she knew Smythe might have already switched back to his lance frequency. She marked Bravo lance’s position on a secondary cockpit display. Then silence again, except for the sound of ‘Mech feet and the growing internal chorus of Kit’s doubts.
Finally, her lance passed under one kilometer to the contact point. “Let’s get their attention,” she called to Tucker and Maier. “Pop up on three. One… two… three.”
Kit stomped down on her foot pedals and grunted as she was pushed down into her command couch. The
Vindicator hurtled into the air on columns of flaming plasma, flanked on either side a moment later by the
Enforcer and
Blackjack as her lancemates fired their own jump jets.
As she cleared the dunes and her jump reached its apex, she had a clear view of the fight taking place between Smythe’s lance and the raiders. There was no time fully to pick out who was who in the melee, but she quickly counted off seven ‘Mechs moving and shooting, which meant nobody on either side was down yet - although the Morency twins’ Harasser tank was nowhere to be seen.
One of the ‘Mechs in the furball abruptly came to a stop, looking in the direction of Kit’s rising lance with obvious and almost comically human surprise. Kit knew by its silhouette that it was a thirty-ton
Javelin like the one Naila had piloted in their simulator duel even before the
Vindicator’s warbook computer tagged it. She dropped her targeting reticle over the raider and launched a flight of long range missiles without a lock, aiming for more distraction rather than damage. The
Vindicator’s descent prevented her from seeing the results.
The
Vindicator touched down on the sea floor again with a teeth-rattling impact. Kit steadied the machine’s balance and brought it back up to full running speed. She was in range for her main weapons now but rolling dunes blocked line of sight to any target.
At last she reached the top of one particularly tall former undersea ridge and found the whole tableau of the battle spread out in front of her again. “Pull up!” she radioed to her lancemates. “Firing line here.”
Four hundred meters away she spotted the
Javelin. Whether because of the distraction she had provided or some other reason, the raider MechWarrior was in big trouble. The
Javelin twisted in a failed attempt to draw a bead on the Kats’ Harasser as the hovertank flitted by and delivered a double-handful of short range missiles that cratered the Javelin’s green paint. The ‘Mech’s’ left leg buckled underneath it and the pilot only barely caught their machine with its left arm. Giving up on the departing Harasser, the
Javelin swiveled its torso back in the direction of Farrish’s nearby Spider and fired an SRM salvo of its own which missed completely.
“For ******’s sake…” Kit muttered at the enemy pilot’s stubbornness. Her targeting reticle glowed gold and she let loose with another flight of LRM’s, followed up by a blast from the
Vindicator’s right arm PPC. Her shots crushed the right side of the
Javelin’s torso, blowing off the arm it was using to prop itself up and leaving it lying flat on its face. A moment later the ‘Mech’s ammunition cooked off, gutting it completely. There was no chance for the pilot to eject.
“They’re running,” observed Tucker. Kit wrenched her gaze away from the burning
Javelin. The fight in the raiders seemed to have died with their lancemate. A
Stinger and a
Firestarter were headed back in the direction the raiders had come from at maximum speed. The fourth enemy ‘Mech, a forty-five ton
Phoenix Hawk, whirled back and forth, squirting bursts of machine gun and laser fire at the Kats’ light ‘Mechs in an effort to hold them at bay and perhaps cover its comrades’ retreat.
That has to be the lance commander, Kit thought to herself. Finally the
Hawk pilot seemed to notice Kit’s firing line for the first time. Setting its feet, it raised the massive laser it gripped in its right hand like a pistol.
Kit’s targeting reticle was already over the
Phoenix Hawk’s chest. Her finger was on the trigger. But she found her hand had suddenly gone slack. In her mind’s eye she saw another
Phoenix Hawk on another world raise its weapon and take aim…
Her view of the outside world dimmed for an instant as her cockpit ferroglass polarized to keep her from being blinded by the laser beam that barely missed the
Vindicator’s head. Her hand convulsed and her view returned just in time to see her reflex PPC shot crack wide of the target.
“You alright, Captain?” It was Tucker’s voice, with a thundering staccato background as he and Maier pummeled the Hawk with autocannon fire. Barely staying on its feet, the raider pilot back-pedaled over a dune out of sight in the same direction it’s lancemates had fled.
“Fine, fine,” she responded, knowing it was only good luck her lapse hadn’t gotten her killed and mentally cursing herself for it. “Hold here. No pursuit, we couldn’t catch them and stay together anyway. Klicks,” she called to the Harasser crew, “Distant shadow again. Make sure they’re really leaving.”
“Uh, might have a problem here, Cap,” reported Morcency. “Got a new heavy metal reading. And I mean heavy.”
Kit’s mind raced. If the raiders were bringing reinforcements, it was a damn strange time to do it. “Same vector as the first lance?” she asked.
“Negative, Cap. Coming from the Northeast. One ‘Mech, taking a peek now… aw, what the hell?”
Kit’s heart pounded and she lurched the
Vindicator into motion again. “Klicks. Talk to me.”
“Warbook tags the new arrival Bravo-Lima-Romeo,” Morency reported, his exasperation audible even through the radio. “I think there’s only one of those on-planet?”
Kit cursed and fired her jump jets again to clear the dune the
Phoenix Hawk had used to break contact as Maier and Tucker fell into line behind her. She saw it off in the distance, its gait unsteady, apparently slowed by leg damage, but already at the edge of her weapons’ range. And she also saw, plodding forward in an apparent effort to block the raider’s escape, a
BattleMaster, unmistakable in the Everett family’s blue, silver, and purple.
“What the ****** is he doing?” she shouted to herself. It had all been over - the fight had been won. The raiders were running away with their tails between their legs, and her force had suffered nothing worse than armor damage. And now her employer had come to play hero and put himself in danger of being killed by one lucky shot!
The
Vindicator touched down hard, compressing her spine, but she ignored the pain and kept the ‘Mech moving at a dead run, trying to settle her targeting reticle on the
Phoenix Hawk’s back, telling herself
No, no, no, this was
not going to happen all because she had hesitated, because she had gotten lost in a waking nightmare for just one moment…
The
Phoenix Hawk swiveled its torso towards the
BattleMaster, then slowly shuffled to a halt. Its arms dropped to its sides. On Kit’s sensors, the infrared signature of the Hawk started to go dark as the fusion reactor at its heart shut down. She slowed the
Vindicator to a walk and started to breathe again.
The
BattleMaster came to a halt, ponderously ruined to face the raider ‘Mech, and fired. Parallel streaks of artificial lightning and coherent light drove into the
Phoenix Hawk and toppled it to the lakebed floor. Kit stared, uncomprehending, speechless.
“Jesus! What the hell? ******!”
Landry Tucker was not speechless; his scream in her helmet’s earpiece was loud enough to make her wince. “Settle down, Tuck,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Blake’s Blood, Cap, didn’t you see? That
Hawk jock was powering down, he was surrendering! I mean, what the
******?”
“Tucker,” she said, willing her voice not to shake, “Can it.” She switched frequencies. “Palmberg, you read?”
“I read you, Captain,” said the infantry squad leader. “Good to hear your voice. What’s the situation?”
“We’re done out here. We need a medevac though… Gee Pee, civilian, whatever you can get.”
There was a slight pause before Palmberg responded. “Copy, Captain. Who-...”
“Not one of ours,” Kit said.
Things could have gone worse, she told herself. Much worse.
Focus on the good: mission accomplished, no losses… employer didn’t get his ass blown off. Not our job to second-guess nobles. We did our
jobs. For the first time since arriving on Calseraigne, in fact, she had done a job she felt like she understood. But as she stared at the fallen
Phoenix Hawk, she realized that for all her earlier eagerness, that thought brought her surprisingly little pleasure.