Warrior: riposte

  Tommy shook his head vehemently. "I saw the Genyosha in action when our First Battalion popped down to pry their jaws free of your ass. The Genyosha are very good—better than the 5th Sword by a long shot." Tommy narrowed his eyes. "Come to think of it, the MHO put out an advisory that said Yorinaga Kurita was running that outfit."

  Scott bowed his head. "He was." Scott balled his left fist and smashed it against the rock. "He piloted a Warhammer. I could have had him . . ."

  Tommy's eyes grew distant. "Me, too. He's the one that got the Doc. I had him right in front of me, but. . ."

  Scott's whisper came wreathed in frost. ". . . But the damned computer wouldn't give me a lock."

  Tommy nodded and shivered despite the warmth of his thick parka. "I've never seen anything like it."

  Scott stiffened, then looked up into Tommy's eyes. "I have. Mallory's World, 3016—only that time it was Morgan Kell defying Yorinaga to hit him. Back then, it confused me. Now it just makes my blood run cold."

  Both men sat silently for a moment. The wind howled hungrily, raking clouds of sharp, stinging ice crystals over their faces. Each man turned from the wind and found himself staring back out at the forces closing on the mountain stronghold. Scott broke the silence first. "How is Doctor Banzai?" Tommy shrugged quickly, but Scott easily read the pain on his face. "Medics say the Doc has stabilized, but it's still very serious. Lost lots of blood, they tell me."

  Scott smiled carefully to keep from cracking his chapped lips. "Guys were line up all around the caverns down there waiting to donate blood. Not just your people, but folks from the Bravos and the Light Cav."

  Tommy nodded. He lifted the field glasses again to study the Draconis troops. "It's going to get nasty when they come for us."

  Scott grimaced. "Do you think they're waiting for the Genyosha!"

  Tommy laughed for a half-second. "No, if the Genyosha were coming to this party, the 5th Sword would have already begun the assault." Seeing the puzzled look on Scott's face, Tommy explained. "We've been listening to their radio chatter. There's no love lost between the 5th Sword and the Genyosha."

  Tommy smiled openly. "I guess they didn't tell you. The Genyosha came to Northwind because ISF sources told them they'd find the Kell Hounds here. From what we can make out, the ISF learned that the Kell Hounds hit the Genyosha base while they were here kicking us around."

  Scott grinned. "That's something, for certain. Serves those bastards right." Way to go, Morgan. Wish I coulda been there with you.

  Tommy crossed back to Scott, ice and snow crunching beneath his boots. He squatted and laid a long-fingered hand on Scott's right forearm. "Look, when they come tomorrow, we'll hold them off. The Hong Kong Cavaliers," Tommy snorted, "or The Cavaliers combined with the remnants of the Blue Blazers and the Radar Blazers will fight a delaying action. That should give the Bravos and the Light Cav enough time to get the Doc to safety through the northern passes. Once you get into the jungles beyond these mountains, the Snakes'll never find you." Tommy winked at him. "The Prince will send more help."

  Scott shook his head. "Face it, Tommy, Team Banzai was our help. You managed to save a company of mine, and two very disorganized battalions of Light Cav, but it cost you two-thirds of your regiment." Scott swallowed hard. "It's time we pay you back."

  Scott held up his left hand to forestall any argument from the slender mercenary. He raked his fingers through his windblown tangle of black hair, then glanced down. "I made some quick trades with the Light Cav. I've got the Bravos arranged into an Omega company ..."

  Tommy shook his head. "You can't..."

  Scott nodded solemnly. "We've already loaded inferno rockets into all of our SRM pods . . ."

  "No!" Tommy shook his head vehemently. "Inferno rockets are too volatile. They're just jellied incendiaries. If one of your 'Mechs gets hit..." Tommy opened his hands in a mock explosion.

  Scott smiled weakly. "Tommy, we're dead anyway. The infernos will cook a few Snakes in their 'Mechs, and will scare lots more. It'll give you more time."

  "I don't like it," Tommy said.

  "Not up to you to like it. Weapons are at full, and so now it'll be up to The Cavaliers to get the Doctor clear. I'd appreciate it if you'd take the wounded Bravos." Scott glanced at his own broken ankle. "The seriously injured Bravos, that is."

  Tommy nodded, patting Scott on the shoulder. "Consider it done, Major Bradley."

  Another man, dark-haired and ruddy-faced, charged onto the ledge from below. He brandished a portable radio transceiver. "Tommy! Tommy! You gotta hear this!"

  Tommy stood. "What is it, Reno?"

  The excited man smiled and flicked on the radio. "Listen."

  Static crackled from the speaker, then cleared, but the transmission was so faint that all three men huddled around the radio. The first voice they heard, coming in somewhat stronger than the others, Scott identified as coming from the Team Banzai member named Rawhide. "Banzai Base to incoming DropShips, please repeat identification."

  The reply, coming in a woman's voice and featuring slightly rolled r's, ignored the question. "We show considerable activity near the Rockspire Mountains. Please confirm, Banzai Base."

  Rawhide replied quickly. "Roger that. Two, repeat, two Kurita Regiments. Fifth Sword of Light and 36th Dieron Regulars approximately ten klicks south on the plains. Please identify yourself."

  The female voice again let the question of her identity slide by. "Copy. Fifth Sword of Light and 36th Dieron Regulars. Anything else?" A strange squealing echoed beneath her words, but Reno's adjustment of the radio did nothing to clear it up.

  The three men on the mountain ledge laughed as Rawhide's surprise crackled through the speaker. "Isn't that enough?"

  "For a while, luv," she laughed in return. "For a while it might be."

  Scott glanced up over Tommy's shoulder and saw a dozen glowing white sparks against the blue sky. Too bright to be stars at this time of day. Suddenly, it dawned on him what they were. Stabbing his crutch at them, he shouted, "Tommy, look! DropShips coming in!"

  Tommy snatched the radio from Reno's mittened hands. Hitting the transmit switch, he broke into the conversation. "Rawhide, we see DropShips incoming!" He glanced over at Scott and got a nod to confirm his unvoiced question. "They're coming this way."

  Rawhide's voice took on a strong edge. "Unknown forces, please identify. Are you the incoming DropShips?"

  As the squeal sounded slightly louder, a lilt worked through the woman's reply. "That we are, luv."

  "Dammit, who the hell are you and what's that caterwauling?" Rawhide exploded in exasperation.

  "We're the best of the best, Banzai Base, and those are the war-pipes you're hearing." The woman's voice filled with pride. "We're the Northwind Highlanders, and courtesy of Prince Hanse Davion, we've left the service of Maximilian Liao. Plainly put, Banzai Base, after centuries in exile, the Northwind Highlanders are coming home."

  49

  Algot

  Capellan March, Federated Suns

  14 January 3029

  In response to the light knocking on his half-opened door, Captain Andrew Redburn waved Leftenant Robert Craon into his room. "What is it, Robert?" Andrew took a last glance at the holodisc viewscreen to memorize the page number of the book he was reading, then shut off the viewer. "You don't look like you're enjoying your R & R."

  Craon dropped himself onto the green, vinyl-covered couch set against the quonset hut's curved wall. "Something's odd here, Captain." Craon shrugged his shoulders eloquently, then sighed. "Things just aren't right."

  Andrew nodded cautiously. "I've told you repeatedly, Robert, that we're just going to have to get used to the fact that the Davion Light Guards view our unit with some suspicion. You're all products of a non-Academy training program. The unit is configured differently, and they still feel stung by our little rescue of them on St. Andre. Face it, any Davion Guard unit is going to be cocky, and they're just not going to take well to half-trained recruits from the Capella
n March."

  Craon shook his head. "It's not that, Captain." He smiled briefly. "The guys in the first regiment are still acting like stood-up debutantes, but I expect that from them. No, their attitude is about the most normal thing around this place. It's other stuff that's strange."

  Andrew smiled. "I know Algot is not the Axton Riviera, but it's warm and we're off duty. After six months in action, we deserve something of a rest."

  Craon nodded, then leaned forward with elbows firmly planted on his knees. "I agree with you, sir, but I just can't kick this uneasy feeling." He nervously clasped and unclasped his hands. "You know how, when in a combat zone, you just have that gut feeling when something's about to pop? That's what I've got, and it's bugging the hell out of me."

  Andrew nodded. You're not alone in that, Robert. "Let's look at this logically. Anything else besides this gut feeling?"

  Craon narrowed his eyes. "How about the fact that they won't let us travel off base. Sure, this place has everything a MechWarrior might want for rest and recreation, but what if I want to go climb a mountain? I mean, they have us at liberty, but not at liberty."

  Andrew waved away that objection. "Standard operating procedure, especially for a unit like ours. If they need to assemble our people to head out and save someone's butt, we've got to be close enough at hand to be collected quickly. Keeping us on the base is the only way to be sure of being able to gather us up in anything approximating a short time. Besides, there are no good mountains on this flat dustball."

  Craon nodded reluctantly. "Good point about the mountains, and the need to keep us close. I thought about the recall thing at first, but then I wondered why, given our uses as a quick-reaction force, they just didn't keep Delta company on an Overlord Drop-Ship at the jump point. It could cut transit time from the world and make us all that much faster to deliver."

  Andrew thought the point was well-taken. "That's something I hadn't considered," he said. "Still, it's hardly enough to justify your uneasiness."

  Craon nodded in agreement. "There're some other things, Captain. Have you noticed that we've not gotten any mail? I went down to the base message center to inquire about it and was told by a clerk that nothing had come in." Craon glanced down at his feet. "I talked to a woman in base ops and, ah, got her to check our status on the computer. As far as the whole AFFS is concerned, we're still on St. Andre. Not only that, but the rest of the Davion Light Guards are there, and the Twelfth Vegan Rangers billeted over on the other side of the camp is supposed to be on Buchlau."

  Andrew leaned forward. "Come on, give. I can see from the look on your face that there's something else ..."

  Craon took a deep breath. "Maggie—she's the woman at the base ops center—just laughed it off. She said it was a computer screw-up and that she'd seen lots of them during this whole thing. She said the computers are usually a couple of months behind what's really going on. Unless someone has faxed orders from New Avalon, nothing gets done. In fact, they consider that the faxes have more validity than anything the computer spits out."

  Redburn frowned. "Fax?"

  Craon leaned forward. "Orders that come printed out on paper. No discs, nothing. Just messages on paper that burns fast. Maggie says they come in by courier, but no one knows where the courier gets them. Weird, huh?"

  Andrew nodded. "True. And faxes contradict what the computer says?"

  "Yup." Craon licked his lips. "The computer reports that the warehouses where we have all our 'Mechs being stored—and I mean all the 'Mechs on the base, Captain—those warehouses are reported to be chock full of supplies and spare parts. In fact, the computer says there's enough spare materiel there to refurbish a whole regiment. And the computer reports there's nothing more than an infantry detail for base security!"

  Andrew's square jaw dropped. "Those idiots. If the Maskirovka has spies able to tap into the base computer, this place will look like a quillar ripe for the plucking."

  Craon opened his hands. "That's why I've got that gut feeling, Captain."

  The loud, bone-rattling scream of a 'Mech raid warning klaxon obliterated Andrew's reply. Within the space of a heartbeat, both men had begun sprinting to where their war machines waited for them.

  Andrew snapped his Centurion's right arm up and tracked along the Vindicator's flight trajectory. He dropped his crosshairs onto the humanoid 'Mech, saw the sight flash once, then stabbed his thumb down on the firing switch. Fighting against the auto-cannon's recoil, he kept the gun on target.

  The hail of depleted uranium slugs savaged the Vindicator's already-damaged right leg, blasting completely through the 'Mech's knee. The limb's lower half twisted free and rocketed skyward on a jet of flame. The 45-ton war machine, unable to sustain controlled flight with only two-thirds of its jump jets, slowly began to spin over. Its flight path deteriorated badly as the 'Mech continued its lazy roll, then finally slammed into the ground, exploding into a roiling ball of argent fire. "Cap, break left!"

  Craon's shout brought Andrew about instantly. A blue line of PPC energy sizzled through the space his Centurion had just occupied. Damn! Would have breached my back if Craon hadn't warned me! Continuing his spin, Andrew came face to face with a humanoid, battle-scarred Griffin. On virtually the only untouched section of armor, high on the machine's right breast, Andrew saw the gold and green chess knight crest that marked this 'Mech as another member of the Second Ariana Fusiliers regiment.

  Four coruscating spears of laser light flashed from Craon's Jenner. Each one cut deep wounds into the armor on the Griffin's arms, dropping half-melted ceramic plates to the ground. The other two beams vaporized the Fusiliers' crest and liquified half the armor on the Griffin's chest.

  The Griffin brought its pistol-like PPC up, the coils glowing with cerulean light. Its particle beam leaped like an electric arc from the weapon's muzzle to the chest of Andrew's Centurion. Squinting against the harsh blue light, Andrew fought to control the Centurion's reaction to the beam's impact. Rocked back into his command couch, he saw armor shards arc away from his 'Mech on superheated plasma jets.

  Andrew dropped the Centurion's targeting crosshairs onto the Griffin's outline, then stabbed the firing switch angrily. The auto-cannon's roar was deafening as it vomited out a storm of hot metal and orange flame. As the autocannon rose with the recoil, its shells raked a diagonal line across the Griffin's chest from hip to shoulder. The shells chewed twisted scraps of armor from the 'Mech and opened holes through which Andrew saw the Griffin's ferrouranium skeleton.

  "Cap, swing wide left!" Archie St. Agnan's voice seethed with outrage. "Archer lance has this one."

  The Griffin all but vanished from sight as wave after wave of LRMs from Archer Lance's Valkyries washed over it. They exploded all over the war machine, cloaking it in a solid sheet of flame. Armor remnants pinwheeled away, smoking like damaged aircraft, then bounced across the landscape. The Griffin's right arm, still clutching the PPC, whirled free of the fiery vortex, narrowly missing Craon's Jenner in its erratic flight.

  The firestorm raging over the Griffin evaporated like a magician's illusion to reveal a badly damaged 'Mech. The cratered armor had been utterly carbonized. Chunks had been blown from the cylindrical LRM launching canister perched on the 'Mech's right shoulder, and the canister now drooped impotently toward the ground. The armor had been blasted from the 'Mech's left thigh, leaving only tatters of the thick myomer muscles that made possible the machine's movement.

  The Griffin's faceplate exploded outward in a glittering crystal shower. The pilot's command couch followed immediately on a tongue of red fire. The 'Mech, unbalanced and frozen in an awkward pose, tottered in reaction to its pilot's ejection. Tipping backward, the Griffin fell to the dusty, armor-strewn plain with a thundering crash.

  Andrew checked his scanners. "I've got nothing on screen."

  Archie's voice buzzed into his neurohelmet. "Archer is clear, and the other lances report the same. Our sector is safe." A chorus of agreement from the other lance leaders
followed Archie's report. Andrew keyed up Craon's Jenner. "What about you, Robert?"

  "Sonovabitch!" Craon's voice, filled with equal parts surprise and pride, echoed in Andrew's cockpit. "I don't believe it!"

  Andrew frowned. "What is it, Leftenant?"

  Hearing his voice, Andrew could easily visualize the broad smile on Craon's face. "Just got a message from Colonel Stone, sir. He said that if we're through playing around, he's got a real fight over in Charlie sector. If we don't mind, he said he'd be honored if we'd join up and help him."

  Andrew smiled. Would wonders never cease? "Did you copy that, lance leaders? Let's head on over south and help the rest of our regiment show these invaders how a real Davion Guard unit fights."

  50

  New Avalon

  Crucis March, Federated Suns

  20 January 3029

  Hanse Davion cinched his robe tighter around his waist, then rubbed one hand through his closely cropped red hair. Stifling a yawn, he smiled at Quintus Allard. "Good morning, Quintus." The Prince took a closer look at his Minister of Intelligence, Information, and Operations, then narrowed his eyes. "Or is it still evening for you?"

  Quintus bowed his head. "I'm sorry to have awakened you at this hour, but it's important."

  Hanse stiffened. "Is there a problem with Operation Ambush?"

  Quintus smiled broadly, which drained some of the weariness from his seamed face. "Not really, sir. We had some trouble on Axton ... elements of the Fourth Tau Ceti Rangers blooded an NAIS training cadre and escaped with a few supplies. All other Capellan assaults were met and neutralized. Operating on Duke Michael's last report, they expected to find little or nothing in the way of garrisons on five supply worlds. They lost everything." Quintus glanced down at his notepad. "And even that little thing on Elgin seems to be progressing nicely."