Tracy snapped off a shot from her large laser at the damaged Hunchbacktoiling up the slope below her, saw sparks flashing from damaged circuitry exposed in the machine's torso. Heavy-caliber autocannon shells cracked into the boulders around her.
Briefly, she was aware of screaming coming over the tac com. When she shifted her Mech's position slightly, she caught sight of Foster's Wasp,ablaze like a gigantic torch for a horrid handful of seconds Then the Waspexploded in flaming, ragged chunks of metal.
Tracy tasted bitter defeat. She was gasping with the stifling heat that pervaded her cockpit, a heat that had long since overpowered her cooling unit and left her weak and dizzy. Heat cramps spasmed in her calf and stomach muscles. The Dutiful Daughterhad received massive damage, her jump jets ruined, her shoulders and upper torso shredded and torn by shell and beam. With Foster's death. Tracy's team was down to four Mechs. a Locust,a Stinger,a Wasp,and her own Phoenix Hawk.Not one of them had escaped heavy damage.
I should have kept going, once I was clear of the line,she thought I could have broken the Kurita line then. I lost the chance when I went back to be with them.
Had she not returned, though, how long would the MechWarrior apprentices have lasted, without her experience to steady them? There was no answer in might-have-beens, and it was too late lor the handful of them to attempt to break through the Kurita line now. A fresh salvo of missiles smashed among the rocks and she drew a bead on a Kurita Catapultin the valley to the west.
A Catapult!They've got reinforcements now! So long as Tracy and her men faced only a company, they'd had a chance. To attempt to lace down a 65-ton Catapultwas another story. She saw her laser bolt catch the ponderous Catapultin one leg. watched metal burning without slowing the machine's advance in the slightest.
A Trebuchetfollowed. Oh. God, no!
It looked like the Trebwas in trouble, however. Its left arm was missing, and black smoke spilled from its side. Tracy became aware of other Mechs, all marked by the starburst-on-sun of the Dieron Regulars, all damaged, all retreating.
Toward her!
‘Hey, Arrows!’ she snapped. ‘On your toes! Fresh meat!’
More and more Kurita 'Mechs appeared among the rocks along the slope below them. There were at least two companies there, most of the 'Mechs battle-damaged. At the moment, all were spilling in nearly uncontrollable contusion toward the east
And Arrow Detachment occupied the ridge squarely in their path.
‘Arrow Leader! Arrow Leader! This is Skull Leader!’ The familiar voice was much clearer now and very, very welcome.
‘Colonel! Where are you?’
‘Two klicks west of your position, and closing! We have you spotted on the ridge west of the factory. Sit tight and don't move! Just keep firing from your position!’
‘Acknowledged, Colonel. We're burning them down!’
On the face of it Arrow Detachment was in a terribly exposed position, smack in the path that the fleeing remnants of the Kurita battleforce were taking. They had been roughly handled in a series of lightning engagements among the mountains to the west, and by now, their pilots were probably thinking only of saving their 'Mechs...and themselves. When the 'Mechs in the lead of the Kurita column began to take fire from the crest of the ridge separating them from the Mifune factory complex, their last reserves of discipline vanished. At almost precisely the same time, four of Carlyle's 'Mechs came smashing up from the south, having looped around the fleeing Mechs' southern flank to strike them from the side. Taking fire from three directions, the Dieron Regulars' last shreds of control evaporated, and individual BattleMechs began to scramble for safety across the rocky ground along the ridge side to the north.
When Carlyle's forces linked up with the defenders on the ridge, only two 'Mechs remained operable enough to greet them. Having been wounded early in the fight, Paul Casey had bled to death in the cockpit of his LocustTracy Kent was unconscious, a victim of heat prostration.
The victory at Mifune Pass promised to become yet another spectacular victory in the annals of the Gray Death Legion. Carlyle had managed to deploy his forces in such a way as to split his more numerous opponents into three groups among the broken ridges and hillsides west of the factory complex, and his deployment of a small force of 'Mech trainees in a fixed defensive position had been nothing short of brilliant. If the regimental historians neglected to point out that the deployment had been accidental, that Carlyle's sudden turn-and-march to the east had been made to rescue Arrow Detachment, that Arrow Detachment's position on the ridgetop where it played anvil to Carlyle's hammer was all the result of luck, pure and simple, they could, perhaps, be forgiven. Grayson Carlyle did not object to being known as a lucky MechForce commander, but he hated it to look as though he relied on luck to carry off his victories.
Tracy regained consciousness in a field hospital set up at Kaigun. The city had surrendered after the Kurita disaster at Mifune Pass, but Carlyle did not yet have enough men on site to secure the city against saboteurs and assassins. A formal occupation would have to wait until House Steiner Drop-Ships could arrive with Lyran troops and reinforcements, in any case, the bulk of the Dieron Regulars remained intact, somewhere north of the city. Meanwhile, the Gray Death was maintaining a defensive position that would allow them to retreat and maneuver, if necessary.
‘How are you feeling?’
Tracy opened her eyes and saw Grayson Carlyle seated beside her cot. ‘Like a 'Mech stepped on me.’
‘That's to be expected. The Doc tells me you'll be up and around in no time.’ -
‘And my people?’
‘Foster and Casey are dead. The rest are fine. Vic Dolby smashed his head against his control panel when his 'Mech was knocked over, but he's already back on duty. We even recovered his Stingerintact.’
'That's good.’ She started to say something more, then bit back the words.
‘What is it?’
‘I...I...’ She tried to order spinning thoughts. ‘I guess I didn't do so well, huh?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘First you had to chew me out about not following orders the night before...and then I went and blew it completely. We never got near the factory complex. And you told me to keep the youngsters out of a fight. I didn't... and now two of them are dead.’
Carlyle leaned back for a moment, thinking. ‘I don't see that you had much choice, Tracy. According to the people with you, you were cut off and surrounded before you even knew there were Kurita 'Mechs in the area.’ He frowned. ‘Bad intelligence, that. But it couldn't be helped.’
‘But...’
‘You lost two of the kids. Again, no choice. You saved four, and yourself. From the way Carolyn Lannetti is talking, you were the hero of the hour, holding the line together, firming the kids up when they needed it, deploying them to meet new threats. It sounds like it was quite a fight.’
‘It was that.’
‘By holding on when I told you to, you scared hell out of the bunch I was chasing-just when they needed scaring. We'd slammed into them ten klicks from your ridge, and it took us over an hour to win through. By the time we broke through, they were pulling back toward Mifune, but they were still in fighting shape. I gather from one prisoner we took that they figured they were completely surrounded when they retreated smack into your bunch perched up on the ridge. Must've been a rude surprise for 'em. They hit your fire and scattered, and then we mopped up.’
‘Then...we won?’
‘Oh, indeed, we did.’ Tracy was startled by the grin on the Colonel's face and puzzled by his emphasis on the word ‘we.’
Then she realized what he was getting at, that the victory had been won through her holding the training cadre together and in place. Had she left the recruits and pursued her own plan, they would have lost it all. Instead, she had pulled her team together, dug in, and they'd slugged it out together.