"Natasha, the tanks are dug in. Is Quarrel flight still available?"
"Ax One, please be advised that we are pushing the Com Guards around to your position. I suggest you move the armor and appropriate their fortifications. This is where you earn your pay, Phelan."
"Roger, Black Widow." Phelan knew his 'Mechs should be able to dislodge the armor, but its being dug in made the nut just that much harder to crack. "Do I have air?"
Carew's voice cut in on the frequency. "ETA thirty seconds, Ax Star. Be ready to act then."
"Roger, Quarrel One. We'll take the pass." Quickly he switched back to his own tactical frequency. "Heads up. We have an airstrike coming in. Thea and Ace, you'll jump your 'Mechs in. Concentrate on the Rhino. It is a tough target, but they are known to explode if you hit them hard enough. The rest of us will hit the first Burke. The Furies have run speed and they will if we give them the chance."
"Roger, Star Commander. On the strike."
* * *
Carew keyed his radio over to his wingman. "Cover me while I run in, Virgil, then I will cover you. ComStar has some other ships up, but I have nothing on my screen."
"Roger, Carew."
The Clan pilot switched his HUD to ground mode and kicked his Visigoth over into a steep, wide bank. His computer showed him the location of Phelan's Star and the reported position of the ComStar armor. He set a course that connected the two lines, then dove the Visigoth until he screamed in at 650 knots only 500 meters above the ground.
For a millisecond, the ComStar armor flashed as viable targets on his HUD, but his finger hit the trigger buttons while they still remained on holograph. The PPC and twin medium lasers mounted in his nose backlit his canopy with a reddish-purple glow. Two flights of LRMs streaked out from the wing-mounted launchers and actually dropped his speed by 40 knots.
As the heat spiked in his cockpit, he hauled back on his stick and pointed the Visigoth into the sky. With a flip to the left, he spun the aerospace fighter into a barrel roll that took him out along a course at right angles to his strafing run. As he righted himself again, he switched his HUD over to air-to-air mode and saw Virgil begin his run.
Warning klaxons started going off in Carew's cockpit. Instantly he spotted the fast-approaching pair of ComStar fighters. His computer immediately identified them as Rapiers, which meant he and Virgil were in for a nasty dogfight. "Break off, Virgil, we have company."
* * *
Explosions still ringing in his ears, Acolyte R. G. Flute tightened the restraining strap holding him in the turret gunner's seat of the Rhino. "Dammit, that run melted armor and it's congealed in my turret, drive. Anderson, get us ready to move because we're only going to be able to shoot at what you point us at."
"No can do, Acolyte. I've got a damaged track. We're not going anywhere."
"Agree, Fury One is untouched, but Fury Two has a turret lock. Burke One is in the same shape we are, Burke Two lost armor, and Burke Three lost its missiles and one of the PPCs." The radioman craned his neck back and peered up into the turret past Flute's feet. "They want to know what to do."
"Fight! What else is there to do here? Peace of Blake be with you, boys," the Acolyte intoned solemnly. "Here they come."
* * *
Phelan had his Wolfhound up and cruising in toward the gap as Virgil swooped in toward the pass. The second Visigoth let go with his PPC and lasers, but broke off in mid-run. The MechWarrior knew of only one thing that could possibly make a fighter stop a strafing run. That was the arrival of enemy fighters, and with memories of his bloodfight against Glynis flashing at the back of his mind, he did not want ComStar to return the favor of a strafing run on his 'Mechs.
Sprinting into the pass, Phelan saw how much damage Quarrel Flight had done to the tanks, and whispered a prayer to help Carew and Virgil in their battle with the ComStar fighters. Everything save one of the Furies looked as if it had been attacked with a blowtorch. Fire-blackened armor crisscrossed with laser and PPC scars covered the turrets and front ends of the vehicles. None had been destroyed by the run, but five of six had been softened up.
I hope that's enough.
Up over him soared the Summoner and Viper. Thea's Summoner sent two flights of LRMs streaking down at the Rhino. Over half of them impacted the ground in front of the hulking vehicle, but the remaining missiles further savaged the armor on the tank's nose.
The Rhino's gunner tracked the missile pods up and sent a full forty missiles back at the Summoner. His hurried aim and difficulty following the flight meant only a quarter of them hit their target. Explosions fragmented armor on the Summoner's left arm and left leg. Nothing got through the armor, but any damage on 'Mechs so lightly armored hurt significantly, especially with the Furies and Burkes still operational.
Ace piloted his Viper with such skill that Phelan thought it could as easily have been a giant alien lifeform rather than a BattleMech. The squat juggernaut stabbed its left-arm PPC at the Rhino and sent a sizzling beam into the vehicle's front armor. The beam of a medium pulse laser, mounted on the underside of the 'Mech's right forearm joined the larger light shaft and punched through.
A single flash spit fire back out through the front of the craft, then a fireball ripped it apart from inside. Like an escape pod, the turret jetted straight up into the air. Before it reached the apex of its arc, the missiles in the starboard launcher cooked off and imparted a backward spin to the turret. It slammed into the mountainside, then tumbled back out of sight.
Somewhere beyond that something else exploded, but Phelan had no time to figure out what it was. He dodged to the left as one of the Burkes tried to impale him with a pair of azure PPC beams. They shot wide, but his evasive maneuver spoiled his aim against the damaged Fury. His large laser beam and two of the medium pulse laser beams chewed up the dirt in front of the Fury. Only one of the beams hit and it just blistered off more front armor.
* * *
Initiate Elza Speer hauled back on both drive controls for the damaged Fury. On the holographic display surrounding her, she saw the golden crosshairs hanging in the center. Letting the left control slip forward for a second, she brought the cross to bear on the Wolfhound leading the charge.
"I lined him up for you, Perry. Bring him down."
* * *
The Fury's Gauss rifle pulsed out a silvery ball that caught the Wolfhound just below its right knee. Grinner half-stumbled in that direction, but Phelan fought gravity and kept the machine upright. Stravag! One more hit like that and. I lose this leg. "Let's shut these Furies down."
The Clan Nova looked to Phelan like nothing so much as a large, aerodynamic toad bred for combat. The cylindrical autocannon that made up its right arm sent a stream of slugs tracing a straight line through the dirt up to the undamaged Fury, but never actually hit it. The Nova's LRM swarm overshot the autocannon shells and wreathed the Fury's turret with fire.
Apparently that attack did not impress the Fury's crew. The turret swung around with ease and sent a Gauss rifle ball out to shatter the armor on the Nova's left leg. Though the 'Mech had more armor than Phelan's Wolfhound, the pilot realized that another shot in that leg from any of the weapons left operational would strip the leg down to bare bones and practically doom the Nova.
Dimitria's Ice Ferret had drifted to the far left side of the formation. Its autocannon missed the targeted Burke, and the flight of LRMs she launched went dead-in, but exploded in the dirt. Only the medium laser from the Ice Ferret's chest actually struck the target, doing no more than cause some armor to ooze away.
The Burke returned better than it got. Though one of its three PPCs missed high, the other two bracketed the Ice Ferret with electric fire. The beams stripped armor off each arm in equal proportions, leaving the Ice Ferret's head and shoulders shrouded with armor vapor. Another Burke tried to add to the Ice Ferret's misery, but its attacks missed.
Phelan shivered. This is harder going than I imagined. Please, God, let Carew keep the buzzards off us.
* * *
Carew pulled his fighter up and over through a split-S that brought him in above and behind where the Rapiers were setting up on Virgil. He rejoiced in the advantage that gave him, but the fact that they had position on Virgil filled him with dread. "Virg, you have two. Break right!"
Virgil's Visigoth started its sharp right turn, but the lead Rapier hung with him and actually turned tighter than he did. With its twin, forward-jutting fangs and paired tails, the slender-winged fighter looked not nearly as menacing as Virgil's compact craft. But it sailed in with the grace of a raptor, then opened up with the autocannon mounted in its nose.
Virgil's maneuver brought his ship up into the stream of shells. They peppered the sleek craft's fuselage, stripping away sheets of armor that followed the Visigoth like a glittering rain. A PPC beam sliced off more armor, then LRMs arrowed out from the Rapier and skewered the damaged craft. With a flash and puff of black smoke, the Visigoth began to break apart in mid-air.
Virgil's icon vanished from Carew's holographic battle-scape and the lead Rapier cut up and toward the sky as his outline burned white on the infrared scale. Whipping the Visigoth into a right spiral, the Wolf Clan pilot brought it out of its spin and watched the Rapier's wingman follow the leader right into his sights.
Both medium lasers raked claws through the armor over the single aft thruster, and half the missiles Carew launched similarly blasted away shards of ferro-ceramics. Other missiles corkscrewed into the fuselage and left wing, shattering armor and denting the Rapier's aerodynamic profile.
The damaged Rapier dropped its left wing and started to pull around in a tight circle while his wingman continued to pull up and to the right. If I go after you, wounded duckling, your mate will pounce on me. No! Carew refused the gambit and pulled his ship up to the right. We play this game by my rules.
As he expected, the wounded aerofighter leveled out when the Visigoth declined to chase him. Carew kept the crosshairs on target and triggered the two aft-arc medium lasers the Visigoth carried. One burned away more armor from the engine while the other further clipped the Rapier's left wing.
Carew smiled involuntarily as the fighter in front of him pulled a tight series of twists. Yes, you know how to fight better than your wingman. It will come down to the two of us, but I owe you for Virgil. His teeth clenched, Carew pushed down on the thruster pedals and brought the Visigoth around to again join the battle.
* * *
On the ground, Phelan glanced at his auxiliary monitor, and learned that the distant explosion must have been from the crash of one of the two fighters. I hope to God it's not Carew! Then he noticed that two Rapiers and one Visigoth still fought in the skies above him and he truly did not know if he wished Carew already dead or about to die in the battle with two enemies overhead.
The ground war gave him no time for any thoughts beyond that. Lee's Nova drifted across in front of him, eclipsing his view of the Fury that had hit him before. The Nova poured both autocannon and LRM fire into the Fury, chipping away at yet more of the front armor. In return, the Fury backed up and jerked to the right, then delivered a shot with the Gauss rifle that opened a great rent in the Nova's center torso armor.
Phelan brought Grinner to the right to complete a crossing pattern with the Nova. Sprinting forward, he flanked one of the Burkes. He opened up with all his weapons, but the large laser that replaced his 'Mech's right hand missed high. The trio of pulse lasers stitched back and forth across the Burke's left side. They reduced all its armor to molten slag that dripped thickly from the shredded tread on that side.
Because its turret was locked in the forward position, the Burke could not bring its gun to bear on Grinner. Unable to move and with its gun locked in one position, the Burke was as good as out of the fight. Phelan hoped its crew realized it, too, because he had no desire to kill them if it was not necessary.
Ace's Viper touched down in front of the Fury the strafing had left untouched. The 'Mech's PPC fused armor plates on the Fury's nose into a molten lump, then its medium laser chipped away at the armor left behind. The Fury brought its gun around and pounded a silver ball into the Viper's chest, half-slewing it around to the left.
Dimitria's Ice Ferret brought its weapons to bear on another of the Burkes, but the tangle with the first Burke had shaken the pilot. The autocannon, medium laser, and LRMs all missed their target, while the Burke's crew brought its PPCs around. Two blue bolts of man-made lightning blazed into the Ice Ferret. One carved armor from the center of the 'Mech's chest. The second beam flayed the rest of the armor from the Ice Ferret's left arm and started grinding away at the arm's metal bones and rubbery muscles.
The third Burke lashed out with two PPC beams at the Summoner. As with the Ice Ferret, the Summoner lost steaming shards of armor from its left arm and chest, but Thea weathered the storm without losing her weapons lock on the Burke. Two LRM flights shot out from the launchers and burst through the armor on the Burke's nose.
Their detonations set off a string of secondary explosions that lifted the Burke from its pit and flipped it over. Both treads whipped off like steel ribbons and started to disintegrate. The boxy tank's turret whirled off and smashed into a mountainside, then the body of the vehicle plumped in the middle and splintered into a million fragments. The nova in its heart was born of ammo and fuel explosions and managed to do with far greater effect what the Clan's attacks had not accomplished.
* * *
Locked in a cockpit he found as comfortable as a womb, Carew made two discoveries. The first was that his aerofighter could out-climb and out-dive the Rapiers. He found this out as his Visigoth swooped down on the stricken Rapier. The pilot tried to boost his ship forward, but Carew closed on him and pulled away from the second Rapier.
The Visigoth struck at the Rapier with both lasers and missiles. The rockets hammered the fuselage and left wing. Carew saw several holes open up in the cylindrical body of the fighter and knew some control computers must have taken damage because the tailfins locked in their straight-ahead position.
One of the lasers finished the armor on the Rapier's engine. In a bright spark on the IR readout, the laser damaged the engine. Immediately the engine darkened, and the Rapier began to lose air-speed. With its control surfaces locked and sending the slowing plane forward, Carew knew one more set of shots would destroy it.
The second discovery he made was that he would die if he indulged his desire to flame the Rapier. Its wingman powered down into his aft arc, but bounced around enough to deny Carew a solid weapons lock. The Clansman cursed and jerked his stick to the right. His craft sideslipped nicely. Then, in response to the command he gave it as the Rapier juked in behind him, it pulled up hard and to the left.
The ComStar pilot brought his Rapier into a sharp turn that would cut inside the Visigoth's turn radius, so Carew flipped the aerospace fighter over in a roll that stood the Vlsigoth on its left wing. Cutting back on his thrust, he let the Visigoth drop like a rock. Regaining control, he feathered it into a sideslip that brought him in behind the Rapier at less than a kilometer's distance.
Before he could fire on him, the Rapier pilot pulled his nose up in a Immelmann and shot back down at the Visigoth. At their speed, their flight paths intersected and passed in three seconds. In that three seconds, both fighters fired every weapon they had at each other, and did it at point-blank range.
Carew felt the Visigoth shake violently as the Rapier's autocannon ripped a jagged scar across the armor on his left wing. Blue light filled the cockpit and static crackled in his earphones as a PPC slashed armor away from his right wing. The Rapier's second PPC and its LRMs missed, but not by much, and Carew felt certain he'd used up whatever luck he'd been granted for the day.
His computer's estimate of the damage done to the Rapier cheered him. His own PPC had missed the target, but the LRMs more than made up for it. They hammered the Rapier's fuselage and blew out chunks of aircraft in locations the computer marked as belonging to heat sinks.
The missiles also blew armor from the engine, while the two forward lasers flashed into the right wing and fuselage, possibly damaging a fire-control computer.
Carew nodded and studied the Rapier's nova-white IR signature. You're running hot—as hot as the pilot you think yourself to be. Kicking his left wing up, he swung over into a split-S and grinned as the Rapier came around to meet him.
* * *
The least-damaged Fury cranked its turret to the right and drilled a Gauss rifle projectile into the Summoner's left arm. The silver ball punched through the fragmentary armor and crushed the LRM launcher pod nestled therein. The Summoner shuddered, but remained upright and blasted back at the Fury with a missile barrage that chewed up the tank's nose armor.
Ace's Viper oriented on the most dangerous Fury and opened up with both his PPC and medium laser. They continued the job the Summoner had begun and one beam even sliced through the right-side track. The ribbon of metal spun off the wheels, awkwardly freezing the Fury in mid-turn. Dirt sprayed high into the air as the Fury fought to move and escape its tormentors.
Because of the heat washing up through his 'Mech's cockpit, Phelan only used his pulse lasers on the Fury. The stuttering hail of red bolts pierced the tank's weakened nose armor as if it were not even there. An internal explosion shook the Fury, then it stopped dead while dust settled over it and oily black smoke curled up out of the hole beneath it
* * *
Frantically working the control levers, Elza Speer fought to track the Black Hawk circling to the right. "I'm trying, Perry, dammit, but the 'Mech isn't helping."