As above, so below. The lines came together, passed and turned to rend. Falcon and Northwinder ’Mechs blasted smoking chunks from each other at touch range. Armored fighting vehicles circled and shot, engines snarling like rabid wolves. Big Gnome power-armor suits rushed out to strike the smaller Elementals with lasers and short-range missiles—or grapple them. Malvina’s aide-de-camp Star Captain Matthias Pryde crushed the driver’s cage of a Fusilier Shandra scout car in hisUller ’s right fist.
TheUller reeled as a huge shell from an SM1 tank destroyer shattered its right hip actuator. Another tore away its right-arm LB 5-X autocannon and ammunition box. Then the light BattleMech was knocked to pieces by a long-range missile salvo from both racks of a First KearnyRyoken II.
“Stravag!”Malvina screamed. As theUller collapsed like a broken toy, she turned to attack her ADC’s killer. A shadow crossed her cockpit on the left.
Malvina stepped forward with her right foot to turn her ninety-five-ton ’Mech toward it, then flung up the Black Rose’s left arm as something flashed down at her from above.
Impact rocked theShrike and clacked Malvina’s teeth together hard. An enemyHatchetman had sunk the depleted-uranium blade of its handheld weapon deep into the barrel of her outer autocannon.
With theShrike ’s three-fingered right claw, Malvina seized the hatchet haft just above where the enemy ’Mech gripped it, yanked it out of her autocannon, and flung both weapon andHatchetman away together.
Tara Campbell braced as best she could as herHatchetman hurtled backward. It landed on its posterior on bare ground with a thudding crash. It slid several meters before stopping.
A few flakes of snow had begun to drift, lazily from the sky.
A few red flickers on her display indicated minor damage from the impact. Nothing that would affect performance. Likewise her own status: she guessed some bruises on rump and ribs.
That would change quickly if the monstrous winged BattleMech turning ponderously toward her actually brought its weapons to bear. With all her superb skill, Tara scrambled theHatchetman to its feet.
She did not know what the monster was. Not even the master merchant’s voluminous info-dump had contained much data on newer Jade Falcon BattleMech types. She knew—couldsee —it was an assault ’Mech, and at the high end of that weight range. More importantly, she knew from reports from prior worlds on the Falcon hit list that this was the machine of none other than Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen. The stylized black rose insignia confirmed it.
Brutal, confused swirl though it was, the battle was clearly going the way of Tara’s mixed force of Highlanders and Garryowens. The defending troops had employed an ancient trick of waiting for the assault they knew was coming from the woods in buildings justbehind the outermost ones. The apartment blocs shattered by the last salvos of Malvina’s looted JESIIs had been utterly empty.
Then Tara’s troops had rushed forward to catch the Gyrfalcons in the open with all the fury of their fire. Tara had not ordered the countercharge; she presumed her soldiers were overcome with impatience to avenge their brothers and sisters who had been so systematically stamped out by the advancing Falcons, and eagerness to show that Clanners were no more mettlesome than Northwinders and Skye-folk. She felt some of that as well—which was why she had not tried to halt it.
And it seemed the chance for the killing stroke against the Gyrfalcons, to whom Tara’s people had dealt the second bone-breaking blow of the day. Then the Countess spotted the tall, winged BattleMech striding through the smoke and dust and decided to stake all on a kill shot of her own.
Unfortunately, Malvina had sensed the hatchet descending and blocked it from crushing her in her cockpit. Now it was she who would put an end to Tara Campbell, if Tara did not take quick, decisive action.
Raising the hatchet, Tara charged.
Wide-eyed, Malvina Hazen watched the enemy machine attack a BattleMech more than twice its mass with its ridiculous, primitive hand weapon cocked. It was an act of mad courage she would expect from a Falcon, not a bellycrawler.
But based on ice-cold calculation: the Spheroid’s sole chance of survival was getting too close for
Malvina to use Black Rose’s weapons—and the hatchet could disable even her far larger ’Mech with a single shrewd or lucky stroke.
The attack’s sheer unexpectedness gave Malvina no scope for maneuver, skilled as she was. All she could do was grab the hatchet-haft again as that blade expanded toward her viewscreen. She cocked the Shrike ’s left elbow back and swung the arm toward theHatchetman , intending to press the muzzle of her remaining autocannon to the lesser ’Mech’s chest and blast it into smoking chunks with hundred-millimeter shells.
But theHatchetman wrapped its manipulator-tipped left arm over and around theShrike ’s right upper arm, hugging itself against theShrike ’s right side. It was outside the arc of Malvina’s long-range missiles, not that she could use them at touch range, below and to the side of where her shoulder-mounted lasers could reach. And to Malvina’s sudden, tooth-grinding fury, the machine was also too close to bring her autocannon into play: the muzzles just clanked impotently against theHatchetman ’s side armor.
Then her mood broke like a glass rod. She laughed. “Very well, Countess Tara Campbell,” she said aloud. For she also had recognized her opponent: by the signature machine with its Highlander emblem of armored fist upholding a sword by its bare blade, and the odd swatches of blue-green plaid painted on its armor. And also by the enemy MechWarrior’s un-Spheroid-like prowess and bravery.
She put her ’Mech’s right arm over the other’s back.Squeezed. “If you will not let me shoot you, I will crush you!”
The cockpit filled with blue glare.
Listening to the creak of crumpling armor plate and watching the red lights blinking in her display that warned of theHatchetman ’s structure beginning to fail under the awful, inexorable pressure, even as her mind clicked through a list of possible options ofwhat to do next —nothing promising, here—Tara Campbell had a flash in which to wonder if she’d done the right thing by opting to tackle a BattleMech that had to be nearly a hundred tons with her forty-five-tonHatchetman .
The answer still seemedyes . Reports indicated Malvina’s hawk-headed monstrosity was unusually fast for a ’Mech its size. Unfortunately, theHatchetman was slow for a ’Mech ofits size. And while the Falcon’s arsenal was nothing special for an assault ’Mech—what one might expect from a heavy, or even a really burly medium—it was more than sufficient to shred Tara and her ride in seconds if given the chance. Even though Tara was sure she’d taken out at least one of those big Ultra autocannon with her first chop. Mostly.
With an almost musical but nonetheless alarming sound, the armor housing over her left-shoulder actuator began to buckle.Getting tight, here , she told herself. She considered punching out, but wasn’t sure the ejector would do anything more than blast her right into Malvina’s BattleMech. She realized she was humming the Seventh theme, “Garryowen,” tunelessly through clenched teeth....
Blue light surrounded her. She raised her close-cropped head to see the Falcon ’Mech’s head haloed in blue radiance.
“Is this a private dance, TC,”Tara Bishop’s voice said over her radio, “or can I cut in?”
Malvina uttered a wordless falcon-shriek of pure rage. She had been so engrossed in the not-unpleasurable task of crushing Tara Campbell to death that she had neglected to watch her three-sixty vision strip. Now an enemyPack Hunter stood but meters behind her.
The Spheroid machine was two-thirds the man of the inconsiderableHatchetman, a bug, to be swatted with little thought. But it was a bug with a deadly sting: a Ripper Series A1 extended-range particle projector cannon. Which it was currently blasting into the back of theShrike’s head.