Beyond the hill, the Fourteenth Legion of Vega lay in tatters. As Shin had guessed, the petrochem refinery had, indeed, been put to the torch. Flaming rivers of thick, blue-black liquid gushed from the ruptured sides of storage tanks. The First Battalion had obviously created the rivers in desperation because they knew no 'Mech could wade through a flood of fire without overheating. Their fiery moat should have warded their flank and directed the attack to an area more easily defended, but the trail of mechanical carcasses told a different story.
Somehow the raiders managed to get through the flames to hit the undefended flank!Shin stared at the raider 'Mechs but couldn't identify them. He glanced at his auxiliary monitor and met the disturbing sight of the computer flipping back and forth between several different 'Mech designs in its effort to correctly label the raiders. Looking up again at the horrible tableau, Shin saw one of the raiders emerge from the flames, rivulets of burning oil running off its legs.
The raiders, about two dozen 'Mechs, pressed forward. They chased the remnants of First Battalion back into the ranks of Second Battalion, then engaged the Kurita reinforcements at the extremes of long range. Seeing two 'Mechs go down in the initial barrage, Shin had the sickening feeling that one of them was Hohiro Kurita's Grand Dragon. '
Once more, the armored figure hauled itself up over his viewplate like a malevolent ghost and resumed working on the glass. Again, Shin punched down on the pedals to boost himself even higher, hoping to shake the man. An explosion at his 'Mech's back accompanied a flashed warning on his status monitor. Something had blown out the left jump jet, letting the right jet send the 'Mech into a lazy pirouette.
Dammit! There must be another one of them working on the jets!Shin gasped involuntarily as the figure on his view plate began to pound his head against the glass with renewed intensity. Two hundred fifty meters up and falling fast! If the drop doesn't kill me, he will!
Shin slammed his fist down on the eject button. Explosive bolts around the faceplate detonated in unison. They blew the faceplate out, wrapping the armored figure in shards of glass. The invader spun up and away, for a heartbeat allowing Shin to believe he was rid of his tormentor.
Hanging on by one hand, the armored raider swung back down, his steel-shod hooves clanging against the lip of the cockpit. The figure bounced up and down, its silhouette resembling nothing so much as an excited ape. It may have been trying to speak, but the warning klaxons blaring in the cockpit drowned out the sounds. The creature raised its right hand and pointed the laser at Shin, making his intent loud and clear.
Fire filled the spherical cockpit as the ejection rockets on the back of Shin's command couch ignited. Inertia jammed Shin back down into the couch's thick padding as the rockets catapulted him free of the doomed Phoenix Hawk.He hurled through the sky, spinning and whirling uncontrollably, which told him he'd struck the raider in the exit from his 'Mech. The wet stickiness running down over his thighs also told him the raider had not missed his dying laser shot.
The couch's gyrostabilizers kicked in and brought an end to the chair's wild ride. Using the foot pedals, Shin turned the chair and directed it down in a small meadow about five hundred meters from where the infantry continued to dismember his lance. He slowed the chair for landing and saw his Phoenix Hawkhit the earth.
His ejection had snapped the 'Mech's head back and imparted a slow backward spin to the humanoid machine. With all the aerodynamics God gave the average mountain, the war machine flipped end over end, then landed on its head. The body crushed the cabin like an empty eggshell, then the 'Mech's broad shoulders hit. Inertia splayed its arms out, grinding clenched fists into the earth and causing the 'Mech's sturdy legs to telescope down into the torso. Fire spurted from all the growing cracks in the Phoenix Hawkas the legs speared the fusion reactor, then the limbs shot up from the doomed 'Mech on jets of ion fire. As the legs spun away, the rest of the 'Mech exploded, sowing the battlefield with mammoth shards of half-melted ceramic armor and jagged slivers of ferro-titanium skeleton.
Arrow Lance's 'Mechs, by dint of their size, weathered the blast easily. Debris from the Phoenix Hawkwashed over them with all the damage of a summer shower. The smaller raiders, however, suffered as armor sheets twice their size sliced through them and bone fragments impaled them. Even those that survived the shrapnel storm fell prey to the explosion's Shockwave. It knocked them flying, freeing their captives.
Shin grounded the command couch and popped the restraints holding him into it. He pulled off his neurohelmet, then looked down to see how much damage the raider had done with his last shot. I don't feel any pain, just blood. That's got to be bad.
He was right. The wound was horrible, unsurvivable. Blood covered him from the lower part of his cooling vest, down his legs, and into the tops of his boots. Already black flies buzzed around him, and in his shocked state, he could barely summon the strength to shoo them away.
Fortunately, the blood was not his.
Weakly, Shin grasped the armor-sheathed left arm and lifted it away from his waist. The smooth metal felt almost warm and fleshlike, and the fingers remained curled around a small piece of weather-stripping from the Phoenix Hawk'sface. A slight dent near the upper arm showed where the command couch's leading edge had hit it during the ejection. Extending up beyond the shoulder, half of the thing's head armor and a broad plate from its chest had been pulled free. Without looking inside at the pieces leaking blood, Shin threw the arm into the long, green summer grasses and climbed out of his chair.
He grabbed the back cushion and yanked it free of the couch. From behind it, compressed into flat packages, he pulled a survival pack, a forest camo jumpsuit, a gun and gunbelt, several clips of ammo, and a cylindrical, diatomic water purification pump. He laid each out on the seat of his couch, then stripped off his cooling vest and bloody shorts. Using several handfuls of grass, he managed to scrape off most of the blood, then pulled on the jumpsuit. After fastening the water pump to it, he shrugged the backpack on and belted the gun around his waist.
Ready to depart, he reached into the command couch's cavity and pulled out his katana.The sword measured a little over a meter, including hilt, and weighed no more than two kilos. The black lacquered wooden sheath showed no decoration, but Shin knew that under ultraviolet light, ghostly purple calligraphy would show up to identify the sword as belonging to a member of the Kuroi Kiri. As he was not a graduate of one of the elite military academies, Shin did not wear a wakizashi sword as well. I am entitled to this one blade, but as myoyabun put it, "Two swords are for show. A blade's work is best done alone."
Holding the sheathed sword in his right hand, Shin started away from his command couch and almost immediately stumbled over the discarded infantryman's arm. He dropped to one knee beside it and turned it over. That's odd. The whole limb has gotten cold! It feels like the armor is chilling itself. And down inside here, a membrane has irised down, and what's this black, sticky stuff leaking all over? It almost looks like a tourniquet to stop the arm from losing blood. It's as though the armor is protecting it so the limb can be reattached .. . that's impossible—but no more so than anything else I've seen today. And it means ...