BattleTech - LE5523

CASSIE CAME UP FROM BEHIND,

grabbed a fistful of his green-and-black jacket and rammed the barrel of her revolver into his kidneys so hard she felt his knees sag at the unexpected shock of pain.

"Keep that up, Sierra-for-brains," she hissed in his ear, "and I'll blow your guts out your belly button."

To his credit, the agitator froze. She could almost feel his eyeballs straining in their sockets, trying to track far enough to get a glimpse of her. But he didn't try to hand her a milligram of see-here-little-girl-you-might-hurt-somebody guff, which showed he either had some native smarts or was a trained operator. What she'd told him wasn't a threat but a promise. At the next sound out of his mouth she would happily make good on it....

BattleTech - LE5523

BATTLETECH

LE5523

HEARTS OF CHAOS

Victor Milan

BattleTech - LE5523

ROC

Published by the Penguin Croup

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, June, 1996

10987654321

Copyright © FASA Corporation, 1996 All rights reserved

Series Editor Donna Ippolito Cover David Mattingly

Mechanical Drawings: Duane Loose and the FASA art department

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BattleTech - LE5523

For Pat & Scott

BattleTech - LE5523

Señores, Señoras, y Señoritas, Radio KATN, la Super Cadena, presents con mucho gusto, los Caballeros de Coronet! Carlos Camacho!

*APPLAUSE*

BattleTech - LE5523

PART ONE

We Meet 'Neath the Sounding Rafters

If you are ambushed, your survival depends entirely on the inadequacy of your attacker.

—Damon Fay, late 20th-century tae kwon do instructor and law-enforcement officer

BattleTech - LE5523

1

Masamori Hachiman

Galedon District, Draconis Combine

24 December 3056

Regretfully, Mr. Obata took off the headband.

Beyond the white fiberboard walls of his cubicle, the seventy-seventh floor lay silent. The only sounds were the hum of ventilators circulating warm air through the skyscraper—harmonic throb of fans out of alignment—and the buzz of the few fluorescents remaining on high overhead, their light falling like polluted sleet over the cubbyholes that served as offices for the middle managers of Tanadi Computers. Most of the staff, from the Workers in the factories to the Middle Class administrators and executives who, like Mr. Obata himself, worked in the corporate high-rise headquarters in the heart of Masamori, had already left. It was scandalously early; the short-lived winter sun had not yet fallen into the Shakudo Sea. But it was Chairman's Day Eve, and the celebrations were already breaking out on the streets of Hachiman's capital and across the planet. Even a man as devoted to tradition as Mr. Obata saw the need to allow the people the essentially anarchic release of their matsuri, their festivals.

And Mr. Obata, like the late head of Tanadi, the Marquis Redmond Hosoya, took tradition very seriously indeed. Seriously enough to die for.

The hachimaki in his hands was simple enough: a strip of white cloth embossed with a black dragon against a red disk. Not the stylized dragon's head that was the proud symbol of the Draconis Combine, but the Dragon whole, rampant. Flanking it was a slogan drawn in kanji: Ten Thousand Lives for the Coordinator.

Mr. Obata felt tears fill his eyes as he held the cloth in his hands.

It would mean premature death to wear that ancient, sacred symbol on the spy-filled streets of Masamori. So far had the rot penetrated, he bowed a final time toward the figure of the Dragon in its office shrine, breathed in the sweetness of the incense sticks he had set to smolder on either side of it. Then he put the headband back into his open briefcase, setting it atop the false bottom that concealed an even more controversial object, shut the briefcase, and reached for his coat.

* * *

Naked from the waist up, his chest and big white belly emblazoned with a tattoo so new it still bore scabs—of the Virgin of Guadalupe standing on her crescent moon—the man hobbled on his knees through the deep layer of snow that carpeted the ground of the Hachiman Taro Enterprises Compound, snugged up against the Yamato River in the guts of Masamori. A half-dozen newsfolk followed him at a distance of several paces, training an impressive arsenal of still and full-motion holocameras on him and keeping him pinned in the glare of spotlights boasting only slightly less candlepower than a Guillotine's Sunbeam laser. At every step the man whacked himself across the shoulder with a bundle of indigenous thorn-bush branches, alternating each time, as he chanted, "Hail Mary, full of grace."

This was one human-interest story the Federated Commonwealth News Service team assigned to the Seventeenth Recon Regiment, Camacho's Caballeros, wasn't covering. Instead the pair stood in the middle of the Compound, one half confronting the other in the lightly falling snow.

"You're what?" Archie Westin asked in disbelief.

A snowflake struck smack in the center of his cam-erawoman's smooth, chocolate-brown cheek. She smiled and didn't try to brush it away.

"I'm staying, Archie," she said. "And to save you the trouble of saying 'you're what?' again, I'm pregnant."

"You're what?" Archie said again. He was a trim, theatrically handsome young man, with a pencil-thin mustache arid wavy blond hair showing just a hint of red. His accent, like that of his assistant, was the British of the Davion planet of Northfield.

"Hail Mary, full of grace." Whack. "Hail Mary, full of grace." Whack. The HTE Compound was largely deserted. Its CEO and sole owner of any consequence, Chandrasekhar Kurita, had demonstrated his scandalous liberality by letting all his people off at noon today, except for a skeleton crew, some of whose members stood at a polite distance gaping at these typically inexplicable gaijin goings-on. Most of the Caballeros serving as security garrison for the Compound were off preparing for their own Christmas Eve celebrations.

"Hail Mary, full of grace." Whack! By accident or design, the penitent's path carried him so close to Archie Westin that he almost brushed the young reporter's khaki-clad calves.

Archie spun and kicked snow at the man. "Leave off with it, you bloody lunatic!"

The man beamed at him from a face whose cheeks were beginning to sag from rapid fasting-induced diminution of the flesh beneath. His brown crewcut, two months untended and penitentially unwashed, had long gone to lank tendrils, like kelp.

"Bless you, brother," said Tommy Joe Poteet, the Seventeenth's erstwhile Baptist chaplain and newest convert to Catholicism. Behind him, the holovid news crew glared daggers at Archie.

The former Reverend Tommy Joe continued on his way, whacking and hailing. The low overcast threw the sounds back down in his wake as muffled echoes. The news crew trooped after.

"Who are those bloody people, anyway?" Archie stormed, kicking another clump of snow after them.

"The Noticias de la Trinidad news team from Galisteo," his assistant Mariska Savage said. "Remember when poor Terry Chavez bought it in her Crusader during the Ghost Legion attack, and some of the 'llero 'Mech pilots swore they saw angels swoop down to bear her soul up to Heaven? Apparently word got back to the Southwestern Worlds, away back in the beyond of the Free Worlds League. Noticias pulled a team back off the Clan truce line to cover the story."

"They did what?"

"Miracles are big news in the Trinity, Arch. Since Mr. Poteet was a Protestant, and a minister, no less, they're especially fascinated by him."

Archie took his head in his hands and shook it, as if making sure nothing rattled. He and Mariska had been with the Caballeros since arriving on Hachiman back in August. Despite the constant and generally well-intentioned efforts of the 'lleros, he had yet to make the slightest sense of the bizarre tripartite culture of Galisteo, Cerillos, and Sierra, the so-called Trinity or Southwestern Worlds, from which most of the Seventeenth hailed.

"Never mind all that," he said. "What you're telling me—how? Why?"

"Aren't you forgetting 'where,' and 'when,' not to mention 'who'?"

He stared at her. "When did you develop a sense of humor? Not that I'm complaining, mind."

"When I started getting to know these people, Archie. When they helped me start to get to know me. When they gave me the nickname 'Risky' and I started wanting to live up to it."

She reached up and gently touched his cheek. Mariska was in her late twenties, a black woman with straight dark hair framing a broad, pretty face. She was of medium height and wide, solid build, but in her case, "large bone structure" was not a euphemism for "fat." She wasn't fat, but quite handsomely proportioned. Her proportions were simply broader than usual for women—as though she hailed from a high-gee world, although Northfield's gravitation was less than ten percent stronger than Terra's.

"You've been a wonderful boss, Arch, really a love. And you're a sweet boy. But you never, in all the years we've been together, really got to know me."

He blinked at her through the snowflakes adhering to his eyelashes. It was too true, he realized with a shock. His assistant had always been capable, willing, indomitable, and deferential. He'd taken her for granted—as he took for granted that she would always be there. He felt a pang of betrayal: I always assumed you were in love with your boss. Tears stung his eyes.

"As to how and why," Mariska went on, "if you mean my condition, in the usual way, for the usual reasons. If you mean not going back to the Federated Commonwealth with you now that you've been recalled"—she shrugged—"these people have taken me to their hearts. I feel at home with them, as I never did back on Northfield. Even among my own family."

"But you'll never truly be one of them, Ris— Mariska," Archie said. "They still call Cassie Suthorn 'Abtakha', and she's been with them for nine years and pulled everybody's fat out of the fire at least twice over."

"Maybe I'll always be a gringa to them, but they've made me welcome."

"But whatever will you do?"

"I've talked to Astro Zombie about signing on as a commo tech. He's quite enthusiastic. And so am I. He really is a wizard technician, if a trifle odd."

Archie felt himself deflate. "And what am I going to do without you?"

"You'll be fine. Your uncle is Ian Cromwell, after all. And your mother will make sure he doesn't let the Stealthy Foxes assign you to anything too madly dangerous."

Archie stared wildly around through the snow. Ha-chiman's primary was a bright band in the grayness along the top of the Compound's western wall. "Woman," he said in an exaggerated whisper, "watch what you're saying! We're in the heart of Kurita space. You don't know who might be an ISF spy!"

"Come off it, Archie. Street urchins in Sodegarami know you're with Davion Military Intelligence; discretion was never your strong suit. Meanwhile, Chandrasekhar Kurita is the Coordinator's cousin, and the second-in-command of the whole Internal Security Force still spends half of every day conferring with good old Uncle Chandy between these very walls. They already know you're an MI4 plant."

He opened his mouth to. berate her. Then he shut it. "You've never talked back to me before," he said in tones approaching wonder. "You know, I'm really going to miss you."

"And I you, Archie."

From north across the river came a series of rapid explosive pops. Archie ducked his head slightly down into the collar of his Burberry. Most probably the sound was a string of firecrackers being lit off as part of the matsuri already underway in the Floating World district of Sodegarami. But it might just as easily have been full-auto gunfire: the Masakko took their holiday-making seriously.

A figure resolved out of the murk and snow-swirl: a man of middle size, dressed in a black cassock, with black hair turning distinguished-gray at the temples, a black mustache, heavy-lidded Hapsburg eyes set in a handsome if somewhat pudgy face. Mariska Savage's face lit when she saw him.

He slipped an arm around her and kissed her cheek. "Hadn't you better start getting ready?" he asked. "The banquet our employer is giving us starts promptly at seven, so the debauchery will be over in plenty of time for midnight Mass."

"Archie, I've got to run," Mariska said. "Really, I'm sorry. But it's for the best."

Archie's jaw was dropping toward his breastbone. "Father García?"

"Call me Bob, son. We've been friends long enough." Lieutenant Senior Grade Father Doctor Roberto "Call Me Bob" García, SJ, the Seventeenth's psychologist and historian, as well as a Crusader pilot himself, had taken the FCNS team under his wing when they first began to cover the Caballeros.

Archie's head traversed back toward his former assistant. "You mean to tell me," he said in disbelieving tones, "that you've gone and got yourself put preggers by a bloody Jesuit?"

Mariska Savage merely smiled and snuggled closer to Father Doctor Bob.

* * *

"What brings you out on this snowy Chairman's Day Eve, Obata-kun?" asked the Port Authority guard as Mr. Obata key-carded his way through the ground-floor entrance to Yoshitsune Spacesport Traffic Control.

Mr. Obata controlled the urge to snap at the green-uniformed man for familiarity. The Masakko— residents of Hachiman's capital city—were notorious for their boisterous irreverence, even by the planet's own standards. And this was a holiday to boot. Besides, he reminded himself, now of all times he couldn't afford to create an incident.

He held up the briefcase. "Preventive maintenance check," he said.

The security guard's eyebrows rose toward the short bill of his cap. He always knew Tanadi was a stickler, but this ... He waved Mr. Obata into the half-lit foyer.

By the time he'd finished climbing several flights of stairs, Mr. Obata was winded. He tried to keep up the regular practice of judo to set a good example for the lower classes, but his duties as Associate Director for Support Services left him little time. Tanadi products were excellently designed, but quality control left much to be desired. It was another sign of the decline he had pledged himself to fight, Mr. Obata thought— not realizing that standards had been improving steadily since Theodore Kurita had long ago begun instituting the reforms Mr. Obata found so distasteful.

The door to Traffic Control was shut. The corridor outside was deserted. That was good. Mr. Obata leaned for a moment against a wall, breaming from his diaphragm, both to recapture his breath and to summon his ki.

He removed his coat, folded it, and laid it on the floor. Kneeling down on the thin lime-green carpet, he opened the briefcase and took out the hachimaki, which he knotted around his temples. Then he unfastened the case's false bottom.

Holding his right hand out of sight behind his thigh, Mr. Obata pushed through the unlocked door into Traffic Control Central. The Draconis Combine was poor, as certain of its leaders never tired of reminding the people, especially when those people started agitating for higher wages. Even though Hachiman was the richest planet in the whole Combine, just this one facility handled space and atmospheric traffic for both spacesport and capital. Despite that fact, there were only two operators on duty tonight.

The one sitting farthest from the door never looked up from the radar display that lit his features in rhythmic splashes of ghostly green. A voice spilled from a speaker in the console before him: "—DropShip Eia Panice, out of Kawabe, Union Class, thirty-five hundred tons, putting in for scheduled groundside overhaul, requests clearance to land at Hachiman Technical Institute—" The Institute, which provided hands-on classes in repair of BattleMechs, aerospace fighters, and DropShips, lay across the port proper from the tower.

The other controller took off his headset, rose, and came over to meet Obata, presenting his hand and a mouth of laughing teeth as he saw the headband. In the calculated dimness, lit by red and amber displays, he mistook the hachimaki for something more festive. "Obata-san! Have you come to help us celebrate?"

Mr. Obata felt his own lips drawing back into a grin that threatened to split his head in two. He raised his right hand from its concealment and shot the man through the forehead from a range of about two centimeters.

The pistol was a special covert-operations model, the ancient but enduringly popular .22 Long Rifle, with a built-in sound and flash suppresser and a capacity of twenty-four rounds in a double-column magazine in the butt. It was of a type originally developed by SAFE, House Marik's intelligence service, but the design had been copied by the other Great Houses and several lesser powers and was consequently untraceable. It made no more noise than an emphatic spit. The other operator, hearing muffled by his headset and the effort of understanding the gaijin radio operator on board the freighter, didn't realize anything was amiss until his peripheral vision caught his partner slumping toward the floor like a dropped handkerchief.

As the man whipped his head around, Mr. Obata was approaching him, with his ghastly fixed smile and the suppressed rifle held at the full extension of both arms. The traffic controller jumped to his feet, throwing his arm protectively across his face even as Mr. Obata began to shoot at him.

Blood spurted from a hit on the controller's right forearm. Shrilling in terror, the young technician turned and bolted blindly, tearing the plug of his headset loose from the console. Unfortunately, the direction he chose to run—not unnaturally, away from his hideously grinning attacker—led nowhere except into the floor-to-ceiling transpex wall, bullet-proof and polarized, that gave out onto the now-quiescent landing field. He flattened himself against the window as if hoping he might somehow permeate through it as if it were a membrane. Then he slid downward to a cowering crouch.

Mr. Obata had never fired a weapon in his life, had never even handled one until he'd been presented with the smuggled gun and instructed what to do with it. He coped with his inadequacy as a marksman by pushing the gun at his quarry and continuing to pull the trigger until it quit making even its negligible amount of noise and recoil.

By that point the hapless tech had quit making noise as well.

Mr. Obata stooped and laid the gun almost reverently at the soles of his victim's cheap Srinagar shoes. He picked up the headset abandoned by the first controller, held the microphone to his lips, and spoke the words, "Climb Mount Niitake." Then he went back into the hall for his briefcase.

Kneeling on the thin carpet in the center of the control room, he reopened his case on the floor beside him. From inside the hidden compartment he took a tanto dagger. He unsheathed it and set it down by his thigh. Then he took off his jacket and began to pull the tail of his white dress shirt out of the waistband of his trousers.

BattleTech - LE5523

2

Masamori Hachiman

Galedon District, Draconis Combine

24 December 3056

As the band played on, Cassiopeia Suthorn, ace scout for the Seventeenth Recon Regiment and recently promoted to Lieutenant Senior Grade, whirled through the waltz, trying to keep her feet out from under those of her escort and silently cursing her friends.

Christmas was a gaijin holiday, and manifestly unacceptable to the mostly unbroken generations of xeno-phobe Kuritas who had ruled the Draconis Combine for centuries. But long before humankind had ever achieved space flight the Japanese people had gotten in the habit of it. Attempts to stamp out its celebration had never entirely succeeded, especially on Hachiman. The bulk of the planet's population weren't even descended from Christians, being of Gujarati and Mah-ratta stock and resolutely Hindu beneath a thin wash of Dragon cult Confucianism. But Hachimanites, and in particular the Masakko, whether of Japanese extraction, or Hindu, or Korean, Ethiopian, Syrian, or Rasal-hague Scandahoovian, could never be persuaded to let go of a holiday devoted to parties, garish decorations, and getting presents.

Prosperous Hachiman was the Kurita world most devoted to practicing compromise, the art of the possible. Centuries before, the insightful Planetary Chairman Isoroku Fillington had decreed that December twenty-fifth should henceforth be celebrated as Chairman's Day. It had nothing at all to do with alien, unwelcome religions. And if the effigies of Blue Boy Krishna and elephant-headed Ganesha in Hachiman's household kami shrines were pushed aside that day in favor of a stout figure with a white beard and a red suit... well, he, too, was merely an aspect of the Dragon.

The Planetary Chairman's own Chairman's Day Eve Ball was the social event of the Masamori season. The Right Honorable Percival Fillington, Earl of Hachiman, had done himself proud. The Grand Ballroom, on the ground floor of his palace in Masamori's Assad District, was a pentagonal chamber fifty meters across and three stories high. Its floor of polished hardwoods from the Trimurti Mountains was dominated by a chandelier a full thirty meters across that consisted of a spray of millions of fiber-optic stalks appearing to gush like a fountain from a circular bronze and transpex base. At each corner of the ballroom rose a column, one of ivory, one jade, one teak, one steel, and one of solid gold, representing the five Pillars of Combine society. Along three of the walls tables had been placed between the Pillars and piled with food: steamed fish, vegetables, barons of beef, curry, rice, purple slivers of Tamerlane melon from New Samarkand, three-meter-long sea scorpions boiled scarlet. Each table displayed a man-high ice statue, one a swan, one a banth—a Hachimanite predator resembling a flattened eight-legged bear—and, of course, a Dragon. Along another wall was the bandstand, and the last was taken up by huge double doors giving out onto the palace's extensive garden.

Everybody who was anybody on the whole planet was here—with the glaring exception of Cassie's employer, Chandrasekhar Kurita. That was odd, since he and the Earl had recently patched up a feud that had stood since the present Chairman assumed office—a peacemaking process that had required a small war to accomplish. In fact, during the bad old days, the planet's Kurita, who was most un-Kurita-like in his sybaritic tastes and not one to miss a party—had attended religiously. Now that peace had broken out, Uncle Chandy was nowhere to be seen. The ballroom buzzed with muted speculation: was the Buddha-fat magnate sick? In hiding? Had a new rift developed?

The truth was that Chandy got a prodigious hoot from his Southwestern mercenaries, who were so uncouth and weird—literally outlandish—that the old propaganda caricatures of barbarian money-troopers paled by comparison. Cassie only wished she were back at the HTE Compound with them.

She caught sight of the Chairman himself, standing by the Pillar of Teak, a Srinagar crystal snifter almost as large as his head in hand. A slight man of no great strength and sickly constitution, Percy had been regarded by his grandfather—the tyrannical, reptilian, and blessedly late Rex Fillington—as irredeemably deficient, mentally and morally as well as physically. Among the huge—nobility—of the planet, as well as the military and managerial ranks of the Middle Classes, he was regarded as something of a twit.

And yet he was a handsome man, with well-sculpted features and chestnut hair caught in a samurai topknot rather than its customary queue. He looked very dashing indeed in the white tunic, black trousers, and red boots of his Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery uniform. The long and short-sword dai-sho he wore were not the blades he was entitled to wear by virtue of his birth into the kuge, but rather ones he had earned on graduation from the elite Sun Zhang Academy. He had been among the few to pass through the brutal Sun Zhang Academy Cadre in a single term, and the huge red disk of the Bushido Blade he wore on his breast was awarded only to those who earned it in combat.

At the moment the Honorable Percy was giving Cas-sie his puppy-dog-lost look. Of course. An intelligent, able, courageous man who underestimated himself even more thoroughly than others did, he was that rare thing among ranking Dracs: nice. The problem was that he was, withal, too nice for Cassie's taste. She liked him a lot, respected him for the strengths she, at least, saw quite clearly in him. But as for falling into bed with him, much less into love ... no.

"You might want to watch out for the trap of mistaking abusiveness for manliness, hon, since that's a big risk for people like us," her MechWarrior friend Captain Kali "Lady K" MacDougall had cautioned her. (How odd it still seemed to think the words "MechWarrior friend," which for most of Cassie's life would have been an oxymoron). "Still," Kali had tacked on, "poor Percy really is kind of a wimp." .

The orbit of their dancing feet interposed Cassie's date between her and the Chairman. Cassie's escort was a strapping young man in dress uniform with the yellow shoulder bars and piping of the Armor, which was odd since as far as Cassie knew there were no tanks on Hachiman. She had been set up with him for the evening courtesy of her friend Tai-sa Eleanor Shimazu, commander of the Ninth Ghost Legion and recently acceded to the post of top oyabun over all the planet's yakuza-fczi. In fact Cassie suspected her date was one of Lainie's cost-offs, since he fit her profile: tall, blond, built, beautiful, and—so far as Cassie could ascertain by his occasional attempt at conversation— dumb as a bagful of hammers.

His large hand was sweat-clammy on Cassie's bare back. He muffed a step, trod on the toe of one of her stiletto pumps, and glared down at her. True Drac: the woman was always at fault. Cassie smiled dazzlingly up at him and thought about giving him a quick pentjak-silat wrist-throw, just for the pleasure of seeing him hit the floor.

She herself was certifiably beautiful: a lithe, slender woman, 165 centimeters tall, with hair shiny-black as a raven's wing piled atop her head in an elaborate knot. Her face was oval and perfect, her nose slim and ever-so-slightly snubbed. Her eyes were large, classic Japanese almonds, with pronounced epicanthic folds—but smoky gray-blue, capable of changing from brushed-steel to deep slate, depending on her mood. She wore an evening gown of sapphire silk, low-cut in back, that fit her like oil. Had she been wearing anything between it and her smooth brown skin it would have stood out like a mole on her cheek.

She was dressed to kill, was Cassie. Literally. Taped to the inside of her right thigh was a flat-handled, 20-centimeter vibrodagger, a very neat piece of equipment. It was, in fact, Rabid Fox issue, a present from Archie Westin, who probably would've been pestering her as much as Percy if he hadn't been boffing Lady K. Cassie never went anywhere unarmed. But she still felt naked, in a way merely being unclothed never made her feel, since the weapon was not Blood-drinker, the ancient Indonesian kris she customarily wore; it was too bulky to conceal beneath her sheer gown.

She also felt like a total fool.

* * *

It was Kali MacDougall who'd talked her into coming tonight, of course, aided and abetted by Lainie. "Hon," the blonde MechWarrior had told her, her extravagant two-meter-tall frame sprawled like a slumming goddess across the bed of her tiny Compound quarters, "it just wouldn't strike you dead to learn to be a little more feminine. Truly."

Cassie felt her cheeks grow hot. Kali often had that effect on her. She never said anything to hurt Cassie or make her feel small. But she was always catching the smaller woman unawares.

"I do fine being feminine," Cassie protested. "I got Percy hooked on me quick enough." It was less than two months since Cassie and the Caballeros had saved HTE, Uncle Chandy, and the Regiment from destruction with a plan that required Cassie to get close to Lord Fillington. Which was where his interest in her originated. He seemed the more fascinated by her now for the knowledge that she had deceived him.

"That was acting," Kali said.

Cassie glared at her from suspicion-narrow eyes. "Is this part of your big scheme to humanize me?"

"Yep."

Kali MacDougall had a most annoying habit of being right. And since both she and Lainie Shimazu managed to be at one and the same time tough and feminine as hell, Cassie had let herself be talked into it.

* * *

And now she was repenting at leisure, as the old saw went. The waltz ended. When her escort tried to lumber off the dance floor with her in tow, Cassie dug in her heels, then simpered when he turned to glare at her. "Please," she said in a throaty voice. "I just love to dance."

His frown melted into a nod of acquiescence. Plainly he had great plans for later on tonight. Kali, she thought as the band began another waltz, I'm going to kill you.

Aside from being self-conscious, not to mention bored cross-eyed by her consort, Cassie was nagged by a lingering, creepy feeling of unease.

There was no sensible reason for it. The Clans were restless, and every week or two rumors passed over Hachiman like Shockwaves from a supernova that one or another of them was about to bust the truce. But the Clans were distant, and the truce seemed to be holding. Across the border the Federated Commonwealth seemed to be on shaky ground, but the last thing Prince Victor Davion wanted to do right now was take a poke at the Draconis Combine. Though the two states had long been the bitterest of enemies, the Clan threat had made them allies. As for internal strife, while there was almost certainly at least one riot already in progress in the streets of Masamori, and possibly more, there was no real discontent to speak of—perhaps because of the pressure-vent that rioting provided.

But the only way Cassie had managed to survive— as a street kid on the hardscrabble Liao world of Larsha; as a scout against pirates, Dracs, and the Clans; going up against the dreaded ISF itself—was by developing a keen internal danger-sense. And learning to trust it.

She and her partner revolved past the double doors. Perhaps her uneasiness derived from the tall, solitary figure in black standing with its back to the Pillar of Ivory, opposite the doors. His hair was red and wavy, his face a brick-colored fist of almost transcendental ugliness. He wore a pistol at his waist and a wakizashi, a short-sword, slung over his left shoulder. He watched the proceedings with a dark fixity.

Cassie had a nearly pathological fear of the giant war machines called BattleMechs, which was why she'd perfected the art of hunting them afoot. But she feared very few human beings. The man in black was one of those few.

She was in good company. His name was Ninyu Kerai Indrahar, and he was second-in-command and adoptive heir to Subhash Indraher, the Smiling One— head of the Combine's Internal Security Force, the most feared secret police in the Inner Sphere. It was not for his position that she feared him, nor even for the fact that he had come close to destroying both Uncle Chandy and the Caballeros, the only family she had known since childhood.

It was for the fact the he was much like her. Though his career had begun as a MechWarrior, he had no need to swaddle himself in tens of tons of titanium and steel. He radiated menace black as his garb—intimate menace, personal menace, not the robot threat of a ten-meter-tall BattleMech. Cassie's defense against the monstrous machines she so feared had always been that they were easy for her to see, and she was hard for them to see.

She had the conviction Ninyu Kerai could see her, anywhere she went.

He was not a handsome man, not in the manner of her escort. His face was determinedly ugly, a knot of scars and anger, but it showed a rugged, implacable strength that exerted a magnetism all its own. It was the sort of ugliness that intimidated men and melted women.

Not that Cassie was susceptible, of course. She was merely assessing him, as she might if she were out trolling for marks in her intelligence-gathering mode. He had been an enemy before, and while he was Uncle Chandy's ally now, in the maelstrom of Drac politics he could easily be a foe again tomorrow. It was as important for her to know his strengths and weaknesses as to know those of a new model BattleMech.

His dark eyes caught hers briefly across the dance floor. Heat and cold warred within her body. Fear, she told herself. Nothing more. Her escort whirled her away.

* * *

It was dealing with people that Ninyu Kerai Indrahar found hard. Killing them was easy.

It had not always been that way, he reflected as he sipped fruit juice from a goblet. In his youth he had been fluid with people, easygoing, despite his early recruitment by the ISF and his training as both Mech-Warrior and commando. In those days he had been friend and confidant of young Theodore Kurita, future ruler of the Draconis Combine, as quick with a joke as with a gun, as comfortable with his arm around a woman as with his fingers around the hilt of a katana.

But something had happened. Now he watched the glittering high-life swirl with a disdain masked by his customary look of angry impassivity. The years of service in the Combine's secret police had taken their toll. Youth and ease had been burned from him, by constant danger, by brutality, by the hidden knowledge that he could never hope to fill the shoes of the man he was appointed one day to replace.

Yet his adoptive father constantly urged him to renew his social skills. "The Dragon cannot afford for you to become a mere blunt instrument, or even a sharp one, my son," the old man would tell him from the powered wheelchair in which he had spent the last decade while his still-living body decayed around his razor wits and steel will. "Your task is infinitely more complex—and infinitely more demanding. You must remain flexible, sensitive to the slightest nuance."

Once Ninyu would have enjoyed such a splendid party as this. Now it was meaningless to him, so much white-noise for eye and ear. But he must never forget that he was the obedient son of Subhash Indrahar, the Smiling One. Among the most dangerous and powerful men alive, Indrahar had earned that nickname for the charm with which he hid his real intentions. It was no surprise that the Smiling One deemed it important for his heir to attend such functions. So Ninyu stood alone, enduring. After all, he was about duty, not gratifying his own desires.

The gaijin scout, Cassiopeia Suthorn, danced past, looking small and vulnerable in her escort's clumsy embrace. Ninyu Kerai knew that was an illusion. She had gotten the better of him on their first meeting, the only person to best him in a physical encounter since he was a child. Few who faced him had even survived.

He had raged at first, shame-burned, hungering to destroy her. Political realities—those accursed pressures that samurai might disdain but commandos could not afford to—denied him that pleasure. The passion had cooled, though, and now he could watch her with stolid respect for her capabilities.

She spun away from him, a sleek panther inexplicably harnessed to a bear. She was undeniably beautiful in the sapphire gown that clung to her like an adolescent lover. It was not that he was affected by her beauty, he assured himself. He merely noted her potential effect on others.

It was all part of learning, once again, to deal with people.

* * *

The trajectory Cassie and Lainie's blond Armor officer followed brought them before the swan table just as the waltz concluded. The hand behind Cassie's back began to drift south again, leaving a moist trail. Evidently its owner thought he was going to get lucky tonight. He was wrong.

Just how wrong he was, not even Cassie realized.

As the final chord of the dance hung trembling in the air, the double doors flew open. Men burst in, bulky in padded body armor. For a moment they stood, surveying the glittering throng from behind the faceless anonymity of their visored helmets. Gauntleted hands gripped submachine guns.

Percival Fillington strode forward. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

Turning at those words, the nearest of the helmeted, armored men pivoted slightly and fired a burst full-auto from the hip.

BattleTech - LE5523

3

Masamori Hachiman

Galedon District, Draconis Combine

24 December 3056

The Earl of Hachiman flew back into the arms of his startled bodyguards. They in turn were the next to die as the intruders began to spray the crowd at random.

"¡Hijo de la chingada!" Cassie shouted. She reached past her escort's back, deftly unsnapped the flap of his holster and yanked free his service arm. Bringing it around in front of her, she racked the slide. Then she thrust the handgun forward until her arms locked with the weapon pointed at the groin of an intruder not four meters away. Staring down the barrel without bothering to acquire a sight picture, she pulled the trigger.

Click. Cassie's date for the evening was carrying his piece unloaded.

As one, Cassie and the visored man raised their eyes from the large chromed service semiauto. Cassie saw bloodless lips split in a grin beneath the visor's lower edge. The moment stretched out in silence, like a glass rod whose center has been heated molten in a torch, and whose ends are then drawn away while the hot middle attenuates to a thread, ever thinner.

The thread broke. Gauntleted forefinger tightened on trigger. Cassie tossed her useless gun in his face and threw herself backward in a somersault over the buffet table, scattering silver and crystal.

Her escort screamed and did a herky-jerky dance as crimson splotches lit up the front of his white dress tunic. Trigger held down, the gunman hunted Cassie with his bullet-stream.

* * *

Fool though he was, Percival Fillington knew how to die. And so, at the last, he earned the respect of Ninyu Kerai Indrahar.

In life Ninyu Kerai had little use for the Earl of Hachiman, but he took grim satisfaction in avenging his death. Even as Percy was bravely—if none too brightly—striding forward to confront the intruders, the red-haired man in black was turning his body clockwise to cover drawing his sidearm with his left hand. As Percy fell, Ninyu drew the weapon, dropped into two-hand shooting stance, and fired two shots.

He was a man who favored penetration over stopping power. His weapon was a sturdy Sony-Nambu pistol in an exotic caliber, firing sharp-pointed high-velocity bullets with tungsten cores. Such rounds were extremely hard to come by, since they were designed to defeat even the full-body armor worn by the ISF's DEST commandos.

Their anti-armor capability did not come immediately into play. The hard-shell polymer helmets and transpex visors worn by the intruders left their throats almost entirely unprotected. Ninyu Kerai put two rounds through the side of one raider's neck.

As the man fell spurting, Ninyu pivoted micrometrically and put two bullets into the chest of the raider next to him. It was a woman, Ninyu noted dispassionately. The bullets performed as advertised—and good thing, since otherwise Ninyu Kerai would have had their manufacturer's quality-control engineers boiled in a black cast-iron kettle. She dropped like a wet rag.

Systematically the man in black moved his sight-picture from target to target, giving each the double-tap benediction of a trained commando who isn't concerned about body armor. Several bodyguards had managed to get their weapons out and into play before being cut down, and others were arriving through doors concealed behind the Pillars ringing the pentagonal ballroom. Against the shattering noise of many guns going off, noise that seemed to ricochet like bullets, it was difficult to tell where any given shots were coming from, especially since the calm method of Ninyu's motions were not such as to attract the eye.

He had fired half his rounds, dropping five intruders, before one noticed, shouted, and turned the fury of his machine pistol on him.

* * *

Hearing the bullets punch through the table behind her, imagining she could feel their breath of passage hot on her bare legs, Cassie kicked off her heels and speed-crawled the length of the table. She passed the feet of livery-clad servers who screamed and fell as bullets caught them.

Unable to see her through the linen tablecloth that hung almost to the floor, the gunman was pursuing her blindly with his bullets. Serving dishes and exotic foodstuffs were knocked flying off the table in sprays of pink and white and powdered-glass snow. The immaculately carved swan exploded.

And then the bolt of the terrorist's submachine gun slammed home on an empty chamber.

Cassie was up in instant response. Whether as a nod to the Combine's status as a poor power, or in some inverse snobbery here in gadget-mad Masamori, the serving trays for the hot food were chafing dishes warmed by canned-heat flames. Cassie snatched a burning canister from beneath a silver dish of curry and hurled it at the gunman as he fumbled for a fresh magazine.

The can struck the center of his chest, spilling blue fire down belly, groin, and thighs. The alcohol canned-heat mixture didn't burn hot enough to do serious damage, at least not right away, but Cassie knew it wasn't the way of those on fire to make fine calculations.

The gunman had presence of mind enough to drop and roll. As he went down on hisbelly, squelching most of the flames, Cassie scrambled up over the table. Three flashing steps and she threw herself onto his back.

His momentum carried them over with her underneath. She grunted as his weight crushed her, but Cassie was still able to make a grab at his holstered sidearm as they went down. She seized it, thumbed off the safety, stuck the muzzle up under the bend of his jaw, pulled the trigger twice.

He was carrying his weapon loaded, not to mention cocked-and-locked. Cassie winced as back-blast blood sprayed her face. His body convulsed twice wildly, and became dead weight.

Then the corpse twitched as bullets slammed, into it. Another raider was approaching, blasting away at Cassie. She extended her gun hand, fired shots through the man's unarmored knees and shins. He screamed and fell.

Another. Cassie shot him through thigh and groin. Blood sprayed in a wide red fan from his severed femoral artery; he was dead, though it would take the body a few seconds to quiet down. No other targets presented themselves. As the man whose lower legs Cassie had shattered lay there moaning, she shot him through the throat, then eeled out from under the dead raider.

* * *

Alerted by an awareness as keen as any katana, Ninyu Kerai Indrahar stepped back behind the Pillar of Ivory a fraction of a heartbeat before bullets began to smash chunks from its polished pale surface. Out of the line of fire, he dropped the half-empty magazine, drew another from a pouch at his belt, slid it into the well, and seated it with a palm-heel' blow.

As he did, a visored figure danced sideways around the Pillar. Ninyu reached up with his right hand, drew his wakizashi, and slashed diagonally down in one blinding swift motion. The incomparably sharp blade, forged in intricately folded layers of mild and brittle steel, millennia ago, sliced through the synthetic of the helmet and the terrorist's skull as if they were warm paté from the late Planetary Chairman's buffet.

* * *

A machine-pistol began to yammer as Cassie darted for the man she'd just finished off. Muzzle-flash danced yellow at the edges of her peripheral vision. Bullets gouged hand-rubbed hardwood near her bare feet. Stooping, she dropped the empty pistol, grabbed the dead man's submachine gun, and did a half-somersault on her belly. She landed sliding, facing the raider who was firing at her across the corpse. She triggered a burst. The gunman's legs flew out from under him.

She rolled to her left, cut the legs from beneath three more raiders. She wasn't wearing earplugs, and all the muzzle-blasts had halfway deafened her, but she felt the vibration of footfalls coming up behind her. She rolled right, holding the trigger down.

Her burst cut downward across the visor of a man running at her, knocking him backward. She slashed the bullets down the front of his chest, throwing him onto his back, and then pumped the rest of the magazine into his crotch.

She came up on one knee, trying to tug up the hem of her skirt, which had bunched about her thighs, binding them. Motion tweaked the fringe of her peripheral vision. She looked up to see Ninyu Kerai Indrahar coming around the Pillar of Ivory, aiming his handgun at her one-handed.

Snarling, she raised her captured SMG in a gesture as empty as its magazine. The Nambu-Nissan's muzzle blossomed yellow.

A crack, a slap of air on the cheek, solid as fingers, a whiff of burned hair. The end of a jet-black lock of Cassie's hair drifted downward toward the floor in little swoops.

Slowly Cassie turned. An armor-clad woman stood three meters behind her with a Sternsnacht heavy pistol aimed at the back of her skull. The woman had lost her visored helmet somewhere. Her hair was dark blonde and cropped close, her cheekbones Slavic-broad, her eyes blue as the sky. And also as wide.

In the exact sternum-center of her quilted armor jacket, a neat black hole wept a single red tear. She dropped to her knees, and over onto her face.

Cassie turned, wide-eyed herself, to stare at Ninyu Kerai. He tipped up the barrel of his pistol in salute, nodded slightly.

Letting the submachine gun fall with a clatter, Cassie dove for the Sternsnacht, came up holding it in both hands. There were no more targets. Between her and Ninyu and the late-arriving Palace security staff, all the intruders were down.

An impact, muffled and heavy as the fall of a distant mortar round. Another. Cassie heard the silverware laid out on the table with the ice-statue Dragon begin to jingle. Overhead, the great light-fountain chandelier began to sway.

The hairs rose at the back of her neck. Those slow-rhythmic temblor sounds could mean only one thing: BattleMech.

The double doors to the garden opened. The guests who'd been lucky enough to escape into the snowy outdoors came streaming back in. '"Mechs!" screamed a portly man in a government administrator's robes.

An explosion flowered in the garden behind him. The administrator and a hapless half-dozen others were launched into the now-deserted bandstand on the debris-laden forefront of the blast wave. Cassie went flat and buried her face in her arms.

Something fell beside her with a slap. She raised her head. A smoking sandal had landed on the floor nearby.

A crunching rumble from the garden. Cassie looked around. Through the blown-in doors she could see a broad metal foot like a tapered cube. BattleMaster.

Armed security guards were running back and forth in frenzy, acutely aware that they'd already blown the Big One, but none too eager to run outside and expiate their failure to protect the Planetary Chairman by getting turned into pink mist by the medium lasers that bristled from the 85-ton 'Mech. She saw Ninyu Kerai Indrahar spear some with his eyes, setting them to Securing the fallen terrorists. He relieved a corpse of its submachine gun and spare magazines as the machine gun in the BattleMaster's giant left arm began to flay the snow-clad garden outside.

He started toward the door, working the SMG's action. Pausing to swap the Sternsnacht for a submachine gun of her own, Cassie ran after him.

He spun round, weapon ready, before her reaching hand could touch his arm. "Don't," she said. "Not even you can take down a BattleMaster with a squirt gun."

He scowled. "I must fight."

"Didn't your adoptive father teach you better than that?"

Anger flared in those dark eyes. "That 'Mech pilot thinks his comrades are still alive in here," she said hastily. An impact jarred the building, brought fine white dust sifting down from the dazzle overhead. "Otherwise he'd have blown the front half off the place already. He's being careful to avoid hurting his own. If you're good—and lucky—you can keep him busy for a while, and he won't dare turn his full firepower loose on you."

"And what will you be doing while I keep him busy?" the tall man asked. "Attacking him with your own squirt gun?"

She showed him a wild grin. "I'm a professional. This is what I do."

"You are impertinent," he said matter-of-factly. "But you are not a fool. I shall do as you say."

* * *

The corridor was dim, the yellow glow of light-strips running along the tops and bottoms of the walls all but swallowed up by the dark stain with which the immaculately hand-rubbed hardwood paneling was finished. The light-show out the fifth-floor window of the Palace was highly impressive as Cassie again hiked her gown up strong, slim thighs. Apparently the Battle-Master had brought some of its little—and not so little—pals along. These were busy rampaging around the heart of Masamori like a twenty-story dinosaur in an ancient Japanese movie, creating diversions.

A. kilometer away she saw another BattleMech rise into the air, illuminated by the flames of its jump jets and the blaze of a building burning behind it. It was the most humanoid-looking 'Mech she'd ever seen.

Until now she'd only ever laid eyes on one in holos from archive files: the Wyvern, an ancient Star League design, not seen in the Inner Sphere for centuries—not until ComStar had rolled out an uprated version to meet the Clans in their giant death-duel on Tukayyid.

But she didn't for an instant think that ComStar was for some reason falling upon the Draconis Combine. No, obviously it was the Word of Blake, the renegade ComStar sect the Caballeros had butted heads with two months ago, returned to Hachiman. Whether they still believed Uncle Chandy was a threat to ComStar's control of interstellar communications because Hachiman Taro Enterprises had perfected its own hyperpulse communications system, or whether they were looking for revenge on Chandy for defeating their earlier initiative—or on Ninyu Kerai Indrahar and poor Percy for playing them for fools with the tale of the phony breakthrough—she didn't know.

The blinding blue of PPC fire stabbed out from somewhere west of the jumping 'Mech. It struck the armor housing that shielded the right-shoulder actuator and burned through it in a shower of coruscance. The arm fell away, drooling blue sparks. Overcompensating for his machine's abrupt imbalance, the pilot tumbled his gyros. The Wyvern began to spin, toppled off the thrust-columns of its jets, and fell out of sight.

Somewhere in the snow-streaked night, friendly 'Mechs, Ghost Legion or 'llero, were responding. The yammer of the machine gun, interspersed with crashing, floor-rattling thuds as the BattleMaster periodically slammed its fist into the Palace, made it painfully clear any relief would be way too slow. In a matter of moments the fearsome 'Mech was going to punch enough of a hole in the building that its pilot would see clearly that all his comrades were down. And then there would be nothing on all Hachiman to prevent him standing back and flattening the place with his PPC and short-range missiles. Cassie could see the great, round, transpex-fronted head gleaming not four meters below the window.

She fought her gown up far enough to grab the vibrodagger and rip the tape free of her thigh, not even reacting to the pain. She cleared the tape from the weapon and switched it on.

With deft strokes of the thrumming device she cut off the hem of the gown at mid-thigh. What she had in mind was crazy enough without the frivolous garment binding her legs. She shut off the dagger, hesitated a heartbeat, then stuck the deactivated blade between her teeth. Next, she unslung the submachine gun from her back and fired a burst at the window.

She presumed the window was bulletproof, and if it held, the ricochets would put her in a world of hurt. But she was also gambling on two things: that the window would have been mounted with an eye toward keeping bullets out and on ever-suspect Combine workmanship.

Her gamble paid off. The impacts popped the pane out of its frame whole. It fell away, admitting an icy wind laden with fat snowflakes, noise, and a stink of burning.

Slinging the submachine gun, Cassie clambered over the empty sill.

BattleTech - LE5523

4

Masamori Hachiman

Galedon District, Draconis Combine

24 December 3056

Snowflakes slapped Cassie's cheeks like wet moth's wings. The breeze shot cold up her abbreviated skirt Unlike much of Masamori, whose trademark towers of bronze and glass were built in the rakish, unsymmetrical Yamato style, the Earl's Palace was classic Kurita kitsch: a huge pagoda-style structure, with a skirt of roof crowning each story. Bare feet slipping on icy shingles, she ran along the sloped four-story roof, sliding perilously close to the edge before she hurled herself down astraddle the curved beam that marked the corner. Even that didn't stop her inevitable downward skid. Clinging with hands and knees, she was able to brake herself only slightly before shooting out into space.

She caught herself one-handed on the beam-end, which was carved in one of those Asian lion-heads that looked for all the world like a militant Pekinese. The submachine gun slipped off her shoulder and fell with a clatter onto the armored housing that protected the BattleMaster's left shoulder with a sound as loud in her ears as a short-range missile barrage. Cassie looked around wildly. Through the transpex canopy that formed the front of the great 'Mech's head she could clearly see the pilot, bulky in neurohelmet and cooling vest. It seemed impossible for the Mech Warrior not to hear her, but the figure seemed intent on operating the machine. Which was making more than enough racket to cover the noise the dropped weapon had produced.

Cassie's fingers began to slip from the wet wood. Drawing a deep breath, she let go and fell several meters onto the boxy housing of the Shannon missile launcher perched like a holocam on the 'Mech's left shoulder. Instantly she flung arms and legs spread-eagle to stop herself from rolling off into nothingness.

The flat metal surface beneath her lurched and swayed like a trawler deck in a gale as the Battle-Master cocked its left fist and slammed it into the Palace facade. From below she heard the stutter of a submachine gun, a rattle of hailstone impacts as bullets bounced off the canopy. Ninyu, you can stop shooting now, she thought grimly. The only thing you can put holes into is me.

A crack and eye-searing ruby flash. Too late, Cassie snapped her lids shut. Green afterimage streaks glowed behind the lids as the tang of ozone probed clear to her sinuses. The burst against the windshield had gotten the pilot's attention, and the 'Mech jock had responded with one of the BattleMaster's four forward-mounted Martell medium lasers.

To her amazement, Cassie caught herself hoping—in passing—that the death-beam had missed Ninyu Kerai. She felt herself start to slide again, this time away from the BattleMech. Scrambling furiously, she flung herself over the edge and slipped down between the launcher and the BattleMaster's round head.

The 'Mech's canopy had a nominal locking system to keep Inner Sphere infantry in jump-capable armor— and, more recently, Clan Elementals—from getting at the pilot. That was small deterrent to Cassie, who studied every detail of the major BattleMech designs the way Scout Platoon snipers studied ballistics tables. Rescue crews needed to be able to pop the canopy top to extract unconscious MechWarriors. From long sessions with "Zuma" Gallegos, the Seventeenth's chief tech, Cassie knew just how that was done. With the base of her fist she punched open a concealed access panel just behind the canopy and yanked the D-shaped pull inside.

With a pop and a hiss of escaping air the canopy swung open. The MechWarrior turned in the padded pilot's seat. Through the helmet's faceplate and the green bars that still glowed across her field of vision, Cassie saw the warrior's mouth form an O of astonishment. A woman, she realized. It made no difference to her.

The BattleMaster pilot had great presence of mind. After only a heartbeat's gaping she clawed for an auto-pistol holstered beneath her left arm. Cassie had already drawn the vibrodagger from between her teeth. She switched it on. As it tingled to life in her hand, she stabbed it icepick-fashion through the front of the MechWarrior's cooling vest, once, twice, three times. Blood sprayed Cassie's face, already freckled with the gore of the first raider she'd killed. The pilot slumped back into her seat.

Leaving the dagger buried in the base of her victim's throat, Cassie hit the quick-release catch to her safety harness. With a frantic heave of effort she toppled the body, limp as a soft-cloth bag of flour, out of the cockpit. Then she settled into the command seat—sticky with rapidly cooling blood—and flipped the toggle to shut the canopy.

It closed like jaws, abruptly biting off the cold wind, the screams from below, the battle-clamor growing rapidly closer behind. Wrapped in a womb of transpex and Durallex plate, Cassie drew diaphragm-deep breaths and tried to control her racing heart-rate.

This wasn't like permitting herself to be swallowed by a monster from her childhood nightmares, it was permitting herself to be swallowed by a monster from her childhood nightmares. As a child on Larsha she'd watched a pirate Atlas kill her father—or so she'd always believed—and demolish her home. Since that time she'd feared and hated BattleMechs more than anything in the universe; it was why she'd consecrated herself to destroying them. What she felt now was dislocation made more twisting by an eerie familiarity: though she'd never been inside a 'Mech cockpit before, Cassie knew them as intimately as any Mech-Warrior from her obsessive study.

A flash lit the battered pagoda before the giant machine. Got to do something, she told herself. She hit the switch that would bring radio traffic up.

"Sword of Compassion Three, this is Sword Two," a woman's voice was saying. "Sword Three, please acknowledge. Sword Six, she still doesn't answer."

"Sword Two, Six. Keep trying. Over," a man said.

"Sword Six, this is Sword One," another man said. "I see Sword Three now. My instruments say all her subsystems are nominal, but her 'Mech isn't moving. Could her main computer be down, Precentor?"

"Do I know?" Sword Six said. "Just keep moving. If our quarry's in the Palace, we don't want to let the heretic escape."

The gruff words jolted Cassie out of her fugue. She made her eyes focus on the view-strip in the 'Mech's heads-up display, which compressed a full 360 degrees into 120. It took a fair amount of practice to learn how to process such visual input correctly. Cassie, who had to know what her giant foes could see because her life depended on not being seen by them, had put in that practice.

Com Guard—and therefore the renegade Word of Blake—used a six-'Mech unit as their basic element of maneuver. Following an ancient military custom, the commander of such an element—a "Level II unit" in Com Guard parlance—used the number "six" in his call sign. What that meant to Cassie was five enemy BattleMechs about to march up her back.

Two of them were right behind her, a tall Black Knight a hundred meters back and a pointy-headed Whitworth descending on its Jetlift jump jets. Half a klick back the other three 'Mechs of the Level-II waded through the district's noble villas. The secondary display thoughtfully slugged them with type, weight, and call sign: Sword Four, a 30-ton Hussar, another 45-ton Wyvern, and Sword Six, a 100-ton King Crab boasting a load of firepower worthy of a Clan Omni.

Cassie felt her throat tighten. The Palace and everybody inside were in for some serious hurt unless local forces could get there soon. As for her, she had the most secure seat in the house. Assuming that their comrade was out of the fight for whatever reason, the Blake warriors would ignore Sword Three unless it showed signs of coming back to life. The safe thing to do was to sit tight and watch the fireworks.

But if Cassie had always done the safest thing, she'd have died nine years ago, shot down by Maskirovka Guardsmen in a little electronics shop in Kalimantan.

On the other hand, what she had in mind to do was mad even by the standards of somebody who would jump half-naked out a fifth-story window to attack an 85-ton BattleMech with a dagger.

Cassie leaned forward to study the garden below. Fortunately the BattleMaster's head was tipped forward. Next to its massive left foot she saw the ornamental pond, a three-meter hole punched through its thin scum of ice and a body floating face-down in the center of it.

The Whitworth descended to her right in a blaze of jump jets, crashing through the branches of a thirty-meter-tall Brahma cedar, a carefully stunted version of the kilometer-tall monsters of the Trimurti Range. Snow from branches and garden surrounded the Whit in a white swirl as it settled with a flexing of its myomer-muscled legs.

As the triangular head swiveled to peer into the BattleMaster's cockpit, Cassie pressed herself back into the form-fitting seat and wished she'd thought to keep the neurohelmet for show, even though she lacked the interfaces to operate it. Apparently satisfied by what he saw, the Whit pilot turned the 'Mech's head back toward the Palace. The Intek laser in its head flashed red, boiling stone from the Palace facade in a quick pulse. Apparently the Blake 'Mech jocks were still concerned about frying their ground-pounder comrades inside, a solicitude unusual for MechWarriors, not to mention religious fanatics on a jihad high.

Without a neurohelmet, Cassie had only the nominal control provided by the 'Mech's manual overrides. They did, however, give her the ability to move its limbs, haltingly and imprecisely. She keyed up the right arm override.

With crunching footsteps she could feel transmitted through the BattleMaster's metal skeleton, the Black Knight walked up on her left, on the other side of the pool. She felt the uncomfortable nearness of the Hellstar PPC mounted on its own right arm. With better containment-field focusing than a conventional PPC, the extended-range version, lacked the minimum-range restrictions of the older weapon. At point-blank range, that Sunspot could blaze through even a BattleMaster's tough armor in seconds.

Cassie quickly rehearsed in her mind the sequence of movements she was about to initiate. She would have a window no thicker than a bubble's skin to act in. She drew a deep breath.

Slowly the BattleMaster's right arm began to rise. Cassie made herself hear the words of her old guru back on Larsha: If you control your breathing, you control yourself. If she let herself go tense, she would lose the instantaneous responses that were the only thing that might keep her alive.

Neither BattleMech showed any sign of awareness that its apparently dormant comrade was stirring. Degree by degree the arm rose—and with it the Fusigon Longtooth extended-range PPC clutched in its hand. Though she could work it manually, Cassie dared not invoke the Watchdog targeting system. The Whit's own electronics suite would instantly alert its pilot that it had been targeted.

"Sword One," an excited voice spilled from the cockpit speaker, "Sword Three is moving! She's—"

The PPC was aimed where Cassie wanted it: at the left side of the Whitworth's back, where its armor was thinnest—and right over a magazine holding the reloads for one Longbow long-range missile launcher. She thumbed the trigger.

Blue lightning flared, so brilliant the canopy darkened automatically to prevent the pilot from being dazzled. Gobs of glowing metal sprayed the BattleMaster; a half dozen striking the canopy, where they clung, glowing like yellow stars. Frantic voices yammered from the speaker and then the Whitworth's ammo storage blew, the 'Mech's upper torso vanishing in white brilliance. Shockwave and hard-driven fragments hammered the BattleMaster, rocking it back and to the left.

Cassie felt her stomach lurch with terror that the gyros might let go as something smashed a head-sized hole into the canopy.

The huge assault 'Mech teetered violently, then settled back onto its feet as far-weaker secondary explosions wracked the 40-ton Whit. Warning lights danced like ruby fireflies on the BattleMaster's damage display. Its PPC had been shattered by the blast. Black smoke concealed the smaller machine from the chest up, but its head and shoulder seemed to have been blown utterly away.

Cassie had kept enough command of herself to let the Longtooth's trigger go when the Whit erupted. It was hell-hot in the cockpit. Smoke and heat choked Cassie, and the silk of her gown seared her skin like acid.

But she kept going, hands moving without thought, without intention, as they always did when the hammer was descending. The BattleMaster was already cranking its upper torso widdershins, toward the Black Knight twenty meters to its left.

The smart thing for the 75-ton Knight to do would have been what Cassie did to the Whitworth—instantly raise its right-arm PPC and cut loose from touch range. Instead Sword Two did the human thing. He turned his 'Mech's torso to face her.

For an instant the two viewports in the Black Knight's armored faceplate stared at Cassie like disbelieving eyes. The right arm began to rise.

Too late. Cassie pressed another firing trigger, held it down to chain-fire the six missiles waiting in the BattleMaster's shoulder-mounted launcher. Unaimed though they were, at least three of the missiles smashed into the Black Knight's faceplate. Cassie threw her hands over her face as the Knight's head erupted.

When she lowered her arms the BattleMaster's cockpit looked as if it had been blasted with giant buckshot. At least it was tolerably cool in here now. The Black Knight was nowhere to be seen; apparently it had fallen down. Her left arm ran blood, and Cassie thought she caught the gleam of bone in the glow of the red and yellow lights that were telling her that her ride was in bad shape.

But bleeding out through a deep cut was going to be the last of her worries. "Attention," a female voice said. "You have been locked-onto by a Dalban Hirez-B targeting and tracking system from a range of 373.3 meters."

"Damn!" Cassie said. The Battle Master's computer was talking to her. Sword Six was about to bestow an admonition upon his errant underling. And that meant—

"Right-hand Gauss rifle charging," the voice said. "Left-hand Gauss rifle, charging. Discharge in ten seconds. Eight."

Cassie reached down, grabbed a D-shaped pull, braced herself, yanked.

Nothing happened. "Ejection system malfunction," the voice said, maddeningly neutral. "Six seconds. Five—"

"Tell me something useful, you bitch!" Cassie screamed. She hit the toggle to open the cockpit canopy.

"Enemy firing," the voice said.

As the canopy seal broke with a hiss, a hammerblow struck the BattleMaster from behind. Cassie was thrown about in the cockpit amid a sound like Vishnu the Destroyer Himself had given the world a kick. The BattleMech swayed alarmingly forward under the impact of the Gauss rifle round.

Clumsy and slow and less powerful than the 100-ton titans of the 31st-century battlefield, the BattleMaster was still among the most-beloved designs in the Inner Sphere. 'Mech pilots loved it for its toughness, which was out of proportion to the weight of armor it carried.

The BattleMaster still did not go over. But tough as it was, the awesome 'Mech had limits. And they had been surpassed.

With a volcano roar, the 'Mech's back blew open. "Catastrophic event in left-torso ammunition containment unit," the female voice said. "CASE successfully engaged. Recommend immediate ejection."

Cassie picked herself up. The cockpit was crowded with stinging smoke and searing heat. Tiny lasers painted the HUD on her face and neck. The canopy had winched itself open about the span of a big man's fingers fully outstretched.

Good thing I'm skinny, she thought as she began to squirm through the left side of the opening.

"Discharge in one second," the female voice said. Cassie swung her right leg over the cockpit rim, then made herself roll out toward nothingness.

"Weapon discharging," the voice said.

Cassie let go. Above her the BattleMaster's head exploded as she plunged toward the ice-scummed pool.

She actually felt her feet strike the ice, had time to think it was too thick, that it was going to drive her femurs up into her belly, that this was death. Then she was through, and the icy water made every molecule of her body ring like a bell.

The pond was deep enough to brake her fall, and Cassie made it without breaking both legs. She bobbed back up—and felt a stab of panic as the top of her head hit ice. She looked up, and through the flickering glare of BattleMechs dying saw a break in the ice several meters away. She swam toward it, knowing she risked getting seared by the energies being unleashed above, but unwilling to drown on that account.

Her head popped free. She shook water from her eyes and looked around, expecting to see the Wyvern dropping right on top of her, or even the King Crab looming at the garden verge.

Instead she saw a hell of a fireworks display lighting the sky in the direction from which the Level-II had approached. Somebody's ammo was cooking off big-time.

She was deaf—temporarily, she hoped—but transmitted through the bone-breaking cold water she could feel the footfalls of an approaching 'Mech. She sucked in a big breath, made ready to dive.

But the shape that reared up behind her gutted BattleMaster wasn't the hunched dome of a King Crab, but the erect form of a Mauler, head perpetually hunkered down between the LRM launchers on its shoulders.

"Cassie?" boomed the electronically amplified voice of Tai-sa Eleanor Shimazu, the Red Witch herself. "Cassiopeia Suthorn? Are you still alive? I know it's you. No one else could loose so much hell without a BattleMech."

"Lainie," Cassie rasped through a throat that felt as if she'd been gargling lye, "you don't know the half of it." Cautiously, she climbed out onto the ice.

* * *

"If it's really that simple to destroy a BattleMech on foot," Ninyu Kerai Indrahar asked, "why doesn't everybody do it?"

Cassie glared at him. She was perched on a black leather sofa in the modestly appointed office in a part of the Palace that was still intact. She had a blanket wrapped around her and a mug of steaming tea laced with Hotel Black Label whiskey—known affectionately to the locals as Old Stick and Sack, and to the Caballeros as Old Sick and Stack—clutched in both hands. The mixture was singularly nasty, but it warmed.

"For one thing," she said, "it wasn't that simple."

A shudder wracked her thin body. Her still-wet hair was pulled back, her normal brown complexion had paled to old ivory, and her skin was all over goose bumps. She was still riding the edge of the adrenaline rush that had brought her through the fight, but her mood was starting to oscillate like an aerospace fighter with blown retros that was trying to brake by dipping in and out of atmosphere. Like that fighter, she was hoping to glide to a controlled landing, but she knew that more than likely she was due to tumble and crash at any old time.

The Word of Blake raiding force had been neutralized, mostly destroyed. Landed by DropShip on Masamori's outskirts, it consisted of two Level-II 'Mech units, equivalent to an Inner Sphere company, and a platoon of infantry. One Level-II had attacked the Palace, another the Compound. Some of the commandos had dispersed through the city to create distractions, and were now being run to earth by the Civilian Guidance Corps, Masamori's police. The rest had commandeered trucks and preceded the Battle-Mechs to the Palace.

The Blakies had made one lethal miscalculation. _ Though correct in surmising that the city's defenders would be caught up in celebration, they didn't realize just how rapidly the Ninth Ghost Legion and the Seventeenth would react to the threat. Nor had they reckoned on Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassiopeia Suthorn. But she was a wild card in anybody's game.

Cassie shivered again, gulped a mouthful of tea. "People on foot could take down 'Mechs more often," she said, "if they tried. But everybody's so intimidated by the big metal monsters that they're afraid to. They just assume a BattleMech's invulnerable unless you're in another BattleMech."

She looked up at Ninyu sidelong. "You did your share. I hear you've taken down a 'Mech or two yourself without riding in a tin man."

Reflex made him frown, standing over her. He folded the expression back into the normal contours of his face. That he had been a comrade of Theodore's during the Coordinator's young adulthood was no state secret. Nor were his own exploits of the time—at least, not all.

"I acknowledge your bravery," he said. An angry burn glowed on his right cheek, and if you looked close you could see his close-fitting black garb had dark stains here and there, but by and large he had come through the evening remarkably unscathed. "Also your resourcefulness and skill. Few men could have done what you did. And few would have been foolhardy enough to attempt it."

With that something inside Cassie broke. She found herself on her feet, clinging to the redheaded man in black, sobbing uncontrollably as it all came flooding in on her: the shock of seeing Percy gunned down, the mad scramble across an icy roof, the narrow escape from the doomed BattleMaster. What she'd done was insane, arid yet she hadn't seen any other choice.

Maybe that summed up the whole of her life, since that day on Larsha when a 'Mech destroyed her childhood.

At first Ninyu Kerai stood there like a wooden plank, unyielding. Stiffly he raised a hand to the back of her head, then dropped it to her shaking shoulders. Incrementally he relaxed, until he was holding her almost as one normal person might hold another.

And suddenly a hunger welled up in Cassie, a need for reassurance, a need to conquer fear—or at least come to terms with it, to call a temporary truce. She reached up and put her hands behind his head, drawing his face to hers. The blanket slithered to the ancient Bukhara carpet on the floor. Beneath it she was naked.

For a moment he resisted, frowning. Then he locked his arms around her and kissed her with a savage intensity that would have terrified her had she not already been beside herself with emotions she could not name.

BattleTech - LE5523

5

Jump Ship Finnegan's Wake

Zenith Recharge Station Motor System

Benjamin District, Draconis Combine

10 November 3057

"Chikusho!" Cassie cursed as she tore the neuro-helmet from her head. At the same time she hit the release of the safety harness holding her into the simulator. The violence of her motion spurted her out of the mechanism like a slow-motion cork from a bottle.

As she shot past Lieutenant Senior Grade Bogdan Michael "Stacks" Stachiewski in the zero-gee of the DropShip repair bay, the Caballeros' chief armorer shook his head and rubbed his bearded chin. "Maybe you should try an easier mission."

Floating in free-fall repose beside Stacks, languidly gripping a handhold welded to the bulkhead, Kali MacDougall made a long arm and snagged her furious friend. "Easy does it, hon," she said.

Cassie just managed to contain the urge to bat the tall blonde woman's hand away. Instead she wriggled like a worm on a hook. Kali let her go with a shrug, and Cassie floated across the slight remainder of the compartment, reversing herself so her feet struck the bulkhead first, allowing her sinewy legs to soak up her momentum.

Bobbing slightly in midair, she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned ferociously, the deep brown of her legs and midriff revealed by the cut-off T-shirt and black synthetic shorts that was all any pilot wanted to wear in the stifling heat of a 'Mech cockpit. Her black hair was done up in a complicated set of braids.

After a—blessedly uneventful—year of garrison duty with HTE on Hachiman, the Seventeenth Recon Regiment was now on its way to a new assignment. Though they were still in the employ of Chandrasekhar Kurita, their destination was the world of Towne, a Davionist planet lying on the fringes of the Sarna March. For the past two months that embattled region of Federated Commonwealth space had been under invasion by the forces of Thomas Marik's Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation of Sun-Tzu Liao. Having caught Prince Victor Davion by surprise, Marik and Liao were swiftly retaking many of the planets the Prince's sire had seized from them in another surprise invasion thirty years before.

Governments had been rising and falling, planets changing hands, rebellions failing and erupting, battles won and lost as a state of chaos overtook the region. The invaders had yet to penetrate as far as Towne, but Uncle Chandy's wholly proficient intelligence service believed the planet's respite was due to end soon. Towne's planetary ruler had already fled the world for the safety of Davion space. The Fifth Lyran Guards had also abandoned Towne to its fate, having lately returned to the Steiner half of the old Federated Commonwealth after Katrina Steiner-Davion called her loyal troops home.

In the midst of all this, Towne had become the target of another enemy—renegade elements of the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery. And the job Uncle Chandy had assigned the Caballeros was simple: turn back a possible invasion by this renegade force.

It was a desperate situation. Only Southwestern pride—and the most un-Kuritalike wages paid by Uncle Chandy—had persuaded Colonel Camacho to agree to take it on. Dread of what her adoptive family was getting itself into was eating Cassie alive, and she was trying to distract herself by continuing the informal MechWarrior training she'd been taking sporadically since her impromptu turn in the BattleMaster at poor Percy's final do.

"That damned Uller just popped out of nowhere and blasted me from half a klick away," she said.

Stacks scratched a broad cheek. "Well, you insisted on piloting a Jenner. That Alternate-A Uller's extended-range medium lasers have half again the range of your medium and short-range missiles, and its Gauss rifle has about two-and-a-half. Face it, Cass, not too many seasoned 'Mech pilots from the Inner Sphere care to take on a Clan Omni with only a five-ton advantage."

"I have to be the best," Cassie snapped, realizing as she said it how foolish she sounded. "Otherwise, why even try?"

"Are you setting yourself up to fail?" Lady K asked gently.

Cassie felt her cheeks grow hot. "I—" she began, raising a hand knotted to a fist. "I don't know. I don't think so. I don't want to be coddled or eased along. That'll do me no good when things start turning real."

Stacks hung in midair, secured to a handhold by a half-meter of line unreeled from a spool clipped onto his crowded utility belt. He was a short, stocky man with thinning curly brown hair. He wore his customary faded yellow jumpsuit, open to reveal a white tee-shirt and grizzled chest hair.

"You could try moving up to a larger ride," he suggested. "The Shadow Hawk's a good one, though maybe a little tricky for a novice. And there's always the good old BattleMaster, like the one you snagged us back on Hachiman. That 'Mech just about pilots itself."

"No! I don't like big 'Mechs."

"You don't like any 'Mechs," Kali observed.

"Cassie," Stacks said, taking a rag from his back pocket and scrubbing imaginary propellant residue from his square capable hands, "you've got thirty-five confirmed kills to your credit, counting those three from poor Percy's Christmas party. That's a score any Mech Warrior would be proud of. You've destroyed more BattleMechs more or less barehanded than anyone in history, so far as I know, and I know a lot. Maybe you should stick to what you're comfortable with."

Cassie turned away—a futile gesture in this confined space—leaving her with her snub nose a handspan from the yellowing buff paint that covered the metal bulkhead. For one thing, it was something of an overstatement to say she was comfortable with anything in her life—a fact that Kali MacDougall had done a lot to help her change in the last year and a half, to her frequent irritation.

She knew why she'd given in to the urging of many Caballero MechWarriors and begun training in 'Mech piloting herself. Ever since pirate 'Mechs had destroyed her family, home, and childhood she'd been obsessed with hunting and killing the metal monsters. That entailed learning everything she could about them. Including, to her vast distaste, how to operate one herself.

She found that sentiment impossible to articulate. Not to Stacks, though he was calm and non-judgmental for a male Southwesterner. She could talk about it to Kali, and had; she would have been able to discuss it with Patsy Camacho, the Colonel's daughter, the one truly elite MechWarrior the regiment had ever boasted. But the Smoke Jaguars had killed la Capitana on Jeronimo. Don Carlos himself hadn't taken Patricia's death much harder than Cassie did.

Cassie had never found it easy to talk about herself. Patsy's abandonment had made it all the harder.

"Call it pride, Stacks," she heard Lady K say, "and let it go."

"Sure, Kali. Uh—want to do some zero-gee handball sometime?"

"I'd love to," Kali said, "if you'd actually remember to show up."

Stacks laughed ruefully. "Well, something always has a way of coming up. But I mean to do it." He patted his paunch. "That should count for something, shouldn't it?"

Cassie gathered her legs and pushed off gently for the hatch.

* * *

She floated in narrow spaces between monsters.

The 'Mechs of First Battalion stood in their cocoons within the main bay of the Overlord Class DropShip Tokugawa Iyeyasu, ranked in six tiers of six around a central well. Cassie liked to come in here when she wanted to feel the nearness of people, lafamilia, without actually having to deal with anybody.

The six 'Mech decks were alive with activity above her and below: people gambling, arguing, snoring, laughing, singing off-key to the music that blared from the score of personal players—country, mariachi, or heavy metal, reflecting the tastes of the Southwestern Worlds' three dominant cultures—or in competition with it, as circumstances went. Now and then a dog barked in hopes of being let out of its padded carrying-cage for a null-gee romp, or a hungry baby cried peevishly until its mother, preoccupied with gossip or the work of keeping the vast organism that was the regiment alive or—most likely, both—could unlimber a breast and pop it into its mouth. Notable for its absence was the happy racket of children at play; the young Caballeros spent most of their time in the half-gee environment of the JumpShip's ever-rotating gravity deck, lest weeks in weightlessness hamper musculoskeletal development.

The deck space unoccupied by massive 'Mech feet, the ship's round hull, even the giant metal men themselves were crusted with lumps of possessions secured by colorful polyfiber nets. Wash-water was rationed on a JumpShip in transit, and laundry, mostly underwear, was stretched out to dry on lines that ran from 'Mech to 'Mech, making the Iyeyasu's 'Mech bay look inhabited by a gigantic spider with garish taste in decoration.

More than anything the scene resembled a boisterous, crowded tenement on a none-too-prosperous Inner Sphere world.

Unlike Wolf's Dragoons, the Caballeros didn't have a planethold of their own. Nor would they leave their noncombatants behind as tenants on the Dragoon world of Outreach. They hailed predominantly from the Marik planets of Cerillos, Galisteo, and Sierra, the so-called Trinity of Southwestern Worlds, once the bandit Intendancy of New New Grenada. For reasons generally having to do with the Free Worlds League's current politics, religion, or criminal justice system, few of them were willing or able to return home. Instead the regiment took its families, and its home, with it wherever it went. Even crammed into the nooks and crannies of the overcrowded JumpShip Finnegan's Wake and the three great DropShips that clung to it like bloated young.

Thus the Seventeenth Recon was lafamilia, the family, which Cassie—Combine-born, Liao-reared—could never entirely be part of, and which she could never be entirely separate from. She could not survive without her family. Nor would it have survived without her.

She floated upward, through bands of smell: cooking, heavy on oil and garlic; cheap tobacco; imperfectly washed bodies, to the bay's uppermost deck. To her left stood the fearsome shape of a Mad Cat, very symbol of Clan military might, its blunt-pointed snout painted with a shark smile. This was Great White, Don Carlos Camacho's personal ride, the machine that had killed his daughter Patsy on Jeronimo. Next to it stood what appeared to be another Clan OmniMech, an 80-ton Naga. But it wasn't what it seemed—quite.

Bungees were strung across the central well to serve as maneuver lines, and of course had been coopted as clotheslines. Cassie grabbed one and let it snap her gently toward the assault 'Mech's head, between the flanges of its torso that swelled at the ends into boxy Arrow-IV missile launchers. Two figures clad in the tan jumpsuits of the regiment Technical Support team floated beside the open cockpit. One was a tall, skeletally thin man with big, round, bottle-bottom glasses, skin so pale it was almost blue, and dark blond hair cropped in a bad brush-cut that made his tall cylindrical head look as if moths had been at it. He held this unprepossessing appendage thrust forward and down, in front of curiously hunched shoulders.

As Cassie approached, air friction slowing her to near-motionlessness, the tall man pulled his head out of the open cockpit and swiveled it to look at her. The lenses of his glasses made his blue eyes alarmingly huge.

"Go away, Lieutenant Suthorn," he said in the flat urban-Cowboy twang of Cerillos. "We're busy here right now."

Kiss my fanny, Astro Zombie, Cassie wanted to say, but quashed the impulse. She knew it would be wasted on Captain Marshal Harris, the Caballeros' prickly Chief Tech.

The other jumpsuited figure looked up from a comp pad, dark face lighting with a smile. "What Captain Harris means to say is we're glad you stopped by, Cassie," said Mariska Savage. "He's just a bit frustrated right now."

Cassie grinned back. She liked Risky Savage, who in a little less than a year had worked her way to the position of Astro Zombie's chief assistant. But then, Risky wasn't a BattleMech jock.

Astro Zombie glared at the intruder a moment longer, then grunted and peered back into the cockpit again. Risky gave Cassie a wink behind his back. She was widely credited in the Seventeenth with actually beginning to civilize the truculently nerdish Chief Tech, though Cassie didn't see much evidence of it. She was also claimed to be sleeping with him, having let her liaison with Father Doctor Bob García—to the Jesuit MechWarrior's intense relief—lapse to purely friendly status. Cassie neither bothered to confirm nor deny the rumors; she never involved herself in the comprehensive Caballero gossip-net in any way.

Comfortably ensconced in a papoose-pouch slung around her mother's midriff by a wide elastic band, Tech Support's newest member, Roberta Archi Savage, snored softly and drooled onto the little stuffed lamb that Uncle Chandy had personally bestowed on her as a parting gift.

"Cassie?" A woman leaned out from the other side of the open cockpit into which Astro Zombie was leaning and gave Cassie a wave and a radiant smile. She had brown skin, big dark eyes, heavy black hair tied back with a red bandanna from a face as beautiful and serene as a Renaissance Madonna's. "How are you today—if we can call this daytime."

"Fine, Diana," Cassie said. Lieutenant Senior Grade Diana Vásquez was an atypical Mech Warrior, and Cassie got along with her well enough. But then, everybody got along with her. She was sweet and pious without being cloying; the Caballeros would have called her virginal but for the evidence of her four-year-old son Marcos—and at that, the joke ran, you still couldn't be too sure.

Despite her demure manner Diana Vásquez was commander of long-range artillery support for the Seventeenth. For years she'd reached out and touched the Caballeros' enemies—Dracs, Clanners, pirates, the Ninth Ghost Legion—with the seriously heavy hand of her Catapult's Arrow IV missiles. Though customarily she operated far behind the striking-tip of the Seventeenth's 'Mech forces, she was one of the most respected Mech Warriors in the regiment. Because even when enemy machines flowed past the front ranks—no rare event on the fluid modern battlefield—she was always calm and on call, always ready with the power, even if dueling for her life with her Catapult's medium lasers, or leaping out of danger on the 'Mech's jump jets.

But the world turned, and sometimes on its head. Diana had begun to spend a great deal of time in the company of Coronel Camacho, el patrón himself, and tongues were wagging to the effect that they weren't just lighting candles to the saints together.

"Still can't get the thing to work, huh," Cassie said.

Diana grinned and shrugged. "A few bugs to work out."

"Torso actuator's jammed," Risky offered. "The beast might as well be in a body cast." Astro Zombie pulled his head out of the cockpit.

"Shoddy Drac workmanship," he said. "Luthien Armor Works bit off more than they could chew when they decided to tackle Clan-tech."

"Don't mix metaphors, Marshal," Risky said sweetly.

Astro Zombie blinked at her. She was the only person in the Seventeenth who used his given name. He went back to work.

Cassie grabbed the cockpit's nose, gave herself an easy push, floated down the sharp keel-like torso to the BattleMech's midriff. The faulty actuator's upper armature had been removed, exposing myomer pseudo-muscle bundles skeined around the endo-steel skeleton. A small man floated next to the assembly, probing ganglia tangles of gaudy wire with non-conducting polymerized-ceramic forceps. He was stripped to the waist, displaying a large Virgin of Guadalupe tattooed on his muscled chest and washboard stomach.

"Odale, prima," he said, mustached Mongol-looking face splitting in a grin in response to Cassie's greeting. "¿Quipasa?"

"Astro Zombie says the culebras aren't up to imitating Clan technology." Culebra was the Caballero version of "Snake," a standard epithet for the Dragon-worshipping Kuritas.

"Zuma" Gallegos, Chief Aztech—as the 'lleros spelled it—for the Seventeenth, snorted and shook his head. "The Zombie's blowing smoke again. The Dracs can be pretty sloppy, but the Luthien Armor Works boys aren't gonna mess up with Coordinator Teddy peering over their shoulders. This is one 'Mech where all the seams are welded tight, and all the nuts dogged down real good."

"What do you think's the matter?" Despite her desultory attempts at learning to be a 'Mech pilot, Cassie was mainly interested in what made them not work.

He laughed. His black hair, straight and cut short, was dusted with gray, as was his mustache. But he had that ageless quality a lot of Southwesterners shared, especially if they had indio blood: he could have been in his twenties or in his fifties or anywhere between.

"Mice," he said.

"¿Mande?"

"The Luthien boys were careful as could be when they built this puppy," Zuma said. "But no matter where you go in the Combine, you got mice. Even on Hachiman where they got robots to cook their rice and live mannequins in the department-store windows. And mice love to nibble on insulation."

He fished in the snake-mating ball of wire, plucked out a loose yellow end, held it up for Cassie's inspection. She could plainly see the marks of the tiny teeth that had haggled it raggedly off.

"I was just about to go shove this up Astro Zombie's pointy gringo nose when you arrived," Zuma said. "He's a smart boy, but he looks for complicated causes for everything, you know? Spent too much time in that Santa Fe college." Captain Harris had in fact attended university in Santa Fe, capital of Sierra and once upon a time of the Intendancy of New New Grenada. But Zuma was using the term Sante Fe in its larger sense, signifying the rural Southwesterners' distaste for their urban cousins, whom they considered oversophisticated wimps.

He reached in to snip out the damaged section with a pair of wire cutters. A voice said, "Cassie," from below.

She turned, frowning. "Kali," she said sullenly.

The tall Mech Warrior stood with magnetized boot-soles mated to the deck between the 'Mech's big square feet, hands on hips. "I was just wondering what I'd done to torque you off at me," she said. "Goes against my grain to make people mad by accident."

Cassie bit her lip and wished she were sneaking through enemy territory with her face blacked out, a Shimatsu-42 assault rifle strapped across her back, and Blood-drinker strapped to her thigh. Life was so much simpler then.

"It's not you, Kali," she said. "I'm just not too comfortable right now."

"Everybody's getting crosswise at each other," Kali said. "We've been cooped up on garrison duty back on Hachiman way too long, and that always gets under everybody's skin. But you've been edgy as a cat waitin' for a weekend at Club Rottweiler. Are you sure I'm not contributing?"

"Hey there, little ladies," a masculine, Cowboy-twangy voice floated up through the well in the center of the deck. A moment later a head followed it, with a ski-slope nose, smarmy-ingratiating smile, and dark hair greased back in a duck's-fanny do. "I just meandered along to ask Lady K to sneak off for a late lunch with me, but what the hey? The more the merrier, I always say."

BattleTech - LE5523

6

Jump Ship Finnegan's Wake

Zenith Recharge Station, Motor System

Benjamin District, Draconis Combine

10 November 3057

The rest of the head's owner, a tall, gangly, and unlikely proposition, floated up into view. It snagged a scuffed banth-hide boot toe on the lip of the well to arrest its upward progress, then strolled forward, letting the magnetic skids clamped under the bootsoles hold it down.

"There's part of the problem there," Cassie said.

Lady K looked exasperated. "Just what part of, 'we're through, Buckaroo, so hit that lonesome highway' don't you understand?"

Lieutenant Junior Grade William Payson, callsign "Cowboy," grinned hugely. "All of it," he declared. "Nearest highway's a whole mess of AUs in-system, and anyway, my momma didn't raise me to take 'no' for an answer."

"How about the toe of my boot where it'll do the most good?"

"I still can't believe you went with him in the first place," Cassie said.

Her friend shrugged. "No excuses, hon. Guess garrison life just got to me, too."

Cassie had always been wary of becoming engaged with people, of allowing them inside her defenses: that led to pain. That was why she'd resisted so savagely when Kali MacDougall began to work her way into her life right after the Caballeros arrived on Hachiman— and why Cassie was still wary and prone to sulks where her friendship with the tall blonde 'Mech jock was concerned.

But she had learned to read people expertly, a skill which, while it could help you get close to someone, had nothing to do with letting them get close to you. Unspoken were the words Kali would never say, precisely because they were—however true—an excuse: it's better than drinking again.

Cowboy was looking elaborately pained, which made him resemble an overgrown fourteen-year-old dressed up as an off-duty Mech Warrior for Halloween: bulky insulated boots, black-gray-white urban camouflage pants, scuffed black leather FWL dispatch-rider's motorcycle jacket worn over a torn black tee-shirt bearing the skull-and-crossbones logo of the crash-metal band Slow Russian Death, and of course, a worn web belt with a Kali Yama autopistol riding low on his skinny thigh in a tie-down holster.

"Aw, Kali," he whined, "you can't blame a guy for tryin'."

"Sure I can, after the two-hundredth time or so."

He shook his head slowly, like a chastised child. Then his gloom fell away and he looked up at the BattleMech the others were working on.

"That old Naga looks like a gas-station openin' with all that laundry hanging from the guy-lines," he said. "Too bad it's such a bitch to get it running."

"It's not a Naga," Cassie corrected. "It's a Luthien Armor Works OBK-MIO O-Bakemono."

"Well, it surely looks like a Naga."

And so it did, and the resemblance wasn't coincidental. In a top-secret crash program overseen by Theodore Kurita himself—similar to the NAIS initiative that had produced the Rakhasa, the Federated Commonwealth's Mad Cat knock-off—Luthien Armor Works was building its own copies of captured Clan BattleMechs. The 'Mech being worked on so diligently by Astro Zombie, Zuma, and the rest was a prototype, assigned to the Seventeenth for field testing on its upcoming mission.

Which was worrisome. With the exception of Chandrasekhar Kurita, who was probably the richest man in the Combine and quite possibly in the whole Inner Sphere, Kuritas were not known for their largesse. And while Coordinator Theodore Kurita had made a point of ignoring the centuries-old Combine tradition of contempt for mercenaries, it was still startling that such a valuable and secret piece of machinery should be entrusted to gaijin. Particularly ones who had spent much of their lives fighting against the Draconis Combine.

To be sure, Uncle Chandy, as a magnate, a Kurita, and a favored relative of the Coordinator, could throw around mass disproportionate to his famous Buddha bulk. But even in a corruption-riddled society, in which personal influence and family ties counted for almost everything, there were limits. And in the normal course of events the most cherry of the DCMS's new technotoys should lie far beyond them.

Add to that, then, the datum that one of the nervous techs who'd accompanied the tarp-shrouded 'Mech from the Combine capital had let slip to Zuma during a walkaround: there was at least one other complete OBK-MIO prototype in existence. Which suggested to Cassie's scout-paranoid mind that this one was considered expendable.

And there was what was really making her moody and on-edge: the mission.

* * *

It had all started in a briefing room in the guts of Chandrasekhar Kurita's Citadel in the middle of the HTE Compound back on Hachiman.

The image on the holostage was of a man who appeared to have fallen forward from a kneeling position, so that his cheek was pressed against a scuffed synthetic-tile floor. He had a white cloth band tied around his head. From the amount of blood pooled on the floor, it was probably best for the composure of certain onlookers that the shot was a fairly extreme close-up. Spilled blood meant nothing to Cassie, but MechWarriors could be a squeamish lot. They weren't used to seeing the human results of their handiwork up close and personal.

"Conventional histories state that the Kokuryu-kai was formed on Terra early in the twentieth century," said the man standing on the dais beside the stage. Cassie knew him well—the Mirza Peter Abdulsattah, Uncle Chandy's security chief. "Allegedly the name meant 'Amur River Society,' but it can also be taken to mean 'Black Dragon Society.' Certain sources claim that the latter meaning is the correct one, and that the organization is older by far."

He adjusted controls hidden in his podium. The image rotated and tightened until the symbol in the middle of the headband dominated the display. It was a black dragon rampant on a red circle, differing from the familiar red and black symbol of House Kurita and the Draconis Combine in that it displayed the whole dragon.

"You have already, unwittingly, had dealings with Kokuryu-kai," he said. "The Internal Security Force took these holoimages of the man who killed the traffic controllers in the Yoshi-Town Spaceport last Chairman's Day Eve, permitting the Word of Blake raiders to land without warning and attack and kill Planetary Chairman Percival Fillington. This man's headband bears the symbol of the Black Dragon Society."

The listeners shifted and murmured in their seats, ranked on terraces carpeted in light gray-blue mingled with white. They were the usual mixed bag for a Seventeenth Recon briefing: Colonel Carlos Camacho, stocky and mustached, heavy black hair in retreat and rapidly being overtaken by gray, full eyelids droopy with long-accreted fatigue; his chief intelligence officer, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird, tall, lean, and distinguished in an immaculately tailored Free Worlds League-style undress uniform; his three battalion commanders, including son Gavilan, dark, lean, and handsome, with a flamboyant mustache and just a hint of self-doubt in his eye; the various company commanders; assorted dignitaries—mainly clergymen—and one lowly scout, Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassiopeia Suthorn.

The Mirza himself was a handsome man, two meters tall and little more than bones, with a great blade nose and a narrow skull topped by a small embroidered cap. Beside him reclined the man who employed everybody in the room, Chandrasekhar Kurita, a great fat glistening Buddha in robes of purple silk, lolling amid a pile of cushions. He ate fruit and drank wine off a carven silver table as he listened to the briefing.

"Whatever the original meaning of its name, Kokuryu-kai has long been known for extreme conservatism and a taste for military expansionism, first of the Japanese empire and subsequently of the Draconis Combine," the Mirza continued. "It has throughout most of its existence been nominally outlawed, though governments, or at least certain agencies, have traditionally been happy enough to make use of Black Dragon assets, including the often deadly zeal of its members and supporters. These tend to be drawn from three rather disparate groups: industrialists, the military, and the yakuza."

Lieutenant Colonel Baird frowned and shook his stylus at the air. "I thought the Combine military felt only contempt for civilians," he said. "Especially tradesmen and crirninals."

"Don't think, Gordo," a voice said from somewhere behind him. "You ain't cut out for it, ese."

Cassie snickered. The intel officer twisted in his seat and glared at ranks of faces suddenly turned stone. Beside him, young Gavilan Camacho's blade-lean face went dark. First Battalion's commander was spending a lot of his time with Gordon Baird these days.

When Baird faced forward again the ripple of muted laughter had a nasty edge. Ethnic tensions between Cowboys and norteños had been bubbling to the surface once more, exacerbated as usual by the boredom of garrison life. Not even Gordon's apparent alliance with the younger Camacho, who was popular with the norteño hardliners, won him any slack. Then again, most 'lleros of whatever flavor thought the S-2 was a fool.

The Mirza went on as if there had been no interruption. "I believe it fair to say, Colonel, that those groups found common ground in their views—including the confidence each had in its ability to manipulate the other two."

"Well, at the risk of having people laugh at me, too," said Lady K, her 174 centimeters sprawled in the seat next to Cassie's at the chamber's rear, "it seems to me you just named off two of Teddy Kurita's staunchest sets of supporters."

Nobody laughed this time. The commander of Bronco Company was well-respected among the Caballeros, as the pompous pinch-voiced Baird was not. Besides, Kali was as lethal with the laser pistol nestled in its tie-down holster on her thigh as she was at the controls of her 100-ton Atlas, Dark Lady.

"You are correct, Captain MacDougall. But do not fall into the error so prevalent outside the Draconis Combine: no society is monolithic, not even the Combine's. There are elements within the Pillar of Steel who believe that the only virtues worthy of a Kurita are those of the sword. And the Coordinator's support among the yakuza is strongest with their younger members. Many of the older oyabun are highly conservative, and consider themselves guardians of the Dragon's traditions.

"For centuries, roughly the period from the Age of War through the collapse of the Star League and the Succession Wars, the Black Dragons lay dormant; they found little to complain about in the rule of Coordinators who were almost uniformly iron-handed at home and imperialist abroad."

That elicited an uneasy rustle of butts shifting in seats from the audience. Those Coordinators had all been Kurita, even the usurping—and rapidly extirpated—von Rohrs of the late twenty-fifth and early twenty-sixth centuries. People who bore the name Kurita were not noted for their fondness for those who spoke invidiously of others who bore that name. But Uncle Chandy just swilled wine from a golden goblet. He was an unorthodox Kurita in more ways than one.

The Mirza spoke on as if unaware that he had said something that might cost him his head—and as far as Cassie could tell, very little went on that Peter Abdulsattah wasn't aware of. "In 3034 then-Coordinator Takashi Kurita permitted most of the Rasalhague Military District to secede. As is widely known, that provoked the Ronin War, in which DCMS hard-liners, under the leadership of Warlord Vassily Cherenkoff and the ever-troublesome Marcus Kurita, tried to reconquer the breakaway Free Rasalhague Republic. As Gunji no Kanrei, Theodore Kurita himself led Combine forces to the KungsArmé's aid. The ronin—as some of you know, the word means 'wave-men,' implying masterless warriors—were quickly crushed. The Free Rasalhague Republic's survival was assured."

"Leastways until the Clans came callin'," drawled Lieutenant Senior Grade Aharon "Barak" Ben-Yisroel, Dayan Company CO, in his exaggerated Cowboy accent. A wiry young Mech Warrior with a face as dark as any Indian's, a hook nose, and an unruly brush of curly black hair, he was more overtly countrified than his superior, Second Battalion commander "Maccabee" Bar-Kochba, the Seventeenth's planetologist and a man as well educated as he was battle-seasoned. Both belonged to the ethnic sub-grouping that called itself by the defiant nickname "Jewboy." Refusing to be assimilated into the Roman Catholic Church in the twenty-first century along with most of Judaism, their ancestors had eventually found their way to the three then-Periphery worlds of the outlaw Intendancy of New New Grenada, where they settled down and devoted themselves to out-Cowboying the other Cowboys.

Imperturbable as always, the Mima nodded. Like his employer, he was unfazed by the rude and abrupt habits of these gaijin hirelings. Cassie suspected that the tall, gaunt man found them, secretly, as amusing and delightful as his boss so overtly did. Which highly un-Kurita taste had likely saved Uncle Chandy's life: when the Word of Blake raiders attacked poor Percy's holiday bash last year, Chandy had been back home in the Compound, hugely enjoying his mercenaries' to-him barbaric Christmas Eve revelries.

"Less widely known was the fact that, despite the Kanrei's overwhelming popularity within the army, certain elements of the Combine military secretly resented what they considered the sellout at Rasalhague. And less known still was that the Black Dragon Society, outraged, awakened from its long slumber.

"Since then Kokuryu-kai's influence has grown in leaps and bounds. Now the Society has all but gone public with its demands that the Combine—like the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation— take advantage of the dissolution of the Federated Commonwealth."

The image of the dead Black Dragon dissolved into stars. "As you all know, the Federated Commonwealth is no more, ever since Katrina Steiner-Davion claimed rulership of the old Lyran worlds and renamed her new state the Lyran Alliance. There wasn't much Prince Victor could do, preoccupied as he has been trying to defend the worlds of the Sarna March from predation by Marik and Liao. As you are also aware, Katrina refused to help her brother fend off the invasion, even going so far as encouraging the various pro-Lyran units to leave their posts on the Sarna worlds and other border planets. Many of these units have returned home to the Lyran Alliance by now, leaving numerous Federated Commonwealth worlds poorly defended."

A swath of stars along the yellow-glowing line marking the frontier shone suddenly brighter than the rest. "Indeed, Katrina Steiner has even agreed to the presence of Combine troops as peacekeepers on the worlds of the Lyons thumb, a responsibility which our Coordinator, not without reluctance, has accepted."

Uneasy stirring and cicada-rustle of behind-hands comment ran through the audience. Most of the Seventeenth's members were veterans of the Marik armed forces, whether their separations from service had complied with all the formalities or not, but they had spent most of their careers as mercenaries fighting against the Combine for the Federated Commonwealth.

Uncle Chandy was a popular employer with the regiment, and most of its more sophisticated members harbored at least grudging respect for his cousin Theodore; he seemed to be the only Inner Sphere leader who wasn't permitting personal or House ambition to blind him to the Clan threat, with the clock constantly ticking on the ever-precarious Truce of Tukayyid. But the Caballeros held little love for Dracs at large. Despite their pose of mercenary indifference, they felt a certain general sympathy for FedComs, at least as opposed to the Ktiritas. The thought of the Snakes taking up posts on F-C worlds made many of them uncomfortable.

"Our intelligence"—the Mirza had no need to explain that he was speaking of HTE's farflung corporate intelligence service; that was taken for granted— "indicates that the Black Dragons are preparing to do more than agitate for an incursion into FedCom space. They have recruited the recently appointed commander of Al-Na'ir Prefecture of the Dieron Military District, Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki, to their cause. With their aid, he is preparing to invade a world the Federated Commonwealth claims, a vulnerable planet on the fringe of what many are now calling the Chaos March."

"Why doesn't the Coordinator stop them?" asked Third Battalion's leader, Force Commander Peter White-Nose Pony. A sturdy, quiet man with skin the color of well-tanned leather, his callsign was "Singer," reflecting his secondary job as chaplain of sorts to the Seventeenth's sizable Navajo contingent. "He's Victor Davion's ally these days."

"Theodore Kurita is quite possibly the most popular Coordinator in the Combine's history," Abdulsattah said, "and he is certainly one of the most capable. But no ruler is ever truly absolute; his power is circumscribed in numerous ways. Kusunoki is a hero who won much honor for the Combine during the War of 3039 and the Clan campaign. He is immensely popular with the people of the Combine and, more to the point, with the Combine military. Until Kusunoki does something overt, it could be politically embarrassing for the Coordinator to move against him. By the same token, there are many who take issue with the Coordinator's recent alliance with Victor Davion and the Federated Commonwealth. In.such a climate it could be difficult for Theodore Kurita to repudiate the capture of a world from the Combine's former enemies, should such an action be successful."

He smiled bleakly. "A fait accompli is always difficult to counter, and nowhere more so than within the Draconis Combine. In their misguided zeal to serve him, the Black Dragons could place the Coordinator in the position of having to choose between weakening the Combine through civil war, or betraying the allies who helped save Luthien from invasion by the Smoke Jaguars and Nova Cats. Either course must inevitably weaken the united front Theodore is trying to maintain against renewed Clan aggression. And the evidence is mounting that the militants are gaining strength among the Clans and might at any time become powerful enough to renounce the Truce of Tukayyid."

Cassie slouched lower in her seat, crossed her legs, and gave a sidewise glance at Lady K, who flared her finely sculpted nostrils and rolled her eyes. They could both read this sign well enough, and neither liked where it was leading.

"What about the ISF?" asked Bar-Kochba. He had a sunburned, bullet-shaped head, a lordly nose, and a beard that seemed to consist of curly black or white wires driven into his jutting chin. Despite his age he was reputed to have the best short punch in the regiment. "Aren't they gonna have something to say about Pretty-Boy Kusunoki kicking over the traces?"

The Mirza glanced toward his boss. That right there launched all kinds of red warning rockets in Cassie's skull. It was Abdulsattah's style to seem to meet every question square-on, even if it was with a cunningly camouflaged evasion.

The Man Himself finished chewing a grape and cleared his palate with a swallow of wine. "Though the Smiling One has been taking—if you'll pardon the pun—increasingly draconian measures against the Kokuryu-kai of late," he said, "he and his heir-designate Ninyu Kerai"—here he looked at Cassie, who to a flash of self-directed anger felt her cheeks grow warm—"disparage the threat they pose. Why they do that so determinedly I cannot say, and not even my invaluable Mirza is privy to all that passes between those two.

"As a practical matter, the ISF is also greatly preoccupied with monitoring the Clans and keeping an eye on Maskirovka activity in the Combine, which has increased markedly in the last year. Among other things, Sun-Tzu Liao has been trying to whip up enthusiasm for a sort of quasi-pan-Asian alliance against the Federated Commonwealth—a notion the Black Dragons support enthusiastically, by the way, although in their hearts they have as little use for the Liaos as mad, sad, bad Sun-Tzu truly has for us. Abdulsattah-kun advises me that if the Dragon's Breath has not blown out the candle of Tai-sho Kusunoki's ambition by now, it implies it isn't going to."

"And where do we fit in, Don Chandrasekhar?" asked Colonel Camacho, looking more sad-eyed than usual. Tradition-minded Mexicans would happily have matched any Drac in talking around the point. Norteños—Terran ones or their descendants on the Southwestern Worlds—had never much bought into those traditions.

A star on the far edge of the Chaos March, just below the Combine border, turned red. "I've recently purchased extensive holdings on the world of Towne," Uncle Chandy said. "I want your regiment to go there and safeguard them."

"Towne wouldn't happen to be the planet this Kusunoki character's got his eye on, now, would it?" asked Cassie's superior, Captain James "Badlands" Powell of Scout Platoon. His callsign was more appropriate than ever, thanks to the chemotherapy that was waging a losing battle against his stomach cancer, and had cost him his hair, including his once-legendary red handlebar mustache.

Uncle Chandy beamed delightedly. "Of course it would," he said. "Imagine the coincidence." His little black eyes twinkled like obsidian stars.

"What's our real job there, patrón?" the Colonel asked bluntly.

"To liaise with Towne's armed forces; to stiffen their spines and serve as cadre for them, and to defeat whatever Tai-sho Kusunoki and his traitorous handlers throw against them," Uncle Chandy said. "What else?"

* * *

And there you have it, Cassie thought, jogging around the gravity deck as it turned and turned about the Finnigan's Wake's long axis. She wore a sleeveless ribbed white top over running shorts and matching athletic shoes. Her long dark hair was pulled back tightly and knotted at the back of her head.

Dressed in white tee-shirt and canary-yellow trunks, Kali MacDougall pounded grimly along at her side, a vee of unaccustomed frown furrowing her brow. Lady K hated exercise as much as Cassie relished it. Pride—in her slim leggy beauty as well as her concept of the kind of shape a top Mech Warrior should stay in—kept her to it. Cowboy Payson, whose view of the demands of the 'Mech jock's craft was decidedly different, had declined to join them. Which, as Kali pointed out, was another great impetus to exercise.

For more like the hundredth time than the dozenth, Cassie had replayed the briefing in her mind. Here lay the root of her moodiness and discomfort: la familia was heading into a situation she feared was flat impossible, at least as desperate as the fighting retreat against the Clans on Jeronimo.

"At least this time we're walking in with both eyes open, hon," Kali said. Cassie frowned. She hated it when her friend read her like that. "On Hachiman you were about the only one who saw the thorns waiting in our bed of roses."

"What's the good of spotting a trap if you go ahead and walk right into it?"

"Because that's what we get paid the big C-Bills for," Lady K said, breathing much more easily than her avowed distaste for exercise would seem to predict. "It's our job. If we really thought we'd be happier working as checkers in a grocery store, we'd be doing that, wouldn't we?"

Cassie grunted. She couldn't envision the tall blonde Mech Warrior whipping canned hams and disposable diapers past a laser scanner any more than she could see herself doing it.

"It's the life," Kali said. "You get caught up in it, you don't want to let it go. Sooner or later it takes you. But what the foxtrot? Life's fatal in all known cases."

A great double puffing and slap of half-gee footfalls warned the two women that parties were overtaking them from behind, probably male by the sounds. Cassie glanced surreptitiously back to see the lanky form of Gordo Baird closing up. She had no love and less respect for him, but he did keep himself in pretty decent shape, even if he was sucking wind a bit now. Beside him trotted Gabby Camacho.

Despite the fact that the younger Camacho was a favorite with the wild-ass noteño bravos who'd been snarling and bristling so much at their Cowboy counterparts of late, he and the older S-2 seemed to get along. Baird had history with the Camacho clan; he had saved the Colonel's life, long ago when both still fought for House Marik, back before Don Carlos had backed the wrong horse in the Marik dynasty races and been compelled to travel for his health. It was why Baird managed to hang onto his job in spite of what Cassie considered an overwhelming lack of performance: el Coronel normally had a keen eye for ability, and made personnel decisions accordingly, but he was also a hacendado and a Knight of Galisteo—a literal caballero. Honor overrode all, and the heart of honor was loyalty. He gave back to his people what he demanded of them, unswerving loyalty, and they loved him for it. But sometimes that loyalty imposed costs of its own.

Of late Lieutenant Colonel Baird had been spending an unusual amount of time with Gabby Camacho. Though Cassie kept herself as isolated from regimental politics as possible, her scout's eye had not been able to avoid noting that datum. She still tried not to analyze what it might mean. Analysis of what made people tick was for marks. Cassie's world was divided into marks and la familia, and if ever the twain should meet, she feared on some preconscious level that her center could not hold.

"Buenas tardes, Cass," Gavilan Camacho said as the two men drew alongside. There was no missing the look in his eye, either: Cassie's pert nose and perfect butt gave him a short-circuit in the cooling trunks, and no mistake. That was NBD; she had an array of evasions for that sort of thing, carefully graduated from playing stupid to sudden death, and had in her time used them all. Fortunately, Gabby had soaked up sufficient sense of Command Responsibility from his days at House Davion's New Avalon Military Academy that he'd never pushed the issue far enough for Cassie to break anything.

"Buenas, Gabby," she said in a neutral voice. Treating him as a none-too-well-liked sibling usually seemed to serve her best.

"Good afternoon, Captain ... Lieutenant," Baird said in cordial tones. The women gave him back polite replies.

"You seem preoccupied, Lieutenant," he said, looking hard at Cassie.

She stared back at him, making a serious effort to keep from showing more reaction. She didn't give him credit for that much perception.

"I'm thinking about the mission, Colonel."

"That's to your credit," Baird said. "You worried?"

"Always."

He squeezed out an indulgent chuckle. "I can certainly see why. But you might as well put your mind at ease for the short term. We're heading in to lend Towne a hand it's badly going to need."

He smiled. "What a relief it's going to be to go in somewhere the locals will welcome us with open arms."

BattleTech - LE5523

PART TWO

A World of Lies

The world is a vast temple dedicated to Discord.

—Voltaire

BattleTech - LE5523

7

Turanian Transport Company Complex, Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

12 December 3057

It didn't surprise Cassie that Gordo Baird turned out to be dead wrong.

"DEATH TO THE DRACS!" the loudspeaker blared, words seeming to echo off the hanging overcast of Port Howard. "DEATH TO THEIR SCUMBAG MERCS!"

Hands thrust deep into the pockets of her parka lined with hexwolf fur, Cassie hung near the rear fringes of the mob gathered before the front gates of the sprawling Turanian Transport Company complex, on the north bank of the Thunder River where it emptied into Circle Bay. The crowd was mostly male, ranging from young to middle-aged, and dressed more according to the dictates of budget than fashion. The Caballeros had just barely arrived on Towne, and Cassie was out on the street doing what she did best. Noting the hands of people around her as she slipped through the mob, it looked to her as if their owners must have once been truly employed in some manual trade.

Construction and contracting were depressed in Towne's urban areas, and had been since most offworld investment and a great deal of domestic capital had followed the Fifth Lyran Guards, who'd returned home to Katrina Steiner rather than become involved in her brother's war with Thomas Marik. The septuagenarian Marquis of Towne had also turned tail, repairing for an apparently permanent stay at a villa he owned on New Avalon. That went a long way toward explaining why so many laborers had the surplus ill-will and free time to engage in potentially violent demonstrations. It did not exactly explain why both were directed so furiously against Uncle Chandy. The Kurita magnate's arrival-by-proxy had brought wads of fresh capital, and not just the promise of spanking new jobs but the actuality.

Despite last night's hand's breadth fall of snow— since churned to gray mush beneath several thousand protesting boots—the wind blowing up Starry Wisdom Street, warmed by the Valusian Current, was nowhere near chill enough to account for the touch of ice in Cassie's marrow.

"THOMAS MARIK AND HIS LIAO LACKEY HAVE RAPED THE FEDERATED COMMONWEALTH," the amplified voice proclaimed. "NOW A KURITA WANTS HIS TURN TOO. HE'S A SNAKE IN THE GRASS. FIRST HE COMES TO TAKE OUR JOBS. SOON HE'LL WANT TO TAKE OUR LIVES ..." The speaker, standing atop a delivery van mob-bound across the street from the compound gates, was a man in his thirties with a big neck and rough hair, dressed against the uncold breeze in a red plaid shirt, baggy dark-indeterminate trousers, and half-fastened galoshes.

He was partly right, Cassie thought. Some worlds were still engaged in scattered fighting, but mostly it was all over. Marik and Liao had gotten what they'd come for, winning back the worlds their empires had lost decades before. Victor Davion still claimed the region as the Federated Commonwealth's Sarna March, but in reality it was a no-man's land that almost everyone had begun to call the Chaos March.

As a rabble-rouser the man was middling. As a survivor he didn't impress Cassie much. Growing up on the Liao world of Larsha, she'd known some serious civil disturbances. Also some serious suppression of same, courtesy of the brutal Maskirovka Guards. Even the stupidest Maskirovka leg-breaker understood that if you wanted to take the starch out of a mob, you took down its leaders. This fool might as well have been projecting a holo of a big arrow pointing down at him, accompanied by the words, "Bust my chops."

Or maybe civil disturbers didn't have to learn low-profile reflexes to survive in the relatively open Fedrat society. At any rate the holocameras, out in force today despite inclement weather, could get a good look at him.

The dozen tan-jumpsuited Turanian Transport security guards lined shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the gate faced the demonstrators across a forty-meter half-moon of ground with riot batons held across their hips. Their faces grim beneath the white-painted hard-hats they'd crammed down on top of their customary indigo berets, it was obvious that they weren't accustomed to such a state of affairs. For sure they weren't comfortable with such a state of affairs. From their postures they seemed to be deriving no more by way of spine-stiffening from Lieutenant Leo "El Pipiribau" Archuleta's Locust standing at their backs than from, say, the heavy-hauler blimp whose yellow bloat was visible above the fence as it offloaded its cargo of Eiglophian Mountain bloodwood logs onto a surface freighter moored on the Thunder.

A man in a brown jacket stood right in front of them, trying to calm down the crowd through his own bullhorn: "Look, you all know me. I've lived and worked here all my life, just the same as you ..." He was losing the volume war to the man on the van. His bald head shone with more sweat than the temperature—it wasn't warm, either—would account for.

A beer bottle arced out of the crowd over his and the security cordon's heads to shatter against the Locust's flat transpex windscreen. Somebody's got a live arm, Cassie thought. Somebody also had what Kali MacDougall would term more sand than sense to get that fresh with a BattleMech, even one as tiny as Pipiribau's ride. Twenty tons was still a lot of weight to throw around a street crammed with bodies armored mainly in flannel and ripstop.

Or maybe these citizens were so spoiled by the free and easy FedCom life that they didn't think any 'Mech jock—even one whose checks were signed by a Kurita snake-in-the-grass—would dare start stomping them into red paste.

The truth was they had a point. Courtesy of Zuma Gallegos's tech wizardry, the large laser boasted by Pipiribau's LCT-1V had been temporarily replaced with a water-cannon for crowd-control work. Though the 'Mech still sported its arm-mounted Sperry Browning machine guns, the Peep was a happy-go-lucky goof from Frenchfry Ames' Adelante Company, who hadn't really needed any hair-raising warnings not to light them off at people except under direst necessity. Pipiribau's frame of mind was indicated by his habit of gluing toys, party decorations, painted plates, and thimbles—all kinds of colorful magpie junk—all over his Locust in the ancient Tijuana Taxi style, giving the machine a weirdly fuzzy appearance. When the clutter was blasted off in combat, he set to work replacing it the instant the smoke cleared.

The crowd cheered the bottle-lobber. "It's great to be welcomed with open arms," Cassie murmured under her breath.

Nobody looked her way. They couldn't hear her for their own commotion, much less the Battle of the Bullhorns. Nobody was paying her much attention at all, in fact. The bulky parka and a pair of bulbous polarized goggles obscured her striking looks, and though the crowd was predominantly white, the Islanders from Towne's southern hemisphere were of mostly Black, Polynesian, or Asian extraction, and she could easily pass for one of them.

One thing she especially noticed was the lack of student-activist types. Gymnasium and college-aged Townie kids who came from families affluent enough to allow them to worry about saving the world tended to affect working-class dress. Street-kid Cassie could spot the posers a klick away. In the ten days the Seventeenth had been planetside she'd learned that solidarity with working men and women was a currently fashionable campus fad. Going out and rubbing actual elbow with actual workers was apparently less trendy.

As she filed those data away, though, she noticed a man moving through the throng near her. He was slightly older than the undergrad types she'd been thinking about, and his hair was just a touch too smooth and he looked just a hair too uncomfortable in a green and black-checked lumberman's jacket a size too big for him to altogether blend in. He was stopping now and then to say something to various demonstrators, individually or in groups small enough to hear words spoken in a normal tone of voice, touching the occasional arm and nodding frequently toward the compound gates. Working the crowd, Cassie thought. Who and why?

She'd just started to drift over to where she could listen in on his patter when the snarl of about 1600 ccs of unmuffled engine cut through the crowd-clamor like a chainsaw.

Cassie'shead snapped around. In all the Inner Sphere she knew only one machine to make that snarling farty sound, a big-ass V-Twin outlaw bike from the Harley-Indian-Messerschmidt factory on Atreus—a ride which, coincidentally, enjoyed near-sacramental status among all the ethnicities of the Southwestern Trinity. HIM cycles were not unknown outside the Free Worlds League—they had just begun to enjoy a vogue as the status ride of Hachiman's upper-middle-class dekigow-zoku kid gangs when the Caballeros left for Towne—but this was the first one Cassie had encountered here.

Off to the left she saw the crowd giving way briskly to the motorcycle, which was prudent, since at almost half a ton in the local gravity the bike was more than capable of forcing its way through. The rider was swaddled in condensation-sheened black leather, faceless in a black-visored helmet. The figure steered with a gloved left hand. In the other it carried—

Cassie popped her goggles up her forehead to get a better look. In his right hand the rider was carrying the unmistakable fat double tube of a portable SRM launcher.

Grasping the synthrubber grips of the snub-nosed revolver she carried in a hidden holster sewn into the parka's right pocket, Cassie started forward through the crush. With her other hand she held a pocket communicator to her mouth, broadcasting a warning on the Adelante company freq. She already knew she'd never get close enough for a shot at the black rider in time.

The security guards saw the huge bike bearing down on them. They scattered even as Pipiribau Was turning his Locust to face the interloper. He either spotted the weapon or thought the HIM was going to try to crash the gate, because he triggered off the water-cannon. The motorcycle swerved around the hissing stream and made straight for the 'Mech.

The 'Mech's Sperry cut loose with a snarl. Cassie saw pale tracer pulses in the gloom as bullets chewed blacktop to either side of the cyclist. The rider laid his big machine down on its left side.

Cassie stopped. Her reflex sigh of relief stuck in her throat. The rider in black wasn't abandoning his bike. Instead he stayed with it as it skidded amid a bow-wave of sparks, right between the Locust's legs. As he passed beneath the 'Mech he triggered both tubes of the launcher straight upward.

A double blast shattered the little 'Mech's right hip actuator. It toppled forward and to its right, collapsing a section of three-meter-high chain link fence as it crashed down.

Ditching the spent launcher and pushing off powerfully with a black-leather-clad leg, the rider used his bike's momentum to get it back upright. It skidded through a full circle and got its wheels pointed forward again. The HIM wobbled twice and then peeled but with a defiant snarl of its engine.

For a moment, Cassie and everybody else in eyeshot just stood and stared. The motorcycle hung a knee-scraping left inland off Starry Wisdom and disappeared.

With a happy, savage shout the mob surged forward. They were going to roll the hapless security guards out flat. They were going to bust down the gates and go pouring into the compound. It might even occur to them to try to pry El Pipiribau—who was likely stunned but unhurt by his tumble—out of his 'Mech.

And then they were going to start doing some serious dying. The other Adelante 'Mechs stationed discreetly out of sight within the Turanian Transport Company grounds would charge into action. Now that heavy ordnance had been unleashed—-and one of their own down—all restraint would be out the airlock.

"Adelante, this is Abtakha, come back, over," Cassie was saying desperately into her pocket comm. The white-helmeted security men and their baldheaded CEO stood with their backs to the gate, awaiting death. Behind them Cassie could see the round transpex-covered "face" of Macho Alvarado's BattleMaster swaying ominously as the vast 'Mech lumbered toward the fence. A Phoenix Hawk, the beautifully airbrushed painting adorning its breast and belly armor an indistinct blur in the drizzle that had begun to fall, soared high above the compound on its Pitban jump jets. That was unmistakably LieutenantJG Jesse James Leyva, callsign "Outlaw."

"Frenchfry, Raven, Macho, Outlaw—anybody, please come in," Cassie said urgently.

What she could tell them if they did come in she wasn't sure. If her blood hadn't been singing with fear and anger—la familia is threatened!—Cassie would have admired the setup's cold-blooded perfection. Thanks to the bold mystery rider, the Caballeros were about to massacre several hundred of the very people they'd come to save. In a matter of heartbeats, a task that was already proving near-hopeless—rallying Towne's defenses against the coming attack—would become irretrievably impossible. And instead of winning allies, the members of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment might find a whole planet howling for their blood.

With a multi-throated growl the crowd started forward. Cassie drew the snubby from her pocket and got ready to fire it into the air—anything to break the spasm, head off the coming catastrophe. It wouldn't work, of course.

The gate opened. A small, slender form stepped out.

Before the line of guards could react it had slipped past them and was walking toward the advancing mob, raising a megaphone to its lips. Black hair glistening with moisture hung to the shoulders, framing a perfect heart-shaped face.

"Outlaw, Frenchfry, Raven, anybody," Cassie said urgently, "don't shoot. It's Diana."

Outlaw Leyva's jumping Phoenix Hawk, which seemed to be aiming for touchdown smack in the middle of the mob, braked in the air and settled to a roaring landing just inside the gate. The wash of its jets whipped Diana Vásquez's hair around her face. Frenchfry's Stinger and Cowboy's black and yellow-striped Wasp touched down flanking it. Frenchfry's wife Raven hung the drooping beak of her 'Mech—a Raven—over the fence like a curious bird.

"People of Port Howard," Diana said through the megaphone, her voice smooth and soothing as a mother's breast, "Townians, please listen to me. We haven't come to hurt you. We're here to help."

The front-runners of, the crowd faltered, slowed. The lone woman looked so fragile and vulnerable, and yet projected such utter serene strength, that no one had the will to raise a hand against her. Cassie glanced toward the van, where the mob orator stood with his own bullhorn lowered and his jaw slack, a stricken look on his face, as if asking himself, What did I almost do?

From a few meters away Cassie heard an unampli-fied voice raised: "Don't listen to the bitch! She's a Drac spy! Kill the slut—"

Cassie grinned a wolf grin. Here was something she could do. She glided forward and to her right, flowing between hulking demonstrators as unnoticeably as a shadow. The sleek-haired agitator she'd spotted just before the balloon went up was standing with his back to her, shaking his fist and shouting for Diana's blood.

She came up behind, grabbed a fistful of his green and black jacket and rammed the barrel of her revolver into his kidneys so hard she felt his knees sag at the unexpected shock of pain.

"Keep that up, Sierra-for-brains," she hissed in his ear, "and I'll blow your guts out your belly button."

To his credit the agitator froze. She could almost feel his eyeballs straining in their sockets, trying to track far enough to get a glimpse at her. But he didn't try to hand her a milligram of see-here-httle-girl-you-might-hurt-somebody guff. Which showed he either had some native smarts or was a trained operator, because what she'd told him wasn't a threat but a promise. At the next sound out of his mouth she would happily make good on it.

Touching somebody with a firearm was seriously bad policy—most times. Hence the deathgrip on the back of his jacket. If he tried to pivot out of the way she'd wrap both strong legs around his waist and blow him in half anyway. She was utterly confident in her ability to do that no matter how good he was. She'd done it before. A mongoose had nothing on Cassie.

By now the impressive mass of Macho's Battle-Master was looming up behind the gate, with Buck Evans' Orion right next to it. Even quiescent, the awesome firepower of half a dozen BattleMechs, including an assault and a heavy, was enough to quench the hot flash the Locust's fall had ignited in the crowd. The crowd, which had stopped ten meters shy of lonely Diana, now began to.back up as if all those guns and missiles and energy weapons were giving off some kind of magic repellor field.

Moving with a purpose, demonstrators washed back into Cassie and her captive, jostling them. A quick hip-twist torqued the jacket out of her grip. She stepped quickly back, pulling her pistol back to her hip in case the agitator made a grab for it. But his intent was escape and evasion; he sidestepped to put the breadth of a dockworker between him and the snubby. For a moment, burning dark eyes caught Cassie's and held them past a butte of shoulder. Then the man was gone.

She made the little revolver vanish. Then she did the same.

BattleTech - LE5523

8

Palace of the Marquis, Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

12 December 3057

"We don't need your help,!"

The woman standing at the far end of the table had lank blond hair and a thin face. But for the pink spots glowing high on either cheek, her skin was dead-pale in the gray light filtering through high narrow windows in the gray stone walls. Colonel Carlos Camacho wondered if she were really entitled to the Hauptmann-General rank badges pinned to the epaulets of her undress tunic.

"Calm down, Janice," said the man sitting halfway down the table on the Colonel's right. He was a slim, handsome officer who was unquestionably entitled to the Leftenant General's badges he wore. Though his face and manner were youthful, accreting years bad begun to turn his trim blond mustache the color of wood ash. The General had graciously yielded primacy of position to Don Carlos, but he was in fact hosting this meeting in a ground-floor building of a smartly turned-out barracks complex set in a corner of the absent Marquis of Towne's palace grounds. "We'll gladly take all the help we can get."

The lank-haired woman glowered at the slim, mus-tached man while the woman in the plum suit sitting across from him leaned clasped hands on the table and favored him with a plump, unpleasant smile. "Now, Sir Osric, let's not be hasty," she said. "This is a democratic society, need I remind you? Since the Marquis' departure, your Fusiliers aren't exactly in any position to dictate to the rest of the planet. And, I must say, the Planetary Government is inclined to agree with Hauptmann General Marrou's assessment. If a threat exists—and the PG is far from satisfied that such is the case—surely our domestic resources are sufficient to handle it."

"The PG can shove its assessments up its bum," muttered the man sitting to the right of Osric Gould. '"Unless, Of course, the Snakes do it for them."

"I beg your pardon, Kommandant Waites?" the woman in the plum suit said sharply.

"I said, if the PG's wrong, our situation will be rum," Waites told her blandly. He was a wiry man with wiry dark-blond hair, whose skin was brown by birth and rendered almost black by a deep-water tan that contrasted almost shockingly with his crisp whites. An Islander from the southern hemisphere, he was meeting with Colonel Camacho as representative of the by-the-Virgin blue-water Navy. As such he was the only member of the regular Armed Forces of the Federated Commonwealth present.

Leftenant General Sir Osric Gould commanded the Marquis of Towne's Own Fusiliers, or what was left of them after the Marquis pulled his bunk for New Ava-lon, taking his Own First Battalion with him. Sir Osric's rump force were household troops—armor, infantry, and some aerospace fighters mixed in with maybe two companies of 'Mechs all told. Hauptmann General soi-disant Janice Marrou headed up the Towne Guards, a planetary militia unit auxiliary to the AFFC. The Guards boasted a paper strength of seven battalions. Their actual strength, according to reports, amounted to maybe four battalions, mostly infantry, leavened with armor, artillery, VTOLs, and about a company of 'Mechs.

The Fusiliers were regulars in any meaningful sense. Sir Osric was a much-decorated soldier, as were many of his remaining officers, and a reasonable percentage of his troops were AFFC vets who'd opted to serve closer to home in the wake of the formation of the Lyran Alliance. Their equipment was not bleeding-edge modern—neither was the Caballeros'—but it was well maintained and the Fusiliers acted as if they knew how to use it. How well their morale was holding up under the flight of the man whose body their ostensible purpose was to guard and the recent breakup of the Federated Commonwealth was an open question.

The Towne Guards were a different proposition. Unlike the Fusiliers, who were scattered across most of the major northern continent of Hyboria, they were mostly concentrated in the capital city of Port Howard. Caballeros who'd gotten a look at them were not overly impressed. They were slovenly, even by easygoing Southwestern standards, and the antecedents and current battle-worthiness of their BattleMechs were as mysterious as those of their commander.

"I'm not altogether sure," the Planetary Government representative said, "why we're having this discussion at all. The Seventeenth Recon Regiment, as I understand it, has been retained as security guards by a plutocrat from the Draconis Combine who recently saw fit to purchase substantial holdings on Towne. Why they should be engaged in talks with our defense forces isn't clear to me."

"We've all seen the evidence Colonel Camacho has presented," Sir Osric said. It cost him no visible strain to maintain his cordial, reasonable air, a fact Don Carlos admired. "He has convinced me and my staff that, in some four to six months' time, we're due to receive some rather unwelcome visitors from the Combine side of the border."

"Evidence he admits comes exclusively from Drac sources," Marrou said. "Even if he's playing us square, who's to say they're not feeding him false information?"

"What in God's name would Subhash Indrahar and his people stand to gain by us going to alert status?" asked Kommandant Waites. "A good belly laugh?"

Marrou gave him a pale-eyed glare and fell silent.

"Just for the sake of argument, Colonel, could you refresh my memory as to the exact statistics you quoted us?" said the woman in the plum suit, her tone indicating she hadn't bothered to look at the digests originally prepared by the Mirza Abdulsattah's staff, and wasn't going to pay attention to what she was told now, either. Hermione Finzi-Grich was the personal emissary of Towne's head of state, Chancellor Martin Cortese.

"Certainly," the Colonel said. "We expect that, within the time-frame the Leftenant-General mentioned, one Jeffrey Kusunoki, commander of the Draconis Combine's Fifteenth Dieron Regulars, will lead an estimated two to three regiments in an invasion of Towne. An attack which, I repeat, is not in any way sanctioned by Theodore Kurita."

Finzi-Grich shook her head. "I find it hard to believe that anything of such a military nature could be contemplated, much less undertaken, without the full knowledge and approval of the Coordinator of the Draconis Combine."

Don Carlos tried not to scowl. It would be both impolite and impolitic. And anyway, not so very long ago he'd had plenty of misconceptions of his own about the Combine being a monolithic entity, instantly and unanimously obedient to its rulers' will. His regiment's time on Hachiman had graphically shown how silly that notion was, but most citizens of the Federated Commonwealth and the Free Worlds League still accepted the idea religiously.

"The Coordinator has his hands full with the Clans, ma'am," explained Gordo Baird, who sat next to the Colonel.

Father Doctor Bob García, sitting to Don Carlos's other side, leaned forward. "Perhaps we could discuss scheduling joint exercises, between your units and ours," he said pleasantly. "Surely there's no objection to that? Even if this Combine threat proves chimerical, don't you agree that it would be beneficial to spend time training together?"

Don Carlos's face remained impassive, but inwardly he smiled. In a more rank-conscious outfit a mere Lieutenant Senior Grade would not likely be tapped to participate in meetings at this level, and certainly not to contribute at will. The Caballeros didn't work that way. As a psychologist and a historian—not to mention a Jesuit—García was adept at handling people in difficult circumstances, at smoothing over confrontations. He was not, alas, a very skillful Mech Warrior, although none could question his courage in battle. But Don Carlos had long ago learned that, to keep the large and essentially vulnerable organism that was his regiment alive and intact in the hostile environment of the thirty-first century, he needed to be able to call upon a vast array of talents, not just war-craft.

Moreover, he had a traditional Galistean aristocrat's respect for the clergy. And after all, didn't the existence of little Bobbi Savage prove Father García wasn't a maricón, as the young bravos used to laughingly claim behind his back?

Leftenant General Osric Gould turned a toothy, engaging smile on his opposite number from the Towne Guards. "That seems fair enough, doesn't it, Janice? Our lads and lasses could stand some touching up, to be sure."

Hauptmann General Janice Marrou scowled. "My people don't much hold with money-troopers."

For just a flash Sir Osric's mouth thinned to a line. "Are you aware of the service record of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment, General?" he asked quietly. "They've fought a great many brave battles for the Commonwealth in the last twenty years and more."

"That hasn't stopped them taking Drac coin."

"Those of us who fought the Clans did so alongside the Draconis military," Gould said. "Our own Prince Victor personally led the raid that freed the Coordinator's son from Clan captivity. We're not currently enemies of the Combine, ma'am; and should these. Black Dragon renegades in fact materialize, it will be greatly in the interests of both Combine and Federated Commonwealth—not to mention our own—to resist them as effectively as possible."

"Not wishing to dampen anybody's boyish enthusiasm," Finzi-Grich said, "but it looks like it's time for a reality check. These war games you're all talking about so blithely cost money, at a time when a reactionary segment of the populace is already groaning about paying their fair share."

"Our operational budget—which, I hope it's not presumptuous to add, comes out of the Marquis' household funds—already allows for such exercises, Ms. Finzi-Grich."

"Perhaps it's time for the Assembly to take up the question of how big a percentage of our planetary income we ought to devote to enriching an absentee nobleman," Finzi-Grich said grimly. "And I might mention, Father García, that I'm personally shocked to see a man of the cloth associating himself with violent enterprises, particularly for pecuniary gain."

Father García smiled. "I'll spare you a lengthy discourse on the history and raison d'etre for my Company—my order, as you might call it. Suffice it to say that in my primary capacity I serve the Seventeenth as a common MechWarrior."

Finzi-Grich's jaw dropped. "I thought clergymen were always noncombatants!"

"Not in the Caballeros, ma'am," Baird said.

Leftenant General Marrou was frowning—or, to be accurate, frowning more deeply; the Colonel suspected that the rest-state for her features was pinched displeasure. This time, at least, her disfavor was aimed at the round-faced civilian.

"We've got our budget set for the fiscal year, too, Hermione," she said defiantly. "There's also a limit to how far the PG can throw its weight around."

She turned to Sir Osric Gould. "If your people can drill with these mercenaries, mine can too. I'm very interested to see how good they really are."

Finzi-Grich drew a deep breath. Deciding for the moment not to press the issue, she looked at Don Carlos and said, "One thing I have to caution you about, Colonel Camacho, both as a responsible citizen of Towne and a spokesperson for the Planetary Government. Don't have anything to do with any of the unofficial militias springing up here and there, especially this self-proclaimed Popular Militia. They're dangerous criminals and psychotics. They cling to this outmoded 'Charter' of theirs as a pretext for their continued existence. Some of them actually preach armed resistance to the Planetary Government's attempts to belatedly bring a degree of enlightenment and humanitarian rule to this planet, which has too long suffered the ravages of a frontier mindset. If you really want to do something about the peace and security of Towne, you can help us disarm them."

"We have come here to help defend the planet against a threat, Señora," Don Carlos said. "We have no wish to become embroiled in your local politics—"

A knock at the door. "Come," Gould called out. He displayed no irritation, just the serene conviction that his subordinates would not disturb the meeting without adequate cause.

The door opened and a Fusilier leftenant poked her close-cropped red head into the room. "General, there's something—" Her eyes flicked to the Colonel, and she moistened her lips with a pink tongue. "Perhaps your guests would be interested as well."

"Very well, Leftenant Hogeboom," Sir Osric said. "Ladies, gentlemen, with your permission—?"

He rose and indicated the door. The others headed out. Hermione Finzi-Grich said peevishly, "The correct phrase would have been citizens," but she trooped after.

The little leftenant led them down stone corridors decorated with battle scenes from the Fusiliers' past. Even though no Marquis had exercised his traditional prerogative of leading his troops into battle personally for the past few generations, Towne's rulers had been wise enough not to let their soldiers get rusty. While household troops or other planetary militias could be compelled to serve offworld only in the direst emergencies—such as the Clan invasion—a nobleman or woman could commit personal forces voluntarily. When the Clans struck, the current Marquis had sent two battalions of Fusiliers into action without waiting for a mandatory call-up.

Leftenant Hogeboom led them to a cozy officer's lounge with walls paneled in the native hardwoods whose export was a major source of Towne's relative prosperity. There were comfortable sofas and chairs, racks of the latest holomags, a billiard table at one end of the room. It was the holovid display at the other end that claimed everyone's attention.'

An exquisitely tailored woman with meticulously coifed blonde hair was holding a microphone up for a tall man in a tie to talk into. He had a long narrow head, long nose and jaw, dark eyes beneath a rather aggressive forehead, curly dark brown hair. Though he was far from a pretty-boy, he had the kind of looks that made men think of him as a tiburdn—shark—a real man's man, and made women want to think of him as theirs. His dark suit didn't look overtly expensive, but was cunningly tailored to display broad shoulders and trim body to advantage.

Hermione Finzi-Grich didn't seem smitten with him, however. Sight of him brought her up short, and she said, "Blaylock," under her breath in a disgusted tone.

"—all deplore this violence, Annabelle," the man
was saying. "But we must have the courage to face the
message it sends: the people of Towne are in pain, and
they don't know where to turn "

Gould raised an eyebrow at his subordinate. "I'm sure we're all very interested in seeing Towne's most distinguished opposition leader, Leftenant—"

Hogeboom fluttered her fingers. "Please, sir. Just a moment."

The newswoman touched the little white button speaker plugged into her right ear. "Just one moment, Assemblyman Blaylock. As promised, we take you now live to the north' bank district of Port Howard, where we understand the mercenary Seventeenth Re-con Regiment has just launched an unprovoked attack on demonstrators outside the Turanian Transport Company compound ..."

Don Carlos looked to his intelligence officer. Baird's eyebrows were raised, and he gave his head a taut little shake. From the corner of his eye the Colonel caught what he took for a smirk flitting across Finzi-Grich's full lips.

The scene shifted to Starry Wisdom Street, where the crowd was starting to run toward the gate. A weird metallic-grasshopper sprawl to the left side of the frame resolved itself in Camacho's mind into the legs of a fallen Locust. "Pipiribau!" he exclaimed, a soft explosion. A Phoenix Hawk was descending to meet the crowd on its jump jets' blast.

And then the gate swung open.

BattleTech - LE5523

9

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

12 December 3057

The black-clad motorcyclist streaked across the holostage toward Pipiribau's Locust, laid the bike down, and fired its SRMs. A gasp that was half-admiring and half-concerned rose from the crowd as the BattleMech fell. Even Leo Archuleta, a.k.a. El Pipiribau—bruised from his fall, but otherwise unhurt—whistled appreciatively.

"Now there," Cowboy Payson's voice twanged from the theater dark, "is a bad guy with balls of brass."

"Ovaries," Cassie corrected into her little hand-mike as the lights came up halfway.

At a hair under six hundred people, including babes in arms, the Seventeenth might be only a fraction of the size of a conventional regiment, but it was enormous by the standards of many 'Mech outfits. Accommodating the whole crew without scattering them like dandelion seeds required a high degree of art. For years that art had been ably provided by Colonel Comacho's executive officer and mistress, Lieutenant Colonel Marisol Cabrera. But she had died saving the Colonel's life during the brutal fighting against the Ninth Ghost Regiment the year before on Hachiman.

Her replacement as XO was Dolores Gallegos, who had no military rank and refused any kind of make-believe commission. She happened to be the wife of Zuma Gallegos and the mother of five children. Though her style was markedly different from Cabrera's—for one thing she was a whole lot easier to get along with than her predecessor, whose nickname had been la Dama Muerte, the Lady Death—she had, if anything, a more remarkable gift for seeing to the regiment's domestic needs.

While Towne's timber and copper exports were still going great guns, the flight of those who controlled the world's capital assets had severely cut the number of visitors—in particular tourists and construction crews—passing through Turanian Transport's Port Howard yards. Taking advantage'of that, Dolores Gallegos had found a hotel called the Markbreit Select just two blocks from the TTC main gate—right around the corner from the morning's riot, in fact. Nicknamed "Red" for the color of her hair and built like a von Luckner tank and about as easily deflected, she had persuaded the management to give its facilities over entirely to the Seventeenth while referring other potential guests to various area hostelries, none of which was overfilled.

To make matters better, right next door to the Markbreit was a hemi-demi-semiderelect holotheater known as the Top o' the Towne, where the whole of the Regiment could crowd in together to get filled in on the day's events while Zuma tried to get the old popcorn machine to work. Though there was no question of it being a democracy, the Seventeenth Recon really was a family. If it was feasible, nobody was kept in the dark, and everybody was consulted, even if el, patron held the undisputed final say.

Now Cassie was none too comfortably aware of a hair under twelve hundred eyes fixed on her from the ranks of seats and the two wedding-cake balconies stacked up below the ceiling, which was painted black and set with hundreds of tiny lights to mimic the constellations of the Towne night sky. It wasn't that she had stage fright—she had some notable phobias, but that wasn't one of them. It was simply that, as the Ultimate Scout, she had dedicated her whole professional existence to the principle of not being seen.

But whatever she did or did not do, Cassie never shirked her duty to la familia. So she stood as tall as her 165 centimeters would let her at the foot of the holostage thrusting into the semicircular theater and said, "Our mystery rider's a woman."

"Good lord!" sang out Cowboy Pay son again, sitting with his pal Buck Evans up in the top balcony where he could drop things on people's heads if he got bored. "You mean there's another one out there just like you?"

The audience laughed. Cassie glared at Cowboy. If her eyes had been Martell lasers he'd have had holes in him you could stick your arms through.

"Her name's Wolf Girl," Cassie continued when the laughter subsided. "Nobody knows her real name, nobody ever calls her anything else. She's reputed to be a master of weapons and of martial arts. She's a major organizer—'enforcer' might be a better word—for something called the Rights of Towne Movement, which is associated with the Popular Militia."

From the middle of the crowd, where he was sitting between Colonel and son Gavilan Camacho, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird stood up.

"We've been able to compile some information on the ROTM, or 'ROT' as most people call it," he said. He didn't need his own mike to be heard; in the darkness above the holostage Risky Savage was crouched on a catwalk aiming a shotgun mike at him. Cassie had her own mike because she was almost directly beneath the tech's position, and also to signify her position as mistress-of-ceremonies.

"ROT is a rather loose, rag-tag assortment of resist-ers whose general level of competence is demonstrated by the unfortunate acronym they've saddled themselves with. Its members range from Towne separatists to hard-line Davion or FedCom loyalists to outright anarchists. One thing they share in common is a passionate belief in the so-called Towne Charter, a document guaranteeing certain political rights to the planet's inhabitants, and empowering the citizenry as a whole to serve as an armed self-defense force. This was granted by Prince John Davion back in the late 2700s after the locals waged a savage and successful guerrilla war against the Combine and Capellan Confederation forces who'd invaded during the so-called Towne Debacle.

"The movement has achieved a certain popularity in the Hyborian hinterlands, especially among ranchers, miners, loggers, fur-hunters, and others who work the land. In the major cities, such as Port Howard, it appeals primarily to the lower-middle and lower classes. Its military arm is the so-called Popular Militia, which the Planetary Government is currently attempting to disarm."

"That's not exactly true, Colonel," Cassie said. "There may be a lot of overlap between the two groups, but you can't read too much into it, because neither's anything like a unified movement."

"And where did you come by this startling news, Lieutenant?" Baird asked.

"By going out and talking to people."

The S-2's face pinched. "Young woman, are you seriously suggesting we throw away the fruits of tried and true intelligence-gathering and evaluation on the strength of mere hearsay gossip?"

Cassie wanted to say you got that Foxtrot straight, but Don Carlos—for whom loyalty to an old friend was a beautiful, sacred thing, but who also knew Cas-sie's track record—said, "We've done our best to publicize our intention to help the people of Towne keep their independence and their freedom since we came to this world. Why haven't these groups sent anyone to speak to us?"

For answer Cassie hit a button on the little controller she carried in her left palm. As the frozen action kicked back into motion, Wolf Girl was seen riding off through ranks of demonstrators waving DRACS OUT OF TOWNE signs. "Who do you think was out there protesting us today?"

"Still sounds as if these people are the ones we oughta be talking to, instead of these head-up-the-butt Towne Guard types," said Buck Evans. He and Cowboy Payson were inseparable companions, which Cowboy joked was to "keep him out of trouble." But given the amount he managed to get into with his buddy on hand led to much lively speculation among the Caballeros about what might be the level of mischief if Cowboy were left to his own devices.

That brought a general chorus of approval. "But, you know, they hate us and everything," objected Frontera Company's commander, Captain Angela Torres, a raven-haired woman who came by her handle "Vanity" honestly.

Jeers in English and Spanish answered her. Her beautiful face flushed angrily as she began to shout back abuse.

"Wait a moment, people," Kali MacDougall said, rising from her own seat on the main floor. Risky, who had cannily swung her mike away when Vanity clouded up, focused on Lady K. "Vanity isn't just pushing air molecules around here. We got us a problem if these Popular Militia buckos think we're the ones they're supposed to be fighting."

"I'm relieved to see you speaking out on the side of sanity, Captain MacDougall," said Baird, who hadn't sat down. "We mustn't considertreating with these dangerous fringe elements. In fact, it's my opinion we'd be doing ourselves a great favor by complying with the Planetary Government's request that we help them disarm the Popular Militia."

A chorus of boos answered. Southwesterners still fdndly remembered their own days as a Bandit Kingdom. They had a reflexive tendency to root for outlaws over authorities, even when the outlaws were hostile to them. It did not, of course, slow their reflexes when they got shot at.

"That's not what I'm saying at all, Gordo," Lady K said as the catcalls died away. "I'm with Buck; we need to try to get these militia people working with us."

Baird stared at her. "But you yourself pointed out—"

"I was just secondin' Vanity, actually. Because she's right. It's not gonna be easy to 'open a dialogue' with 'em, as they say in Santa Fe."

The 'lleros laughed. To the wild-ass equestrian bra-vos and bravas who made up most of the Seventeenth's complement, Sierra's capital of Santa Fe represented everything trendy, oversophisticated, and generally foppish about urban Southwesterners. It was the translation of one of their favorite curses, "Sierra Foxtrot."

"But I reckon," Lady K continued, "that if anybody can weasel them into talkin' to us, it's our very own Abtakha."

* * *

"Senior Lieutenant Vásquez!"

Diana Vásquez stopped with her keycard poised above the slot of her door on the Markbreit's fifth floor. "Colonel," she replied, nodding gravely.

His right hand concealed behind his back, Don Carlos walked down the corridor toward her with a rolling bowlegged gait. As befit a true caballero from Galisteo he had grown up dividing his time between the saddle of a horse and the cockpit of one of the AgroMechs Trinity ranchers used to herd their huge, unruly Ranger cattle. Even though he still forked a riding-beast—a horse or whatever the locale offered— whenever he could, after all these years the walk was an affectation. One of the few he permitted himself!

"I hope that I did not embarrass you by praising your actions of this morning at tonight's meeting," Don Carlos said.

Diana smiled her easy, gracious smile. "No, I wasn't embarrassed," she said. "But I'm not sure why you bothered. Something had to be done, or people would have gotten hurt. I was there, and I did it."

Don Carlos did not doubt her sincerity. Neither would the most cynical of Caballeros, Cowboy or Bobby the Wolf or Vanity, who resented Diana almost as much for her refusal to be drawn into quarrels as for her radiant beauty. In the huge and often contentious family of the regiment, everybody was constantly under the microscope; the slightest particle of phoni-ness or pretense was inevitably spotted and magnified by the Seventeenth's eager gossips. Though people might make fun of Diana's niceness—in a gentle way—no one ever found falseness in her.

An outsider might have thought her attitude ironic in a Mech Warrior—a woman whose job in combat was to rain massive destruction down on people from great distances. Few Caballeros would have seen it that way. The Seventeenth did not make war on noncombatants, and wouldn't work for employers who wanted them to. When Diana unleashed the fury of her Arrow IV missiles, it was only against enemies who could and would do harm to the regiment if they got the chance.

Had the mob gotten inside the TTC gates, it would have become an enemy, with the potentially catastrophic results Cassie foresaw. That was why Diana had acted—and why she was honestly puzzled at being singled out.

"I was speaking this evening as your commander," Don Carlos said in his courtly way. "And now I hope that you won't take offense if I speak as plain Carlos."

From behind his back he produced a bouquet of red roses. "I am very proud of you, mi amor," he said, bending to kiss her hand. "And I'm very glad you were not hurt."

She accepted the flowers, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.

"And now," he said, disengaging, "I'd best slip quietly away, in case your little one is waiting up for you."

She smiled and shook her head. "I was hoping that after mi coronet was finished for the evening, Carlos mio would pay me a visit," she said. "I've sent young Marco off to spend the night with his Aunt Cecilia."

Then she opened the door with her card, and taking him by the hand, led him within.

BattleTech - LE5523

10

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

19 December 3057

Breath coming in white puffs of condensation, Cassie ran along the frozen floor of a narrow canyon of the night. From time to time, when she was sure of her footing for the next couple of steps, she glanced back. Her back had been clear for two blocks now, though she doubted her pursuers from the diner had given up on her. As far as she could tell, they were all men, all on the large side, and as far as she was concerned that was a plus. Even if they spent a lot of time grunting in a gym, such types rarely had the stamina for a long haul, especially over such an obstacle-course race as Cassie could lead them. Her breathing wasn't even labored yet, which pleased her; she knew how easy it was to overheat, even in the coldest weather, by exerting yourself while wearing heavy winter clothes.

It wasn't surprising to her that she wasn't being seriously pressed. She'd been an expert at being chased down alleys since before reaching her teens, long before Guru Johann found her and took her under his wing, training her to inherit his mantle as master of the ancient, esoteric art of pentjak-silat.

What was mysterious was why she was being chased.

* * *

Millennia ago, back before the Star League or the Age of War or the Terran Hegemony, before the Exodus from Terra, back even before the long-ridiculed Kearny-Fuchida experiments were verified to the embarrassed surprise of the global scientific community, a system of digitally lined optical telescopes orbiting throughout the solar system to form, in effect, one giant viewing device had begun detecting Terran-sized planets in surrounding solar systems. One of these was named Towne, for a Terran Parliament senator whose support was needed for a vote on a new appropriations bill for the project.

Before many years passed, thanks to the Kearny-Fuchida drive, humans were colonizing those Terralike planets. Late in the twenty-second century an expedition mounted by trillionaire C. Augustus Pons settled Towne.

Pons was an eccentric plankton magnate. One of many ways his eccentricity manifested itself was in his lifelong addiction to archaic fantastic fiction. He was particularly fond of, not to say obsessed with, the works of the early twentieth-century writer Robert Erwin Howard, especially his stories of a barbarian adventurer named Conan. That was how Pons had come to name the planet's single large moon Conan, the sprawling continent that dominated its northern hemisphere Hyboria, and the first city, nestled at the mouth of a river opening into a bay formed by the crater of an eons-old meteorite strike (whose shape guaranteed it would be named Circle Bay, obsession or no obsession), Port Howard.

Even after Pons's death, early settlers, many of whom were likewise North Americans, had gone along with the gag, so that the far southwestern reaches of Hyboria were named Turan, the south Stygia, the great backbone mountain range the Eiglophians, the island-continent southwest of Turan, which extended from the northern temperate zone into the tropics, Almuric, and so on. A later wave of settlers who settled in the southern hemisphere, hailing primarily from Brazil, Australia, the Caribbean, and Polynesia, paid no attention to Pons's conventions at all and called things whatever the hell they wanted to.

Towne's primary, a yellow-white F-class sun, was hotter than Sol. Towne also orbited farther out than Terra from its sun, which resulted in its being slightly cooler, despite receiving a similar amount of solar radiation, the shortfall being made up in a greater percentage of highly energetic ultraviolet radiation. The world was smaller than Terra, but rather denser, so that gravity was only slightly less. But Towne was also younger, geologically speaking, so everything seemed bigger. It boasted big storms, big mountains, big volcanoes.

And also Big Beasts. Biologically, Towne was in an epoch roughly analogous to Terra's Pleistocene, with generally lush terrestrial ecosystems, thanks to the extra UV energy, and some species of warm-blooded megafauna, notably the six-legged, shaggy, and amazingly dim Eiglotherium of the central Hyborian plateau, beasts that stood ten meters tall at their foremost shoulders.

Towne was a proprietary planet and colony, which helped explain why Pons had managed to make so many of his names stick. The shareholders' desire to keep their property as pristine as possible had spared Towne most of the ravages of runaway industrialization as the governments of the so-called Outer Reaches worlds geared up to break away from the Terran Alliance. Also, Towne was more than amply supplied with water—upwards of seventy percent of the surface was covered in it—which meant its owners hadn't needed to make onerous payments for ice to the Ryan Cartel. Finally, a still-unexplained freak of world-formation had planted most of the planet's abundant metallic ore deposits securely beneath its oceans. Towne had access to ample resources to build a comfortable and fairly modem low-population-density society, but not to sustain gigantic war industries.

The one strategic metal readily available on Towne was copper, which, while vital to the building of BattleMechs and other military equipment, wasn't valuable enough to make it worthwhile for anybody to descend from the skies and just rip the stuff out wholesale. Which didn't mean nobody had tried. Late in the twenty-eighth century, at the outset of the First Succession War, squabbling between the defending Davion 56th Avalon Hussars and the Davion 123rd Aero Interceptor Wing had enabled invading Liao and Kurita forces to turn what was intended as a series of smash-and-grab raids into a protracted occupation, the so-called Towne Debacle.

Once the invaders had been given their walking papers, and a grateful Prince John Davion had rewarded the Townies with their Charter (a cheaper expedient than rewarding them with, say, money), Towne resumed its prosperous, relatively quiet lifestyle, supported by exporting its copper and its outstandingly durable and beautiful native hardwoods.

Otherwise the economy relied largely on ranching— of both the pelagic and terrestrial varieties, and of both native and imported species—and a thriving tourist trade attracted by Towne's emphatic vistas and its riotous geology, climate, and ecosphere.

Or so it had been until Archon Prince Victor Davion had brought down on himself the wrath of Thomas Marik. The Marik-Liao invasion seemed all but over, yet the aftermath of war is often worse than the fighting. The once-proud Sarna March had now exploded into a hotbed of contested worlds, rebellions, and uneasy alliances. Sitting too close for comfort to all this was the once sleepy planet of Towne.

* * *

Finding the ROTM and the Popular Militia had not been hard. Though the Popular Militia had been driven underground by Planetary Government pressure—with wide support from such disparate factions as the Union Party, which agitated for annexation by the Draconis Combine, and the main opposition Reform Party, for which Howard Blaylock was the point man—the Rights of Towne Movement was still legal, and still holding frequent seminars, meetings, and rallies. Popular Militia literature was widely available at all Movement functions, though nobody ever saw who put it there. Of course.

Cassie saw no overt recruitment for the Popular Militia at any ROTM gathering, though she'd attended a lot of them gotten up in various guises after the regimental meeting a week ago. Sometimes she appeared as an Islander from the South, as she had at the demonstration outside the TTC complex. Though Cassie could use colored contact lenses, skin-tones, wigs, and hair dyes as well as anybody and better than most, her only really unmistakably Asian feature was the pronounced epicanthic folds at the corners of her smoky blue eyes. However, in the Great Gene-Plasm Bingo Parlor that was the Inner Sphere, a two-meter-tall snow-blonde woman was no less likely to sport epicanthic folds than was Cassie—or late Coordinator Takashi Kurita—to have blue eyes. So Cassie's most-used alter egos were white.

She went that way because she did in fact encounter racism at Rights of Towne Movement meetings, along with ageism, sexism, cultural elitism, insensitivity, and a wide variety of other colors on the Bad Attitude spectrum the ruling Charter Party accused the Movement of. Most meant little to Cassie, who was as close to apolitical as any human could get and still register on a brainscan. The widespread Townian hatred and distrust of foreigners bothered her, of course, because they were directed against the Regiment. But race and gender only concerned her as potential disguises and the need to keep from using too memorable a one in case she had to perform radical structural alterations to some persistent bigot in the midst of a crowd of his nominal cronies.

Other attitudes, such as that people were entitled to fight to protect themselves and their property, seemed as organic to her as breathing. From her Capellan upbringing, Cassie found it entirely natural that the government should want to deprive its citizens of personal weaponry, particularly firearms. On the other hand, she found it equally natural, and prudent, that the citizenry should do what it could to hang onto its guns.

But though she did find it worthwhile to change her apparent ethnicity—she didn't think circumstances warranted her trying to pass as male—she didn't encounter any great number of racists. Anybody publicly making racialist statements would find scores of other speakers crowding forward to rebut him. And though a heavy-handed male-chauvinist condescension wasn't uncommon, the selfsame male chauvinists were among the readiest to step chivalrously forward and perform attitude adjustments on the few offenders who seriously crowded Cassie.

As for the widely held anti-foreign sentiments, they were usually promulgated by speakers who didn't quite fit in. Though these individuals generally affected workingman or woman's dress, they tended to be younger, sleeker, and softer than the authentic laborers. And they tended to sound alike, as though their rhetoric all came out of the same can. They reminded Cassie disturbingly of the agitator to whom she'd given the kidney-massage with the barrel of her hideout pistol.

But finding out who was pulling the strings of the resistance wasn't her mission right now. Getting in touch with the Popular Militia was.

The Movement meetings often featured people talking about the various militias. Some spoke quietly in groups, off to the side where they thought no one could overhear. Others were loud about it, brash, almost aggressive.

Cassie wrote the latter class off as agents-provocateur. The alternative was that they were wannabes, a group about equally as deadly to an operator in her position as to authentic militia members.

The discreet ones she paid closer attention to. Closer than they seemed to think possible, as it happened. Amateurishly, they overlooked the possibility of people with unusually keen hearing, like Cassie. Also of people equipped with small, highly sensitive, directional and concealable listening devices, also like Cassie. Their behavior struck no wrong notes; militias were amateurs by definition, and tended to act that way until they'd gotten their noses bloodied good and hard a few times. The Popular Militia was, hypothetically, centuries old—but until the departure of the Fifth Lyran Guards and the flight of the planet's own Marquis, the PM had been little more than a social club.

So they talked in hushed voices, and Cassie listened, even when her attention was apparently focused elsewhere, such as ardent debates as to whether open immigration of Islanders into Hyboria ought to be permitted or not. And she marked who said what, and how, until she had a line on who the authentic Militia members were, who were the merely curious, and who were just a more laid-back species of wannabe. After that, it was just another mark hunt.

* * *

He was in his late fifties, white-bearded, weathered hard, still bigger in the chest and shoulders than he was in the belly. He'd grown up in a timber camp in the Cimmerian foothills east of the Eiglophian Mountains, worked for a time at a mine operating one of the titanic power-shovels that took an Atlas-sized bite out of the earth at every stroke, then settled down ranching slo-mos, a particularly tasty and normally docile native herbivore. He had done fairly well by himself.

Then one day he threw it all over and came to the big city, where after a spell of drifting he opened, of all things, an antiquarian and collectible bookstore. He'd devoted himself to that for the last dozen years, making a modest success of it A genuine frontier man of action and urban intellectual, he was oddly typical of the trail mix that made up the Rights of Towne Movement—and the Popular Militia.

What made him attractive to Cassie, and her to him, was what had brought him to Port Howard in the first place. The slo-mos he ran were anything but aggressive, but they were also massive and nearly blind. When a ravaging hexwolf pack slashed into his herd like a Drac katana one late-winter morning, the resultant stampede had rolled over his sixteen-year-old daughter and her horse before she—or he, watching in helpless horror from the fringe—could react. The death of his sole child soured his marriage. Within eighteen months he and his wife had divorced and the ranch was sold to pay the settlement.

Cassie didn't have sex with him. That wasn't her style, even when she employed a conventionally seductive approach. She just became a little girl fresh up from the Islands—John Satterthwaite hated bigots, and knew little of the South—who wondered just what this Rights of Towne business was about.

Approach was so simple she was almost shamed by it. It was another sound-and-fury ROTM meeting in another rented lecture hall in downtown Port Howard. Cassie stepped on the booted toe of a garage worker she'd spotted for a bigot with advanced testosterone poisoning. He had her by the arm and was just warming to the subject of what he ought to do to her worthless little black ass when a big scarred hand grabbed him by the shoulder of his shirt with his name on the pocket and spun him around.

Racist Boy was tall enough to look Satterthwaite in the eye, and probably had almost four decades' advantage. But Satterthwaite was nearly twenty kilos heavier, not all of it adipose, and while he was the last man in the world to claim to be able to drop a bull slo-mo with one punch, he looked just the man to do it. The pigeon Cassie had jostled beat an abject retreat to the jeers of his cronies.

Things continued to run on rails. Cassie spent much of the next few days with the older man—taking long walks by the Thunder, sitting together in his shop conversing in low tones while occasional customers grazed like herd beasts, hanging out till all hours in coffee shops or diners. Cassie knew nothing about Towne politics except what she'd gotten from the briefings prepared by Father Doctor Bob and Maccabee Bar-Kochba, and cared nothing for the issues involved. But she was expert at getting the old man to talk about what he cared about—and then feeding him back exactly what he wanted to hear.

It had, of course, been his own idea to recruit her into the Popular Militia.

* * *

Earlier that evening, Cassie was sitting at the counter of a downtown diner sipping unsweetened native tea, a more characteristically Islander drink than the northerners' favorites, coffee and hot chocolate. Satterthwaite or his militia pals had picked an inconvenient hour for their meeting with Cassie, 0100. Amateurs liked to meet people at night. It added to the cloak and dagger effect.

The diner was wide but shallow, brightly lit, an inviting oasis in the snowshot night. A shabby, derelict-looking guy with fingers poking out holes in his gloves was nursing a hot chocolate three stools down to Cassie's left. A female cabby sat at the right end of the counter with a stool between her and Cassie, talking to the proprietor. Four people, a pair and two solos, were distributed among the booths and tables at her back.

She was, discreetly, wound for sound. Her dark-green stocking cap was a balaclava that could be pulled down to obscure her features. Her bulky coat was lined with lightweight synthetic ballistic-cloth, with ceramet inserts over sternum, belly, and kidneys; the whole didn't add that much weight to what winter on Towne mandated, and swung loose enough that it didn't much encumber her movements. The coat opened down the left side, not the front, and its zipper was a dummy; it was really sealed by a Velcro strip, allowing it to be torn open in a hurry to let Cassie get to the Sperry Browning autopistol holstered in the small of her back. Blood-drinker rode hilt-downward along the left side of her torso, and her snubby was tucked into its pocket-holster.

She kept glancing at the watch on her left index finger, and her foot had a tendency to tap against the gleaming chrome facing of the counter. Satterthwaite was late, and these manifestations of nervousness fit her established profile. But the truth was, she was nervous. Country folk on Towne, unlike rural Southwesterners, had a very strict sense of punctuality. It was uncharacteristic of her—it took an effort of will to think of him as a mark—to be late.

"Hey, little missy." It was the bum. He had sidled over to the stool one away from hers and was leaning toward her. He smelled like a bowl of rotting fruit. "Got the time?"

She got no threat vibes off him, but like hers, his baggy winter garb could conceal a lot. She let her peripheral vision brush her watch, as her right hand, hidden from his view, slipped down into her coat pocket.

"One thirty-five," she replied. Her character wouldn't use the twenty-six-hour military time system.

Two men walked into the Café behind her. She saw them perfectly; the right side of the order window back to the kitchen was sheathed in shining-clean chrome and served handily as a mirror. The one to her right was white, the other was black. They were both young, reasonably fit, and familiar. She had seen them both passing out pamphlets attacking the Seventeenth at ROTM meetings.

They split up as soon as they cleared the door.

Cassie stood up. The vagrant, who had slid into the stool next to hers, blinked up in surprise. "Hey, missy, don't rush off—"

She wasn't rushing, just moving with a purpose. She cut to her left, a course that would bring her closer to the white guy. She wasn't going to give them a chance to jump on her simultaneously.

The white guy was perceptibly bulkier than his partner, in fact moved as if he was pretty buff despite the masking of his own coat. He was obviously somebody who relied on that strength—"muscle-bound" as a state of mind rather than body—which meant he came in with every muscle taut. That in turn meant he was slow. Cassie could not remotely match either man in main strength, so speed was her weapon. He wasn't much of an operator; the way they'd split had signaled that—as obvious a red-light move as a grab for a holstered weapon. She had actually gotten past him before he reacted.

A strong hand gripped her left shoulder from behind and spun her around. The guy had his face open, but it was a blur to Cassie. She was already dropping, adding the power of her own spring-steel leg muscles to the momentum he'd imparted. Even as she dropped, she turned and swept his legs out from under him with her scything right leg.

He fell against a table with a crash and a grunt of pain. The table fell over, depositing him on the floor and gouging a bloody groove in his forehead as the metal napkin-holder fell on him. Cassie came up facing the other guy.

He was quick, already on top of her. Surprised by the way she popped up, he grabbed her by the neck with both hands, but did not apply crushing pressure with his thumbs.

"Hey, now," he began, smiling. "No call to go off—"

She grabbed his left hand with her right one, just to muscle-read his intentions. At the same time she slipped her other arm up between his, then cocked it over his left arm. Feeling in control of the situation, with both hands firmly locked on a slender woman's throat, he was still talking to her as if soothing a frightened child when she slammed her right elbow into his jaw. Stunned, he relaxed his grip on her throat. Reversing her hold on his wrist, she yanked his arm out straight while seizing the back of his neck with her other hand. She slammed his face down into her knee, feeling his nose break with a soul-satisfying crunch, then pivoted and ran him toward his partner, who was just climbing off the floor.

Cassie was blowing out the door before the second man hit the first and knocked him back down in a cursing tangle. Normally she would've made sure of her opponents; she hated leaving foes still functional in her backfield. But she didn't know if her little pals had other little pals who might be closing in even now, and that made evaporating imperative. She took a right down the street and began to run through lightly falling snow. The heavier coating that had fallen earlier in the evening was now churned slushy enough by foot traffic that her tracks would be hard to make out.

Two quick shots behind the ear from her snubby would have added no appreciable time to her leave-taking. Had this still been Hachiman, she would have taken that time without hesitation or remorse. But she'd worked among the FedComs before, and they were different from the people among whom she'd grown up. In neither Liao or Combine space did people or government pay much heed to the concept of the rule of law. It was no accident that the Kuritas' main domestic code was a book of aphorisms. The Davions, on the other hand, took law seriously—and unlike their counterparts in the Combine or the Capellan Confederation, FedCom citizens generally believed that the authorities were their friends.

Cassie's present persona was not that far from her own real appearance; the simpler the better was a prime rule of disguise. It would not be optimal to have the local heat looking for a woman of her general description on a double-murder rap. And cops in the Federated Commonwealth were a lot more efficient at criminal investigations than their counterparts across the line.

As she ran she glanced over her shoulder. A pair of dark forms two blocks behind broke into a run after her. She put on an additional burst of speed, angled across the street and raced left into an alley.

* * *

She was now at least ten minutes away from the diner, moving at a jog she could keep up forever. She was a little surprised the bird-dogs had stayed with her this long. Then again, she hadn't yet made any serious moves to break contact and separate for good. And though her pursuers were still on the trail, they hadn't shown any sign of being able to run.her down, though she thought she'd made two foot teams and one car after her. She was minded to string this out a little while, see what she could see. Sooner or later she would double back on them, cut out an isolated pursuer—the pursuit always got strung out if the chase went on long enough—and ask a few pointed questions in some alley.

That she might blow—might have blown—the gig never entered her calculations. Maybe the scene had been going down straight, and the Popular Militia had wanted to strong-arm the newbie a little bit, just to establish who was who. It wasn't Cassie's way to let herself be used as a practice dummy unless the mission very specifically mandated it; and Don Carlos's stiff-necked Galistean pride would have met him approve any action that might give the PMers the idea 'lleros could be pushed around. If they wanted to engage in the time-honored rituals of testing each other through recreational combat, that was another matter. Kidnapping was no part of the code.

She dodged wide of a dumpster, then ran out the center of the alley mouth. You never took a corner close. Three blocks to her left, where the street began to slope down to the bay, a pair of figures rounded a corner and pointed at her. She turned right and sprinted through an intersection.

Four blocks ahead, a car turned onto the street toward her. As soon as its lights hit her, it accelerated. Realizing things were getting serious, she crossed the street and dove into the next alley.

Something's strange here, a voice was saying from somewhere in Cassie's head. She had come to recognize two such little voices. One of them she had learned from Lady K to ignore. The other Guru Johann had taught her always to heed. He was right too. Maybe the hardest lesson she'd yet learned was to distinguish between them.

This was Voice Two, loud and clean They've got the manpower to've tried to cut you off long since. It's almost as if they're herding you.

To think that was to act. The tag end of a fire escape hung down to Cassie's left a tantalizing three meters in the air. She dodged to the right side of the alley, and then without breaking stride pivoted to run almost straight into the brick wall beneath the bottom stair. Momentum carried her two steps up the wall. Her fingers closed on chill, ice-slick metal. A heave of legs and shoulders and she was running up the metal stairway like a monkey.

A figure stepped into the center of the alley's far end. It was featureless, deeper black against an un-lighted intersection, and some kind of thick jacket bulked out the upper torso. But something in movement and stance and the curve of hips into powerful thighs told Cassie the figure was a woman.

The flame and thunder of a machine pistol on full-auto erupted from the middle of it.

BattleTech - LE5523

11

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

19 December 3057

Copper-jacketed slugs didn't spark as they ricocheted off the iron steps and railings of the fire escape the way they did in adventure holovids, but they made a Krishna-almighty racket. Being fired up on full rock'n'roll wasn't something you got used to, really. But like most of the bitch-goddess Danger's many faces, it invoked the old fight/flight clauses of the genetic code, and those you could learn to deal with. Cassie was so used to riding the adrenaline surge like the wave that it was that she only really felt safe and secure when the hammer was coming down.

But safe and secure are relative concepts. She ran up the fire-escape stair as fast as her legs could piston. Her snubby was in her hand and blazing, but it would taken an entire miracle to tag the pistolera coming after her. Cassie was only trying to make her flinch, throw off her aim, maybe dazzle her with muzzle-flare.

Speed, dark, distance, and the fire escape made the shooter's tracking solution tricky. But Wolf Girl, as Cassie was marrow-sure her pursuer was, knew her stuff, pulsing out bursts of no more than five or six shots. From upwards of sixty meters she, too, would have to be lucky to score a hit.

But she'd have to be a whole lot less lucky. It was time to change a few more targeting variables.

The windows in this neighborhood seldom had bars on them, bless these trusting little Davion souls. Coming up on a switchback Cassie crammed her snubby back into its holster while ripping her coat open with her left hand. Then she hauled out the bigger Sperry-Browning autopistol and fired two shots at an upward angle through the window, to ensure it wasn't shatterproof.

It wasn't. It shattered just fine, glass shards cascading down around her like big triangular snowflakes. She just had to hope like hell her rounds hadn't intersected any sleeping citizens in their flight.

Two steps shy of the landing she stopped. Wolf Girl, running toward her along the alley's far wall, fired a burst straight into the now broken window. Cassie poked her pistol over the rail and blasted off five quick shots as the glowing tritium-painted sight dots lined up. Wolf Girl threw herself into a forward dive, tucking a shoulder, rolling, and coming up shooting.

By that time Cassie had grabbed the rail and swung herself through the window. She was in a cramped bedroom heavy with heat and the smell of human presence. Her peripheral vision picked up two human-sized lumps cowering on the floor on the far side of the bed. Smart people.

"Take everything," a timid voice called as she blew past. "It's not worth our lives."

"Police pursuit!" Cassie yelled. "Call for backup."

Then she was out the door, and gone.

* * *

"We should split up," said Force Commander Peter White-Nose Pony. "All in a lump like this, we just make ourselves a target."

Cassie was perched with her butt on the back of a sofa shoved against the wall of the second-story lounge in the Markbreit, her feet on the seat. Nobody told her not to do that, la Dama Muerte being long gone. South-westerners generally didn't take kindly to being told to keep their feet off the furniture and go clean their rooms. No one here knew about her wild chase through Port Howard's darkside last night, and she wasn't about to tell them.

"That's ridiculous," retorted Gordo Baird. "If we spread across a whole planet we'll be lost like grains of sand in the Chiricahua Desert back home."

White-Nose Pony studied Baird calmly for a moment. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that," he said evenly.

Cassie was rocking back and forth, almost vibrating. She was paying little attention; Gordo was being a butthead, of course, but that was SOP. White-Nose Pony was too cool a customer to go off on him for letting his mouth run. He'd settle for reminding the S-2 to tighten the reins.

Despite Don Carlos insisting she be present, despite the fact the regiment's safety was at issue, Cassie was having trouble focusing on the here and now.

"Nobody's talking about covering the whole planet, Gordo," Lady K said. She sat on the sofa next to Cassie, her body leaned back and her long legs stretched all the way out. "We can't do it, even with the Fusiliers and the Gourds. Shoot, the culebras couldn't do it if they drained the whole frontier from Dieron to Proserpina of troops. We don't even bother with the southern hemisphere, for starters: let the Dracs play with toy boats. What we're talking is splitting up to cover a few strategic points, places the Dracs can't say they've won unless they have hold of them. You don't have to've read Clausewitz or Sun Tzu to figure that angle."

Baird stiffened. He hadn't read either, but he knew Kali had. Cassie too, but she was only peripherally aware of the by-play. All she could think about now was John Satterthwaite, whose body had been found on an abandoned pier by Circle.Bay, shot through the back of the head. Inside, she boiled with feelings she couldn't name.

"I can't believe we're so scared of a few culebras that we're going to flee like quail at the very thought of them," said Gavilan Camacho, who sat near his father with legs extended and arms folded.

"This isn't a macho thing, Gabby," Lady K said. "It's war."

Gabby didn't flare back at her. The prospect of real enemies had pretty well damped out the intramural norteño/Cowboy squabbling.

"I'm not talking about macho," he said reasonably. "I'm talking about concentration of forces. We have the Towne Guard to back us up. Two regiments, even three, we can meet and beat. If we're not scattered to the four winds."

Lady K shrugged to acknowledge the point. "We can't just sit back and take for granted we're not going to face any more than three regiments," said the Rasalhaguian commander of Harley Company, Captain Erik "Gringo" Johansen.

"How many can they spare?" Gabby demanded. "The Combine's border with the FedCom is down to the bone as it is. With all this bullicio going on in Clan-occupied space, they need as many troops up guarding the truce line as they can get."

John "Frenchfry" Ames scratched behind his ear. The hair hanging sheep dog-like in his eyes was unwashed and lank, and those eyes were sunk deep in his long, lined face. He and his wife Raven had been fighting even more than usual of late. She thought he'd been paying a little too much attention to Janine "Mariposa" Esposito, a Valkyrie driver from Bobby the Wolf's Cochise Company, widowed in the fight with the Ghosts. Raven had recently issued an ultimatum, the rumor mill said.

"What about our families?" Frenchfry asked in a voice which, like his appearance, hinted that sleep and he had been strangers for a spell. "I don't like having my two kids stuck in the ten-ring night and day. And I'm not just talking about the Dracs, either."

That brought a rumble of assent. Though the rioting Diana had headed off had not recurred, protesters thronged in front of the Turanian Transport Complex gates every day. The occasional anti-foreigner sign appeared on the street outside the Markbreit, too, though they didn't usually linger. The hotel management kept the local precinct well-bribed, so that the cops usually came and told the demonstrators to move along. The constant presence of one or two light Caballero 'Mechs on the roof helped make the point.

But in the long run they only served to up the stakes, and everyone in the Seventeenth knew it. A few tentative bonds were being formed with the Marquis's Own Fusiliers, whose continued wariness stemmed more from reflex mistrust of money-troopers than xenophobia. But the mainstream political parties as well as the ROTM fringe were squarely against the 'lleros. Bashing them in the media was the one thing the Charter, Reform, and even Union Parties could agree on.

"Our families, OK," Gabby said. "Nobody wants them in the line of fire when the shooting starts." He had no real family left other than his father, but just like Cassie, like everybody, for him the regiment was la familia. His concern for the children was scarcely less acute than Frenchfry's.

"But let's not lose sight of the point," Baird put in sourly. "Not splitting one's forces is a widely recognized military principle, after all." And he favored Lady K with a triumphant smirk.

"And let's not forget we aren't being paid just to guard Turanian Transport," Maccabee retorted. "Uncle Chandy owns some mining and timber concerns the Snakes might take some interest in. And Port Howie isn't TTC's only yard."

Cassie tuned out. This was all talk—serious talk, but nothing that needed her.

She had plans to lay.

* * *

Cassie wasn't at the hotel later that afternoon when Red Gallegos's quick thinking saved them all. The XO was standing in the lobby holding a quiet but impassioned debate with the front desk over, of all things, linens. The regiment's usage of bedclothes and towels had taxed the Markbreit's outside laundry service to the point of serious overheat. Every alternative avenue seemed blocked by either contract with the service or Port Howard's convoluted union rules.

Like her husband, Dolores was expert in the arts of gentle persuasion—neither had ever struck one of their five children, though their discipline was strict. She was confident that something could be worked out. In her experience that was always true if you just kept talking, and kept the voices down. But before she could slide the day manager past the denial stage, some movement on the street caught the corner of her eye. A panel van had coasted by the entrance as if slowing to a stop.

"Excuse me, just a moment, please," she said to the manager, and walked out through the swinging door. The day was cold and the clouds had come back, but no new snow had fallen since the plows and salt-trucks had come by, and the street was clear. The van had stopped about twenty meters down from the hotel entrance. The driver's door opened. A man in a jacket and nondescript pants climbed out, consulted a noteputer in his hand, and set off down the street. Very briskly.

Dolores turned to the manager, who had followed her outside, puzzled by her abrupt departure. "Get everybody out the back doors," she said matter-of-factly.

"What?"

She already had her pocket communicator out and pressed to her mouth. "Emergency alert," she said. "Delivery van parked twenty meters north of entrance. All Caballeros begin evacuation procedures now. Emergency alert. Pass it on."

"Señora Gallegos, what on Towne—" the manager sputtered.

Dolores Gallegos waved at the parked vehicle. "That's a bomb. Get clear if you don't want to die. It may already be too late." She turned and ran for the stairs.

* * *

It was standard 'llero practice to leave your personal com on standby at all times in a potential danger zone. Ninety percent of the regiment heard the warning. By the time Red reentered the building, Diana Vásquez had the youngsters from the day-care center, which was on the ground floor against just such possibilities, filing through the lobby and out the back door.

With no prospect of immediate battle and cooperative exercises with the locals still in the negotiation stage, most the Seventeenth's 'Mechs were parked out of sight in the TTC yards. The only unit actually manning its rides was LtSG James Kicking Bird's Geronimo Company, and they were all inside the compound.

Keeping guard over the hotel and its occupants was a strictly volunteer affair.

Down out of the overcast came a Valkyrie, its three Norse Industries jump jets roaring like a gale. It had big cartoon butterflies with polka-dotted wings painted down the right side of its chest armor, the left being occupied by a Devastator long-range missile 10-rack. It was, by coincidence, Mariposa Esposito on watch this afternoon.

The Valkyrie touched down lightly in the street next to the parked mystery van, its thirty tons adding only slightly to the extant potholing. It bent over and seized the van by the box, its medium pulse-laser right hand clamping along the side, the fingers of its left-hand battle-fist digging into the light-gauge metal to assure a solid grip. Then it flexed its legs and launched again in a full-throttle jump south toward the river.

When the Valkyrie reached the apex of its leap, the van exploded. Port Howard's bomb squad, made up of well-seasoned blasters from the mining camps up in the mountains, later estimated it was carrying over two tons of high explosive. All that was ever found of the 'Mech was the legs and hip actuators, which crushed a freight car parked on a siding in the TTC yard.

Shortly before midnight an unscheduled train pulled out of that same yard, heading east. It carried the Caballero noncombatants along with a scratch security force of volunteers, under the command of Diana Vásquez. It was covertly bound for the Copper Queen Mine in the western Eiglophians, a property Chandrasekhar Kurita happened to own. Accompanying them were two lances of 'Mechs, hidden under tarps rigged to look as if they covered heavy mining equipment, a frequent cargo for TTC cars. Diana's own experimental O-Bakemono went too; it would be of limited use in a city-fight, since the mission was to save as much of Port Howard as possible, not level it with salvos of massive Arrow FV missiles.

No trace of Lieutenant Junior Grade Janine Esposito was ever found. But for twenty-four hours Port Howard's three universities and the police stations all over town were deluged by calls from citizens who claimed to have seen butterflies, perched on snow banks or icy sills, gently opening and closing their brightly colored wings as if to dry them. When approached, they flew away, some callers said. Others claimed they simply vanished.

It was just another case of mass hallucination. No doubt.

BattleTech - LE5523

12

Prince John Spaceport, Outskirts of Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

19 December 3057

The Phoenix Hawk, its lower legs painted with the transverse red, blue, and green stripes of the Towne Guard, soared high above undeveloped snow-covered flats between the southern suburbs of Port Howard and the spaceport. At the apex of its leap, ruby light flashed from the heavy Harmon laser "rifle" in its right hand in the direction of the Western Ocean, just visible beyond a low line of dunes. The 'Mech passed over a company-sized wedge of heavy Fusilier armor and touched down into billows of freshly fallen powder snow being blown along the ground by a gust of wind.

It caught its foot on a mogul and slammed face-first into the ground.

The man who stood beside Colonel Carlos Camacho, safe from the wind behind the polarized transpex of the spaceport control tower, winced at the impact. Don Carlos himself imagined he could feel the impact through the soles of his boots, though it was half a kilometer away. He kept his face impassive.

The Phoenix Hawk skidded forward on its face, plowing up mounds of dirt and snow. Swerving to miss the fallen BattleMech, a Rommel tank burst through the cloud of snow thrown up by the crash. Snapping from its whip antenna was a flag showing an argent pony rampant on an azure field, the personal insignia of Sir Osric Gould. The rest of the Fusilier company flowed around the downed PHX like water around a rock.

Next came a Cabellero Wasp painted with yellow and black stripes. It took off in a long, low jump, then hit the ground directly next to the motionless Phoenix Hawk, and took off running after the tanks. It was the Colonel's turn to wince.

"There's no love lost between your men and the Towne Guards, is there, Colonel?" the man beside him asked with a half-smile. He was a head taller than Camacho, with a long narrow face and the kind of body affluent urban gringos paid gyms and private trainers handsomely to acquire.

"The Guards haven't been very receptive to us, Señor Blaylock," Don Carlos said. In fact only a rumored threat by Sir Osric to withdraw technical support from the officially recognized militia had persuaded Hauptmann General Janice Marrou to honor her promise to cooperate in maneuvers with the Seventeenth. The Colonel had no plans to mention that to his companion.

He turned to face the taller man. "I have to ask you, señor, man to man: why do they attack us so viciously?"

Howard Blaylock shrugged. "People on Towne are suspicious of things Draconian. It's hard to blame them, after all. You're in the pay of the Combine, and a Kurita to boot. What else can you expect?"

"But we've come to help you fight against the Dragon! Against Drac renegades, anyway."

"A lot of citizens have a hard time seeing the distinction, Don Carlos."

"But we're trying to strengthen your defenses! Would we do that if we were only front men for the invasion? It makes no sense!"

"Sometimes politics doesn't." Assemblyman Blaylock gestured out the window at the recovery vehicles steaming through the blowing snow like tugboats toward where the Phoenix Hawk still lay motionless. "Can we walk? It's getting stuffy in here."

* * *

"An impressive machine, Don Carlos," Blaylock said, staring up at Great White. Its bullet-shaped snout painted with a red and white shark's grin, the Colonel's 75-ton Mad Cat stood with head tipped forward as if peering down curiously at these insignificant insects presumptuous enough to face it without apparent dread. "I hear you captured it yourself?"

"Indeed," the Colonel said.

"An impressive act of skill and courage, Colonel."

Don Carlos thanked him, but Blaylock had already turned and begun walking up the runway. The day wasn't bitingly cold, even given the wind chill, but the Colonel felt a certain admiration for the way the other man was able to stroll casually along, hands thrust into his trouser pockets and dressed in nothing heavier than a dark suit-coat. The Colonel also felt irritation at the way Blaylock was imposing on his hospitality, gaining dominance by towing him out into the weather like this. But his deep courtesy compelled him to go along, a fact he suspected Blaylock knew well.

Towne's main spaceport had originally been named in fond memory of Augustus Pons, by settlers who were reasonably grateful to him for letting them live on this pleasant world, even if he made them give things foolish names. After the Towne Debacle it had been renamed Prince John Davion Spaceport, by Prince Davion in honor of himself.

The two men approached a large hangar. In front of it techs looking like sausage men and women in heavily insulated jumpsuits swarmed over the pride and joy of the Fusiliers' aerospace assets, Towne's lone 100-ton Stuka. Camacho gave it a sour look in passing. The aerojocks had bowed out of the day's exercise, claiming the weather made flying too risky; replacement parts for their fighters were hard to come by in the current situation.

Don Carlos had seen hundreds of sorties safely flown in weather far worse than this. Leftenant General Gould's men and women seemed briskly competent and willing overall, but they had their weaknesses. An even bigger problem was that the Planetary Guard, when badgered into performing, showed little but weakness. And the outlawed Popular Militia, despite the fact it made the regular politicians so loco, hadn't shown at all, despite the best efforts of super-scout Cassie Suthorn.

"I'm glad to have the chance to talk to you face to face," Don Carlos called out, though he was addressing Blaylock's back. The Townian's longer strides kept pulling him out in front of the Colonel. "We need all the help you can possibly give us waking the people of Towne to the danger they're in."

"Hmm." Blaylock made a sound that could have been a grunt, or a laugh, or damned near anything. "Well, you know, Colonel, from where I stand, this 'ronin' threat of yours is pretty hard to see. I'd have to say that's the bottom line here."

Camacho frowned in exasperation. "Chandrasekhar Kurita has gone to the greatest effort to send us here.

I assure you, Señor Blaylock, he would not do so without a compelling reason."

"Perhaps. But maybe he has other motives in mind. Using you—unwittingly, of course, don't get me wrong—using you as fronts for an economic takeover on Towne. We are very vulnerable here, and don't doubt for a moment that everybody knows it. And don't forget that our economic straits are more real to the man or woman in the street than any threat of war."

"But the evidence!" Don Carlos burst out. "We have made public—we've made mountains of data available, to you, to the government, to anyone who's even interested!"

Blaylock shrugged. "We live in a devious age, Colonel. Evidence like that can be faked, even mountains of it. Weighing against that, you have almost a decade of alliance with the Draconis Combine—and the fact that most people, myself included, find it hard to believe that anything happens inside the Combine without the full knowledge and approval of Theodore Kurita. We're pretty familiar with the ISF hereabouts, let me tell you."

Not like we're familiar with them, the Colonel thought. And they've been wrong before. He was unaware—only Cassie in all the regiment knew—that the Smiling One's suspicions that Uncle Chandy had been treating with the Clans last year were perfectly correct. Chandy had almost gotten himself assassinated when the Director of the ISF ordered the Ninth Ghost Regiment to attack the HTE Compound. All Subhash Indrahar had really gotten wrong was the spin: betraying his cousin Theodore and the Combine was the last thing on Chandrasekhar Kurita's mind.

What the Colonel did know he couldn't tell. He didn't dare let this lead spokesman for a previously hostile group know how closely the Internal Security Force and the Caballeros had rubbed up against each other on Hachiman.

The politician had pulled out in front again. He stopped and looked back as Don Carlos pulled up. "Not even Sir Osric believes these invasion stories of yours, you know. He's just going along with the gag because he's happy for any chance to shape his troops up, and also to rattle the PG's cage."

The two men were in step now. "If you really want to do something for us, Colonel, then back our play when we go for a no-confidence vote on the Planetary Government. Oh, not like you're thinking—I'm not talking anything overt here, anything dishonorable. It's just that—"

Blaylock waved out across the flats, where the Guard forces had fallen hopelessly behind the 'lleros and the Fusiliers. "You can see what a mess the current government has made of things. Charter isn't even a party in any real sense; it's just a false front propped in front of a bunch of political hacks who happened to be holding office when our beloved Marquis went on his extended vacation. Even their name's a joke; to them this so-called Towne Charter is a museum piece, a curiosity with no relevance to the world we're living in today, the same as we do. They just picked it in hopes of appealing to the great unwashed, the self-styled patriots out there with their sunburned necks and their gimme caps. But they're not fooling anybody."

The Colonel finally found his voice. "What exactly are you asking of us, then?"

Blaylock shrugged again. "Support. The main thing, maybe, would be to use your influence with the managers of these holdings your boss has acquired. This Kurita has bought himself a fair chunk of clout, though maybe he doesn't realize it. The first thing is, we get the Charter deadwood cleared away, get our people in, along with some folks we have to make deals with along the way to solidify support. You can make swinging that a whole lot easier. Then we disarm these Popular Militia crazies, settle their hash for good and all. And after that—"

Howard Blaylock gave Don Carlos a big grin. "After that maybe we can get people to pay attention to this ronin threat of yours. Nothing like a good global emergency to pull everybody together, shut up all the nay-sayers and nit-pickers.

"What do you say to that, Colonel?"

* * *

It was a good crowd tonight in the gym of the Randolph Carter Lyceum on Skelos Street in downtown Port Howard. Talbot could feel the electricity in the air. People were going to get galvanized soon. People were going to be ready to make some moves.

"Hey, Talbot!" It was Mac Hainey, a long-haul driver for Nemedia Cartage. Talbot suppressed a wince. Hainey was a smart-ass who hardly ever had a nice thing to say but said plenty anyway. Their paths hadn't crossed since Talbot's mishap.

"What'samatter there?" Hainey demanded, voice cutting through the echoing auditorium buzz like a foghorn. "Cut yourself shaving?"

"Real goddamn funny, Hainey," Talbot said through gritted teeth. He had an allergy to plastiflesh, couldn't even tolerate it. The cut that snaky little Island bitch had given him in the diner had to be patched up with old-fashioned sutures. Sewn with guitar strings, by the looks of them.

Hainey walked away laughing uproariously. Laugh all you want, buddy, Talbot thought. Come the revolution, you're going to find out why they say payback's a mother.

Somebody grabbed his biceps painfully hard. He turned around, ready to unload, and found himself looking into the face of his partner Lumlee. That always cheered him up; Lumlee looked worse than he did. It was true he no longer resembled a raccoon, with two well-blacked eyes peering out of his dark-skinned face, but he would still be wearing the splint taped down his nose for quite some time.

"What?" Talbot asked, grinning through mock-belligerence.

"It's her."

"It's who?"

"Her. The little trash who did this to us." Lumlee nodded toward a rear exit. "And crap, she's aiming a camera at us!"

It took Talbot a moment to pick her up, half-obscured by the end of the slowly filling bleachers. But there was no mistaking her, even with the little palmcorder in front of her face. The stupid slut was wearing the same coat as the night she'd busted him and Lumlee up. She had a ripstop pack slung over one shoulder. The kind somebody might carry video equipment in.

"The she-wolf was right," he said. "She's got to be a police spy. And a pretty dumb one at that."

"What're we gonna do? What if she makes us for doing that old white-haired beezer?"

"She can't prove anything," Talbot said, but a slight hesitation gave him away. He was far from sure how far the cops would go on the basis of her story, especially if she really was working for them. It occurred to him that their superior might not be too happy with them if they brought police scrutiny down on themselves and their activities.

Talbot smiled unpleasantly and started to walk toward her. To his vast annoyance Lumlee went clutching at his arm again.

"What now?"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

His smile widened. "I'm going to take her around out back and have a nice little chat." His nerves were zinging with happy anticipation. A career as an activist had rewards he hadn't even dreamed of as a student of political science.

"You're out of your mind," Lumlee hissed. "What if she raises a fuss? What if she screams rape? Some of these damned Bubbas would just love to bust up a couple of jokers they caught manhandling a pretty little helpless girl."

Talbot's nostrils flared like a bull's, and much of his enthusiasm blew out through them. His partner was a bit on the excitable side, but this time he was spot-on right.

"OK," he said, "here's how it is. You hang here and keep an eye on her—discreetly, but don't let her out of your sight. I'll just make the rounds, tell a few people we have a spy in our midst." He slapped his friend on the back. "We play this right, we might just get a nice little solidarity-building exercise out of it. And who knows what else?"

"Yeah," Lumlee agreed without enthusiasm, flicking his eyes sideways for a glance at the girl. She was aiming her holocamera off across the gym floor now, taking in the crowd.

As good as his word, Talbot did a little drift, did some concise and quiet talking. Everybody he approached fell right in with his plan, and didn't buck at all about doing just what he suggested.

He was mightily pleased with the way his leadership skills were shaping up when he circulated, as if by random, back to where his buddy was standing. Behind him, one of the district organizers mounted a little movable dais they'd rolled out under the basketball net. He tapped on the microphone sprouting from a podium set in the middle of the platform. Naturally it made a sound like a firecracker going off, causing everybody to wince.

"Sorry, sorry—forgive it." A weak flicker of a smile. "We're all comrades together, though, aren't we?" Through thunderous silence he went on, "All right, everybody find a seat, we're about to commence—"

"Everything's set," Talbot said in a low voice as Lumlee looked at him with relief as plain on his face as his bandages. "Got the other exits covered, and some of the boys circling around to watch this one from outside. All we have to do is move in nice and quiet. Piece of cake."

He looked past his friend to the end of the bleachers. Nobody was there.

"Hey! Jesus, she's gone!"

"What?"

"You were supposed to watch her, dammit!"

"I did! She was standing right there a minute ago, until you walked up."

The two ran for the door, shoving aside stragglers headed for seats in the bleachers. They burst out the back door into the night air so cold it hit them in the faces like a spike-headed mace.

There were half a dozen burly guys standing around. Some of them were staring off between darkened school buildings to the parking lot. Others stood staring at one of their number who lay on a patch of ice, curled about himself in a tight little ball.

"Don't tell me," Talbot said disgustedly to no one in particular. "She got away."

"Jeez, Tal," said one of the outside contingent through a white cloud of condensation. "You didn't tell us how quick she was."

"Or how mean," another added with a meaningful nod toward the sufferer on the ground. "She came flying out the door like she was shot from a rifle, gave poor Jimmy there a knee to the nads, jumped on a Krauthead bike parked over there by the dumpster and was just plain gone."

"She didn't get away scot-free, though," a third man said. He walked over to kneel down beside the moaning Jimmy and gently eased something out from under him.

"Jimmy had a hold of this when she nailed him," the man said. He stood up and displayed the spy's shoulder-bag.

Talbot and Lumlee exchanged glances. Talbot grabbed the bag, opened it enough to peek inside by the shine of an inadequate security lamp tacked high up under the gym roof. A glance was all it took: the bag was crammed with expensive-looking electronic gear.

"Son of a bitch," he said.

* * *

"But all is not sweetness and light in the mercenary camp," the plastic-pretty face said from the little holotank stuck to the wall of Don Carlos's office. "We spoke to Captain Angela Torres about the situation of women inside the so-called Seventeenth Recon Regiment."

Vanity's face appeared, seeming to float in midair in the half-lit office. "Well, there's a lot of male chauvinism, you know?" she said to the holocam. "I mean, just look at the evidence. There's no female batallion commanders. There's only two female company commanders—"

The Colonel held up the remote and clicked off the set. "And unfortunately you're one of them," said Gordon Baird, who sat perched on the end of a clunky green-enameled metal desk that looked as if it dated from the years right after Kerensky's Big Bug-Out. "Thanks so much, Vanity."

Don Carlos rubbed his face with his hands.

"Watch you don't put pressure on the eyeballs," Baird cautioned. "You can actually put a dent in them if you push too hard. Doesn't do much real harm—just squeezes some fluid out of the tissues, takes a while for things to equalize again—but it looks pretty alarming. Whiskey?"

Don Carlos sighed and dropped his hands to the desktop. "Go ahead."

Baird went to a wooden cabinet bolted to the wall, opened it, took out a jigger and a bottle of Hotei Black Label they'd carted all the way from Hachiman. He poured himself a couple of fingers and put the bottle back.

"Salud," he said, tossed back the drink, then wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. "Ahh. You should have taken Blaylock up on his offer, old friend."

The Colonel shook his head.

"I'm serious. I hate to second-guess you, Carlos. But we're a long way from home, and friends are precious few and far between. Things are getting ugly. I know you haven't forgotten Janny Esposito."

A wave of pain passed over the Colonel's face. For a moment he looked impossibly old in the light of the one green-shaded lamp on his desk, his face deep shadows and sagging masses.

"No, my friend," he said. "We are not here to get involved in local politics."

Baird shook his head. "Look, I know what Old Man Chandy told you. But he's not on the ground. We are. This wouldn't be the first time we've reshaped a mission profile to conform to ground truth."

Don Carlos gave a sad chuckle. "Sometimes you talk as if you were fresh out of SAFE intelligence school all over again," he said. "Ground truth."

He shook his head. "No, I'm not forgetting our employer's instructions, but they're not what I'm talking about. I'm saying, we're not being paid to get tangled up in politics here. And that's too risky a job to undertake for free."

"Even if survival's at stake?"

The Colonel looked up sharply. "You think I forget about survival? Do you think I don't light a candle every day to the memory of poor Mariposa? You think that, each and every night, I don't lie awake in bed until I've asked the Blessed Virgin to look after each and every soul the regiment has lost over all the years I've run it?"

"Carlos—I'm terribly sorry. I didn't think—" The Colonel waved a hand. "It is I who owe an apology for letting my grief and frustration spill onto you in the form of anger."

"I understand. Now will you please just reconsider—"

"No. Tonight I'm too tired to wrangle anymore. Speak to me of your concerns and recommendations tomorrow, if you must.

"But please understand me: I've made my decision. And may la Virgen de Guadalupe show mercy on her poor lost children."

* * *

It was a third-floor walkup apartment on Irsei Street south of the river. It wasn't in the best of neighborhoods. Neither was it the worst—but only by virtue of the fact that there's always something worse.

The flat was empty. Just a blanket rolled up neatly against the molding along one wall, a communicator set on the bare hardwood floor, a couple of fast-food containers awaiting disposal. What light there was came from a kerosene lantern turned low. What it was used for Talbot and Lumlee didn't even care to speculate on.

The door stood open to a corridor lit by a single bare bulb hanging from a cord several doors down, the passage so dank and fly-stained to begin with it was hardly worth bothering to illuminate. The open door made him nervous. But that was the way she always did things.

"You have something for me?" the woman asked.

It seemed to Talbot that he'd never seen her in good light. They mostly met with her at night, out on the street away from the lights, or in the passage to the john in some dim dive where, if a man wasn't known, he could be stabbed fifty or a hundred times in the middle of the room, then rolled out into the gutter to bleed to death, and nobody would have seen a Goddamned thing.

He knew what she looked like, though, as well as if he'd spent hours poring over her hologram. She was about 170 centimeters tall, big in shoulders, bust, and hips, not much narrower at the waist, although very little of her body weight was fat. The black megathere-hide jacket she wore over her torn black tee-shirt exaggerated the heft of her shoulders and added meat to her menace. Her face was broad, high-cheekboned, with a short nose and slanting eyes that were russet brown with a hint of red highlight in the lantern-glow. Her hair was brown too, graying prematurely—she could be no older than her early thirties, Talbot guessed—brushcut short but for a skinny tail hanging down to her well-muscled butt in back.

She was handsome, and might've made it over the line into beautiful if she'd ever smiled—or ever looked at a man, or any creature at all to Talbot's knowledge, as if he was anything but a piece of meat. Even if he hadn't been sweat-scared of her, he wouldn't have called her a dyke to her face; he liked to think of himself as a sensitive kind of guy. But in fact he wasn't sure she liked women either. Or anything at all.

They didn't call her Wolf Girl for nothing.

He looked meaningfully to his partner. "Uh, yeah," Lumlee said, unslinging the pack. "We saw that spy again tonight, the one that got away from you last time—"

Talbot winced. Way to go, butthole. But if Wolf Girl took offense at being reminded so bluntly of her failure, her face showed no sign. It might as well have been carved from soapstone.

"Look," Lumlee said, holding the pack out toward her. "Get a load of what's in here."

* * *

Cassie was sitting with her kickstand down and her elbows folded across the handlebars of her stolen Cyclops 650 bike when the second apartment from the end on the top floor of the low-rent block across the street blew up.

It was very satisfactory, with glass-shard storms, a noise fit to make the dead call the cops to complain, big gushers of flame roaring out the windows, and a rolling overpressure that slapped Cassie's face like an angry hand and rocked the big bike on its suspension. The blast blew out most of the other windows on both sides of the block, for good measure.

Almost at once sirens fired up off in the distance. The Davion cops were efficient, you had to give them that. She centered the machine, kicked up the stand, gunned the engine into a purr, turned around and rode west. It would be too hot trying to cross the bridges across the Thunder for a while.

It wasn't about revenge. She kept telling herself that. Wolf Girl had proven herself an immovable obstacle to making contact with the Popular Militia. She had also proven to be a direct—and deadly—threat to the Regiment.

Cassie didn't know Wolf Girl was responsible for the attack that killed Mariposa; she was merely soul-certain without real evidence. But Wolf-Girl had tried to spark a riot that could've cost Caballero lives, not to mention those of a few hundred of her own pals.

And she had John Satterthwaite's blood on her hands too.

Even when purely incidental, vengeance was sweet.

Laughing, Cassie opened the throttle wide, and let the icy night air fill her body like the rush of some powerful drug.

BattleTech - LE5523

13

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

3 January 3058

The black-mustached man's fist crashed into Cowboy Payson's face, knocking him all asprawl into the gleaming light-bedizened face of the jukebox. The miniature mariachi combo performing in the little holotank on top never skipped a beat.

Kali MacDougall looked at Cassie through the steam rising off her hot chocolate and shook her head. "I don't know why we hang out here. It's a nice enough little place, but it attracts the wrong kind of crowd."

From his stool by the counter near their table—Buck Evans and his buddies weren't the sort to sit at tables—Evan let out his rock-polisher chuckle. "Boys will be boys," he said. "They don't mean nothing by it. They just don't wanna let go of their New Year celebrations."

Cowboy shook his head, once, twice, and launched himself in a tackle that took his opponent around the waist. They went flying back across the little restaurant in a whirl of limbs, slammed into an unoccupied table by the window, and knocked it over with a bang and a musical clatter of silverware and plastic glasses on fired-clay tile.

Outside the window the light of a rare sunny day turned the snowy Gunderland Mountains to the east blinding-white, made them seem to hover over the city. The restaurant was on Melnibone Drive outside of downtown proper, well away from the Caballeros' usual stomping grounds. But it served Mexican food that was acceptable—if mainly as a source of heated debate over how it should really be done-played mariachi music—one of the Trinity trinity of country, Mex, and metal—and the owner spoke Spanish. As such it seemed an inviting oasis in a desert of surly gringos.

At the far end from Buck, Father Doctor Bob García was hunched over the counter conducting his field-work, as he put it, which in this case involved drinking coffee sweetened to near the consistency of molasses and shooting the breeze with the proprietor of Salazar's Old New Mexican Café.

"It's funny, you know," Abenicio "Nikos" Papandreou was saying to his new friend. He used his mother's maiden name and cultural heritage for his establishment because, as he explained, he hated Greek food. "People around here, in Port Howard, you know, they make a big thing out of how unprejudiced they are. But if you're what they call a minority, if you don't act according to their expectations of how you're supposed to act, they get seriously bent out of shape."

Father Doctor Bob smiled. "I've noticed that already." The Caballeros had a long history of upsetting expectations, along with sundry other apple carts.

About that time Cowboy and his playmate upset the table. Nikos came bustling out from around the counter, a dark fireplug of a man with frizzy hair beating a premature retreat from his scalp. "Hey, now," he said. "I don't mind you boys playing. But you got to place nice. Don't go busting up the physical plant."

Cowboy's opponent eeled out from between Cowboy and the wreckage and popped to his feet as if spring-loaded. He was a handsome norteño devil, 178 centimeters tall, dark, with flashing green eyes. The teeth he displayed in a grin were so white they looked self-luminous.

"Sorry for the destruction, carnal," he said. "If any-thing's busted, mi vato here will pay for it. It was his clumsiness that caused it."

"Don't call me 'vato,' you low-down owl-hoot. We'da never knocked that durn table down if you'd've been watching where I was pushing you."

"Why don't you two boys sit the hell down and shut the hell up?" suggested Buck Evans from the counter.

Cowboy and company ambled to the counter. Cowboy's playmate was Lieutenant Junior Grade Jesse James Leyva, callsign Outlaw. Dispossessed during one of the Regiment's Periphery gigs following its disastrous Clan campaign, he'd moved into the Phoenix Hawk piloted by Adelante's former CO Juan Pedro O'Rourke after O'Rourke was killed by ISF operators masquerading as Word of Blake terrorists in an attack on the Hachiman Taro Compound.

In most outfits Frenchfry Ames would, as a matter of course, have taken over the PH, a machine recognized for its capabilities as a command 'Mech and a substantially larger, more powerful machine than his 20-ton Stinger, when he took over Adelante. But while the Seventeenth Recon was technically a "medium" BattleMech regiment, meaning it had some of all four classes of 'Mech, Caballeros grew up hot-rodding little AgroMechs, and had a strong cultural predisposition to hit-and-run raiding tactics, so no stigma attached to the lighter machines. Leyva had been a PH pilot before, so he took over the Phoenix Hawk and Ames kept his Stinger.

"Maybe now that the atmospheric testosterone count is goin' down in the room we can actually talk," Lady K said as the recent combatants sat down at the counter with Evans. Outlaw was Cowboy's norteño counterpoint. Of course they got along famously, but they had an unusual way of showing it.

Cassie shook her head. "It's nothing."

Her friend looked stern. "You've been hanging around me like you're just dyin' for me to pry something loose before you bust. But it's your choice, hon. You can talk, or you can stay closed up till you bust."

"It's—oh, I don't know!"

"Yes, you do," Kali said quietly. "It's that old man who got killed."

"It's not! It has nothing to do with that. It's just..." Cassie's voice trailed away and she felt tears weigh down her eyelashes. What's wrong with me?

Lady K reached across the table and took her hand. "Grievin's one of those things that's best gotten over and done with. You try to hide from it, it'll eat you up inside. Just like being mad."

"I'm not grieving for anybody." Cassie pulled her hand away. She felt Kali's blue eyes on her, would not raise her own to meet them.

"He was just a mark," she said in a soft voice. "I can't care what happened to him. Don't you see, I can't?"

She looked up at Kali. "Once you start to care-about the marks, that's it. You're through. Game over. You can't scam people you care about."

"You're worrying about that human thing again, aren't you? Well, hon, the god-like detachment of the true sociopath just isn't for everybody. Speaking strictly for myself, I'm glad it's turning out not to be for you."

"But it's what I do. I'm a scout."

"You're a human being, you're a woman, you're a member of the family," she said. "Scout's just a job."

"They still call me 'Abtakha' after all these years." Cassie's callsign was a loan-word picked up from the Clans. It meant an outsider taken into a Clan.

"You can be adopted into the family," Lady K said, "but you got to be born a Southwesterner. You're a true Caballera. Nobody questions that, and you know it.

"And you're doing your scout thing and leading us down a false trail. Cass, you have plenty of skills, at a level not matched by anybody I've even heard of. If you get so you can't just use people up and toss 'em away like old candy wrappers, that still leaves you a pretty wide repertoire. And if you ever decide to toss over scouting, you think the universe will come crashing to a halt? Plenty of other things you could do—like be a top-ranked MechWarrior, if you put more'n half your mind to it. Or even spread your wings and fly away beyond the Seventeenth."

Cassie clutched her hand convulsively. "No!"

"Hey, hey, I'm not saying you have to leave the nest. I just want you to realize how many options you got open."

Cassie put her head down on the table and wept. Lady K stroked the back of her head. From the counter, Cowboy glanced over at her. Buck cuffed him upside the head. "Don't go stickin' your nose where it don't belong, boy."

"Let it go," Lady K murmured. "You been holding back grieving for poor Percy for a year now, and that's been making you crazy. Just get it out and get on with your life."

Cassie raised her head to deny that she had any grieving to do for Percival Fillington. But all that came was more tears.

The front door opened, ringing silver bells hung from the latch by a leather strap. A man walked in. Slim and somewhere between medium-height and tall, he wore a heavy, scuffed jacket of megathere hide. He had coffee-with-cream skin, a halo of kinky dark-blond hair, and the devil in his chocolate eyes.

"Check it out," Lady K said to Cassie, sotto voce.

Cassie was already looking—scout reflexes. He was pretty, there was no denying that. Not that it meant anything to her.

"I was told I could find some folks from the Seventeenth Recon Regiment here," the newcomer said.

Things got abruptly tense in the Old New Mexican Café. Cowboy and Outlaw, who had strapped their gunbelts back on after their sparring match—Nikos let them carry openly in here, in spite of Port Howard law, which was another attraction to the place—dropped hands to pistol grips, as did Lady K. Cassie already had her hand on her snubby. The current Captain-General—of the Society of Jesus, not Tommy Marik— deemed it inappropriate for a Jesuit to bear a weapon openly. But not to carry a sneaky-pistol—Father Bob had his hand in a trouser pocket.

"Who wants to know?" Buck Evans asked, leaning back against the counter. He went with 'Mech jock custom and wore his piece in a shoulder-rig, even when he wasn't in the cockpit.

"My name's Tim Moon. Leftenant, Towne Air Rangers, straw-boss of Chaos Flight. I understand you folks are looking for somebody to help you kill Dracs."

* * *

"Reason we got our base way the hell out here in the ass-end of nowhere," said Leftenant-General George "Wombat" Stephanopoulos, waving a blunt instrument of a hand at the snow-encased peaks surrounding the plateau on the eastern side of the Gunderlands, "is that the weenies in Port Howard keep trying to break us up, Charter or no Charter. We figure, out of sight, out of mind."

"And the way the folks back in Port Howie are acting lately," sang out Tim Moon from the back of the pack, where he was walking between Cassie and Lady K, "they're definitely out of their minds."

Wombat chuckled. He was about as wide as he was tall, with grizzled wiry hair and beard and body hair so profuse it came crowding out the neck of his coat. The 'lleros in the party looked at each other. An outfit where a lousy looie could crack a joke and a general could crack a smile was their kind of operation.

The Towne Air Rangers had flown a group of Caballeros out to Python Base on the Morrison Plateau to get acquainted. Don Carlos had come along, as had Gordo Baird; Gavilan was back in Port Howie overseeing the dispersal of Second and Third Battalions to various other Chandy-owned locations on Hyboria, under the watchful eyes of Red Gallegos and his two fellow battalion commanders, White-Nose Pony and Maccabee. It was a sort of character-building exercise for Camacho Junior, who had strenuously opposed the move to the last.

The rest of the party taking a walking tour of the Ranger home base was filled out with odds and ends including Father Doctor Bob; Don Carlos's confessor Father Elapido Montoya, who didn't pilot a 'Mech and was accordingly looked down on by most 'lleros; the usual suspects Cowboy and Buck; and Cassie and Lady K. The latter two had been included, it appeared, at the special insistence of Leftenant Moon, who had driven the sleek, arrowhead-shaped passenger plane that carried them to Python with the air of a racing jockey driving a beer cart. The sun was falling toward the Gunderland peaks to the west; twilight came early in a place like this. A fighter plane dropped out of the sun's eye, coming in for a landing with the whine of a reciprocating ICE. Tim Moon put his arms around Kali's and Cassie's shoulders and gently turned them to watch. For some reason she couldn't name, Cassie didn't pull away. She did find herself wishing he wasn't holding Lady K. She wondered why.

It was an arrowhead like the plane that brought them here, white painted, with the propeller—actually two, driven by the same engine but contrarotating— mounted in back, and a bone-in-nose canard up front. Cassie thought it was a pretty toy.

"A Voss," Moon said. "A real fighter, pure air-to-air. What I pilot."

"I hate to tell you this, Timmy," Lady K said, "but it looks like any self-respecting aerospace job, even a crummy little Seydlitz, could eat that puppy for lunch and have room left over for a plate of ribs with all the fixins."

The pilot laughed. "Looks can be deceiving, Kali, my dear. In space the blowtorches rule, and they can do a lot of damage to those big, slow, oh-so-visible tin men you ride around in. But down here in the atmosphere, down here with the ground seldom more than an eyeblink away, our little fan jobs pack some nasty surprises."

Lady K gave Cassie a look past his chest—angled downward; he was a couple of centimeters shorter than the blonde 'Mech jock. Cassie's return look was neutral. She loved Lady K, however reluctantly, but her friend was still a Mech Warrior, with some of the prejudices of that breed. For her part, she saw nothing farfetched about humble low-tech bringing down mighty fusion-powered monsters.

"The Air Rangers are covered by the Towne Charter," said Ranger XO and public relations officer Kommandant "Dandy Don" Coryander. He was a tall black man with a nervously eager manner who served a mining company as PR man in everyday life. "We used to get some support from the AFFC, but that's dried up since the Fifth Lyrans pulled out. But mostly we get along the way we always have: we get grants from certain companies, we do air shows, barnstorming kind of things. And a lot of our pilots own their own craft."

"Our pilots are working pilots," Stephanopoulos said, sticking a big Coventry cigar in his mouth. "Being a fighter jock is only a hobby for most of 'em. But don't let that give you the notion we're a bunch of crummy dilettantes. When they're not doing this, our boys and girls are airline pilots, cargo jocks, postal delivery, wilderness SAR, what have you. They fly commercial for a living, and that means they spend a lot more time in the saddle than any death-or-glory aerojock."

"We're proficient, and proud of it," Coryander added.

They stopped to watch the little Voss taxi past them on the way to his hangar. Up close its sleek functionality was undeniable. But even Cassie had to acknowledge that it didn't look like much to pit against a torch-driven aerospace ship.

They walked on. A little way ahead a group of techs and pilots were playing basketball on a cracked patch of blacktop, some of them stripped down to T-shirts despite the chill. A security officer stood watching with an Imperator submachine gun slung across her back.

"Why is the Planetary Government so opposed to you?" asked Father García.

"They think we're too militaristic," said Kommandant Jeanne "Silk" d'Aubisson. A thin woman with fine white-blonde hair worn long and straight, she commanded the Rangers' Able Group. "They think we're an anachronism. Like the Charter."

"I hope it's not disrespectful," Don Carlos said, "but why is it you take us seriously, when no one else does?" The Colonel was troubled by the lack of support the Caballeros were finding among the locals, and he missed Diana Vásquez.

D'Aubisson laughed. "Maybe we are an anachronism. Maybe we're just looking for a chance to live out our fantasies."

Stephanopoulos dug into a hairy ear with a broad fingertip. "Silk's just yanking your chain. We been staring down the Dragon's throat too long not to know that the breakup of the FedCom and the Chaos March going up for grabs gives the Drac hotheads an opportunity they can't resist. I figure this Teddy the K's as straight a shooter as any Snake can be. He's done all right by our Prince Victor. But, hell, this wouldn't be the first time some samurai hotshot got a wild hair up his butt and decided to take off on his own for the greater glory of the Dragon. Just like 3034."

"Well, whaddaya know?" Buck drawled. "Somebody who knows a little history."

"How come y'all don't think we're just frontin' for the Dracs, then, General, sir?" sang out Cowboy.

"Why on God's green Earth would you be busting your butt trying to get everybody to wake up and look to their guns if you were doing that?" Stephanopoulos burst out. "Only a halfwit'd think something like that."

"The Popular Milita certainly seems to," García said.

"Point proven." Stephanopoulos chopped air with his hand. "Don't get your shorts in a bunch over what a bunch of Port Howard buttheads say. We can put you in touch with the real militias. The country folk. They're ready to listen to what you got to say. Only Port Howie isn't too healthy for them, these days."

They came to the top of a low rise, looking out over a shallow basin between runways. A wooden water tower rose from the center of it.

"Now I'm sure you're all wondering just what a bunch of weekend warriors and warriorettes in little bitty prop-driven atmospheric craft can do to big, bad BattleMechs. Well, let me point out to you that our ships are small and hard to spot—and not just for the Eyeballs, Mark I, that God issued to you. They're mostly polymers and ceramic, even their engines, so they don't have a radar signature worth diddly. And their exhaust is cool, which means an infrared missile has the devil's own time seeing them—unlike their big noisy aerospace cousins, I might add. Besides, as the saying goes—"

A two-engine aircraft that was a smaller version of the one that had brought them here burst out of a fold in the plateau no one had even spotted, and howled over their heads. "—it's not the machine, it's the person inside. Our jocks are experts at daisy-cutting. They can use the strong relief of this world of ours to best advantage. And as Dandy Don told you—"

The airplane rose, banked, turned, and dove back down at the water tower. Cassie saw something elongated fall from its belly, and then the water tank burst in a cloud of spray and splintered planking. The Caballeros cheered.

"—we're proficient. That was a cement practice bomb, ladies and gentlemen. But imagine the effect had it been live, packed with five hundred kilos of high explosive—and that tank a BattleMech's head."

Cowboy pushed out his lips and nodded. "Now, that's downright impressive, General. But lemme show you something."

"Payson—" Baird began in a warning growl.

Stephanopoulos waved him off. "Let the boy have his say."

The lanky Cowboy turned and walked back down the hill to the basketball court, where the teams were setting up for a pair of foul shots. He went to the watching security patrolwoman.

"Pardon me, honey," he said. The shooter sank his first free throw. "Mind if I borrow this?" Before she could respond he had slipped the subgun sling off her back, clicked off the safety, and jacked the bolt.

The player cocked his hands back for his second shot. Cowboy leveled the subgun from the waist and fired a burst into the blacktop right behind him.

The other man's throw sailed clean over the backstop as he and his fellow players scattered for cover.

"You see, General," Cowboy said, turning up the hill to face the astounded group, "making those fancy shots is one thing when there ain't no pressure on. But when the bullets start to fly, everything gets just a mite tricky."

He put the weapon back on safe and handed it back to its owner. "Thank you kindly, ma'am. Much obliged."

BattleTech - LE5523

14

Vale of Shamballah

Gunderland Mountains, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

11 January 3058

Starboard wing dipped, the Ruedel attack plane circled above a vast bowl of mountains filled with fluffy white cloud.

"Welcome to the Vale of Shamballah," Tim Moon's voice crackled through Cassie's headset. She was in the rear half of the cockpit, the GIB seat. In combat the "Guy in Back" operated sensors and kept an extra set of eyes peeled. She suspected Moon was pulling her leg with the terminology, but every Towne Air Ranger she asked about it solemnly assured her it was technically correct.

"It's beautiful," she said. She was mostly being polite, trying to make appropriate noises—and why did it matter to her to please this young man, anyway? She wasn't very susceptible to the wonders of nature, as a usual thing. But in fact this vista was so grand, on so awesome a scale, that it stirred something inside her.

"You ain't seen nothin' yet," Moon said. He put the nose down and dove for the clouds.

* * *

The Caballero contingent had spent the night of their tour at Python Base. Alarming as Cowboy Payson's demonstration had been, their hosts had taken it in good part. At dinner that night, the recipients of the demo generated roars of laughter in the Ranger mess hall, telling the tale. It was the sort of thing they wished they'd thought of themselves.

Python Base was rustic in appearance if not in its comforts. In their private lives, as Wombat said, the Ranger jocks were mostly skilled professionals, and the timber and mining companies that employed most of them had deep pockets. They didn't stint themselves where they could help it.

The mess hall was a huge, prefab, stressed-cement half-cylinder dropped whole into place by a heavy-lifter airship. Well insulted against the icy breath of the storm that had swept over the plateau shortly after sunset—but not so soundproofed you couldn't hear the howling fury of it—it was paneled on the inside with rough planks of native hardwood. Dimly lit by recessed yellow lamps, it looked and smelled and felt like an enormous barn.

Kitchen staff kept platters of food coming: great smoking ribs and joints of several species of herbivore native to the region, bowls of fruit, wheels of bread with hard brown crusts and insides soft as a kiss, pastas, cabbage, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, local vegetables the 'lleros could put no names to yet. The drink flowed free as well. Seated with Cassie on one side of him and Lady K on the other at a long rough-hewn plank table, Tim Moon put down large amounts of beer in a big fired-clay stein showing the Towne Air Rangers insignia—a stylized white-clad cowboy with a black domino mask and a big star on his chest waving from the cockpit of a cartoon airplane with the prop up front. He didn't push Kali when she chose to drink the rich, dark apple juice with bits of peel floating in it that was offered in place of anything alcoholic.

He did encourage Cassie to drink more than she was accustomed, making her lightheaded—a little. When she felt her control slipping, she usually stopped. When she wanted release, she found it elsewhere, mainly the practice of pentjak and other survival arts. She had a horror of losing command of herself and her surroundings, and was surprised when she did feel herself start to float.

The guests were introduced to gales of applause. Then various Ranger dignitaries stood up to be recognized: d'Aubisson and her fellow Group commanders, Ed Zollinger and Zane Saldano; squadron commanders such as Hauptmann Angela Chistaki, an astringent-looking woman with a single fierce black eyebrow, and Fritz "Krauthead" Moellwitz, blond and blunt-faced; and flight leaders including Leftenant Sondra "Ice" Prynn, tiny, severe, and even paler than Silk, and Tim Moon, whose callsign was simply "Bad."

When the food was served, conversation diminished—country Townies took eating as seriously as Southwesterners, it seemed. After the second or third wave of reinforcements were dealt with, chairs were pushed back and more than a few trouser-fasteners discreetly loosened. The base's security chief, Sergeant Major FitzGerald—who had had to be restrained from doing bodily harm to the unwary guard Cowboy had so readily disarmed—stood up and bellowed for quiet.

A space was cleared on the head table, where Wombat sat with Don Carlos and Gordo Baird. The Rangers' youngest pilot, a Sergeant Jerry Wilcox, with short-sheared red hair and ears like jug handles, was chivvied up onto the tabletop, where he stood at quivering attention.

The boy put back his head and sang in a trembling but serviceable tenor

"We meet 'neath the sounding rafters,

The walls around us are bare;

They echo the peals of laughter;

It seems that the dead are there.

So stand by your glasses steady,

This world is a world of lies.

Here's a toast for the dead already;

Hurrah for the next man who dies."

"What's going on?" Cassie whispered to Moon, and was shocked that her words were slurred.

"Tradition," he said. "Hush, now, there's a dear girl."

"Cut off from the land that bore us,

Betrayed by the land that we find—"

"Sounds like us," Lady K said to Cassie. Cassie's lips tightened. Her friend felt like an intruder.

"The good men have gone before us,

And only the dull left behind.

So stand by your glasses steady,

The world is a web of lies.

Then here's to the dead already—"

And somehow the whole mob, 'lleros as well as Rangers, even Cassie herself were all on their feet, to roar in unison the final line:

"AND HURRAH FOR THE NEXT ONE WHO DIES!"

* * *

Cassie had felt tears streaming down her face that night, and looking around by the false lantern-light she saw she wasn't the only one. Now, though, ten days later, what she had was her stomach in her throat, evidently trying to escape, as the Ruedel plunged into an apparently solid bank of clouds.

"You're not nervous, are you?" Tim's voice said jauntily in her ears, as all the world turned to cotton batting around them.

"Of course not," she said in a voice of metallic calm. How can you see to pilot this thing? "You bastard."

He laughed. "That's my Cassie-girl. Never let anyone get the upper hand on you. And good for you."

They broke through the bottom of the clouds with an almost physical impact. Or maybe Cassie had just been expecting impact of a much more tangible sort. She glanced down at the ground, then stared.

Below them the land indeed resembled a shallow bowl, one almost empty of snow. It was an expanse of dark rock and grass, green in patches, interspersed with brown pools.

"Even in the bitterest winter, snow seldom sticks here," Tim said. "The volcanic-mud pools provide plenty of heat, and the perpetual cloud-cover holds it in."

Cassie's nose wrinkled. "What's that smell?"

"Sulfur. From the mud-pits. The stink is what keeps this place from being Paradise. Most of it."

She turned to look all around. With the canopy paired to the fuselage behind, she had mostly unobstructed vision in all directions. "Why is the valley so round?"

"It's not a valley. It's a caldera—the cone of an extinct volcano. This is what's left of a peak that blew its top about fifty thousand years ago. Just yesterday, geologically speaking, so don't get too relaxed."

He circled around toward the north side of the crater. A landing strip had been laid out in crushed lava near where a stream trickled down from the hills that formed the rim-wall. The Rangers had proudly told the Caballeros that even under full armament load-out, their prop-driven craft could take off and land from a regular paved road, and unladen could use dirt roads or even grass. The Ruedel touched down with a squeak and crunch of rubber on volcanic gravel.

Tim popped the canopy, helped Cassie down from the cockpit. She was still a little surprised that she was in no hurry to pull away from the contact when her feet were on the ground. He gave her that grin of his, then climbed back up the rungs molded to the side of the fuselage and drew a hamper encased in blue ripstop synthetic out of the cockpit.

Cassie was holding her nose. "So this is your idea of a romantic getaway? You must not get out much."

"Less than I'd like to, to be sure." Moon laughed. "Patience is a virtue, little one. Come along."

He slung the hamper's carrying-strap over one shoulder and started hiking uphill along the stream. It seemed to spill down from a jumble of boulders. Cassie followed.

"That song that first night, back at the base," she said to his back. "What was it?"

"Our unit song," he said. "A thousand years and more ago it was the song of a group of very brave, very romantic, and mostly doomed young men called the Lafayette Escadrille. Young men only, I'm afraid; they didn't know how brave women could be in those days, you see."

"A thousand years ago. That must've been before BattleMechs were invented."

"To be sure. It was before a lot of things— spaceflight and fusion and holovid. There were no armored land vehicles to speak of when that war began, and only in its later years did they start sending farm-tractors with armor plates bolted onto them into battle, code-naming them "Tanks' for reasons of security. And it was the first large-scale war in which men in aircraft fought each other."

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I guess their planes were a lot like that one, huh?"

He stopped his upward progress to look back at her with a wondering expression. Then he smiled. "I'm not sure whether to be honored or insulted on behalf of our proud birds. That was real flying in those days, in fragile box-kites with open cockpits, whose pilots kept them aloft mostly by sheer force of will. In some very meaningful ways our airplanes are as far advanced beyond those first warcraft as your mighty BattleMechs are beyond those first crude armored crawlers."

"They're not my BattleMechs." He shrugged. "But we like to feel that our planes are close to those crude wood-and-fabrip ships—closer than fusion-driven spacecraft in spirit, as we're closer to wind and weather in fact. And we all, men and women, feel close to those pilots from long ago."

He had lowered himself to a seat on the grass as he spoke. "Do you need a bit of a break? I don't want to wear you out."

It was her turn to laugh. "I'm a scout," she said. "I don't make my living sitting on my butt in cockpit."

He clutched his heart and rolled half onto his back, canted to one side by the slung hamper. "Cut to the quick! My manhood's impugned! Now there's nothing left for me but to turn into a thermoworm and crawl off to spend the rest of my wretched days in a mud-pit."

"We could race to the boulders up there," Cassie suggested, "and I could let you win."

He looked at her upside-down, cocked an eyebrow. "Now you've got me wondering if it's you who don't get out much, with such a tongue on you."

"Sorry. I'm sorry! I didn't mean—" He rolled over and sat up. "Did your pretty little leg come off in my hand? I'm just teasing."

He tapped his nose. "Have you noticed, child, when you like a man your victim-reflexes kick in? Watch that close, girl, or someone whose intentions are less straightforwardly dishonorable than mine may take advantage."

She felt her cheek muscles tighten. He was talking just like Lady K. Before she could find anything to say he'd gotten to his feet and started off up the slope again.

Just to get a bit of her own back, she pushed him, forcing him to pick up the pace to stay in the lead. By the time he clambered over the lip of a granite shelf and stood up with hands on hips he was sucking wind. He gave her a rueful grin as she climbed up alongside.

She stopped. "It's beautiful."

He put his arm around her shoulder. "Ah. This time it sounds as if you mean it."

Almost at her feet lay a stone-sided pool of clear water. Soft grass fringed it. They had climbed out of the sulfur-stench of the ealdera floor. The dominant smells were water, so warm Cassie could feel its heat on her face, and the brisk scent of the conifers that surrounded the pool on three sides.

"The pool's fed by a hot spring that rises about twenty meters upslope," Tim said, pointing to where water trickled down a pile of boulders, as picturesque as a fountain in a Japanese garden. "It may not be paradise, but it's as close as I expect to get in this life. And any other, perhaps."

He swung the hamper down to the grass by the water. "If I were a smooth-talker, I'd say it was never closer than with you here beside me. Would you believe me if I told you that a beautiful woman's presence brightens any scene?"

She laughed. She did that a lot around Leftenant Tim Moon. She did it a great deal during the meal they shared on a blanket spread beside the pool.

When they'd eaten their fill, and Cassie had drunk enough Stygian wine to feel warm all over, he reached out a hand and gently stroked her cheek. To her own surprise she took his hand and kissed the palm.

He smiled, and there was sadness in his large dark eyes. "Before we start, my beautiful one, there's something you should know: I'm no good, for you or any woman born. I'm always true in battle, but never in affairs of the heart. That's the way I am, and if you have no stomach for it, why, say so now and I'll never be blaming you. It's still a lovely spot for a picnic."

Cassie looked straight into those eyes. "Are you going to make love to me?" she asked.

"Ah, but that's the general idea." He cupped her chin in his hand and raised her face. "And has anyone ever made love to you before? It's bad luck to deflower so beautiful a woman."

"I've had sex before," she came back, tartly.

"That's not what I was asking."

"What's the difference?"

"If you insist," he said, "I'll show you." And his mouth moved to cover hers.

* * *

"More cocoa, Cassie?" Niko Papandreou asked.

Southwestern-style she waved him off, moving her opened and vertical hand up and down above her cup. Then she checked her watch again. It was a wrist watch with a Velcro flap. Outside of her personas she never wore a finger watch, or rings of any sort. They tended to hang up on things.

Where's Kali? Cassie wondered, also not for the first time. It wasn't like her friend to keep her waiting like this.

From the counter she glanced around the Old New Mexican Café. The smattering of customers were all local civilians. It was a little unusual in and of itself that there were no Caballeros in here at this time of day, early afternoon. Cochise Company was in the hot seat right now, Adelante and pravo stood down. There were no exercises scheduled for today that she knew of. Hauptmann-General Marrou of the Towne Guards was sulking again, and even though, true to their word, the Towne Air Rangers had helped the Caballeros establish communications with the Popular Militia inside Port Howard as well as out, no tangible results had yet resulted. The Seventeenth and the militias were still at what Lady K termed the "sending flowers" phase.

Sending flowers. Tim Moon had sent Cassie flowers after he returned her to Port Howard from their idyllic trip to the Vale of Shamballah. Plenty of men had sent her flowers. But they never meant anything before.

She glanced out the window. A little guiltily, Cassie realized she wasn't really hoping to see Lady K, their appointment notwithstanding. She was looking for Tim Moon to walk up to the door at his familiar easy amble. He was supposed to be flying in today; despite the Planetary Government's overt hostility, the Rangers had begun transferring planes to a private airfield northeast of town for their own get-acquainted exercises with the 'lleros. Outside the sky was overcast. But to Cassie, who had some experience judging how weather might affect aerial operations, it didn't look like anything to deter a daredevil like Tim.

High up on one wall, near the entrance to the rest-rooms, a holotank was turned on. Cassie let the newsreader's plastic-smooth and nominally masculine features and voice drift into focus:

"Port Howard labor union leaders met with Planetary Government officials today to demand the disarmament of what they termed 'Drac hirelings and union-busters.' They were referring to the mercenary Seventeenth Recon Regiment, employed by mysterious Combine tycoon Chandrasekhar Kurita, rumored to be the uncle of Coordinator Theodore Kurita. Reform Party spokesperson Howard Baylock had this to say—"

And before Cassie could hear exactly what it was the esteemed Assemblyman had on his mind, the windows blew in with enough sound and fury to wake the dead and terrify the living ...

BattleTech - LE5523

PART THREE

Here's a Toast to the Dead Already

Take the cylinder out of my kidneys,
The connecting rod out of my brain (my brain!)
From the small of my back take the camshaft
And assemble the engine again.

—Royal Flying Corps Mess Song, First Terran World War

BattleTech - LE5523

15

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 January 3058

Cassie never for a moment doubted what had happened. Port Howard's strict air-traffic control laws forbade any craft to go supersonic above the city.

Leaving Papandreou staring with rag in hand she ran out the front door. On the sidewalk she shook her fist at the clouded sky and screamed, "Kusunoki, you no-good bishonen bastard! You weren't supposed to come so soon."

Standing a short way down the street from the door were the inseparable pair of Buck Evans and Cowboy Payson. Cowboy still had his hands pressed over his ears. "I'm glad it's not our arrival you're reacting to that way," Buck called out to Cassie.

A car with a retractable polymer top had jumped the curb almost in front of Papandreou's little restaurant. A citizen leaped out with his tie askew and started looking wildly around. "What was that? What? What?"

Buck Evans pointed to the sky off to the west, where a white disk with a protrusion from the leading edge was curving out over the bay. "A Sholagar," he said. "Unless of course the Dracs got themselves a Thrush."

"Or maybe the Capellans came to join the party," put in Cowboy.

Buck gave him a sour look. "You sure got a way of looking on the bright side, boy."

More sonic booms cracked the air. Nikos Papandreou came out onto the sidewalk, wiping his hands frantically on his apron. "What's going on?"

White explosion clouds blossomed from the city center. "Well, to the south there, you see your basic Union Class DropShip descending on Prince John Spaceport," Buck said, waving a hand. "And up there—"

He pointed almost directly overhead, where scores of bright sparks drifted down from the clouds like flame snowflakes. "—you see maybe a company of BattleMechs, dropped by another DropShip, wafting their gentle way into your life."

The distraught motorist was digging his fingers under his eyes so hard Cassie expected to see blood at any moment. "But what does it mean?" he asked in a clotted voice.

"You know that Drac invasion y'all didn't believe was coming?" Cowboy said as the sound of distant explosions marched over them like thunder. "Well, it's here, and runnin' way the hell ahead of schedule."

The motorist uttered a strangled squawk and took off down the street at a wild stumbling run. He fell down in the gutter twice before rounding a corner and disappearing. Meanwhile the invading 'Mechs were dropping into the heart of Port Howard.

Papandreou took off his apron, wadded it, and threw it down in disgust. "Well, I'll be God-damned. You boys were telling the truth all along."

"What did you think?" Cassie asked.

The restaurant owner shook his head. "I believed the Popular Militia when they said you were the spies," he said. "Shoot. I was helping 'em set up a strike on you."

Buck slapped him on the shoulder. "Well, old son, let's both be glad you didn't go and do something we'd all regret."

"What do I do now?" Papandreou's other customers had emerged to stand staring open-mouthed at the skies, like so many turkey chicks beneath a dripping eave.

"Well, unless you want to add sushi to your menu," Cowboy said, "I'd suggest you think about takin' a long vacation in the country."

"What about us?" Cassie asked.

"Don't tell me we all came on bikes," Buck said, looking up and down the block.

"You too, huh?" Cassie said.

"This is a mighty poor time to get split up," Buck said.

"Hey! What're we gettin' ourselves all lathered up about?" Cowboy raced to the car that had run up into the curb, jumped into the driver's seat. The top folded back into the trunk, revealing his grinning face.

"Check it out! Engine's even still runnin'."

Cassie looked at Buck. "I don't think Mr. Hymel's coming back for his car," Papandreou said.

Buck slid in next to his partner. Cassie vaulted into the back seat. "Yee-haw\" Cowboy yelled. He bounced the car off the curb, squealed it into a U-turn that left rubber on the far curb, and accelerated down Melni-bone. Papandreou stood on the sidewalk gazing after them with a distracted expression.

The convertible sped toward the central business district. The noise of explosions grew until it became a constant fabric enfolding them. Cassie bounced in the back seat, barely able to contain herself in her frenzy to be back with the regiment doing something. Just what that might be was not clear, even to her resourceful mind.

"How'd they drop in on us so damned fast?" Cowboy shouted over the unending thunder and the noise of their passage as the convertible flew over a rise and bottomed-out on its suspension with a squeal of metal on blacktop. "Same trick they pulled in that Christmas raid?"

"No way," Buck yelled back. "A raiding party might get through jump-point security disguised as regular traffic. Not an invasion force."

"Pirate point," Cassie said. She had her pocket comm out and was trying to raise the regiment. "They jumped in somewhere close to the planet."

"This Kusunoki's a ballsy son of a bitch, then," Buck said.

"That's the word on him. Damn these atmospherics! The primary's screwing up the comm net again." Towne's high-energy sun was as prone to storms as the planet was, and the solar storms disrupted broadcast communications severely. A fusion-driven signal could punch through—but the reactors in the embattled 'llero 'Mechs had other demands on their output right now.

They could see 'Mechs hopping and popping, rising into the air on jump jets to duel with each other over downtown and off to the northwest where the Palace of the Marquis stood. Aerospace fighters were battering the north bank of the Thunder near where it emptied into Circle Bay.

Cassie pounded her fist on the back of Buck's seat. "They're bombing the TTC yards!" she cried in anguish.

"They're gunnin' for our 'Mechs," Cowboy said. Most of the 'lleros still in Port Howard were stationed inside the great transport complex. Cowboy's Wasp and Buck's Orion were both parked there.

"How did they know?" Cassie cried. She struck her comm unit with the heel of her hand in frustration.

"Inside job," Buck said. "Somebody shopped us for true."

They passed several shops with broken windows, then a convenience store blazing merrily, big gobs of orange flame rolling out the windows. "Fighting must've moved mighty quick," Buck said.

"This isn't 'Mech damage," Cassie said. "Too many buildings are standing."

"Yeah, and I don't see any stepped-on cars," Cowboy said, swerving to avoid a burning van with all its doors standing open and a body sprawled beside it.

"What's anybody packing?" Buck asked.

For answer Cowboy whipped out his Sunbeam laser pistol from the tie-down holster low on his right thigh. "Keep both your damned hands on the wheel, boy," Buck said. "I got my 12 mike-mike, Cassie's got that baby hammerless wheel gun. This isn't gonna do. We're at a serious social disadvantage here."

"Who cares?" Cassie demanded. "Just get us downtown. Then you guys can get to your 'Mechs and I can do something."

"Don't get tunnel-vision fixated on BattleMechs, Cass," Buck said. "It might not be too easy to get to where the big boys are playing, if the Dracs got troops on the ground—or if lovely Port Howard is beginning to experience civil disturbance, as seems to be the case."

The popping-corn sounds of firelights came sporadically from either side, though they were still several klicks from the major battle raging downtown.

"Damn you!" Cassie raged at her communicator. "What's going on dbwn there?"

"Offhand," Cowboy called breezily, "I'd say the home team's gettin' its butt kicked."

"How can you sound so cheerful about it?" Buck asked.

"Ain't our butts bein' kicked. Yet."

A whistling roar and swooping shadow made them duck, even as Cowboy cranked the wheel hard left to avoid a mass of abandoned cars completely blocking the street ahead. Dragon's breath washed over them and Cassie looked up into the dazzling plasma glare of two fusion-driven exhausts. Less than 500 meters overheard, the Fusiliers' lone Stuka, bleeding gray smoke, was jinking frantically from side to side, as much trying to bring its two rear-firing Martell lasers to bear on a boomerang-shaped Shilone in pursuit. The 65-ton Shilone was riding the Stuka's tail as if the larger fighter were towing it, hanging so close it had to dodge the thruster flames as much as the laser beams.

As the two craft streaked out over Circle Bay, the big Diverse Optics laser in the Shilone's nose stabbed out. Cassie saw a white puff of armor sublimating away from the root of the Stuka's left wing. The Stuka nosed up and suddenly banked in a violent high-gee turn to the left. The maneuver caught the Shilone jock by surprise; the Drac couldn't match-the turn without blacking out from gees. Instead it banked right, flipped through a barrel roll that brought it back to the same line of flight as its larger flying prey. Then it fired a spread from its long-range Shigunga rack at the Stuka, which was blazing south at full thrust.

Cassie saw at least two flashes as missiles struck the big fighter. Debris streamed briefly from it. Then the Stuka seemed to strike an obstruction in the air and go cartwheeling into an end-for-end tumble, still shedding parts. The pilot, dead, stunned, or trapped by the centrifugal force of its death-spin, never punched out. The Stuka struck the base of the peninsula that curved out from below the Thunder mouth to form the lower boundary of Circle Bay and blew up in a sun-bright yellow-white flash. The Shilone, which had climbed almost vertically after launching its LRMs to avoid foreign-object damage from wreckage, pulled through onto its back, did a slow barrel roll, and vanished into the clouds.

"Foxtrot hot-dog," Buck muttered.

"Long-range and low-heat," Cowboy said. "So much for the pride and joy of the ol' Marquis's aerospace boys."

"Wait," Cassie said, "I'm getting something." She held her com between Cowboy and Buck as Cowboy turned west again and started up a hill.

"Peaches! Watch that Marauder at nine o'clock!" It was Captain Bobby Begay, callsign "Navajo Wolf" and commander of Cochise Company.

"I'm on him, Wolf! ¡Santiago y Sierra!" Frank Gomez's battle cry invoked his homeworld and its patron saint "I got him! I got him! Yo—"

The transmission broke off in a sudden snarl of static. They heard Bobby the Wolf scream Gómez's name and then break into Navajo.

Cassie pounded a fist on the back of Buck's seat as tears streamed down her cheeks. It wasn't for Gomez—she hardly knew him, felt little for him; he was just another 'Mech jock to her. It was for what was happening to la familia.

"Guess Frank Gómez pulled that Death from Above trick once too often," Buck said.

"Downin' a Marauder in a Phoenix Hawk ain't shabby," Cowboy said.

"Oh, no," Buck said. "This ain't good. We got two more DropShips corning down, one out by the Palace, looks like, and another comin' down at the spaceport." Bright thruster flares descended through the clouds to south and northeast.

Cowboy slammed one hand off the top of the wheel. "It's raining the sons of bitches! One or two regiments, my ass!"

Buck cocked an eyebrow at Cassie. "Looks like your pal the Mirza gave us a bum steer."

"He predicted the attack," she pointed out. "Where the hell do all these Snakes come from, anyway?" Cowboy said.

"Well, given Senior Lieutenant Suthorn's presence, this doesn't seem like a real propitious time to fill in some obvious gaps in your knowledge of the facts of life, Cowboy—"

"I mean, what the Foxtrot? They were supposed to be scrapin' the bottom of the barrel to send two regiments after us!"

"Maybe they did get help from the Capellans," Cassie said. "Or maybe Word of Blake decided they want some more of us. Terra's not all that far away."

"God, that's a cheerful thought," Buck said.

"Who cares?" Cassie said. "We've got to get back to the regiment—wait, listen!"

She had been channel-hopping, getting nothing more than disjointed snatches of frantic talk on the tac freaks. Now a red light had begun blinking on her personal communicator, indicating a message coming in on the alert frequency. She held up the unit again.

With a sound like a drum-roll magnified a million-fold, a volley of missiles crashed down in the street to the south of them. Something struck the windshield with a bang. It went suddenly opaque in a crazy network of fracture lines.

As the car went into a spin, Cassie clearly heard the Colonel's voice say, "—ordering the immediate withdrawal of all units from the city."

The car squealed to a halt, settled onto its suspension with various pings and squeaks.

"Whoa," Cowboy said, staring at the windshield, which had been dented almost back to the depth of the steering wheel by the piece of debris thrown out by the missile impacts. "That was cutting it close."

"Pull in right over there," said Buck. They had come to rest facing northeast. He pointed to a gun shop across the street, almost in line with the convertible's nose.

"What are you talking about?" Cassie demanded. "We've got to get back, got to join the others!"

"Give a listen, little lady," Buck said, tapping the communicator still clutched in her wiry brown hand.

"I say again," Don Carlos was speaking Spanish, in tones of infinite weariness. "All Seventeenth Recon elements are to withdraw from Port Howard at once. Save what you can. We'll fight again another day."

"We got our marching orders, Cass."

Cassie threw herself against the back of the seat and folded her arms tightly across her chest. "We can't abandon the others."

"Right. And they're all bugging out. If we hang around here, they'll abandon us. And they won't have a choice in the world. We're out-gunned, out-flanked, and out-fornicated."

She shook her head. She could not speak. Tears blurred out her vision.

The cur lurched forward, crossed the street diagonally, came to rest with its tires squeaking against the curb on the wrong side, right in front of the gun shop. "If you want to throw your life away taking on a whole Drac army single-handed," Cowboy said, opening the door and unfolding his lanky frame, "be my guest. Me, I'm going shopping." He slammed the door.

Buck Evans followed him into the store. Cassie sat a moment, breathing hard. The com kept repeating the Colonel's message, over and over. Evidently he'd left a transmitter broadcasting a recorded loop.

A burning aerospace fighter fell from the sky to the north. With fierce satisfaction she saw that it had the snouted-saucer shape of a Sholagar. The Fusilier fighter jocks weren't giving up without a fight,

Tim! Where are you? She didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved not to see his little white Voss with the red-painted nose take to the sky against the invaders. For all the Rangers' brave talk, with the sky full of fusion-driven killing machines, the little synthe-tic-and-ceramic prop-driven craft seemed nothing more than toys.

She climbed out of the back seat and went into the shop. The interior lights were out; the only illumination was the gray light filtered through barred windows streaked with urban grime. Buck Evans stood near the front, perusing a rack of carbines. Cowboy was behind a glass display counter to the left, feeding green double-ought shells into a stainless pump-action twelve-gauge shotgun with furniture of black synthetic.

"I don't for the life of me understand why you don't just get yourself a good autoloader," Buck said, turning a semiautomatic version of an old AFFS assault rifle over in his hands. Civilians were not permitted to own full-auto-capable weapons in Port Howard.

"Something about a good pump just suits me," Cowboy said, racking the slide to chamber a round, then topping off the extended magazine with a fresh shell from an open box on the counter. "I like the way they feel."

"Your funeral," Buck said with a shrug. "Help yourself, Cass. Looks like nobody's home."

As if to contradict him, a sturdily built black man with short gray-dusted hair came out of the back with an autoloading shotgun tucked beneath his shoulder and his finger on the trigger.

"Not so fast, there," he said. "Y'all best be putting those things back where you found them, unless you got money to pay."

Buck turned and walked toward him, holding his hands out. He still held the carbine in his right hand.

"I know how you feel, citizen," he said, "but we're kind of short on change here."

"Don't get any closer!" the shopkeeper ordered.

Buck nodded his head toward the open door, through which the sounds of a 'Mech battle in progress not many blocks away poured. "Now, there's a little point you might want to consider. That's not just the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery kicking your fair city to kindling out there. It's a bunch of outlaw Dracs so crazy they're disobeying their own Coordinator to invade your happy little world. Now, how do you think they're going to treat a civilian such as yourself whom they happen to catch in possession of a large store of weapons?"

He walked almost up to the muzzle of the leveled shotgun and laid the carbine on the counter next to the register. "I understand why you want to hang onto what's yours. But if you keep trying to hang on too long, you might lose more than you bargained for. Now, whether you're willing to give us a hand or not is your call,and we're not here to rip you off. But if you think the PG is rough on firearms ownership, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

The proprietor stared hard at the tall blond man a moment more. "You're some of those offworld mercs, aren't you? Seventeenth Recon?"

"That's us," Cowboy said. He had laid his shotgun down too.

The shop owner sighed and lowered his weapon. "I guess you're right. I guess you've been right all along, haven't you?"

He waved a hand. "Help yourselves. I'd rather you have it than the damned Snakes."

The man looked at them for a moment longer, then turned and disappeared into the darkened back rooms. Cowboy grinned at Buck and vaulted the counter. As Cassie selected three high-capacity semiauto handguns and started scarfing spare magazines, the two began to pile boxes of ammo into their arms and tote them out to the car.

Cassie came back from carrying out a load to find the proprietor had turned on a little holotank set up on the counter, where he could watch it from his stool behind the cash register. Cowboy and Buck were staring at the set, so Cassie stopped to look.

It showed Howard Blaylock shaking hands with several Combine officers in tan field uniforms on the steps of the huge Planetary Government complex downtown. The buildings at their backs showed no sign of battle damage.

"In the name of the people and government of Towne," Blaylock was saying, "I welcome the peacekeeping mission from the Draconis Combine, and trust that today will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for all our people."

A title at the bottom of the display read, "Newly Appointed Planetary Chairman Blaylock." In the lower right corner floated a neat little Kurita dragon-in-circle symbol.

"I guess we know who the insider was on this little sell job now," Buck commented.

"The newsies must nof've been too surprised neither," Cowboy said. "Lpokit. They even got that cute little Drac meatball and everything."

The bellow of the owner's shotgun almost imploded Cassie's eardrums in the confines of the store. The holotank exploded.

"Y'know, I've always wanted to do that," the shop owner said, laying down the smoking weapon.

* * *

Cassie slipped back into the convertible's back seat. The overcast was closing in; a light snow was beginning to fall, though she didn't feel cold at all. Cowboy and Buck emerged and stacked a final couple cases of rifle ammo on the seat beside her.

The store's owner emerged holding a case of Frost Giant's Daughter beer, a popular local brew. "I know this stuff usually doesn't go too well with guns," he said, "but I had it in the cooler in the back for after hours, and somehow I don't think I'm gonna have time to polish it off myself before the Snakes get here."

"Thank you kindly, citizen," Buck said, accepting it from him. "We're headin' for the Gunderlands. I'd advise you do the same."

"We can make some room in back, if you don't mind sittin' next to a skinny mean woman," called Cowboy. He pulled his new shotgun off the driver's seat where he'd left it.

The proprietor shook his head. "Thanks all the same, but I got some business to tend to before I pull a bunk."

Buck walked around the front of the car with the beer. Cowboy stood by the driver's door, facing east. He had his shotgun and stood holding it with the barrel pointing back over his shoulder.

"I wish you wouldn't hold that thing like that," Buck groused, turning to prop the case on the door to free a hand to open the handle. "It's unprofessional."

Cowboy just grinned. Then Cassie saw him stiffen and stare into the driver's side wing-mirror.

It couldn't have been more than a microsecond later that she launched herself straight over the top of the windshield as Cowboy's 12-gauge went off with a shattering sound.

BattleTech - LE5523

16

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 January 3058

Cowboy's blast of buckshot caught the lead man of the Drac infantry squad that had just trotted around the corner behind the convertible full in the chest. The ground-pounders were armored in nothing more than their tan trichloropolyester jumpsuits. The front of the lead man's suit came all over red blotches, and he fell. Cowboy threw himself over the closed driver's door and fell across the front seat on his back.

Cassie twisted her body as she rolled down the hood of the car, had her feet beneath her when she dropped in front of the grille. She had struck a 9 mm into the waistband of her faded black twill trousers at the small of her back. Naturally the gun fell out and got lost, but she had strapped on a gunbelt carrying a sebond nine in a holster around her waist too. This weapon stayed put.

She drew it, shoved it out both-handed before her at full arm-extension along the car's right side as she crouched to put as much as possible of the engine block between her and enemy gunfire. Buck was rolling across the street, prone, supine, firing his carbine as he went. A figure in tan appeared from behind the rear of the car, the Shimatsu-42 assault rifle in his hands spitting fire. Cassie lined up her sights on the center of his chest, fired twice. He went down.

Cowboy laid his 12-gauge across the rear of the driver's seat and began pumping out shots. Buck made it clear to the other side of the street. He rolled up over the curb to the cover of a fire hydrant, where he slammed home a fresh magazine and began taking aimed shots. Cassie shot another infantryman, then rolled to the driver's side of the car in time to drop a third who was backing around the corner of the building, firing wildly.

Silence landed like a weight from a great height.

Cowboy oozed over the driver's door, ran to the corner. He tossed the shotgun end-for-end in the air, catching it in a left-handed grip, poking it around the corner, firing blind, racking the slide, firing again. Then he dropped to the sidewalk and peeked around.

At once he was up again, shaking his head. "No sign of them," he said. "They musta heard their mama callin'."

Buck rose deliberately from cover and came back to the car, keeping his carbine ready. Cassie stood. Eight forms lay on the pavement. Three were moaning and writhing. The others kept their peace.

"Why'd you go and jump into the car like a damned fool?" Buck demanded. "There's almost nothing you can shoot that won't go through a car lengthwise unless it hits the engine, which was on the wrong end to do your sorry ass much good if any of those culebras had known what they were doing."

"It seemed like the thing to do at the time," Cowboy admitted, sheepish. He was stuffing shells from the
pockets of his heavy coat into the shotgun's tubular
magazine. "Good thing they were lousy shots, even for
Dracs."

Pistol in hand, Cassie had approached the fallen soldiers. "These aren't Dracs," she said.

Buck stared at her. "What are you telling us? That we just laid the whack on a passel of Boy Scouts?"

"Well, they're not DCMS. Check them out; they haven't got anything more than jumpsuits and caps. Teddy Kurita started issuing helmets and those padded bodyarmor jerkins to all combat troops back when he was Kanrei, ages ago. This kit's at least thirty years old."

"Then who the hell are they?" Cowboy asked.

She picked up a Shimatsu, nudged the outflung left hand of the first man Cowboy had shot with the toe of her boot. "Look here. Little finger's missing. Which means—"

She stuck the flash suppresser into the notched front of his high jumpsuit collar, slid it down so that the fastener unsealed for about twelve centimeters, pushed back the cloth to reveal a fragment of an intricate and colorful tattoo.

"Irezumi," she said. Yakuza.

"I'll be damned," Buck said. "Pretty Boy Kusu-noki's gone and recruited himself some yakuza cannon fodder."

"Guess he reckoned it worked for Teddy, so what the hey," Cowboy said. A wounded man moaned loudly. Cowboy winced. "What about them? We can't just leave 'em."

Combine born, Capellan raised, Cassie responded in what seemed to her the direct and natural way: she shouldered the Shimatsu and fired three shots. When she turned back to her companions, both were staring at her, faces pale.

"What?" she said.

Buck Evans shook his head. "N-nothing, Cass. But I think it's about time we were pulling up stakes—"

As if to underline his words a terrific crash sounded from the west. All three of their heads snapped round as a 50-ton Enforcer, smoke and flames streaming from its shattered chest, toppled into sight from the left, two blocks away. It landed on its back.

"Not one of ours," Buck said. The stowed ammo for its Federated autocannon began to cook off, lighting up the smoke pouring from the stricken machine like a hy-pertrophied fireworks display.

Out of the side street from which the 'Mech had fallen stepped a Stalker. It paused above its downed opponent, then turned ponderously to face east. Cassie felt her blood congeal as it seemed to look directly at them. The 'Mech could have blown them all away with the merest puff from its awesome weaponry.

The ruby lance of a large laser cracked past the 85-ton monster from right to left, apparently just missing behind it. The Stalker turned north and lumbered out of sight with a crunching and groaning of tormented pavement beneath its vast, pod-shaped feet.

Wordlessly, the two Caballeros and one Caballera jumped into the car. Fortunately it was already pointing the right way: east, toward the putative safety of the Gunderland Mountains.

* * *

The Shilone's, landing gear squealed as it kissed the blacktop of the combined starport and airfield south of the port city. As she kicked in the retro boosters, Tai-i Sharon "Mouse" Omizuki of the Fifth Galedon Aerospace Wing, Tai-sa Terrance Kondracke's Desolation Angels, tried to contain the excitement that seethed in her like bubbles in champagne. Her first kill in years, and it had been one worthy of a company commander: a 100-ton Stuka.

Having tasted blood she was hot for a shot at more. But her group commander had ordered her company to land and stand down, and she was seasoned enough to know the wisdom behind that order. Fusion-driven, armed with one large and two medium lasers, her 65-ton Shilone could fight virtually indefinitely. But aerospace combat was a highly aerobic sport. Far faster than the conflict of the lumbering landbound Battle-Mechs, it imposed physical stresses many times the force of gravity on the system, stresses that could kill an unprotected human, especially one not trained and conditioned to endure them. More to the point, even an aerospace jock tempered and honed like a Muramasa blade and swaddled in a gee-suit could fly herself quite literally death in a fighter. As a practical matter, long before that point was reached, the accumulation of gee-loading and emotional stress would have reduced the pilot's judgment, perceptions, and reflexes to the point where the chances of a fatal mishap soared asymptotically toward certainty.

Even under the enlightened leadership of Theodore Kurita, first as military commander and then as ruler of the whole Combine, the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery demanded much of its warriors. But the DCMS had long since learned the hard way that to keep a pilot in actual combat for more than an hour at a stretch, barring dire necessity, was simply to throw away expensive machinery, not to mention pilots' lives. And though, individually, their lives meant nothing, their training cost the Dragon a JumpShip-load of money.

When the Shilone began to slow, Mouse turned the craft off the runway and taxied to a parking spot on the apron near some hangars under the guidance of a heavily swaddled ground tech wielding light batons and wearing ear protectors. She dropped out the access hatch in the craft's flat belly, waving off the gloved helping hand offered by a tech, and walked bent-over beneath the rapidly cooling craft to where a little van waited. The door slid open as she mounted the non-skid-padded metal steps.

"Welcome to Towne," said the voice of her wing commander.

In the entrance she stopped and bowed. "The Tai-sa does this unworthy one great honor," she said, not bothering to suppress a grin that the faceplate of her helmet didn't hide. Kurita aerospace pilots kept up appearances, but like fighter jocks in any time and any clime, their tendency, especially among those who had shared combat, was toward extreme informality. Respect came due as to how you flew. Everything else was a dog-and-pony show.

"Oh, come the hell inside and take a load off. And get your butt out of the door, Mouse. These Fedrats don't stint themselves on comfort, so don't waste the nice warm air."

In fact Tai-i Sharon Omizuki hadn't much noticed the cold or blowing snow for the warm victory-rush and the insulating effect of her vacuum-capable gee suit, but she moved to a seat facing her commander across the narrow aisle running front to back. She removed her helmet as the driver set the machine in motion.

There was nothing overtly mousy about Mouse Omizuki, but then there was nothing overtly Japanese, either. Standing 172 centimeters, with curly chestnut hair—-sweat-matted to her forehead at the moment— fair skin and freckles, she was not a particularly pretty woman. Her nose was too large and her mouth too irregular. There was no denying the appeal of her big luminous hazel eyes, and under the proper circumstances—she was very particular—she could display a devastating sexiness. Right now she just grinned at her CO, feeling a bit goofy. ,

Tai-sa Kondracke was a tall man with black hair shorn close to a narrow skull-spare head. His eyes were dark and deep-set, giving him a grim appearance which, except in combat, his nature belied.

"I don't think you're going to get in another sortie today, unless things really go to hell in a takara-bune," Kondracke said. "Weather's coming down hard."

Mouse grunted and frowned slightly. That was the bitch about in-atmosphere ops. One solid gust of wind would have wrecked even the 100-ton Stuka she had downed far faster than her Shilone's powerful armament had done—to say nothing of what it could do to her own 65-ton machine and lighter craft. In space there was no damned weather.

"Mattaku," she grunted, a phrase approximating something like the Inner Sphere exclamation of "Damn!" She waved a hand around the cozy, cheerily lit interior of the shuttle. "So what's the shake? Why take time to meet a lowly squadron commander? Don't you have a battle to run?"

Kondracke scowled, and not at his pilot's apparent insubordination, which was only apparent; these two respected each other. "The air battle's winding down-with the storm coming, but yes, I do. I've been ordered to take time out for a welcoming ceremony."

As Kondracke spoke, the whining roar of a Drop-Ship descending toward the blast pits was clearly audible through the shuttle's insulated skin, cutting through the wind-keening like a wakizashi. "Since you scored the showiest kill, you get to come along and meet our celestial leader and his friends from the kai." That word carried a number of meanings, all having to do with an organization or society. In this case, there was no doubt Kondracke was referring to the yakuza.

Mouse leaned back and stretched her legs. "I've been wondering what Kusunoki's really like." She was looking forward to actually meeting the famous war hero.

Kondracke's answer was an uncharacteristic grunt. She looked at him sharply.

"Hotshot-sama," she said, using his callsign and a deferential honorific, "tell me something. Do you think the Coordinator really knows about this mission and secretly approves?"

She expected simple reassurance. After all, it was well known that years ago it was a young Theodore Kurita who had launched the unauthorized offensive into Steiner space in 3029, just before the close of the Fourth Succession War.

Instead Krondracke looked away. "Who can say? Like you, I'm just another Dragon's tear, waiting to fall like a cherry blossom in the Luthien spring."

BattleTech - LE5523

17

Prince John Spaceport, Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 January 3058

Edwin Kimura, second in command of Dieron Prefecture's dominant yakuza organization, stood waiting patiently for the loading ramp of the Union Class DropShip to descend. Officially his title was that of sabu, though Kimura might have been startled to learn that the word derived from the English prefix "sub." As the ramp section broke seal and began to swing away and reveal to him the world of Towne, he was already holding his high black silk top hat in place. Kimura-

sensei was a man who worked hard to discern the shape of the future and prepare for it.

His present garb—the topper, a black and white kimono with the Kurita Dragon mon on the right breast and the black dragon rampant crest of Kokuryu-kai on the other, striped pants, spats and shoes polished to mirror finish—seemed hardly the product of foresight, given the atrocious winter weather for which this world was famous. And it wasn't, but rather the product of ceremony. Tradition was very important to Mr. Kimura, as it was to his oyabun, Hiraoke Toyama, and indeed to the man he was about to greet and, hopefully, exercise a benign influence upon.

Upholding tradition was, indeed, what this whole martial exercise was about. Which was why Mr. Kimura was taking part, despite certain very real misgivings about the whole jarajara. Tradition and the wish of his oyabun, to whom he owed vast amounts of giri, and not a little ninyo as well.

As the DropShip door opened outward, the wind hit him in the face like a bucket of ice water—which it didn't omit to contain, in the form of hard-driven snowflakes. Aside from a reflex narrowing of his eyes behind his thick round spectacles, Mr. Kimura showed no reaction. Small, skinny, with a thin neck and a round head that gave him an unfortunate resemblance to a turtle, Kimura knew his appearance was not physically imposing. But that mattered little. He stood on the dignity of honoring duty and pride, and that was enough.

As the ramp grounded with a crunch of hull-metal on blacktop, Kimura began to descend it, grateful for the high-traction surface that prevented him from skiing straight down in a most undignified fashion.

The man awaiting him in a swirl of snow at the ramp's foot was physically imposing. Clad in a Mech-Warrior's cooling vest, trunks, and gauntlets that left arms and legs mostly bare to the ice-laden wind, he carried his neurohelmet tucked under one arm, his long blond topknot whipping like a pennon. With his height of 203 centimeters and muscled like a god, Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki looked, from the perspective of the diminutive Kimura, scarcely less prepossessing than the 95-ton 'Mech, a Naginata, standing behind him.

At a precisely prescribed distance from Kusunoki, Kimura stopped. Both men bowed, Kimura fractionally further.

"Welcome to Towne, Kimura-sensei," the Tai-sho said.

"I thank you, Kusunoki-sama. How goes the battle?"

Kusunoki gestured to a Rommel tank three hundred meters away, canted over the rim of the blast-pit. Despite the snow it was still producing a respectable quantity of black smoke. Kimura could just make out the banner of a silver horse on a blue field fluttering forlornly from its whip antenna. "My own headquarters detachment has secured the spaceport, as you can see. Elsewhere the fighting goes well, better even than I expected. The Marquis' Own Fusiliers have been shattered; the Towne Guard has surrendered. The gaijin money-troopers employed by the traitor Chandrasekhar have begun to retreat, trying to save their own skins. And I have just received confirmation that the grounds of the Palace of the Marquis have been secured by a detachment led by Tai-i Toyama of the First Spirit of the Dragon Regimfent."

The last was spoken with undisguised disgust, almost petulance. Kusunoki had desired for himself, or at least the MechWarriors of his prized Fifteenth Dieron Regulars, named Devotion Through Combat, the honor of capturing the former residence of the Marquis of Towne. But by prearrangement, that assignment had gone to the Kokuryu-kai -raised First Spirit of the Dragon Regiment, "The Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof."

Mr. Kimura repressed a smile. It had also been arranged in advance that the detail attacking the palace be led by young Captain Taisuke Toyama, the oyabun's son. The boy was a fire-breather, a conscientious and highly capable Mech Warrior, a credit to his father and the Dragon. Kimura, who loved the boy as the son he'd never had, expected no less of him. Nonetheless he was gratified, and Kusunoki's bishonen petulance be damned.

"And the Planetary Government?" he asked. He summoned such ki as he possessed into his hara, the center of him, to prevent his limbs from quaking and his teeth from chattering at the cold that knifed through to the marrow of his old bones. He would see this out, and show no dishonor before this arrogant warrior.

Kusunoki showed him the smile of the Dragon. "Your man Blaylock was as good as his word. Using our assault for diversion, he sent a team of assassins into the governmental complex, where they dispatched the Chancellor and key members of the ruling regime. The Smiling One's own skulking son could have done no better. Then he blamed local anti-government terrorists for the deed, declared himself Chancellor pro tem, declared a state of emergency, and extended a welcome to the Arm of the Dragon, come to restore order. Your preparations have borne us much rich fruit, sensei."

Mr. Kimura allowed himself a smile of his own. He and this half-mad warrior-kami shared little affection. But in the months of planning preparatory to the invasion, each had built up a healthy respect for the other's abilities, Kimura as planner and organizer, Kusunoki as military genius.

"I thank you. However, all honor is due your heroic leadership. Has Blaylock surrendered?" Mr. Kimura had spent weeks trying to hammer the crucial nature of that formality into Kusunoki's gorgeous head. If the duly constituted Planetary Government surrendered, resistance to the invaders would become a criminal act, and local authorities would be bound to tender full cooperation to the Dragon's servants. Six regiments, unassisted, were not remotely enough to truly subjugate a world, and even so thoroughly unmilitant a man as Kimura well knew it.

"That ceremony awaits our arrival at the government center downtown. You shall ride with me in my command 'Mech, Ten Thousand Lives for the Co-ordinator." Kusunoki waved grandly at the quiescent Naginata looming over them. A cherry-picker waited by its side, a shivering tech in a white jumpsuit standing by to operate the lift.

"I am honored," Mr. Kimura croaked. He had never ridden in a BattleMech, and had never harbored any ambition to do so. For one thing, he was afraid of heights.

They turned and walked toward the machine, which was not as near as it looked, but, by the Dragon, the thing was huge! Mech Warriors, techs, and pilots lined their path to either side, bowing as they passed.

"This yellow bird Blaylock," Kusunoki said to Kimura, quietly aside—or as quietly as the wind permitted. "How soon can we kill him? He has betrayed his own people. We certainly cannot trust him."

"A thousand apologies, Tai-sho, but trust him we certainly can. For precisely the reason that he has betrayed his people."

Kusunoki gave Kimura a stupefied look. Kimura tried not to dwell on how naturally it fit him. "His fortune—not just his purloined power but the very continuation of his existence—now depends entirely on our success. The Dragon, as of this moment, knows no more loyal or fervent subject."

Kusunoki frowned. "I don't understand."

"I mean if we don't protect him, these Townians will tear him limb from limb," Kimura hissed.

"Oh," Kusunoki said. He smiled and nodded sagely. "I thought so."

* * *

Mouse Omizuki and her CO were waiting by the cherry-picker. Mouse still had her helmet tucked under her arm. She bowed at the approach of the supreme commander and his ludicrously garbed companion, but her eyes kept tracking Kusunoki sidelong. Dragon, he was huge! And beautiful! She tried not to entertain inappropriate thoughts, but she was a woman with healthy appetites, and he was a meal prepared by an ichiban chef.

The Tai-sho paused before Kondracke. "Tai-sa, I summoned you here to commend you on the work your pilots did here today."

Kondracke bowed lower. "I thank the Tai-sho. May I present one of those pilots, Tai-i Omizuki, who brought down a Stuka unassisted in her Shilone."

Kusunoki's brow arched. His beautiful lip curled. "A woman?" he said, as he might say, "A dead rat?" He shook his head. "Do not waste my time with those who seek praise for doing their duty, Tai-sa."

He swept on grandly toward the waiting 'Mech. Mouse stood blinking. She felt as if she'd just been slapped. She wanted to throw up.

She glared at the broad departing back. No-good bishonen bastard! she thought.

* * *

There was surprisingly little traffic outbound along Route 55, the superhighway crossing the mountain passes that led deep into the Gunderland Mountains. For the citizens of the Inner Sphere, especially a border world such as Towne, a 'Mech battle was too commonplace an occurrence to be fled from unless a PPC bolt took off the roof. Or maybe the people of Port Howie didn't think a blizzard in the mountains was anything to flee into.

The storm had abated, but it was obviously the calm before the Big One. Cowboy Payson had stopped the convertible five klicks out of town on a promontory in the foothills that offered a panoramic view of the seaport and the battle for possession of it. They had liberated a set of armored binoculars at the gun shop, and Cassie was watching a number of 'Mechs make their way toward the mountains and safety several kilometers west.

Buck Evans and Cowboy came crunching back up a snowy slope, refastening their flies. They'd been hitting the beers the shop owner had bestowed on them.

"What you got there, Cass?" Buck asked.

"I see the Colonel's 'Mech," she said. The Mad Cat had perhaps the most distinctive profile of any BattleMech in human space, and it was one design the Black Dragon invaders were unlikely to have brought with them. "Other than that, 'Mechs are 'Mechs."

"Can I have a look?"

Cassie handed him the glasses. He knelt down with his arms propped on the trunk and peered through the binocs.

"Trouble is, you've learned a lot of technical stuff about BattleMechs, but you got no feel for 'em. A good MechWarrior gets to know another's ride when he sees it. That JagerMech, f'rinstance—you pick it up?" She nodded. "Did you notice the funny little hitch in its stride? Way it swings its torso extra when it wants to move its right foot forward? That's Teco Alvarez's ride, plain as the nose on your face. It's right hip actuator's a bit weak, and neither Zuma nor Astro Zombie've been able to do a damn thing with it. And that Raven, there—that's gotta belong to the Raven."

"Like you'd need a crystal ball to figure that out," Cassie said sulkily. "We only have one Raven, and the Townies don't have any. I just didn't see it." She shaded her eyes with her hands, though there wasn't much sunlight to speak of. "You see an Atlas?"

"Negatory." He handed her back the glasses. "Don't fret yourself too much about Lady K, though. She knows how to take care of herself."

"She mighta got separated from her ride the same as we did," Cowboy offered.

As the snow eased off, the Drac aerospace fighters had come back. As Cassie raised the glasses again, Teco's JagerMech raised its autocannon arms to fire at a big delta-wing Slayer making a firing run with its lasers and autocannon. The respite in the weather had also brought defending aerospace craft, Fusilier fighters stationed elsewhere on Hyboria or possibly on other continents. However far they had flown to get here they were fresher than the Kurita jocks, who had spent the day in combat, and for the moment had numerical superiority. Two Corsairs bounced the Drac ship, lasers cutting lines across the sky that lingered in afterimage. The Slayer broke off its attack and fled south. Cassie thought she saw smoke streaming from it.

She lowered the glasses, shaking her head. This couldn't last. The Fusiliers had limited aerospace assets to begin with, and whatever had been based in or around Port Howard was almost certainly lost, captured, or destroyed. Tired or not, enough Drac pilots would soon get their stores replenished and get their birds back in the sky so that they could simply swamp the gallant defenders.

"Hey!" she heard Cowboy Payson call. "Check this out! Looks like one of our pals in a novelty Boomerang"

Cassie spun. The Boomerang was a prop-driven atmospheric reconnaissance plane of a design similar to the fighters the Towne Air Rangers used, only much lighter and unable to carry weapons. The Rangers got extremely agitated to hear their beloved aircraft called Boomerangs, which of course was only inspiration to Cowboy.

She looked where he pointed into the northwest. A little white Voss with a red nose was flying above the ridge tops, paralleling the highway. "It's Tim!" she cried.

"Well, then your boy's in a world of hurt," Buck said.

Out of the cloud above and behind the Voss, a 35-ton Sholagar dove. The instant it appeared, the lasers in its wings stabbed for the tiny propeller plane, four missiles leaping from the Hovertec launcher in its nose.

As soon as the aerofighter appeared, the nose of the Voss pitched up and it began to climb. As it did, it slowed, until it seemed Cassie's heart would stop. It slowed so much, in fact, that the Sholagar screamed past and beneath it without either beams or missiles finding a mark.

And then the Kurita pilot found himself very near a planet whose contours were treacherously masked by deep snow. He managed to pull the nose of his craft up before he crashed, then poured on acceleration to win back some altitude.

As the aerofighter passed, the Voss launched two missiles of its own. Seeing the telltale white puffs as they came off their racks, the Drac pilot banked left into a turn. He had reaction mass to burn, blazing out his tailpipe with eye-searing brilliance.

The two missiles turned to follow. One of them exploded near the Sholagar's double-finned tail. Whether its warhead was powerful enough to damage the armored craft, none of the three watchers on the ground had any way of knowing. But the force of the blast kicked the fighter's tail up.

Before the Combine pilot could compensate, his awesomely powerful fusion rocket had driven him into the ground.

As the Sholagar exploded Cassie jumped up and down, cheering and hugging her companions. The Voss turned back for the mountains and quickly disappeared out of sight behind the steadily climbing foothills.

"We should probably be following right along," Buck said, giving Cassie's shoulder a final appreciative pat. "Storm's coming back, and it looks like it's fixing to stay this time."

"Maybe now we can get Cowboy to put the top up," Cassie said.

Cowboy had the trunk open, pulling the last virgin six-pack out of the case. "Hey, girl, ain't you got no soul? Ain't nothing beats a ride in the country with the top down on a beautiful day."

"It's snowing," she pointed out, "and it's cold."

He shrugged. "Yeah, and we had to knock the windshield the rest of the way out so I could see to pilot. What difference does it make?"

Shaking her head, Cassie turned and walked a few steps down the side of the road. Then she turned. "I don't understand you people," she said.

"Shoot, hon," Cowboy said smugly, slamming the trunk. "We knew that."

"I mean, here we've just been chased out of Port Howard, we've had to leave most of our 'Mechs behind, and you two barely blink an eye."

"Don't worry yourself, honey," Buck said. "We take it plenty serious."

"We just don't see any point in getting our panties in a bunch over something we can't do anything about," Cowboy said.

"But we lost. And you—you two lost your BattleMechs. You're Dispossessed."

Buck and Cowboy traded looks, then threw their heads back and laughed.

"Cass," Buck said, "there's a reason we still call you Abtakha, even though you're part of the family. You still don't get us, do you? Mech Warrior is just a job. It isn't what we are, it's what we do."

"What we are is a bunch of scrubby no-account wild-ass coyote outlaws," Cowboy said.

"Take a pity on ol' Pretty-Boy Kusunoki," Buck said. "Just because he chased us out of Port Howie he thinks he's won. And he's gonna let his guard down."

"But—" She shook her head, dumbfounded. "You ... you lost your 'Mechs." She was so attuned to the concept of overweening MechWarrior arrogance—and-the utter helplessness of a MechWarrior deprived of his multiton metal steed—that she was having trouble assimilating these two and their apparent nonchalance.

"Them ain't goin' anywhere, honey," Cowboy said with a nasty smile. "They'll still be waiting when we decide to come back for 'em."

"You may have noticed people have a habit of not staying Dispossessed too long in the Caballeros," Buck said. "You also might've noticed we always get payback. With interest."

"Righteous interest," Cowboy added.

Remembering Jeronimo, and the death of her best friend, Cassie blurted, "But what about the Clans? We never paid them back."

"Not yet," Cowboy said.

"That's just payment deferred," Buck said, "and the interest is compoundin', every day. Someday we're gonna hurt those culebras, and we're gonna hurt 'em where they live."

"I can't believe you two! Here you are talking about paying back the Clans, when we're just barely above water right now. We're naked, alone, and on the run."

"Yep," Buck agreed with a nod. "We got this Señor Kusunoki right where we want him."

Cowboy picked up his pump shotgun, brandished it and the beers.

"We got us a six-pack, a pump twelve-gauge, and a stolen ragtop," he declared. He jacked his right hand up and down once, hard, racking the shotgun's slide and cocking the piece with its own momentum. "Honey, we're getting back to our roots."

BattleTech - LE5523

18

Gunderland Mountains

Nemedia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

25 January 3058

The explosive charge went off with a muffled crack. Colonel Carlos Camacho watched impassively as tons of earth, rock, and snow fell, burying his Mad Cat, hiding the 75-ton OmniMech utterly from view. So deep was the pack upslope that when all was done, no sign was visible that anything had happened beyond a routine mountain snow-slide.

He looked to the technician standing by his side, her short stockiness so emphasized by her bulky parka that she looked fully as wide as she was tall. "The 'Mech will be safe in there?"

"Safe as in a bank vault," Marj Tunhill said. "Safer even, given how the Dracs're stealing everything they can pry up, back in Port Howie."

"And I can get it out when I need it?"

Tunhill nodded. "We can dozer it out, dig it out with a shovel, even blast if we're careful. Once you get into the cockpit, that bad boy will power his own way out."

Carefully wrapped in synthetic sheeting, the Battle-Mech stood inside a protective hemicylinder of polymerized ceramic conduit thirteen meters tall and six in diameter. The conduit was nothing out of the ordinary for Townian civil engineering. A single explosive generally served to excavate the cache, the conduit was emplaced, the 'Mech to be hidden walked in, a second charge sealed it. With a two-handed 'Mech—in this case Outlaw Leyva's Phoenix Hawk, to help, the whole process took literally minutes. Taping the protective wrap was the most time-consuming part of it. Hiding a BattleMech was child's play if a skilled blaster who knew Townian geology was available.

Tunhill was all of that. A Copper Queen employee, she had been nervous at first when a Draconian, and a Kurita at that, had acquired the company. The healthy pay increases Uncle Chandy had passed around had gone a long way to allay her nerves. And like of lot of Townies newly employed by Uncle Chandy, the sudden savage attacks they'd been subjected to by protectionists who styled themselves "patriots" only made them dig in their heels.

Through Uncle Chandy's business reps, Colonel Camacho could have pressured experts like Tunhill to help his mercenaries. Instead he courted them, providing them with the same information he'd made available to Towne's military and civil authorities, and asked them to help. They had responded with more enthusiasm, even than the late Sir Osric Gould's Fusiliers.

Looking at the mound of disturbed snow that was all the visible evidence of the hidden behemoth's presence, Don Carlos felt a pang. Most of the First Battalion 'Mechs that had made it out of Port Howard were going into similar storage, until such time as they were needed to deliver a killing blow. But he was, after all, a Mech Warrior, had seen for most of his life. It was as if part of him had been entombed with his 'Mech.

He thought of Diana and her boy, five hundred kilometers east in the Eiglophians, and was glad he had sent them and the other noncombatants out of the line of fire.

Otherwise, instead of disaster, the battle of Port Howard would have been devastation.

* * *

The Cabelleros made it out with little enough. Of thirty-five 'Mechs in First, eighteen had been captured, eight destroyed. Only nine had escaped. At a stroke, the Seventeenth had lost a quarter of its machines.

Blessedly, the human cost had been less—somewhat. Nine Mech Warriors and five support people had lost their lives. After years as commander of a unit that was frequently in action, Don Carlos still felt there was no such thing as an acceptable casualty count. But he also had to reckon the butcher's bill against how bad it might have been, and he knew they had gotten off lightly.

But the situation retained the potential to get worse—much worse. Seven 'lleros had been captured. Among them was Captain Kali MacDougall, who'd been stunned and put out of action when a fused hip-actuator toppled her Atlas.

* * *

Forefinger extended along wavy blade, the pistollike grip snugged into her palm, Cassie turned as if screwing herself into the granite boulder counterclockwise, swinging her ancient kris across her body as she did.

A five-hundred meter abyss yawned at her feet.

She never had to force herself to exercise; and most particularly did she never have to drive herself to practice pentjak-silat. Unless sick or wounded, she never failed to work to advance her mastery of the art Guru Johann had introduced her to as a young, lost girl. Lady K called it Cassie's drug of choice. Though she smiled, she wasn't kidding.

Kali ... Perhaps that was why Cassie was courting death, practicing on a rock poised over nothingness: she needed an especially strong dose of her drug. She had much need of Void.

So concentrate on breath, sinuous flow, and most of all, balance. Guru Johann's style of pentjak had emphasized balance above all things. Without balance, no proper blow could be struck, and proper defense was problematic. Cassie had trained to fight on loose marbles, oil-slick floors, unsteady table-tops. To work out on this knob of rock, firmly anchored to the cliff, was child's play, though the stakes were certainly high, and the unpredictable winds of the western face of the Gunderlands added an element of risk. "You're practicing martial arts, huh?" Cassie's heart jumped into her throat and her eyes snapped open. That was both the danger and the attraction of her pentjak-play; it was the one circumstance in her life in which she was utterly detached from the outside world, oblivious. At all other times, even asleep, she was at least on some level aware, attuned to her surroundings. In practice she could find escape.

Which added its own element of risk. Guru had hammered her for that; it was her one flaw. And now it had led to her being taken unawares ...

A girl in a blue coat with bright red panels squatted on a rock above her. She had a scoped hunting rifle across her knees. She looked to be about fourteen years old.

"Yes," Cassie said. As usual when she came oat of her practice-trance, her voice sounded rusty, as if she hadn't spoken for days.

"Wolf Girl practices nekkid in the snow," the girl said. "I don't see it, myself. I'd get cold."

Cassie was wearing a blue body-suit of a synthetic called ThinSkin. She disliked clothing herself—she disliked anything that smacked of binding—but unless she was assured of privacy always wore something to practice. The Southwesterners, so free-swinging in so many ways, tended to have problems with nudity.

She started to ask the intruder how she knew about Wolf Girl's training habits, but the girl went on, "What kind of martial art is that? Is it like what Johnny Tchang does? Do you like him? I think he's a dream."

Slowly Cassie straightened, drawing a deep breath. "The art is pentjak-silat. It comes from Indonesia, on Terra. I don't follow holovids much, but I think what Johnny Tchang does in the tank is more kick boxing than anything else. He is very handsome, I suppose."

Follow the action holos or not, Cassie couldn't help knowing who Johnny Tchang was. The most popular martial-arts star in the Inner Sphere, Tchang had made an even bigger splash by defecting from the Capellan Confederation, where he was born and where his career began, to the Federated Commonwealth shortly after the battle of Tukayyid. But if he was popular among most Spheroids, he was a god to the Caballeros. The only question to them was whether he or singing vaquero Tino Espinosa, a native of Cerillos, was the greatest action star in the cosmos.

"Oh," the girl said. "I'm forgetting my manners. I'm Marly Joles."

"Hi. I'm Cassie Suthorn."

"Oh, I know who you are. They told me to talk to you, and somebody said you were up here."

"They told you to talk to me?"

"Well, you're going to be training resistance fighters, aren't you? I want to be a scout. That's what you are, isn't it?"

"Yes," Cassie said, "I'm a scout. You were saying something about Wolf Girl—?"

Marly nodded. A slip of auburn bang escaped the furred fringe of her hood and fell across her forehead. "She does tae kwon do. She told me. Interstellar TKD Federation. She's a black belt."

"She is, is she? You seem to know a lot about her." Except the fact she's dead.

"Oh, sure. She has a lot to do with the Popular Militia. She's even been out to my dad's ranch a couple times. He runs slo-mos down to Bear Creek—"

Cassie held up a finger. "Hang on, Ms. Joles. There are certain things you need to be careful talking about. If you really want to be a scout, the first rule is, don't be seen. That means you should always keep security in mind."

The girl deflated. "Oh. I guess I've gone and blown it, huh, running my head like this. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a scout."

She seemed on the verge of tears. Cassie, who had a weakness for children, hurriedly said, "I didn't say that, Ms. Joles—"

The girl brightened. "Marly."

"—Marly. Aren't you a little young, though?"

"I'm twelve—"

Cassie frowned. Young as Marly looked, she seemed older than that.

"—which makes me fourteen and a half standard years, almost. I can shoot, skin, and dress a full-grown springal or doobie, all by myself. I'm old enough to take care of myself, Ms. Suthorn."

"I guess you are. But keep in mind there's a lot more to being a scout than just taking care of yourself. There's a lot of risk involved, and a lot of people are depending on you."

The girl nodded.

Cassie looked down at Blood-drinker, felt vaguely self-conscious about standing there lecturing with the dagger in her hand as if it were a laser-pointer. She stuck it back into the sheath strapped along her thigh. "Give me a hand up?"

Marly grinned. Bracing the rifle-butt on stone with one hand, she reached out the other and helped Cassie off the boulder. "You must be pretty brave, dancing around on the edge of a cliff like that," Marly Joles observed, overlooking the fact that she herself hadn't been perched that much farther from the drop.

"It's part of training. Now, tell me, Marly—"

"Cassie!"

She looked past the girl to see a figure bounding up the trail, raising a bow-wave of snow. Its hood was thrown back to reveal a familiar brown face and tangle of dark-gold curls.

"Tim!" she cried.

He caught her in a crushing embrace, picked her up off her feet. "I came as soon as I could. Python Base was on twenty-four-hour alert, until it became clear the Dracs were more interested in pillaging Port Howie than in seeking out more trouble."

He kissed her lips. "Isn't it terrible, what's happened to our own dear Kali?"

She grabbed his head and dragged his mouth back to hers. "Uh-oh," Marly said. "I guess this is where I make myself scarce, isn't it?"

* * *

In the video monitor set up in the gallery overlooking the central courtyard of the central administrative complex, the expression of Reform Party General Secretary Marcel Wesemann, seen in extreme close-up, was one of sheeplike bewilderment.

The General Secretary's balding head dropped abruptly out of frame. A beat later the sound of twelve Shimatsu-42s firing a single simultaneous shot each reached the eighth-floor gallery.

"Those are the breaks, M.W.," murmured Planetary Chairman Howard Blaylock. His words emerged in white puffs of condensation. It was a cold, dreary day, and the gallery was open. "Sometimes you just have to lead, follow, or get out of the way."

The little turtle-headed guy, Kimura, who seemed to be the one playing Kusunoki's strings—or trying to— and who always dressed as if he were heading for a funeral right afterward, cleared his throat discreetly for attention. Blaylock didn't miss the way the little man winced every time the rifles went off. It gave him a real charge: these Kuritas liked to image themselves as the ultimate tough guys, but Turtle Head here, at least, didn't have what it took.

Blaylock liked being made of sterner stuff than a Drac.

Kusunoki was staring as if hypnotized down at the tiny figures of the firing-party, and the hobbled prisoners carrying off the body of the former Reform Party leader on a stretcher. "Eh? What is it? Don't mumble, old man."

"I crave the Tai-sho's pardon, but I had not spoken yet," the old man said with a bow. "It did come to me, however, to mention the matter of looting—"

That was where he left it hanging. That was something Blaylock had noticed about the Dracs these last few days. They hardly ever seemed to finish a sentence.

"What of it? It's those 'Dragon's Joy' jailbirds your oyabun wished on me that're doing it."

"May I be privileged to remind your Excellency that he is in command of all, regardless? And may I be forgiven for bringing the unwelcome news that certain of the Combine military regulars have become involved? The 227th Armored Regiment is said to be using its tanks and recovery vehicles to transport loot from the Smith District."

"Well, what of that, then? They've earned a little recreation."

"Your Excellency's confidence in his men is commendable. Looting is so infamous a solvent of discipline—"

"Oh, all right. Have the Provost Marshal see to it." Kimura smiled and bowed. "Your Excellency is most wise."

A DCMS footslogger in jerkin and helmet came trotting along the gallery. The escort of strapping young men with DEST-style machine-pistols slung across their backs who trailed after Kusunoki everywhere he went gave off watching Blaylock like hawks with a rock dove. Instead they now appeared to mad-dog the intruder. Visibly nervous, the infantryman snapped off a salute and rattled out a string of Japanese syllables.

Kusunoki frowned and looked at Blaylock. As always, he seemed vaguely startled to find a gaijin hanging about. A man less supremely self-confident than Blaylock might have become uneasy at the thought that General Kusunoki might well forget what he was doing there, and order him shot on general principles.

"A delegation has presented itself on the front steps," Kusunoki said, "asking to speak with you."

Blaylock shrugged. "With your Excellency's permission." He gave the General what he figured for a suitably deferential grin. It didn't hurt to spread a little soap around. It also didn't hurt to remind these lordly Power Boys that they needed him. Towne could be an awful cold place if you didn't have the proper contacts—as those poor dim mercenary hicks had found out.

The foot soldier trotted off. Two rifle-volleys later he returned, with a tall, beaky woman, a tall man with a broad smooth forehead and wide cheekbones and jaw, and a short man with a prodigious turtle shell belly and a gray beard.

"Murnice, Quinn, Dr. Schulman," Blaylock said, with a skin-deep smile of greeting. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"We want—" the beaky woman and the bearded man began at once. Despite the chill and slushy sidewalks, the bearded man wore sandals over thick thermal socks. Though he glared at his companion, the woman forged ahead.

"We want to reassure ourselves as to the position of the Union Party within the new regime," the woman said. "After all, the events of the last few days represent the culmination of everything we've been working for all these years."

"It's our dream come true," the wide-foreheaded man added. She glared at him.

"Of course it is," Blaylock said, thinking these two had absolutely nothing to do with it. By his reckoning, if their brains were gumball machines, by now they'd be down to one or two gumballs each. Three max.

He looked at the Dracs. Each of the two—there were a lot of people crowded around this stretch of gallery, but only two counted—was watching him with his own brand of expectation. Kusunoki had his big arms crossed across his big chest, his weight cantilevered back and a sneer on his face, as if expecting Blaylock to do something FedCom and decadent. The little old guy was leaning forward almost on the balls of his spat-clad feet, weight resting on the polished brass head of his cane.

"And you three have definitely come to the right place," he said, reaching out to place a comradely hand on Murnice's shoulder. Quinn scowled, then plastered it over with a hail-fellow smile.

Howard Blaylock caught Kusunoki's eye and nodded, barely perceptibly. The General's heavily epicanthic-folded eyes widened, and he barked Japanese. He could be pretty quick on the uptake, where it concerned a matter close to his heart.

"What I want you to do," Blaylock said to the Union Party trio as a squad of soldiers appeared and came jogging toward them, rifles at port arms, "is go with these friends of mine. They'll take you where you can get started understanding exactly what your role is going to be on our brave, new Towne. How about that?"

"A military escort," Professor Schulman said approvingly. "Didn't I always say it? These Draconians know how to do a thing up brown. I've never had a military escort before."

He turned to the two Drac dignitaries. "Bekashita, Kusunoki-sama. Well done!" He bowed.

Gravely, Kusunoki and Kimura bowed back.

As the three were led away by their "military escort," Blaylock sighed and shook his head. "Idiots." He consulted an expensive finger watch. "Well, gentlemen, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with some cameras. It's getting near time for my press conference."

He turned to go. "What about the militias?" Kusunoki said.

Blaylock pivoted back. "What about them? They surrendered, you confirmed Hauptmann-General Marrou in command, Just the way we worked it out in advance. O.K., so a few of them did a bunk with the money-soldiers, but that's no big squeak."

"No. The others, the so-called 'Popular Militia,' for one. We have word that they are gathering their forces in the mountains and that the money-troopers are headed that way. The time has come to crush them."

Blaylock stuck out his long jaw and shook his head. "Sorry, my friend, no can do. The time just isn't ripe."

Kusunoki's dark eyes flashed. He cocked back a hand as if to smash Blaylock to the cement floor.

Blaylock felt his blood chill. Could he have overplayed his hand? That thought hit him harder than the danger, actually nauseated him. He liked to believe himself the Perfect Spiritual Master of brinksmanship. What he didn't like was facing the necessary corollary: the possibility that he might go skating over the brink.

Kimura thrust himself forward. "Wait! Does not Musashi counsel us, 'Be certain of your target before you strike?'"

Then he turned his head slightly so that his right eye was hidden from Kusunoki but visible to Blaylock. The eye winked. Blaylock caught the impression that Musashi may or may not have said any such thing, but that Blaylock should play along if he wanted to keep all his parts. Blaylock was O.K. with that.

Blaylock held his hands out bowed. "I'm sorry, General. Please forgive me, but perhaps we're not used to the way you do business around here. Your humble servant, here, merely wanted to stop you from doing something you might regret later. Just doing my duty. That's a Draconian thing, right?"

Scowling thunderously, Kusunoki crossed his arms. "What do you mean?"

"Merely that you don't want to cross the militias just yet. There's something that has to happen first. Something that'll save you a whole lot of trouble."

"And what might that be?"

Blaylock held up his hands. "I'm sorry, but I can't tell you. Wait, now, don't go flying off! Remember what old Musashi said. Please try to trust me on this. You know, trust? You made me Planetary Chairman, so you're going to have to trust me. If you don't trust me—"

Blaylock tapped himself on the neck with the inside of his forefinger. "You don't trust me, just cut my head off right now, right here."

The old man looked as if he were about to have a stroke. Blaylock knew he was running the edge again.

To his exhilaration Kusunoki looked doubtful, then nodded.

"Very well," the Tai-sho said. "I shall trust you. This time."

Blaylock gave him a big smile. "You won't be sorry, Tai-sho Kusunoki. And now, I really have to get motivating. It's time to turn up the heat on our offworld friends, just the way we discussed."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay to see your friends off?" Kimura asked. Blaylock just waved at him, stilting away with long-legged strides.

* * *

"—And so I come before you to say that you have done your jobs. You've done all that could humanly be expected of you. Now, for humanity's sake—for your sakes, for the sake of the people of Towne—I beg you, accept my offer. Surrender, and you will be transported to Outreach, with full military honors." Which, Janice Marrou had coached him, meant they'd be allowed to keep their weapons and equipment.

"Refuse—" He shook his head. "A great many people of Towne feel your actions have caused them grievous hurt, and while the justice of our Draconian friends is fair, it's also inclined to be stern. If you do not accept my sincere offer, I am, in all honesty, unsure how long I can answer for the well-being of those of your people who remain in our custody.

"The choice is yours, Colonel Camacho, men and women of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment. Your fate rests entirely in your hands."

The man set his jaw and looked the holocam squarely in the eye. The image faded from the tank atop the black marble pedestal.

Howard Devore Blaylock smiled at his dissolving image and nodded. "Outstanding," he said. He had always been his own best audience.

He had taped the announcement, of course. He worked very well live. But he clearly perceived its downside potential, and he understood that even if you could do a thing well, it didn't mean you had to do it.

The sound of two hands clapping turned him around. His guest stood behind him with a sardonic expression on her face. She looked stunning in a white evening gown whose top consisted of two broad strips crossed at the sternum and knotted behind the neck. The vestiges of a pink palm print, an artifact of the process of persuading her to don the outfit, still glowed on her right cheek. Blaylock reminded himself to have a few words with Taras and Buster, his bodyguards, who stood discreetly flanking his guest from behind.

"Very impressive, Howie," Captain Kali MacDougall said. "Only problem is, Caballeros don't treat for hostages. They've already said Mass for our departed souls."

Blaylock smiled at her. Then he lashed out backhand, cracked her across the cheek and sent her flying back into the leg-thick arms of his guards.

"You bitch!" he screamed, spittle spraying her from two meters away. "Don't you ever mouth off at me like that. I had to take that outsized faggot's threatening me—me! But I don't have to take anything from you, and never forget it."

His words echo-chased each other around the large, sparsely furnished chamber. To his pleased surprise, his request that he be allowed to occupy the Palace of the Marquis had been granted Tai-sho Kusunoki preferred to stay in the Planetary Government complex downtown, which had been constructed by the inevitable Prince John Davion with barracks inside. Mr. Kimura didn't wish to let Kusunoki out of his sight for any longer than was absolutely necessary, so he had found an apartment in the center as well.

For the moment, Blaylock had appropriated a large office space for his quarters. Jt had originally been partitioned for clerical staff; the partitions had been removed, leaving only a scatter of structural pillars of white marble. He'd had a gel bed placed here, a desk with comp and communicator set over there. Otherwise he'd touched it up with a few objets that took his fancy: holotapestries along the walls, a transparent column 200 centimeters thick, in which discreet bodies of colored liquids strove against one another, intermingled and separated again, like living entities trying to get out; a giant spider's web of mirror-mylar strips, strung between two pillars; a tangle of sharp-angled, brightly colored synthetic pipes tipped to an impossible angle; the black marble pedestal for the holotank.

It was beginning, he thought, to look like him.

Kali MacDougall got her feet beneath her, pulled, away from the bodyguards. "You know," she said, looking straight at Blaylock, "it's too bad I'm not likely to be around when the 'lleros do catch up with you—and they will. You ever hear of the Apaches? Used to have quite a reputation back on Terra for what they did to their enemies when they got hold of 'em. We have Apaches in the Seventeenth, too. They're good people—unless you go out of your way to torque 'em off."

Blaylock returned her gaze. "You're right," he said levelly. "You aren't likely to be around for it."

She reached up, touched her lip, glanced down at the blood on her fingertips. "You sure know how to treat a lady," she said.

He smiled. He put a lot of teeth into it. "As the saying goes," he said, "you ain't seen nothin' yet. But you're about to."

Taras and Buster seized her arms with hands like the claws of a Cyclops.

BattleTech - LE5523

19

Gunderland Mountains

Nemedia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

7 February 3058

With a clomping of boots on hardwood planking, a big man with a big belly stepped into the doorway of the hunting lodge to stand silhouetted against the milky morning light outside. "I'm looking for Lieutenant Suthorn," he said in a deep voice.

The lodge's main hall was a sunken pit with a huge wooden table in the middle and a stone fireplace suitable for roasting a bull slo-mo whole at the far end from the door. A suitably huge fire was lit and roaring. Cassie half-sat with her rump on the square railing that separated the foyer from the drop-off. At either end of the rail, short flight of steps led down into the pit. "That's me," she said.

The man was looking left and right, hawk-nosed, heavy-jawed features resolving out of the glare. He had an iron-gray flat-top, a brown mustache, and blue eyes that were, for the moment, skeptically narrowed. "You're not what I was expecting."

She glanced around over both shoulders. The pit was filling with representatives of the Popular Militia and various citizen's-protective groups. Most but not all were male. They were buzzing with what had been happening on Towne since Jeffrey Kusunoki and the Black Dragons had arrived in force.

"I could glue on a fake beard if that'd make you feel better," she said, on edge for any number of reasons. "Or would strapping a pillow on under the coat do it for you?"

The man laughed, held up his hands. "No need to run up my pants-leg and dig your claws in," he said. "I was just surprised, that's all. I'm Ganz Harter, Gunderland Ranchers' Protective Association."

They shook hands. "You're a scout with the Seventeenth, aren't you?" Cassie nodded. "Figures. You got the scout attitude. Don't I know it? Used to be a 'Mech jock myself once upon a time. I was with the Third Lyran Guard on Vega back in 'twenty-eight, when that sly Snake Teddy Kurita deked Pat Finnan all the way off-planet. So, you're going to be riding herd on this outfit?"

"I'll be acting as liaison."

Harter laughed again. "Save it for those who'll buy it," he said. He turned away to accept a crushing bear-hug from a lumberjack straight from the forested slopes of the Gunderlands.

The lodge was a somewhat haphazard collection of rooms gathered together under a pitched roof of dark-gray slates. Inside as well as out, it appeared to have been built from peeled logs. In fact, so far as Colonel Carlos Camacho could tell, it really was made of logs, not cleverly masked ferrocrete. In spite of this it was well sealed against the weather, quite cozy in the little library where the Colonel and his chief intelligence officer sat watching the resistance leaders gather.

"Carlitos," Baird said gently, "please, listen to me. You should at least consider the Planetary Chairman's offer."

Without taking his eyes from the blurry black-and-white flatscreen monitor, the Colonel frowned. "I know he played us all for fools," Baird said. "But we can't let ego get in the way on this."

Don Carlos looked over at his old friend. He smiled, half-sad, half-grim. "Do you think it's my pride that deafens me?" But his voice was without heat.

"No. No, I don't, and I spoke out of turn. I'm sorry. But the fact remains—"

"The fact remains that we seem fated to disagree on just about everything about this assignment, my friend."

Don Carlos held up a hand to forestall a fresh spate of verbiage. "First, we do not negotiate for hostages. That isn't my only reason, but it's sufficient."

"Listen, Carlos, tradition is a wonderful thing. But there're a lot more lives at stake here than just the hostages'. It's all our lives. The lives of a lot of innocent people who are liable to get ground up because we can't let go of tradition."

"It's not a question of tradition, but of practicality. If we make an exception this time, no matter the circumstances, then next time—and surely there will be a next time, and a time after that—it will become easier to justify treating with hostage-takers. And in time the word will get out that we can be pressured through our children and noncombatants. And that in turn will make targets of them all." He shook his head. "No matter whom we must mourn, we cannot bend."

Baird squeezed his eyes shut. "I pray to God those words don't come back to haunt you," he said hollowly.

"It is in the Virgin's hands," agreed Don Carlos. "Putting aside the hostages, though, we have a job. We took Chandrasekhar Kurita's coin. I gave him my hand and my word. We are bound."

"The job ended the minute we got our posteriors kicked out of Port Howie," Baird said. "Nobody, not even a Drac, can hold us to a contract to fight on hopelessly for a cause that's long lost."

Don Carlos looked at him a long moment. "My word is not given contingent on whether it is convenient for me to keep it or not, Gordon," he said softly.

After a pregnant moment he smiled. "Besides, I'm not convinced the cause is lost."

Baird shook his head. "We still aren't certain of Kusunoki's strength on-planet," he said, "but it's plenty. More than two or even three regiments, plus the Guards, and now the Planetary Navy too. We're one regiment, cut off from supply, not to mention transport out of here. We're not getting any support, either. Not from Teddy Kurita and not from Victor Davion. Neither one dares lift a finger to help us now. Their alliance is a fragile thing, and they don't want to risk it For allies, we've got what's left of the Fusiliers, that aborigine guy from the Davion wet navy—"

Several days after the surprise invasion, Kommandant Trevor Waites, chipper and cheerful as always, had found the Caballeros' mountain camp, suddenly appearing in the circle of light cast by a bonfire built between the feet of Outlaw Leyva's Phoenix Hawk to volunteer his services. The commander of Towne's Planetary Navy had decided to honor Kusunoki's takeover of the planet. That stuck in Waites's craw, but as he said, it was too far to swim back to New Kingston. "—and them." Baird waved a hand at the monitor. The Colonel had accompanied Cassie here to Bear Creek, but he would wait out of sight and speak to the Popular Militia directly, rather than via speech synthesizer, only if the meeting went well. The lodge's design facilitated that plan. Preliminary contacts with the Militia had begun before the Black Dragons arrived so suddenly, but now things had gotten serious.

That Cassie was so indecisive was highly irregular; usually, if she had anything at all to say, she was quite firm in saying it. Her silence might signify she was losing her nerve or her touch, but Don Carlos doubted that. Which meant she sensed danger in the setup. For years the regiment's survival had depended largely upon her well-honed danger sense. Don Carlos took it seriously.

Baird hadn't wanted him to come at all. Of course. But while the Colonel understood the delegation of authority, he had no stomach for always sitting back in safety and allowing others to take risks. If Cassie thought his presence might be useful, present he would be. The Caballeros were going to need allies, and the Militia was an obvious one.

Onscreen Cassie herself was padding along the catwalk that ran around the dining pit, peering out the windows. "And her," Don Carlos said. "Don't overlook our little Señorita muy bonita. She's a powerful asset."

Baird rolled his eyes.

"A planet is a very large place," the Colonel told him. "And even though Towne is not so very populous a world, a dozen regiments or more could get lost among its people. We learned these things the hard way, trying to build a coalition. Let these culebras learn an even harder way, as they try to conquer."

"The Combine has a lot of experience at conquest."

Don Carlos showed his intelligence office the smile of a man who was much younger and not altogether nice. "And we of the Trinity have long experience at thwarting would-be conquerors. How long did we stand off the Mariks and their misleadingly named Free Worlds League, amigo?"

The Colonel sat back into the metathere-hide covered armchair. "We have suffered a setback. But hasn't it long been said, when you think you've whipped Southwesterners, your troubles have only just begun?"

Baird sighed. "I guess you're right, Colonel," he said. "We'll just have to agree to disagree."

* * *

The room was filling up; there had to be three dozen leading resistance figures already jostling each other for seats around the table or along the catwalk rail. Which piled more wood on the fires of uneasiness Cassie had been trying so hard to bank. Having so many people know about the meet was a horrendous security risk. To a person with the scout mindset—Ganz Harter had been dead-on right about that, swag belly or not—a second person let in on sensitive data was twice too many, and it got exponentially worse after that.

She kept peeking out the windows. The Popular Militia had insisted on providing its own security for this first big gathering, and given the rather tense history between the Militia and the 'lleros, Cassie had seen no choice but to agree. She hated it, and had made certain security provisions of her own. She could not keep from looking out the windows every few seconds to check on the guards.

The windows themselves bothered her, for some unfathomable reason. They seemed of a conventional sort, double-paned, hinged to rotate about the longitudinal axis to open, but currently locked and sealed against the ferocious Townian winter. They should have reassured her; so stringent were the demands of weatherproofing here in the middle Gunderlands that as a by-product they were bulletproof as well—pure transpex. But they made her uneasy.

She stopped by one halfway down the right side from the main entrance, glanced out. There was something familiar about the guard walking parallel to the wall and five meters out with an autoloading shotgun tucked under his arm. The face, the hair—Diets, it's the agitator from the riot that Diana stopped, the one I gave the kidney massage to!

She shook her head and straightened, amazed at how a simple sidestep by Fate could land them on the same side. She wondered if he'd spotted her.

A commotion drew her attention to the entrance. Somebody's approach was stirring lots of interest. Marly Joles's father, Rusty, a solidly built man with freckles and thin ginger hair, began to walk toward the foyer, extending a hand in greeting.

And then, against Cassie's ThinSkin-clad right buttock, the merest wisp of icy wind blew.

In a Zen thunderbolt she had the whole scam in all its glory. Her hand dove into the open front of her coat and closed around the neoplast grips of the nine she carried in a shoulder holster. Her mouth opened to shout a warning.

"Wolf Girl! Damned good to see you," Rusty Joles called out to a familiar figure, the wide shoulders exaggerated by rodan-hide motorcycle jacket, but to Cassie it was almost anticlimax.

Wolf Girl stopped for a beat, stood. She had the same compact grace, the same air of total insolent assurance. The only thing that had changed about her was the black patch over her left eye.

Cassie seemed to be moving in slow-motion while the rest of the world proceeded at its customary pace. Even her cry of warning—"Evreeboddee DOWNNN ittt's a SET-uppp!"—seemed to crawl from her mouth like a crippled worm. Trapped as if in a dream of endlessly drawing her sidewarm, Cassie watched helplessly as Joles stepped up to embrace Wolf Girl—and then staggered forward down the steps as she lit him up with a burst from that nasty little machine pistol of hers.

—Cassie's pistol came free. Time snapped back into shape. She thrust the piece out two-handed, lining up the three sight dots as Wolf Girl turned—

The window to her right—which at some recent point had been tampered with, and then set up to look as if it were still locked and sealed for winter— snapped open. The long black barrel of an auto shotgun poked through.

Cassie wheeled. Her left hand grabbed the barrel, forced it up. Her right stuck the nine into the Starry Wisdom Street agitator's left armpit.

The shotgun went off, searing the palm of Cassie's hand. "Remember me?" she said, and shot the man four times as quickly as she could pump the trigger.

He grimaced in pain and fell away, leaving the shotgun still in her grasp. She shoved the nine into her belt and shouldered the long gun, turning to point it at Wolf Girl, who had begun to spray the crowded pit with bullets.

Wolf Girl's peripheral vision caught the move, or maybe she just sensed it. She dodged to her left. Cassie's blast blew a big chunk out of the square wooden pillar at one end of the rail.

As splinter-edged holes began to march toward her along the wall, she turned and launched herself along the catwalk. A man was shooting a subgun at her from the window directly opposite. As she flew she fired twice. The autoloader was a twenty-gauge, not a twelve—chalk one up to the late agitator's judgment for choosing a weapon that had about two-thirds the killing power of a twelve for half the kick. She did not lose the gun. The submachine-gunner fell back away from the window.

Cassie tucked, rolled, came up to a sitting position with shotgun-butt snugged into her shoulder. She was looking for Wolf Girl. Instead she felt cold air on her back.

She rolled over backward. Muzzle-flash ballooned twice directly over her face. A gunman was shooting a pistol braced on the horizontally turned windowpane. She fired beneath the pane. The front of his coat shredded and smoked, and pink spray misted out to either side behind him. He let go of the handgun and reeled back. The window rotated, depositing the pistol next to Cassie as the man dropped.

She came to one knee, shotgun tracking across the pit like a Marauder's autocannon. The hall was full of gunshots, screams, the stinks of burned propellants and lubricants and also loosened sphincters. Some of the resistance members had produced sidearms of their own and were shooting it out with Wolf Girl and her assassins.

Wolf Girl broke cover from the left of the main entrance, sprinting along the catwalk across the pit from where Cassie crouched. She held her machine pistol out at arm's full extension, blazing wildly away. She seemed to be laughing. Cassie let the rest of the extended tubular magazine go in four monstrous pulses of sound, but could not swing the unwieldy weapon fast enough to catch the running woman up. She hated long guns.

The shotgun quit making noise. Wolf Girl vanished through a door next to the giant fireplace. Cassie threw the shotgun down, re-drew her nine, then scooped up the gun that had fallen beside her. As she did, another gunman came flying through the top half of the window, apparently trying to take her by surprise. She sat down, thrusting against the wall as hard as she could with both legs as she snapped both guns up and began firing.

The man bellowed as bullets pierced him. He slammed against the railing that separated catwalk from pit. Cassie's push and—possibly—the impulse of the firing pistols propelled her between two uprights and into empty space.

Her angular momentum saved her a nasty tailbone crack when she landed. She slid under the table and banged her left shoulder against a table leg the thickness of a railroad tie. Lucky you didn't crush your skull, pulling a nitwit stunt like that.

Lots of eyes, very wide, peered at her through the gloom. Apparently a lot of meeting attendees had discovered urgent business beneath the table. She backed out, stood, rolled onto the tabletop and hence to her feet. She darted across the vast table.

A man appeared at the railing before her, aiming a Rorynex submachine gun at her face. She shoved both pistols out before her and just shot him and shot him. He danced back against the wall and slid down it, leaving a shiny-dark smear.

She jumped from tabletop to the lip of the catwalk, vaulted the railing, and pounded after Wolf Girl.

* * *

Colonel Carlos Camacho and Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird stared at the screen. Though the library monitor provided no audio, they could distinctly hear the sounds of a savage firefight, muted by thick wooden walls.

"It was a trap!" Baird exclaimed. "They were trying to wipe out all the resistance leaders at one shot!"

Don Carlos was half-rising from his chair, drawing his big FWL service-issue Imperator autopistol from its worn leather holster. "We should be cautious ourselves," he said, slipping over the chair-arm to crouch down between the chair and the external wall.

The door flew open. A man with a submachine gun stood framed in it. He saw Baird standing to his right, brought his weapon up and around, spitting fire. Desperately, Baird dived for the doubtful shelter of a table strewn with out-of-date Federated Commonwealth magazines. Bullets followed.

Don Carlos popped up from behind the chair and shot the gunman twice, right through the center of his chest. The bullet-stream stopped. The intruder stared at Don Carlos, wonder in his eyes. The Colonel shot him a third time between them.

Silence, but for ringing in ears and the sounds of fighting elsewhere.

"Well," Don Carlos said after a few moments.

"Well what?" Baird asked from under the table, his pulse hammering so hard he was afraid a vein in his neck would blow. He kept covertly feeling himself everywhere he could reach in his hunched-over position, unwilling to believe he hadn't been hit.

"Go get his weapon," Don Carlos said, "and close the door. We might be in for a little siege."

Baird stared at his commander, crouched there with his big pistol in hand. Look at him, he thought He's actually enjoying this.

It was then that he began to believe Don Carlos had well and truly lost it.

* * *

Back flattened against the wall, Cassie reached out with her 9 mm still in her right hand, hooked her thumb into the handle of the door, yanked it open.

Gunfire answered immediately, shatteringly loud in the confines of the corridor beyond the door. Cassie was already dropping as inertia swung the door outward. She landed on her belly, still mostly covered by the lintel, extended her right arm, fired twice at the figure standing at the far end of the short hallway.

Wolf Girl ducked to Cassie's left.

Cassie took the picture in at a flash. The corridor was whitewashed. There was just one door visible to the right, which looked to Cassie to lead to a utility closet. Two passages led left, the one her adversary had dodged down and a nearer one Cassie thought must lead to the kitchen.

She jumped up. Firing both pistols in hopes of keeping her enemy pulled back around the corner, Cassie charged the two meters to the nearer left turn. She didn't try to make the turn so much as veered left, so that she went into the side-passage at a shallow angle, sacrificing little speed, slammed against the wall and let rebound carry her father along. Even as she lunged into the side-passage she saw the stubby barrel of Wolf Girl's machine pistol poke around the corner and bloom with flame.

She was in the kitchen, all right. It was much less rustic than the rest of the lodge, all gleaming tile and chrome. There were hardwood cutting tables you could perform autopsies on, ovens you could cremate people in, vast ranges, big sinks, and even Big Hats, traditional accouterments of the master chef, on a rack by the far door. Cassie had little time to take in the scenery, however, because Wolf Girl had seized the initiative and was coming after her.

She fetched up against a chopping table, spun as Wolf Girl came around the corner. Cassie had her right-hand gun up, but her antagonist had the MP preceding her, blazing away. Cassie could do nothing but throw herself into a backward roll across the table top, barely managing to get her feet under her as she dropped to the floor on the far side.

To anchor it against heavy use, the chopping-table was filled with cement or something; bullets wouldn't penetrate it. As soon as she took in that fact, Cassie stuck just the barrel of her left-hand gun around the comer of the impenetrable pedestal and cranked out the whole rest of the magazine.

She heard a surprised grunt, a meaty thud as of a body falling. Yeah, sure, she thought. I'm really going to fall for that.

She dropped the borrowed gun. Rolling on her back, she braced her strong legs against the pedestal, pushed herself off on her back, just as she had done on the catwalk. She slid easily over the polished dark-green fired-clay tiles of the floor and stopped with the top of her head almost touching the pedestal of the next table in line.

Arm locked down her body, gun ready, she rolled left. Wolf Girl was crouched in the passageway, machine pistol pointed into the kitchen. The other woman wasn't expecting Cassie to appear at such a low level. Cassie fired twice before Wolf Girl could refigure her targeting solution. Which meant she didn't get to; all she had time to do was fling herself to her own left, to put the mass of the table Cassie had just left between her and Cassie's gun.

Cassie stood up, scuttled around the base of the table she'd arrived at. She crouched behind the table, staying low in case Wolf Girl tried the same trick she had used.

Wolf Girl didn't. She came over the top in a namesake leap, machine pistol yammering. Cassie snapped a reflex shot wild and ducked back around to huddle with her back to the pedestal and her knees up. She heard the thump of a body rolling up against the other side of the table she was hiding behind.

Her eyes focused on the pistol held before her eyes. She realized the slide was locked back: empty. She dropped it, grabbed her snubby out of its pocket holster in her coat. Then she tried to figure out what to do.

If she waited long enough, she'd win, because certainly the 'lleros she had stationed out of sight but on call must soon be responding to the commotion at the lodge. But what if Wolf Girl decided not to wait? She had a preponderance of firepower, and while Cassie respected the old marksman's adage, you can't miss fast enough to catch up, if Wolf Girl wanted to try poking the machine pistol around or over the table and loosing off bursts at random, she was a lot more likely to tag Cassie than Cassie would be to nail her back. Even if Cassie tried the same. reconnaissance-by-fire stunt.

Therefore the only thing to do was take the risk of exposure, try to establish dominance of position. Which meant one, two—go!

Cassie stood up, locking her arms out in a two-handed isoscles grip. Wolf Girl arose as if they were both attached to the same rising beam. Cassie found the muzzle of her snubnosed revolver pressed against Wolf Girl's philtrum—and the muzzle of Wolf Girl's MP snugged in the notch where Cassie's jaw met her ear.

"You're good," Wolf Girl said. Her voice was low, rich, and perfectly calm. She wasn't even breathing heavily. "No one's ever touched me as you have." She reached up and flicked the hard plastic eye patch with the thumbnail of her free hand.

"I'm sorry about your, eye," Cassie said. "I meant to kill you, not hurt you. How did you escape?"

"The same way you did when those fools came after you in the diner. The same way you did when you sensed you were being driven in a trap in that alley. I felt the danger with my ki. It gave me time to react—if not time to get away scot-free. You are well-trained."

"My guru taught me to use my head and my senses."

Wolf Girl smiled at her. Her remaining eye was russet. She was a very handsome woman.

"What will you do now? What your head tells you—or your heart?"

Her accent's local Davion, Cassie thought, but she's fond enough of talking in riddles to be a Drac.

"My heart and my head both seem to be pretty much out of ideas," she said, "but—"

She dropped, turning, sweeping out with her right leg to scythe her opponent's legs out from under her.

Wolf Girl jumped high in the air. Cassie's sweep passed harmlessly beneath her.

Cassie followed through, bringing up the snubby. Wolf Girl crescent-kicked it out of her hand.

This wasn't turning out as Cassie might've hoped. But guru had always taught her to chain attacks until her foe went down or forced her to retreat, and not to give up. Having come halfway up, Cassie dropped again and spun into another sweep. This one deposited Wolf Girl neatly on her rump on the tile.

Cassie swarmed over her, clawing for the machine pistol. She caught Wolf Girl's right wrist with both hands, cracked the back of her gun hand sharply against the corner of the table, The MP skittered away across the floor like a giant metal roach.

Wolf Girl got a foot up between herself and Cassie, launched the smaller woman off of her. Cassie flew against a huge alloy sink, banged the elbow of her right arm, which promptly went numb.

She didn't go down—that balance training. Huddled twisted against the sink was not an uncomfortable fighting position for her. She was doing fine fending off a series of kicks with her left hand when Wolf Girl laid a move on her she hadn't encountered before. The one-eyed woman, fighting right foot advanced, cocked that foot for a front snap-kick at Cassie's short ribs. Cassie got her arm down in time to foul the blow. But instead of driving straight in against the interposed arm, Wolf Girl bent her foot to ninety degrees and turned it way out, like a ballerina, so that it was parallel to the floor. And she whipped it around horizontally, in a movement that caused a brief sympathetic twinge in Cassie's knee and hip, and slammed the ball of the foot in under Cassie's ribs.

As Cassie fought for breath, Wolf Girl retracted her foot, then brought it around the other way in a fairly conventional round-house kick. It wasn't any tournament love-tap with the instep, either; it was a full-on ball-of-the-foot shot, into the side of the head.

Bright light flared behind Cassie's eyes, to be replaced by great floating purple globs of afterimage. Her body did not seem to want to respond.

Wolf Girl grabbed her by the front of the coat, held her upright. Cassie gave her a right elbow-smash to the corner of her jaw. It was a good shot, snapped Wolf Girl's head right around for a change.

Wolf Girl's response was to turn her hips counterclockwise and slam Cassie in the gut with a side-kick that was almost a back kick. The small of Cassie's back smashed into the edge of the counter next to the sink, and her head struck a metal cupboard. She saw more pyrotechnics.

She also heard a rushing in her ears. She figured that was a very bad sign. Especially since it was getting much louder.

From somewhere outside came excited shots, followed by a sharp crack! as air rushed in to replace that ionized by the startling passage of a laser beam. Outlaw Leyva's Phoenix Hawk was jumping to the rescue, signaling the arrival of sundry Caballero reinforcements Cassie had left standing by in the nearby evergreen forest.

"So your friends have come." Wolf Girl grabbed her. Her face swam in Cassie's vision. "I'm glad. I don't want to kill you; you're the best I've ever met."

She crushed Cassie's already-bruised lips with a kiss. And then she was gone, leaving Cassie to slump down until she could rest her cheek on the cool comfort of the tile.

BattleTech - LE5523

20

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

9 February 3058

His long blond hair hanging unbound about his massive shoulders, Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki eased himself back against the hardwood rim of the hot tub that was serving in lieu of a proper bath. He looked through steam rising off the near-scalding water at the face on the visiphone hung on the wall.

"So, Mr. Chairman," he said, "your people remain fractious. All across the Hyborian continent the rulers of cities and even whole districts refuse to acknowledge our sovereignty. In the southern hemisphere the leaders are with us, but the people largely ignore them. I am most disappointed, Blaylock-san. You promised to deliver your world to us."

Scattered among the rest of the half-dozen hardwood tubs that Kusunoki had ordered installed in a former dressing room off the Port Howard administrative complex's gym, his score of young retainers, all naked and scarcely less splendidly muscled than the Tai-sho himself, nodded and murmured about Howard Blaylock's shortcomings in contemptuous Japanese. Standing by the side of the General's tub in his inevitable top hat, kimono, striped pants and spats, gloved hands folded neatly across the head of his cane, Mr. Kimura kept his own counsel.

He'd had a lot of practice at that since arriving on Towne.

Visible from the necktie up, Howard Blaylock performed a facial shrug, a quick grimace suggesting an evil smell had passed beneath his nose. "Townians are an undisciplined brunch," he said. "That's a major reason I thought it was a good idea to invite you people in here in the first place. You—we—are faced with the job of counteracting generations of Davionist propaganda that has sowed mistrust of the Dragon as well as a lot of nonsensical notions about civil liberties that even the Free Worlds League doesn't pretend to believe in anymore."

"So ka?" Kusunoki scowled. His shoulders bunched ominously.

"Perhaps Mr. Blaylock would care to offer his humble recommendation as to how that job might best be accomplished," Kimura said with a smoothness that had acquired a special gloss over his weeks of association with Kusunoki.

Kusunoki relaxed back into his steam and gestured for Blaylock to proceed. "Incentives, General," Blaylock said. "The carrott and the stick. We give the local bosses more power and a bigger take of the cut in return for their wholehearted support. If they still want to play patriot we make it clear to their ambitious underlings that we're willing to play ball with anybody who'll play ball with us. And there're always ambitious underlings looking to topple the guys above them from their perches—I'm sure you're all too aware of that little phenomenon, General."

"It's so," rumbled Kusunoki, nodding. Mr. Kimura rolled his eyes toward the pierced off-white tiles of the ceiling. Despite Kusunoki's mammoth popularity with his troops, he harbored the paranoid conviction that subordinates plotted constantly to supplant him. Which, to Mr. Kimura's considerable puzzlement, did not seem to be the case, despite the fact that gekoku-jo—"those below rising against those above"—was at least as integral to the history of Japan and the Combine as the warrior's code of bushido or even ninkyo, which the yakuza fondly believed was their own equivalent to the Way of the Warrior.

"For the "people, offer increases in government benefits, land reform, that kind of thing. Promise to tax the big landowners, the ranchers and miners and timber companies, and spread the wealth around: the people'll fall into line quick enough. Start recruiting police aggressively. Most of the clowns in this so-called resistance are just a gang of bullies; give them a chance to bust some heads, and they'll flock to you too. And if the leadership doesn't come across quick enough—"

A shrug of those clothes-pole shoulders. "You pick out a few mayors or provincial governors, and you make examples out of them." He smiled. "You Draconians understand that principle pretty well, I believe?"

"That is true, too." Kusunoki was smiling now himself.

"Oh—one more little matter before I ring off, General," Blaylock said as if in afterthought. "You'll go a long way toward consolidating your support if you start off with a gesture toward those who have already helped you. Releasing those BattleMechs you captured from the mercenaries to the Towne Guard will buy you an awful lot of goodwill."

"No," said Kusunoki as he rose and stepped out of the tub, water streaming down his chiseled body and legs. Several attendants hopped out of their own tubs to swaddle him quickly with white fluffy towels piled on a table by the wall. Kimura saw Blaylock belatedly hide his surprise. Draconians had considerably less body-modesty than most Davions did.

From a minuscule arch of one eyebrow Mr. Kimura deduced that Blaylock was reaffirming incorrect conclusions about Jeffrey Kusunoki and his followers. Male homosexuality was not stigmatized by the Dragon or the Dictum Honorium, though it was not actively encouraged among warriors, a sit had been during most of the Tokugawa Shogunate on which the Kuritas had based so much of their own rule. But Kusunoki was not homosexual. Neither did he care for women; in fact he had a marked aversion to them, especially ones in positions of military power. Nor, insofar as Toyama-kai had been able to discover, did he have any interest in children, animals, or artificial aids. He seemed entirely sexless—and the kai was very good indeed at ferreting out such details. They liked to have handles on those with whom they did business.

Blaylock got his reactions in order. "General, won't you even consider it? They're not doing anybody much good, standing parked in the TTC yard."

"I said no, Mr. Blaylock." Kusunoki was permitting his retainers to help him into a purple silk kimono with white cranes and rushes on it. He looked up at the screen.

"Tomorrow morning your ultimatum to the foreign mercenaries expires. Will you have the courage to follow through?"

Blaylock grinned. "Should your Excellency doubt me, I invite him to the little ceremony I have planned for dawn in the Palace gardens if the money-troopers don't surrender."

"I shall be there." Kusunoki nodded. The screen went blank.

"How soon can I kill him?" he asked Kimura.

"Let us first see how his plans to expedite the pacification of Towne prosper," Mr. Kimura said. "If they work, you might find you don't want to kill him at all."

Kusunoki grunted.

Howard Blaylock turned from the darkened visi-phone. "You still here? Take the rest of the night off and go into town. I want to spend a little last quality time with my guest."

Wolf Girl stood in the gloom by the wall. Washes of color from Blaylock's holotapestry chased each other enigmatically across her features. She said nothing, but her arms were folded across her chest.

"What's the matter?" Blaylock shot her a grin. "You jealous? Or just disapproving?"

"Captain MacDougall is a warrior," Wolf Girl said. "It's not right to treat her this way."

"A warrior?" Blaylock laughed. "She sure gave up quick enough when the Dracs got the drop on her. You should be grateful to me; I'm really doing them all a favor, keeping them here in the Palace. Kusunoki wanted to display them in front of the Admin Center in iron cages. The Dracs despise anybody who surrenders."

Wolf Girl said nothing more. Her handsome features were set.

"Jesus, you're spoiling my mood. I don't know why you've got such a soft spot for these freaking foreigners anyway, after the way they bumped your nose a couple days ago. You haven't failed me like that very often, WG."

"If you find my service unsatisfactory—"

"Oh, get the hell out of here."

* * *

Blinking sleep from his eyes, the guard watched the vehicle crawl up Isildur Way toward the black wrought-iron fence that surrounded the former Marquis' Palace. It was a conventional six-wheeler delivery truck; hovercraft were not popular on Towne, for no known reason other than taste. Behind it, the lights of Port Howard were a dimmer display than they used to be. Civilian traffic without special permit was forbidden at this time of night.

Of course, it was too much to hope that this was unauthorized traffic. Nothing that exciting ever happened on the guard's shift. Nobody would be dim enough to drive straight up to the gates of the Planetary Chairman's residence after curfew without all the proper paperwork and a damned compelling reason to boot. Howard Blaylock had a taste for throwing his weight around.

The truck stopped. Grumbling to himself, the guard got off his stool, opened the door of the guard-booth to the icy night wind, stepped out with his Federated assault rifle slung over one shoulder and a torch in his right hand. He splashed the beam along the box. It was lettered Aquilonia Audiovisual, Your Entertainment Electronics Superstore.

The driver rolled the window down. He had on a dark stocking cap and a long face whose sharpness had not been weathered away by his years. "Howdy," he said. "Got a load of heavy-duty holovid equipment in back. Blaylock's orders."

The guard frowned. "I thought the stuff for the big show tomorrow wasn't due in until after midnight."

"Ain't that the way it always works, my friend?" the driver asked with a commiserant grin. "Nobody tells you nothin'."

"I'm still gonna have to see papers."

"Paperwork takes so much time," the driver said, smiling. "How 'bout I do this?"

He raised up an autopistol with a fat black suppressor screwed on the end. The last thing the guard saw was a bright small flash.

* * *

"You're asking a lot of us, Colonel Camacho," Goose Harter of the Gunderland Ranchers' Protective Association said across the scarred Gunderland-pine table. From outside came the crunch of BattleMech footsteps in fresh-fallen snow outside the hunting lodge. Don Carlos wasn't taking any chances of this meeting being interrupted as rudely as the one two days previously had been.

A fire burned in a gray fieldstone fireplace much more modest than the one at the original meeting-place had been. The common-room, whose dark-stained rafter beams were so low that even Don Carlos felt self-conscious when he stood to his full 173-centimeter height, was also smaller. This gathering was more exclusive, and a hundred klicks distant from the Bear Creek resort, although still nestled in the mountains far from anyplace the Dracs and their lackeys had dared penetrate. Except of course for Wolf Girl, who had not been invited this time.

"So far a body might get the impression you mercs have done a lot more running than fighting," the stocky ex-'Mech jock went on.

"We have," Maccabee Bar-Kochba said in his gravel bass. His Dayan Company was spread out by lances in an arc north and east of Port Howard. They had been ambushing probes by Kurita armor and BattleMech units and then pulling back. They had destroyed two 'Mechs, seven tanks, and twenty other vehicles without taking a loss themselves. This was the sort of war the Caballeros excelled at. "But we're hitting and they're hurting."

"They are much more numerous, though," said Pik Vosloo, another Mech Warrior-turned-rancher. A dark, narrow man somewhere in his thirties, he had deep-set black eyes and close-cropped black hair that grew down to a widow's peak. "You can't help but lose any war of attrition."

"That's why we're running," said Peter White-Nose Pony. Right now he had Third Battalion's Geronimo Company south of Port Howard, blockading the superhighway to the port city of Saraath in Nemedia Province. Like Maccabee, he had dispersed his other two companies to Uncle Chandy's holdings around western Hyboria before the invasion.

"A planet is a very large place, my friends, if you will allow me to restate the obvious," Colonel Camacho said from his seat at the head of the table. He smiled. "As we have learned all too well in the few short weeks between our arrival and that of our uninvited guests. These renegade Kuritas must proceed judiciously, since they have no hope of conquering Towne by main force."

"But they'll find no shortage of collaborators willing to sell their birthright for a dollop of power," Vosloo said. "Blaylock, may he find himself in a burning building with his spine snapped, will see to that."

"He already has," added Esther Durning, a tiny wizened redhead who ran a heavy-equipment repair service and doubled as a long-time Popular Militia organizer. Her right upper arm was sheathed in a rigid bioplast net. A bullet fired by Wolf Girl had shattered her humerus. "If I ever get my hands—well, my good hand, anyway—on that traitorous bitch ..."

"But Towne has substantial resources for resistance," Don Carlos said. "Primarily the ingenuity, courage, and will to resist of its people. Our mission has always been to mobilize those resources to defeat the invaders—though when the time comes to strike the decisive blow, you'll find the Seventeenth Recon Regiment in the forefront."

"Why should you hang around here?" demanded stout, balding sawmill owner Eddie Newcombe. "The Dracs've offered you safe passage off-planet. And they've got some of your people hostage."

Don Carlos glanced at his old friend Gordo Baird, who stood glowering from the shadows along one wall. The intelligence officer had been strident in his urgings that the regiment cut its losses and accept the offer of honorable surrender.

"It is not our way to deal with hostage-takers," the Colonel said, "or to abandon our commissions. It is not just a matter of maintaining our credibility in the very competitive Inner Sphere mercenary market. It is a matter of honor."

The resistance leaders glanced at one another. They knew by now that the Southwesterners were as prickly about honor as any Drac. The question remained as to how long the offworlders would stay that way.

"As to what we have to offer," Don Carlos continued, "in the main it is expertise. For example, my son Gavilan graduated from the New Avalon Military Academy." He nodded to Gabby, who sat at his right. The young man was uncharacteristically quiet tonight. He had fled south with his Shadow Hawk to join White-Nose Pony's command after the debacle at Port Howard. Since his father had pulled his own battalion off the line for the time, he had stayed to fight with Third. He had not seen his father again until this evening.

"We're not exactly lacking for conventional training," Harter said. "I graduated from the Nagelring, myself."

"The key word is 'conventional,' Mr. Harter," said Father Doctor Bob García. "We Southwesterners have a long history of warfare which is anything but. We are raiders, guerrillas, at heart. And we have among us a scout who has probably accounted for more BattleMechs destroyed without benefit of any kind of fighting vehicle than any other person in the Inner Sphere, Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassiopeia Suthorn." He smiled. "I think we might have some knowledge to impart to your people."

"We are also fortunate enough to have among us a man whose extensive study of history, as well as his training in the ways of intrigue, qualifies him uniquely as a strategist of unconventional warfare. I refer, of course, to Lieutenant Senior Grade Father Roberto García, SJ."

The Jesuit's smile slipped off and he looked at Don Carlos in amazement. Because of his training as both Jesuit and MechWarrior—and the Colonel's predisposition toward men of the cloth—he was used to attending meetings such as this as part of Camacho's brain trust. He had not known there was a deeper reason for his presence tonight.

Ah, well, Don Carlos thought, concealing his own smile. If the young man could not cope with this small surprise, he could scarcely hope to deal with the renegade sons of the Dragon, could he?

Father Bob blinked and took command of himself. "We all know the importance of knowing when and where to strike, gentlemen, Ms. Durning," he said smoothly, turning to face the militia representatives. "But in a situation such as this, it is perhaps more important to know when not to strike. . . ."

* * *

The backhanded blow snapped Lady K's head around on her neck and sent her reeling into the unwelcome grasp of Taras. As always his touch felt slightly greasy on her bare arms. He pivoted and flung her onto the bed of the small room where she was confined on the second floor of the Palace.

Buster, blond hair hanging in vacant blue eyes, stood over her massaging the knuckles of his right hand.

"What did you do that for?" she demanded. "Blaylock ordered you not to damage the merchandise!"

The sense of betrayal, the unfairness of changing the rules on her, made her eyes sting with tears. That was one of the effects of sustained abuse, as she knew well, that victim-fragility. It was not a place she liked being back in.

Buster looked at Taras. Buster wore a brown suit like a feed sack and a tie that was never properly knotted. The other man was darker, shorter, and slightly less bulky. He wore a natty black suit, a black mustache, and a gold ring in one ear. His dark hair was shaved at the temples, and gathered into a thin tail at the nape.

"The Chairman's gonna come and pay his, y'know, final respects to you in a few minutes," Buster said, "since that greaseball colonel of yours has decided to play tough-guy. We just don't want you getting any ideas about spoiling such a beautiful occasion."

"Also," Taras added, "His Excellency has promised that when he's done with you for the evening, we can have you. We want to ensure you're in a receptive mood."

She wanted to spit in his face. Somehow she could not muster the energy.

Buster ran his eyes over her body like clammy hands. She was dressed in a simple white shift. It hung; she had lost weight in captivity.

"Now you're gonna put on something nice for the Chairman," he said. "He wants you looking good for your going-away party."

"You go straight to hell," she said. And thought, Thanks for helping me find my spirit again. You pig.

Buster scowled and raised a heavy hand.

Behind him the door blew off its hinges with a double crack of finger charges. He and Taras spun around as it was kicked in. Taras's hand dove for the laser pistol in the shoulder holster beneath his coat.

There came a staccato popping, loud in the room's confines. The back of Taras's suit coat blew out in tatters and dark spray. His body jerked in neuromuscular response to multiple impacts, and then he simply collapsed like a suit of clothes that had slipped from a hangar.

Two figures had come in through the door. They carried suppressed machine pistols and wore black sneak suits with goggles—conventional vision-enhancers, not the sinister red circle-vision wraparounds like those of DEST commandos—and gas masks. The one that had sidestepped right and blasted Taras said "Clear" in Cowboy Payson's drawl.

Facing a much shorter intruder who had stepped left of the door, and whose slim black-clad form was obviously feminine, Buster threw his hands up and dropped to his knees. "Don't shoot!" he pleaded. "Please!"

The goggled face turned briefly to Kali on the bed. Then it turned back to Buster. A black-gloved finger tightened on a trigger and sent six 9 mm bullets through Buster's big face.

"Clear," said the voice of Cassie Suthorn.

BattleTech - LE5523

21

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

9 February 3058

Howard Blaylock escaped the Caballero raiders sent to rescue Kali MacDougall by commandeering a four-wheel-drive vehicle from his security detail and busting through a back gate. A torrent of small-arms fire failed to tag him before he vanished into a stand of conifers.

Aside from liberating their captive comrades, the raiders had to settle for shooting anybody who offered resistance—which in their current frame of mind meant didn't fall face-down in surrender or run away quickly enough—and committing sundry acts of vandalism with the explosives and incendiary devices they'd brought along for the purpose.

Effective resistance by the Towne Guards who were ostensibly protecting Blaylock was in short supply. However, the strike team had not been in the Palace long before lookouts spotted a relief column coming up Isildur Way, a 65-ton JagerMech crunching in the lead. Armed with nothing heavier than their suppressed Shimatus-42 machine pistols, the rescue party was unprepared for a pitched battle with regular DCMS infantry, much less BattleMechs. Lieutenant Senior Grade Buck Evans, commanding the unit, thumbed the bug-out button on his communicator. Twenty seconds later a black-painted tilt-rotor Karnov UR transport VTOL popped up, skimmed a nearby ridge, and landed on the Palace's snow-covered front lawn. As Zuma Gallegos sprayed the Palace from the cargo bay with a GM Minigun, the liberated captives were led on board, though Kali MacDougall had to be carried by Cassie and Cowboy.

The last of the rescue party tumbled into the aircraft. At the transport's controls was Tim Moon of the Towne Air Rangers. With Zuma still firing he lifted off and plunged into the night, dodging yellow tracer-streams from the medium and light Mydron autocannons mounted in the JagerMech's arms. In seconds he had crossed the ridge northeast of the Palace and ducked down below it, out of the line of fire. The night was clear. With the light of giant Conan making the deep-drifted snow and the powder thrown up by the Karnov's outsized rotors glow as of their own light, they hugged the ground until the gates of the mountains closed protectively behind them.

* * *

Seven days later a column left Port Howard, heading south along the coastal highway. A regiment of the Towne Guard, whose numbers had been swelled enormously by recruitment since the Planetary Government surrendered, it consisted mainly of infantry packed into a weird assortment of military and civilian vehicles, including buses, cattle trucks, and even commandeered automobiles. Its main punch was provided by a short battalion of tanks, most of which had until recently belonged to the Marquis of Towne's Own Fusiliers. The conventional armor was augmented by a mixed lance of Guard BattleMechs, one of which, a Crusader, broke down even before they lost sight of Port Howard's southern suburbs and could not be coaxed back into motion.

Tai-sho Kusunoki had adamantly refused to release to the Guard any of the BattleMechs captured from the mercenaries or the Fusiliers. This sortie was intended as an opportunity for the Guards to prove themselves worthy of such enhancement. The city government of Sarnath, capital of Nemedia Province and an important seaport in its own right, was openly defying Planetary Chairman Blaylock and his offworld backers. If the Guards could bring the Sarnathians to heel, they could expect to take their reward in 'Mechs.

Fifty kilometers from Port Howard, mercenary 'Mechs ambushed the column's leading elements, destroying two Scorpion light tanks and a scout car. When the surviving Guard 'Mechs, a Whitworth, a Dervish, and a Wasp, came up, the money-troopers turned tail and fled. Morale soared in the column, and if anybody noticed that none of the Caballero machines had been destroyed, or even visibly damaged, they wisely said nothing. The Guards had developed a taste for drumhead courts-martial and summary executions in the wake of the Kusunoki invasion.

On the northern outskirts of Sarnath—Robert E. Howard had been Augustus Pons's favorite author of fantastic fiction but by no means the only one he read—the Guard encountered roadblocks apparently manned by the Popular Militia. The self-styled patriots were brushed aside with contemptuous ease. The column plunged into the city.

Like most inexperienced soldiers, the Guard 'Mech jocks and tank drivers were too impatient to wait for their infantry support to keep up. In turn the infantry in their largely unarmored transports were only too happy to hang back and let the fighting machines bear the brunt of the coming action. The column got strung out along the highway, with its tanks and 'Mechs better than half a kilometer ahead of the transports when they entered the built-up area.

That was when the hammer came down.

Armored units—hovertanks and track-layers far more than BattleMechs—are at their biggest disadvantage in urban fighting. Infantry is at its weakest in the open. Accordingly, Lieutenant Senior Grade James Kicking Bird in his heavily armed Thunderbolt led Geronimo Company's command lance, sweeping down on the infanty as Popular Militia troops popped out of concealment in ditches, culverts, and buildings alongside the highway to begin slaughtering the Guards in their thin-skinned vehicles. At the same time, the rest of Geronimo, likewise aided by militiamen and women, commenced to grind the Guard armor to pieces in the streets of the northern suburb of Yelverton.

When an 80-ton Awesome piloted by Third Battalion commander White-Nose Pony himself vaporized the Wasp with its Kreuss particle projection cannons, the other two Guard 'Mech jocks punched out without further ado. A number of tank crewmen likewise abandoned their vehicles at once. Which was wise, because under the circumstances the machines were little more than crematoria-in-waiting.

Within half an hour the Second Regiment of the Towne Guards had ceased to exist.

* * *

Back and forth across the gym's hardwood floor Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki and his kendo partner, dressed in full dogu, traded blows faster than Mr. Kimura's anything-but-practiced eye could follow. Suddenly the opponent's shinai, his practice sword made of bamboo splints bound together, clacked off the left side of Kusunoki's face-protector.

"Hidari-men ari!" cried one of Kusunoki's retainers serving as informal forward judge, signifying that a clean blow had been scored to that target, one of eight permissible. Kusunoki stepped back. His shoulders heaved in a convulsive breath, and he attacked again.

The Tai-sho made an almost religious observance of exercising at precisely the appointed time each day, no matter what, short of actual emergency. This practice undoubtedly helped account for his maintaining, in his fifties, an appearance and bodily vigor a man in his twenties might envy; but it did little to encourage Mr. Kimura as to his flexibility of mind. Ah, well, he thought, mujo: life is fleeting, as the Buddhists say. Mr. Kimura's misgivings were long since beside the point; now he must put ninjo, his feelings about Kusunoki, to one side and concentrate on giri, the service he owed Toyama-rama and the Dragon. Kusunoki was the tool, and it was the only one his hand could find, no matter its limitations. He must use it to best effect.

Almost at once the opponent's shinai struck the General in the short ribs on his right. "Migi-do ari!" the judge cried, calling a point to that target. "Nihomme!" The latter meant "second point."

In a blur the shinai rose and fell spang on top of Kusunoki's head. "Men-aril Shobul!" the judge called. Point to the head and match.

Throwing his weapon aside, the Tai-sho rushed at his foe, caught him by the kote guarding his right forearm and the left side of his keikogi, or jacket, and dumped him to the floor in a very credible hip throw. He proceeded to kick his sparring partner so vigorously that he dented his do, his vitryl chest armor, until several of his lackeys raced forward and pulled him off.

The General stormed to where Mr. Kimura stood beneath a basketball net, tearing off his men and throwing it down. A retainer caught it before it struck the floor. Likewise his gloves and kote.

"Chikusho!" the General shouted. The word literally meant "beast" or "beasts," and was the strongest expletive used in conventional Japanese.

"Is his Excellency cursing his recent opponent," Mr. Kimura inquired politely, "or merely cursing?"

"Those gaijin money-troopers!" Kusunoki raged. "What they have done is intolerable! The blood of Towne shall flow in rivers."

"To precisely which enormity by the money-grubbing Outside Folk does his Excellency refer?"

"Their treachery at Sarnath, of course. Mattaku!" Which meant, roughly, "damn."

"But the soldiers we lost there were Towne barbarians," Mr. Kimura protested. "Our own yakuza soldiers we call teppodama, mere bullets to be expended. Surely these gaijin are so much less? And besides, your Excellency did not react so strongly when the mercenaries attacked Blaylock-san in his home and killed his bodyguards."

That wasn't all they had done, Kimura reflected. The Planetary Chairman's two chief bodyguards had been emasculated after death and the phrase, "You're next, Blaylock!" scrawled in blood on the wall of Captain MacDougall's erstwhile cell.

"The things are not at all similar! Those were Blaylock's retainers, his concern. These were soldiers of the Dragon, gaijin or not."

He unstrapped his do, threw it down with a clatter, tore off his keikogi and wrung sweat from it.

"The streets of Sarnath shall run red! I shall make of those rebel dogs a satsuriku to rival Kentares IV!" Satsuriku, from the words for "pig" and "to smite," meant massacre.

"You shall do no such thing," Mr. Kimura said with quiet emphasis.

Kusunoki froze, then turned to stare at the old man, more in astonishment than anger. In a language devoted more to accommodation and avoidance of conflict than communication per se, and from an inferior to his nominal superior, such an outright contradiction was like a closed-fist blow to the face.

"Soka?"

"Hai, Kusunoki-sama. Though we may—when truly appropriate—take reprisals, anything resembling a repeat of Lord Jinjiro's massacre is not possible."

Kimura's effrontery seemed to have drained the rage right out of kusunoki. "And why is that?" he asked mildly.

"We are acting here to take advantage of the weakness of Victor Davion, heir to the man so rightly known as the Fox. Doing anything that approaches the Kentares massacre will only strengthen him. His people will unite behind him in a mighty crusade to drive us from Towne, and even his sister will have to swallow her hatred and join him, lest her own people torn against her. Moreover, not only will our esteemed Coordinator Theodore not permit such a massacre, he would most likely send the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery to assist in our extermination."

Kusunoki was thunderstruck. He still believed in his hara that he and his army of invasion were serving the interests of the Coordinator, and thus of the ancient spirit of the Dragon. "Masaka!" This cannot be.

"It can be. You've read the HPG messages as closely as I have. The Coordinator will take no action against us unless provoked. But his evil advisors have turned him against our endeavor to the extent that we can expect no resupply or reinforcement from within the Combine. Nor can we rely on the seimeiyoshi-rengo's smuggling network to replenish our expendables; the other oyabun will not defy the Coordinator in this manner." Seimeiyoshi-rengo was the loose federation of yakuza gumi and kai—read, gangs—that had begun to spread beyond the Combine across the Inner Sphere, and was providing major foci for resistance on Clan-held worlds.

Kusunoki's eyes squeezed shut. Tears trailed down his beautiful cheeks. "So the rot has penetrated so close to the Dragon's heart?" he whispered in agony.

"Kimochi ga fujita." The sentiment is understood.

"Very well," the Tai-sho said, reasserting self-control. He turned to walk away; checked himself, then turned back to the old man.

"Are we permitted to put to the sword those who bear arms against us, at least?"

Mr. Kimura bowed. "Hai, Tai-sho. It was for this reason that the ceremony of surrender we arranged with Mr. Blaylock was of such paramount importance. In the eyes of the law, we are the rightful government of Towne. Those who resist us by force are guilty of rebellion, under the laws of the planet and, indeed, the Federated Commonwealth."

Kusunoki grinned like a schoolboy. "Now that's more like it," he said.

* * *

The Caballeros got lucky at Sarnath.

Not because of the way the battle turned out—that was skill, and the predictable incompetence of Mar-rou's Gourds. But because the Sarnath Popular Militia had sought legitimacy by acknowledging the authority of the city and provincial governments. And the politicians wanted to reap all credit for the one-sided victory for themselves.

Despite—or perhaps because of—his Navajo reticence, Third Battalion Commander Peter White-Nose Pony was one of the Seventeenth's more able diplomats. On Don Carlos's instructions, he had asserted the mercenaries' claim for salvage rights to the two Guard 'Mechs that had been abandoned undamaged—there wasn't enough left of the hapless little Wasp for even Zuma's wizardry to make use of—with more blunt force than necessary.

The Nemedian provincial governor's response had been to order the Caballeros out of Sarnath, and indeed Nemedia. Two days after the battle, Geronimo Company headed east toward the Gunderlands.

Four days after that, three Overlord Class DropShips fell out of heavy overcast onto Sarnath, carrying a battalion of Black Dragon BattleMechs and one each of regular Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery armor and infantry. Strengthened by equipment captured from the Guards, the Popular Militia men and women fought well enough to bloody the regulars before they were overwhelmed.

On the other side the yakuza MechWarriors' performance brought reluctant praise from Kusunoki. In a proclamation beautifully hand-calligraphed by himself he acknowledged that they had fought to the standards of the Ghost Legions that served openly alongside the DCMS. Young Tai-i Toyama particularly distinguished himself in action, under circumstances in which there could be no suspicion that the affair had been stage-managed to make him look good, as the taking of the Palace might have been. In his QKD-5M Quickdraw he had single-handedly knocked out a lance of former Fusilier Rommel and Patton tanks that were holding up the advance into the city's center.

Planetary Chairman Blaylock himself flew down to supervise the purging of Sarnath. His enthusiasm for the task was sufficient to bring a smile of gratification to Tai-sho Kusunoki's clean-shaven lips and a worried frown to Mr. Kimura's bearded ones.

Though Desolation Angel aerospace fighters ranged far to the east of Sarnath until a fresh storm system grounded them, the mercenaries made good their escape into the southern Gunderlands. Blaylock's propaganda machine crowed over their cowardice.

Mr. Kimura only wished it were that simple. The gaijin money-soldiers were no more cowardly than the Dragon's finest. They were devilishly clever. They were extending the field of battle as far and wide as they could, stretching Kusunoki thin. It would take more than the General's machismo and Blaylock's bravado to rid the planet of them.

Mr. Kimura could only humbly beseech the Buddhas that his own cleverness would be enough. On the other hand, the oyabun hadn't drawn his name out of a hat. Drawing on all his sleights and misdirections, he set to work to manipulating his associates into defeating the Caballeros in spite of themselves.

* * *

"Gabby's still saying we should have stayed concentrated in Port Howie?" Lying propped up on pillows in a hospital bed in Athalau, a city in the southern Eiglophian Mountains, Kali MacDougall shook her head in disbelief. "He's full of Sierra, and you can drag him in by the ear so I can tell him that to his face."

After a week in bed she was champing at the bit. But Dr. Sondra Ten Bears, the Seventeenth's Comanche head physician, had told her point-blank that if she tried getting out of bed before getting permission, the doctor would have her sedated and tied to the bed with passive restraints. A bearlike, indomitable woman, just a few centimeters shorter than Lady K and at least ten kilos heavier, Ten Bears was accustomed to Southwestern temper tantrums and, if anything, less impressed by MechWarrior status than Cassie was.

Lady K had the wisdom to recognize that which she could not change. Howard Blaylock's tender attentions had caused her worse internal injuries than even she had realized. Ten Bears—who, despite her gruff-ness, regarded the regiment's members as her own children—had told Cassie privately that Kali would probably never have survived to face the firing squad in the Palace's snow-smothered rose garden had Blaylock actually gotten that final night with her.

The psychic damage her imprisonment had done her would take longer to heal. Cassie was less concerned about that. She herself had survived similar treatment in the past—as had Lady K. In her own way she ached for her friend, but she was sure Kali would be fine once the physical trauma was past.

And maybe, Cassie knew, that was mere wishful thinking. She had to believe Kali would hold together mentally no matter what. Because the blonde Mech-Warrior's center was the rock on which Cassie felt her own stability, such as it was, was built.

Kali sat half-upright, propped on a mound of pillows with her big white teddy bear, Snowy, beside her. Though she had lost a lot of weight, and her green eyes were sunken, she looked very beautiful to Cassie. As usual she was surrounded by friends: Cassie, Raven, Misty Saavedra, and Man Mountain Carter from her own company. Raven had been bitching in more than usually acerbic tones about her own battalion commander's behavior since he'd rejoined his father.

"My friend Howie"—Kali's face contorted as she spoke the name, as if someone were twisting a knife in her vitals—"liked pillow talk. Which translates as, he bragged a lot. His friends brought six regiments with them, including the Fifth Galedon AeroSpace Wing, the ones they call the Desolation Angels. Plus the fix was in with that tramp Marrou from the git-go for the Gourds to switch sides. If we'd stayed clumped together in Port Howie when that hammer came down, the only thing we'd have managed to do is a lot of dying."

While Ten Bears tended to the MechWarrior's more obvious hurts at the staging area where the Ranger VTOL had deposited the liberated hostages, Lady K recorded intelligence data until she passed out. Thanks to her the 'lleros knew the faces of their foe. Aside from the Angels, they were up against the BattleMech 15th Dieron Regulars: Devotion Through Combat, the 227th Armored Regiment, known as the Hard Targets, and the 503rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment, nicknamed A Better Tomorrow. All comprised combat-hardened DCMS regulars.

But the Black Dragon Society had not been idle. They were creating their own secret army, it seemed. They had contributed two units to the Towne invasion: the 1st Spirit of the Dragon BattleMech Regiment, known as The Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof, which in a briefing long ago and far away the Mirza Peter Abdulsattah had informed them was a Kokuryu-ifccw slogan signifying all humanity united under the benevolent rule of the Dragon; and the 1st Dragon's Joy infantry regiment, The Drawn Sword.

"I think Baird put that bug in Cabby's head," Raven said. She sat with legs crossed by a window opened to the frigid mountain air, smoking a cigarette. Cassie mentally counted down the seconds until she expected the floor nurse to come rampaging in to kick butts and take names. "Gabby's too macho to go for Gordo's notion that we oughta throw in the towel and let the Dracs send us to Outreach—like we could trust them— so Gordo was trying to sow a little dissension between daddy and son. He's a sneaky little ditch-weed."

"I should put Blood-drinker in his kidneys," Cassie said. "He'll be trouble."

Man Mountain held up pink-palmed hands. "Now, Cass, don't go talking that way. He means well. He's one of us, after all." Lady K cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him. "You think that means he means well? Earl Willie, you're a lot more naive than I thought."

The vast black Mech Warrior shrugged, sending tidal surges through his chins and belly. He was famously good-natured. As a 200-kilo Locust pilot, he needed every scrap of cheerfulness.

Raven blew smoke and started to say something. The door blew open.

It was Tim Moon, smelling of cold air and wood smoke, his arms loaded with flowers. Without a sideways glance he moved swiftly to hug Lady K. She burst into tears.

For all her toughness Lady K was still fragile from her experiences. Intellectually Cassie realized that. And this was the first time Moon had actually gotten back to see her since he'd watched her carried away from his Karnov strapped to a stretcher. But still ... her own eyes stinging, she rose and went quickly into the hall.

Light and sound were muted in the corridor. So were the smells of disinfectants. Ivor Mictlan Memorial Hospital seemed out of another time. It had been built and decorated without reference to thirty-first-century ergonomic theories. The splashboards of the walls were painted olive drab, and above them was off-white, lending the corridor an appearance whose first impact was dismal. Yet as the staff went about their business in their spotless white uniforms, pushing heavy-looking but undeniably solid wheelchairs and carts, Cassie felt the ultimate effect was somehow reassuring, unlike the gleaming sterility of most FedCom clinics she'd encountered.

A woman with a shabby brown bob and enormous hazel eyes, her slight frame all but overwhelmed by a black rodan-hide jacket, stood leaning against the wall. She glanced at Cassie, tipped her head to one side, smiled shyly.

"You must be the scout," she said. "Timmy's told me about you. I'm Amy—Sergeant Sandoz, from his Chaos Flight. I was his wing-thing flying in here today."

"I'm Cassie Suthorn. Hi."

"Pleased to meet you." Sandoz stepped closer, frowned. "You look like something's chewing you hard."

She took hold of Cassie's sleeve. Cassie stiffened.

"It's Tim, isn't it?" the other woman said quietly, looking into Cassie's smoky blue eyes. "I can tell. I know the signs, girl. I've been there."

Now Cassie did pull away. "I'm O.K.," she said, turning her head.

"No, you're not. You're in the bag for him too." The slight pilot drew a deep breath, let it blow out slowly.

"Cassie—Leftenant Suthorn—I hate to be the one to tell you this. But you don't fall heavy for Leftenant Timmy Bloody Moon. His callsign's not 'Bad' because we couldn't think of anything else."

Cassie shook her head as if trying to dislodge a droplet of water from her inner ear. This doesn't mean anything, she told herself. The girl's just jealous, she admitted she had a crush on Tim herself....

"You don't know, do you?" Shaking her head, Sandoz stepped back a pace or two. "Tim and that long-legged Captain of yours were in bed when the Dracs hit Port Howie. As in together, and not logging Z's. That's why it took him so long to hit the sky—and I'd guess it's also why she got caught, though I bet she's in denial about that as big-time as Timmy is—"

Cassie couldn't hear any more for the roaring in her ears. She turned and ran down the hall, almost bowling over an old man in a flannel gown who was pushing a wheeled IV rack along before him.

BattleTech - LE5523

22

Ham's Farm

Nemedia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

26 February 3058

"We've all heard the expression, 'that government rules best which rules least,' " Father Doctor Roberto "Call Me Bob" García told the attentive faces gathered in the farmhouse dining room. The room was cheerful from the sunlight spilling in at the windows. Though it was just two days past the midwinter festival, the sky was clear and painfully blue.

As he'd anticipated, his score of Townian students grinned and bobbed their heads, concurring with the statement. "One of the great paradoxes of political history," he continued, "is that that government which attempts to rule most actually rules least."

That quieted the group and made them swap puzzled looks—also anticipated. "Our enemies are trying to impose their own brand of order on the planet Towne," he said. "We don't have the military force to defeat them outright—not yet. So we must make, ourselves ungovernable. That means we meet their attempts to impose order with chaos—from which, in time, our own order will derive."

—It was as if a relay clicked in his head as he spoke. He stopped, gave his head a quick shake.

It's true, he thought. They never say anything with just a single meaning. And I never saw it until the words left my mouth.

* * *

He didn't remember what errand took him to the HTE Citadel that day, a week or so before the Seventeenth shipped for Towne. He was walking alone along a corridor whose lighting was at once ample and subdued when he encountered the looming form of the Mirza Peter Abdulsattah.

The Mirza greeted him with the lone word: "Ishq."

The word meant love. It filled Father Doctor Bob García with a weird transfiguring thrill as be uttered the ritual response, "Baraka, ya Shahin." Which meant, approximately, "Blessings, O King."

The exchange was the ancient recognition sequence by which Sufis identified themselves to one another.

"How did you recognize me?" he asked the Mirza. He couldn't meet the taller man's gaze.

Abdulsattah chuckled, low and dry. "I read your baraka." In addition to "blessing," the word could mean holiness, or mana, or any number of things García was sure he wasn't within parsecs of grasping yet.

"Surely that is small, and pale, Teacher," he said.

"Surely you have far to go before you attain to the status of Perfected Man. But even one who travels through darkness is still traveling."

García sighed. It was what he would expect from a dervish Adept. He had advanced far enough along the Way to know that During his studies at the Lyceum run by la CompaHia de Jesus on Galisteo the young Roberto García had become fascinated with the Sufis. They were usually identified as Muslim mystics—and yet they denied they were engaged in mysticism as commonly understood. And while their sages included men such as El-Ghazali, known to the ages as the Authority of Islam, they disavowed connection with any formal religion. Al-tariqa, the Way, lay open to men and women of all religions. Or none.

Though the Company didn't actively teach the fact, the inquisitive young García had long since learned that the Jesuits' founder, Inigo de Loyola, had borrowed many of his indoctrination methods and arguments from Hasan i Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountains, who founded the Hashishin—the original Assassins—arguments the Jesuit-trained Rene Descartes in turn would try to pass off as his own, when presenting his own philosophy in the seventeenth century. While Sabah was no Sufi, his close friend Omar Khayyam was.

Though the thirty-first century Society of Jesus professed no policy on the Sufis, at least insofar as García knew, their libraries and databases contained all known Sufi writings and a huge amount of ancillary information on them. The two groups were similar in many ways, to be sure: secretive groups exerting unseen influence to bring humankind into closer accord with divinity. That the Jesuit leadership, which was very specific in its opposition to, say, ComStar and subsequently the Word of Blake, as well as the Draconis Combine, remained mute on the Sufis intrigued García. He even toyed with the idea that the Company was itself a Sufi front. It had been founded in Spain, after all, which before the Reconquest had been a fertile garden of Sufism and Muslim illuminism.

Not long after his graduation he had begun to search for Sufi teachers, and set his feet upon al-tariqa. He told himself there was surely no harm in it; and perhaps he might gain wisdom of use to the Company.

Jesuits were nothing if not adept at rationalization, after all.

He had found teachers, learned from them, and passed on, as was the Sufi way. For years he had heard nothing from them. Nor had they ever asked anything of him.

Until now? he wondered, gazing at the Mirza with awe and dread.

"Have you teaching for me?" he asked.

"I have amal, the Work." A great Sufi catch-phrase, amal. It meant the work of development, both of the individual and human society. "And as order is often engendered by chaos—and vice versa—you may find in confusion, further knowledge."

Peter Abdulsattah smiled and nodded, and appeared ready to end the interview on that unsatisfactory note. "I want certainty!" García almost bleated.

"That you must earn. This is amal."

* * *

And now, in this farmhouse in what in summer would be lush Nemedian growing land, the Mirza's words came back to García: "As order is often engendered by chaos—and vice versa ..."

He knew. The certainty—there was one for him— both reassured and shook him.

"Dr. García?" a young woman asked tentatively. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, certainly, certainly. Just a touch of premature spring fever. I'm from a desert world. I'm not used to winters this harsh. This sunlight throws me into wishful thinking."

His students laughed politely. "Dr. García," a young man asked, hesitantly raising his hand, "how can a government rule less by trying to rule more? I don't get it."

"Have you ever picked up an armload of kindling? A really huge load?" The young man nodded. "And did you ever give in to the temptation to pick up just one more little piece, so as not to have to make a second trip?"

Again a nod. "And what happened?" García asked.

The young man glanced sheepishly around. "Stuff went all everywhere. I dropped it."

García nodded. "Just so. And so it is with power; there comes a point at which, in trying to grab still more, a government loses its grasp, too."

That brought an appreciative murmur, and what he hoped was a touch of enlightenment to a few faces. It wasn't exactly a Subtlety of the Mulla Nasruddin, he thought, but perhaps the point got the point across.

"We can hurry the process along, both in terms of making it harder for the invaders to hold onto power and of making them want to grab more as rapidly as they can, by injecting the system with a hearty dose of chaos. Thus their order engenders our chaos—which, if all goes as we wish, will lead to you creating your own order."

The students made noises of happy comprehension. Yet some key points remained beyond them—and he, cynically, would make no attempt to enlighten them.

Would you show such enthusiasm if you knew how many lives the process will cost? he wondered.

And will you truly like the order which eventually emerges from this chaos we're going to spread?

* * *

A week later Cassie was high up in the Gunderlands carrying out some instruction of her own, her class consisting of a dozen Townie would-be guerrillas. They were seated on and among a clump of granite boulders overlooking a road that wound along the edge of a two-hundred-meter drop.

"Here they come," a voice said in the little phone taped to the mastoid process behind Cassie's right ear.

She touched the transmit button of her personal comm. "Abtakha acknowledging. Stay low, stay ambient, and try not to breathe too heavy."

The lookout acknowledged and fell silent. Cassie turned to face the group.

"People are intimidated by war machines," she told them, pitching her voice to penetrate the wind that tried to whip her words away. "That makes sense, kind of. Those machines can put out a lot of hurt. But the key thing is, they aren't invincible. Any of them."

The students sat quietly alert, glancing nervously now and again at the road where it curved into view around a giant basalt promontory half a kilometer to the northeast. Cassie didn't look that way. Her lookout was from the Seventeenth's own Scout Platoon. She had full confidence the woman would warn them before the Drac column rounded into view.

"A fighting machine is real complex, but you can still break it down as a set of a few basic systems—and I mean, 'break it down.' It'll have a propulsion system, an offensive system, a defensive system, a sensory suite, and some kind of life support for the pilot. People tend to focus on the strength of the defensive system, which usually means armor and the offensive firepower. That tends to freeze them up."

The saw-edged cry of a hunting rodan—they were much smaller here than in the Eiglophians, her students assured her, sporting a paltry four-meter wingspan— drifted down the wind. "The fact is, you don't have to bang your head off armor plate. If you defeat any of those systems, you'll defeat the machine. Meaning, you'll take it out of the fight—don't get too fixed on wanting to see pretty explosions. If the thing can't see you, it can't shoot you. If its weapons are out, it's not likely to be able to hurt you. If the life-support gets canceled"—she shrugged—"it's a paperweight."

Now she did glance up the road. Still nothing. "Just as the defensive system for most fighting vehicles— tanks, hovercraft, BattleMechs—is, obviously, the toughest to .attack, the propulsion system is easiest. Disabling the propulsion doesn't always mean the thing's out of the fight; a tank with a busted tread can still kill you. But sometimes you can produce side-effects to immobilizing a unit that incapacitates it in other ways."

"Abtakha, they should be in sight of you in one-five seconds," the lookout reported.

"Places," she told her students calmly. They moved unhurriedly to their preassigned hiding-spots. They had practiced going to ground all morning. After all, that was at least as important a facet of the scoutcraft she was teaching as overtly destructive skills. Lesson One: If they can see you, they can kill you. Don't be seen.

As she flowed in behind a rough-surfaced boulder she shot a look toward a man crouching several meters to her right. He was small, shorter than she was, wiry, with stiff red hair and a face like an elbow. He called himself the Rooster. While he had nominally come to her as part of her class in 'Mechbusting 101, his status wasn't all that clear.

In some ways he was instructing her. Cassie was conversant with explosives, but he was a master of them, having worked as a blaster for sundry mining and construction companies. He'd held down a lot of odd jobs, to hear him tell his stories, lumberjack, ranch-hand, miner, hunting guide. Though he never made a big deal of his own role in his tales—some friend or sometimes enemy of his was always the star—when the occasion arose he demonstrated competence in a wide enough range of skills to back his employment claims. In fact, as quiet and steady as he was in the field, Cassie half-wondered if she wouldn't find a stint as an agent of House Davion's Rabid Foxes if she ever got a real look at his resumé.

He gave her a squinty wink, jutted his jaw and nodded. He'd helped her set up today's demonstration, working explosives into a gimmick that required different mechanical means, and substantially greater risk, than she'd used before.

"Attacking the leg joints and legs is usually the quickest way to bring down a BattleMech," she said, not lowering her voice. The Drac patrol would be making sufficient noise that they wouldn't hear her if she shouted. "Just knocking one down won't necessarily take one out, even if you cripple a limb. But sometimes a fall will stun or even kill a Mech Warrior. And, don't forget, the things are a lot more fragile than you think. Bang a machine that complex around enough, it will break even if nothing ever gets through the armor.'' Credit Zuma for that wisdom. "And if you do cripple it, at the very least it will have a harder time bringing its weapons to bear on you."

Though the wind was blowing away from the little group, they all abruptly heard the creaking actuators and thudding footfalls of an approaching BattleMech. Everybody hunkered down a little lower into cover as a 60-ton Grand Dragon, the Draconis Combine's workhorse 'Mech, lumbered into view around the giant basalt knee.

The heavy 'Mech bore the Kurita dragon-in-a-circle on its right shoulder housing. Its slablike left shin also displayed the Black Dragon insignia. Behind it trundled a number of stakebed trucks laden with infantry, escorted by several wheeled APCs. Today's "lesson" was twofold. One purpose was to teach her students a way of taking out even the mightiest BattleMech without heavy 'Mech-style weapons. The other was to teach the Dracs who'd invaded Towne that the mountains were not theirs.

Cassie grinned at the sound of her students catching their collective breath. With its Telos DecaCluster long-range missile launcher jutting like a prow from its chest, and the Lord's Light 2 extended-range PPC in its right arm, the Grand Dragon could hit them at great range.

"Yes, it's a big bad boy," she said. "If you attacked it with, say, a portable SRM launcher, the only way you'd be able to take it down with just those two shots is with a lot of luck. And the 'Mech jock would probably spot you and kill you into the bargain. Mech-Warriors spend a lot of time learning to read where incoming mail conies from. However—"

She raised a radio-command detonator. The Grand Dragon reached a spot on the road marked by a white boulder propped atop another—invisible to anyone on the road, but easily in sight of Cassie and company—a hundred meters above the road. She pressed the button.

The small charge Rooster had made up for her blew out the smaller rocks that held a jumble of big boulders propped upright. The boulders bounded down the mountain toward the road. One great stone struck the 'Mech a glancing blow on its domed head. As it turned, bringing up its arms in a very human gesture of surprised self-defense, a fifteen-ton boulder slammed into its lower legs and swept it right off the road.

Though steep, the drop was not sheer. Gathering speed slowly, like a train pulling away from the station, the Grand Dragon seemed to float downslope on a river of snow and gravel. As it went it slammed into stout-boled conifer trees. Just before it reached bottom, its PPC right arm came off in a shower of blue sparks.

"Shoddy workmanship," Cassie said. "Teddy K needs to think about a purge at Luthien Armor Works. Now, pay attention. If you're going to attack a 'Mech's propulsion system, it helps to use a force multiplier to increase your chances of putting the target down to stay. Gravity works wonders."

"Blake's blood," somebody breathed. "Is that all it takes to take out a 'Mech?"

"Aside from ingenuity, courage, knowledge, timing, and luck," Cassie said dryly, "it doesn't take anything at all."

"Hey!" somebody else called out, "the rest are turning around. They're running!"

"Why are they doing that?" a young woman asked. "We haven't touched anybody but the BattleMech."

The Rooster laughed out loud. "You'd be surprised how quick some troops will find their guts turning to water once you yank the mighty BattleMech security blanket out of their hands."

"Besides, they don't know if we've got more exploding deadfalls waiting," Cassie added. "And of course we do."

A young man jumped up behind her and started to walk past. She kicked his legs out from under him, pretty much as her deadfall had done to the Grand Dragon.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"Well, we won, didn't we?" the red-faced youth demanded, sitting up. "I thought—"

"No, you didn't," Cassie said, "but you better start learning how real quick."

The other students laughed. She let them go on for a moment or two, then rapped out, "Who made the rest of you clowns so perfect you can laugh at other people making mistakes?"

That shut them up. Under other circumstances it would have been gratifying.

But nothing—not even another successful downing of an enemy BattleMech—could long distract her from the pain of Lady K's betrayal.

"Come on," she said, rising. "Time to make some distance. Even if their ground-pounders are beating feet, it won't take the Snakes any time at all to have their fast-movers down our necks.

"That's the second rule of guerrilla warfare, boys and girls: don't hang around to gloat."

BattleTech - LE5523

23

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

31 March 3058

Though the arrival of spring was still a few weeks away by most estimates—the weather of this accursed planet was cantankerously unpredictable, even for weather—it was a fine balmy day in Clark Ashton Smith Park. The hills were covered in snow that had fallen last night, and was still largely pristine, untrodden. The sky was blue, and despite the fact that the temperature had still to rise above freezing, the shining sun had already melted the snow's top layer so that it gleamed like glass.

"How goes the war, Taisuke-san?" asked Mr. Kimura.

The young man shrugged and laughed. Despite the cold he had the hood of his heavy parka thrown back. He was a handsome boy, with dark skin, dark eyes, and a stiff brush of black hair that had been shaved clear of his temples to facilitate better contact with his MechWarrior's neurohelmet. ,

"Well, Kimura-sensei. Though the mercenary scum sting us, they always run from us. Slowly but surely we're expanding our zone of control."

From a nearby hilltop came the seabird-cries of children, some pelting one another with snowballs, others queuing up to take turns sledding down the glossy slope. It always struck Mr. Kimura as marvelous, that despite war and occupation, children still played.

A beautiful day, children at play, and the son of his oyabun, whom he treasured as his own, walking by his side. His heart would have overflowed with happiness were it not for the Planetary Police escort, two men walking six meters ahead, two trailing a similar distance behind, eyes watchful under their dark-green caps, gloved fingers on the triggers of their stubby stun-guns. Even in Port Howard, their stronghold, identifiable servants of the Dragon dared not go abroad without armed escort.

"It's frustrating, though. They won't face us 'Mech to 'Mech. They won't stand to fight like warriors. And they send out women and children against us." A shadow crossed Taisuke's face. "We have to shoot them when we capture them; orders, since it's illegal for civilians to bear arms against us. I hate that, sensei. But it's the rebels' own fault. They are without honor."

"Honor takes on new meaning when one is fighting for one's home," Mr. Kimura said. He didn't care whether the security guards, recruited by Blaylock from the local population, heard him or not Even if by some chance one of them understood Japanese—and given Blaylock's cunning, Kimura was not prepared to rule out the possibility. "Remember that our own ancestors fought the samurai, as machi-yakko and otokodate."

The young man shrugged. "I only wish they'd fight us, let us settle this one way or another. I don't like the way we keep being drawn away from the center. A gas fills far more volume than a solid, but how much resistance can it offer? If we cannot make an end of them, we'll one day wake to find each buso-senshi and foot soldier standing solo guard over a few million hectares of wilderness. Then all the rebels have to do is knock us on the head, one at a time."

Mr. Kimura smiled with pleasure as he nodded. Not at what the boy was saying, which had begun to trouble him too. The thought Taisuke expressed offered the potential for ultimate disaster at the end of a string of unbroken successes. But he was proud of the perception the boy displayed in realizing the truth, and his wisdom in facing it squarely.

"I shall take it up with Kusunoki-sama," the older man said. "We must see this through on our own, unfortunately."

"You've word from my father?" the young Tai-i asked eagerly.

"Indeed. He sends his pride. But his tidings are not heartening. The seimeiyoshi-rengo still refuses to aid the Black Dragon. The other oyabun do not wish to appear to defy the Coordinator."

"But don't they see that the Coordinator's reluctance to exploit our enemies' weakness is the doing of the evil men who surround him, like the traitor Subhash Indrahar? If the Coordinator truly knew what we did here he would not oppose us in his heart. He could not."

"Indeed," the old man murmured, nodding.

But what he was thinking was, couldn't he? If the Coordinator really supported them, why had there been no word of encouragement? The ComStar adepts who controlled the HPG station made little secret of their dislike for the Kuritas on Towne, but they would never dare withhold a communication from the Coordinator. If Theodore Kurita knew what they were doing here— and he must—and if he approved, why had he given no sign?

And how much of what they opposed truly was the work of his evil retainers, his shitennol The reforms that had so weakened the Combine's moral fiber began many years ago, before Takashi's oh-so-suspicious death. And Theodore was a Kurita. Could he really be so weak as to allow himself to be manipulated by his counselors for so long a time?

"You are thoughtful, sensei," the young man said teasingly.

"I'm off walking among clouds," Mr. Kimura said. "Truly, we should not worry. Our pacification campaign goes well. Blaylock-san's scheme of winning local officials to our side, and greatly expanding the size and powers of the police force, seems to be working."

"I thought there was a problem with terrorist attacks."

"At first there were many murders, particularly of police officials. But they were apparently random, and they have tapered off as our security apparatus has strengthened its hold. And the replacements for the assassinated seem to be loyal adoptive sons of the Dragon, so it seems the mercenary bandits' efforts gained them nothing but increased karmic burden."

And adoptive daughters of the Dragon, too, although Kusunoki wasn't happy about that. The Tai-sho's misogyny was approaching obsession. Just two days ago he had decreed that no female could be given the honor of mention in reports.

"The Guards are expanding rapidly too, sensei," Taisuke said. "They're not worth much, but every one of them who falls is a Dragon's tear left unshed." According to Combine lore, each time a servant of the Dragon died in combat, the Dragon shed a single tear.

"Just so. And we are enjoying increasing success persuading corporate officials to cooperate with us.

The idea of a permanent end to labor unrest appeals to them. Even the hirelings of the traitor Chandrasekhar are falling into line readily enough."

The young man scowled briefly. "Do not be quick to judge them, Taisuke-Kun. They are gaijin, after all, who don't realize that an unfit master must still be served to the body's last breath and beyond. And they are merchants, after all, money-grubbers. They see what befalls those who try to resist us—loss of their comfortable jobs, expropriation of property, execution—and are afraid. They lack seishin, the warrior spirit."

A sled came hissing down the slope at them, an untenanted runaway with shouting children running in pursuit. It slid almost to Kimura's feet and stopped.

A small boy, so swaddled in winter clothes that only his eyes were visible, tried to run after it. One of the trail guards dropped him with a stun beam.

With a scream, a woman started running downslope toward them. The other guard in the rear shouldered his stunner. "Bakayaro!" Taisuke shouted, knocking up the weapon before it could discharge. "What are you doing? We're not barbarians!"

"Blaylock's orders," the guard said with none of the appropriate deference. "Anybody moves on you, we drop 'em. No exceptions."

For a moment Taisuke looked as if he would strike the man for his impertinence. Instead he wheeled away, ran to the child and knelt down beside him. The boy's hood and muffler had come loose, and blood trickled from one ear, but his breathing was regular and strong. Taisuke scooped him up in his arms.

He rose and faced the woman, who had halted several steps away. The guns of the guards were trained on her. One of the lead pair had a communicator to his mouth calling for backup. The children's happy racket had ceased as everyone turned to watch in terrified silence.

Taisuke walked to the woman. "Your boy will be all right," he said, stooping to deposit him gently in her arms. "He's just stunned. But you'd better get him home and tend to him."

She accepted the child's limp form. For a moment she. stared at the youthful MechWarrior, white-faced. Then she turned and ran.

Taisuke Toyama fixed the guard holding the communicator with a glare. "There is no need for assistance. The incident is done. Tell your superiors that. Now."

Shaking his head, he rejoined the old man. "This is bad. This is no way to win these people to the Dragon."

"The Dragon's ways are best," Mr. Kimura said, "but they are strange to these people. Better to bring them to right conduct gently, with loving guidance."

Kimura shook his own top-hatted head. "It is most peculiar. The quickest to show brutality are the ones we've recruited from the planet's own population. It is as if all their ninjo is of a negative, hurtful variety."

Taisuke glared around at the guards, who had resumed their earlier stations as the men they were safeguarding began walking again. "I don't trust them. Their loyalty seems to be to Blaylock, not the Dragon."

"That may be so," Mr. Kimura said. "It may occur to Blaylock-san to play a double game. But what of that, after all? As of now, when he augments his own power, he augments ours as well. If he should try to play us false, he can be replaced easily enough."

And he didn't care who heard that, either.

* * *

It was so cold in the clearing that each breath was like inhaling broken glass. The night sky was clear. Cassie stood alone and felt the weight of the stars weighing down upon her.

Around her rose the peaks of the southern Eiglophians, snowclad ghosts by alien starlight. Nearer by, the lordly conifers surrounded the clearing like a palisade.

The message had been explicit: she must meet the DropShip alone. When the rendezvous was done she could call in her comrades to carry away whatever cargo was offloaded, but not before.

ComStar was remaining neutral on Towne. But the local adepts were badly shaken ever since the Word of Blake sect had taken Terra from them some weeks before. ComStar was eager to accommodate the Dragon. And that most decidedly did not mean the renegades who presumed to act in Theodore Kurita's name.

Kusunoki's military intelligence and Blaylock's nascent secret police were watching the Port Howard HPG like a rodan with its eye on a fall-fattened whiffle-tail. But the ComStar acolytes managed to get messages out to the resistance regularly.

The news from outside was mixed. As expected, Victor Davion was too preoccupied with his sister and the threat of the Clans to pay much heed to what was happening on Towne. Nor could Theodore afford a civil war right now, with the hardcore Crusader faction among the Clans—those who wanted to renounce the truce and move on to conquer Terra—seeming everywhere in the ascendant. The situation of Towne's defenders was the same as that of their enemies, which they knew thanks to the friendly gnomes of ComStar: no reinforcement, no resupply.

At least, no major resupply. But tonight a single DropShip would dare a pirate point and the Combine orbital aerospace patrols to meet Cassie and deliver something.

There, low above the peaks to the east: a new star, growing brighter as she watched. She slipped her hand inside her coat pocket for the reassuring feel of her sneaky pistol. For all the good that would do her against the armaments even the smallest DropShip carried, if treachery were intended.

The star grew larger, split apart into landing lights as a DropShip assumed shadowy form. It had the nominal streamlining of a standard military aerodyne, with a blunt snout, big air scoops, round canards up front and stubby triangular wings with down-turned tips astern.

Cassie's eyes got big. That was no Inner Sphere design, she thought. That was a Broadsword. And that meant—

With a rushing roar of chemical-jet lifters, the ship settled into a snow tornado a hundred meters away from Cassie. When the thrown-up snow settled, a ramp was down and two shapes stood watchfully flanking it. They seemed lightly clad for the chill.

Each figure looked almost three meters tall, and was armed with weapons that looked like baby autocannon.

Elementals! Cassie felt adrenaline run through her veins like current at the sight of one of the Clan's genetically engineered infantry. "What the Foxtrot, over?" she asked aloud.

A figure came down the ramp and walked toward her, long shiny black cloak whipping about its booted ankles. It was a head taller than her and slim built, and its head was of normal adult-human proportion. That meant it fell somewhere between the genetically engineered somatype of the Clan aerospace pilot and their MechWarrior model.

The figure stopped several meters away from Cassie. It was a man, with pale hair reached into a mohawk atop his mostly shaven skull, and a dark intricate tattoo covering most of one cheek.

"Lieutenant Senior Grade Suthorn?" he asked. She nodded. "I'm Mason. I see my appearance is strange to you. I am a merchant. Your people don't see many of our caste."

"I've ... seen ones like you before."

He raised an eyebrow, but didn't ask. Behind him men in insulated jumpsuits were jockeying heavy-loaded cargo dollies down the ramp to the snow.

She stood for a few moments in silence. Then: "Why?"

"Why are we helping you?" He smiled without humor. "First, you should understand that we Clan merchants are not puppets of the warrior caste."

"But we're enemies!"

"You're no enemy of mine, unless you so wish. Listen: The great Kerensky left the Inner Sphere because its rulers would not lay aside their ambitions to make peace. Now our Crusader faction is intent upon bringing perpetual war for its own sake to the cradle of humanity. This is not the way."

"So it's political—"

"No. It's survival. Once the truce ends, especially if it is repudiated by the Clans, a war will begin that can only end in extermination. Neither your leaders nor ours offer any alternative. Only the man who sent us here holds forth hope of a different future: Chandrasekhar Kurita."

Curiosity for its own sake was not a major component of Cassie's nature, but she ached to question him further. He held up a gloved hand for silence.

"No more discussion. You'll see why."

Two more Clan merchants, one female, approached. Between them they escorted a smallish lumpy man. As they came up he impatiently shook back his hood, revealing a shapeless black beret beneath. He took off a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses and tried to clear the condensation on his coat sleeve.

"You must be Miss Suthorn," he said. "I'm Enrico Katsuyama. You can call me Ernie; I don't mind. I'm not much one for formality. I'm glad to be here. Hi, hi."

"Um," Cassie said. Was that a glint of humor in Mason's eyes? She was thinking, Enrico Katsuyamal Abdulsattah had briefed the Caballeros on him; he had directed the propaganda war against the Seventeenth while the Internal Security Force was trying to kill Uncle Chandy back on Hachiman a year and a half ago. He was chief assistant to Takura Migaki, the raffishly elegant head of the progagandist Voice of the Dragon. Which meant that Katsuyama was a high-ranking officer in the ISF. Unlikely as he appeared for that role.

He was standing there blinking moistly up at her. "I'm pleased to meet you, Ernie," she said. For lack of anything better to do Cassie stuck out a hand.

He caught it up in a limp two-handed grasp and worked her hand like a pump handle. "Great to be here. Is this Towne?"

"We must go now," Mason said. "For your sake more than ours."

He shook hands with Cassie too, a firm forearm to forearm grip. "Farewell," he said. "May you bid wisely and well."

"You too," she said, throat dry. She had never in her life expected to wish well to a Clanner. They had taken Patsy from her—

The three Clanners turned to go. "Bye, you guys!" Ernie called after them. They turned back to wave, not unkindly.

"Nice people, those," Ernie said to Cassie as the Clansmen vanished back into their ship. "Don't think they're Draconians, and I don't think they're F-Cs, either. Could they be from the Periphery somewhere? Some of them were pretty big."

She stared at him. Was it possible that an Associate Director of the all-knowing ISF was so ingenuous he didn't know Clanners when he saw them? Even though their garb, as far as he could see, had borne no Clan identifications—unusual of itself—their identity had been obvious to Cassie.

From her brief but already exhausting acquaintance with this man, she could believe he was that innocent ... almost. Had Uncle Chandy revealed the deadly secret of his Clan dealings to the Smiling One? Oh, what kind of game are you playing, Grandfather?

She could only hope the fat man knew what he was doing.

The ramp closed up into the hull, sucking up the light with it. Ernie smiled slyly and stuck a hand inside his coat. He had a big gap between his two front incisors.

"Now that they're gone," he said, "I have a present for you. It was entrusted to me by a redheaded friend of yours."

He brought out a data disk and waved it under her nose. She shied back. Ninyu Kerai sent this? She snorted. Likely it was smeared with topical poison. She wasn't naive enough to believe he was sending her a love-gift. Their brief affair meant nothing more to him than would have snuffing out the life of a minor nuisance to House Kurita.

The turbines of the Broadsword's in-atmosphere jets began to whine up the scale. Reluctantly she took the disk, then grabbed Ernie by the hand. "They're getting ready to lift, Mr. Katsuyama," she said. "Maybe we should go stand behind those trees."

* * *

Twenty minutes later a Karnov landed amid an upside-down snowstorm. Zuma Gallegos and a number of his astechs emerged and swarmed over the containers the Clanners had left sitting in the snow. Cassie clambered aboard with Ernie trailing after.

The pilot was a thick, middle-aged Ranger she didn't know. She introduced her charge to him as Ernie.

One of Zuma's assistants stuck his head in the side hatch. "Hey, Cass, ¡mira! he called. "These crates all got the Ghost Bear chop on 'em."

He turned his head and spat. The Caballeros regarded Clanners, quite literally, as evil beings.

"Recovered Clan tech," she told him. "Spoils of war. Courtesy of Teddy the K."

"Hijo la. Good to have friends, ¿qué no? Still, I'd rather have a company or so of those DEST spooks."

"Pablito, you don't know what you're asking for. Now shag ass and get those crates aboard before the orbital patrol spots us and sends a Sholagar down to check us out."

* * *

"He's nuts," Mariska Savage said, coming into the room.

Cassie looked up from the deskcomp Astro Zombie was hunched over, trying to coax Ninyu's "present" to give up its secrets. She was one of half a dozen 'lleros packed into the little spare bedroom of a timber-camp operator's house that was serving for the moment as the regiment's Permanent Floating Headquarters.

"What say?" she asked the black Caballera.

"Katsuyama. Ernie," Risky said. "He's crazy as a Mason jar full of blue-bottle flies, to quote a favorite Southwestern phrase. But he knows his stuff."

It wasn't all Clan tech in the crates the DropShip had left behind. Some of them contained some very spiffy communications tech of evident Inner Sphere origin. Risky and Astro Zombie had been impressed; they didn't think the spotty Kurita tech-base had it in it.

"I majored in mass communications," Risky said. "I always liked the techie stuff, and it turned out to be the way to go to get a good job in the industry. But I got the whole package, and I assure you, Ernie knows his stuff. He's a genius—or maybe an idiot-savant."

Cassie shrugged. "Migaki's pretty sharp, I hear—"

"Indeed he is. He's the one who concocted that smear campaign portraying Hanse Davion as the 'Black Knight.' A pretty piece of bastardy, that."

"And I'm sure the Smiling One would've vetted him thoroughly before OKing him for the job. So I guess he must have something on the ball."

"He and you got up pretty brown on Hachiman, if I recall," Risky agreed. "I'm going to ask Himself there"—she bobbed her head at Astro Zombie—"if I can work as Ernie's assistant. He's all thumbs when it comes to the technical end of things, but the things I can learn!" Her cheeks were flushed and her big dark-chocolate eyes glistened.

"Yee-HAAAW!" The rebel yell bulged the walls of the little room. Cassie went thirty centimeters in the air and came down with her snubby hideout pistol in both hands.

Marshal "Astro Zombie" Harris turned from his monitor and blinked to find himself peering down the muzzle of every sidearm in the room but his.

"What?" he asked.

"Why'd you make that awful noise?" Cassie demanded. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

"Well, excuse me for existing, Lieutenant," the Chief Tech said with a sneer. "I was just overcome with joy at my discovery. Forgive the hell out of me for indulging in a little human emotion."

"Well, we don't want to discourage that, now, do we?" Risky said, returning her Federated autopistol to safe and tucking it back in its holster.

Cassie reluctantly tipped the revolver's short barrel up, off-line with Astro Zombie's pointy nose. "Only you can talk that way and live, Marshal," she said.

"So are you going to tell us what's in there," Raven asked, "or do we get to beat it out of you?"

"Only a nifty little software routine that looks like it can override just about any BattleMech security program in the known universe," Astro Zombie said smugly. "And as hot as this little mamacita is, in the unknown universe as well."

"I like him better when he sticks to nerd-speak," Raven remarked.

And then it hit them all.

"Jesús, María, y José," Zuma breathed. "It's the Ultimate Hot-wire Program!"

He spoke of it as if it were the Grail. Which in a sense it was. Somebody equipped with such a routine could seize total control of any BattleMech he could get physically inside.

"I guess that means Cowboy and Kali and the rest of them can get their rides back," Raven said. "Provided, of course, that the Snakes let us at 'em."

"When the time comes," Cassie said, "they will."

BattleTech - LE5523

24

Seventeenth Recon Permanent Floating Regimental HQ

Southern Eiglophians

Koth Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

18 April 3058

Don Carlos's face brightened as Diana Vásquez appeared on the screen. "Ah, mi amor! It is good to see you."

She smiled briefly, then her expression turned sad. "I heard the news about poor Peter," she said. "I'm so sorry."

Don Carlos crossed himself. "May Our Lady keep him in peace," he said.

To the Caballeros' surprise, the Towne Air Rangers in their eccentric aircraft had more than held their own against the invaders' aerospace fighters. Maneuverability, supreme skill, and heat-seeking missiles had kept the small propeller-driven craft competitive against their bigger, faster, fusion-powered cousins. Fighting an almost exclusively defensive battle, the Rangers had prevented the Dracs from gaining air supremacy.

But the renegade Kurita pilots were tough and courageous. And sometimes they got lucky, as they had the day before when a Desolation Angel aerospace lance caught Third Battalion Commander White-Nose Pony flying back to his command in Nemedia in a Ruedel two-seater. The Dracs had bounced the Ruedel and its two Voss escorts, shooting down all three. The Voss pilots ejected safety. Neither the Singer nor his pilot made it out.

"We're lighting many candles for him here at Mariposa," Diana said. "We miss him."

Don Carlos looked away. "We'll miss him worse when the fighting starts."

She touched the base of her throat apprehensively. "Is the time near?"

Don Carlos sighed and shook his head. "Much remains to be done. But we've made good progress. Many of our allies are in place for the final stroke. And this man from Luthien, Enrico Katsuyama—he's working wonders, if Howard Blaylock's response is any indication."

"I've seen some of Señor Blaylock's broadcasts. The poor man should have a care for his blood pressure."

With the help of Mariska Savage and a horde of local electronics buffs, Ernie Katsuyama was making use of much more than the bag of tricks he had brought along from Luthien. One tool was the means by which this conversation, untraceable and secure, was taking place between Don Carlos in his temporary headquarters and Camp Mariposa two hundred kilometers away: the Towne communications-satellite network. The sats had been designed, to the annoyance of the former Planetary Government as well as the current regime, to make it impossible to trace or block traffic through them. Masercast uplinks cost very slight power-draw, making it hard to triangulate them with radio direction-finding equipment. But the government couldn't tamper with them without bringing the planetary economy to a screeching halt.

Another ploy was faked seditious broadcasts by established air personalities, fabricated on Katsuyama's special Voice of the Dragon mixing board, and which he slipped into genuine holovid and radio broadcasts through plants at the stations. Ernie and Risky were especially fond of that one. Even when the broadcasts were proven to be phony, a certain taint of suspicion still clung to the victimized broadcaster. It was an excellent way to pay back particularly obnoxious news readers.

What had elevated Blaylock's blood pressure to dangerous levels most recently was short-wave radio broadcasts to Towne's farflung network of ham-radio enthusiasts. Cheap little remote transmitters whipped up by local techies were scattered all over Hyboria— and beyond, with the help of Kommandant Trevor Waites, who had headed back to the southern archipelagoes to stir up trouble. These sucked down satellite feeds from Ernie's propaganda workshop and sent them out over the air for anybody to hear. Government forces could RDF the drones and destroy them, but Radio Direction Finding couldn't choke off the broadcasts.

Programming included nasty satire, exposes of PG misdeeds and incompetence, and highly detailed how-to segments on sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and covert resistance. What yanked the Planetary Chairman's chain in particular was an announcement of the results of a contest whose entrants had submitted their most ingenious suggestions as to the best way to execute Howard Blaylock once the Drac invaders were booted off-planet ...

"How are things there?" Don Carlos asked.

"We had an outbreak of runny noses among the children in the nursery, but that seems to be nothing but colds, not serious. Otherwise, we're well. Leftenant Prynn is chafing to get into the fighting, but she's being very gracious about her flight being stationed here, under the circumstances. I'm still teaching Dolores Gallegos how to work El Cuco." El Cuco—the Bogeyman—was what Diana had christened her experimental O-Bakemono.

"How is she doing?"

"I'm afraid I'm not up to the standards of the instructors at the New Avalon Military Academy. But basic 'Mech operation isn't hard to pick up. And it's not as if she'd be doing any dogfighting." The powerful and extremely long-ranged Arrow IV missile system was designed for artillery support, engaging targets well beyond line of sight. A MechWarrior driving an Arrow-equipped machine was never supposed to see an enemy BattleMech. The OBK-M10's close-in armament, three small extended-range lasers, was purely nominal, good mainly for discouraging ground-pounders from attaching shaped charges to its foot actuators.

"It's mostly a way of keeping me sharp, and continuing to shake the Bakemono down," Diana admitted.

"You are wise as always." Having made the command decision to withhold his 'Mechs from combat as much as possible for the time, Don Carlos was determined to keep the prototype OBK well out of harm's way. Especially since the Luthien Armor Works designers had been unable to build a machine capable of moving as fast as the original Naga.

The Colonel thanked Our Lady that military considerations and the desires of his heart alike dictated the same thing: that Diana stay well behind the lines for now.

The Colonel sighed. "I must go now, my love. But before I do, I should warn you to keep an eye out for Gordon Baird. I'm sending him to Mariposa to rest for a while."

Despite the fact that the long-range plan seemed to be progressing well, the Seventeenth's intel officer had never let go of his notion that they were doomed, that they could never hope to beat the numerically superior invaders. Don Carlos had come to the reluctant conclusion that his old friend had lost his nerve. He thought it best to put him among the noncombatants where his worries couldn't do much harm.

Diana smiled and nodded. "I'll make him welcome. He works so hard, a rest will do him good. And you, my love—our enemies are hunting you. Be careful."

"Always," the Colonel assured her. "Yo te quiero."

* * *

"You need to be more careful with these straps," Cassie said, holding up a telltale tag-end from the pack on Marly Joles's back. "They can rattle when you move. A scout has to be absolutely silent."

The girl nodded solemnly. "I'm sorry, Cassie. It won't happen again."

Cassie made a face. The girl took her training seriously, and that was good. But somehow she took it too seriously. Cassie didn't like that.

She glanced at Marly's cherished 6 mm rifle, propped against the bunkhouse wall with its optics capped. Custom built as a highly accurate, flat-shooting hunting rifle, whose low recoil made it suitable for a slight-framed adolescent girl, it had proven itself an excellent sniper's weapon as well. As the ten black tacks driven into the buttstock attested. Marly was taking payment for her father's murder in installments. With interest.

Humming tunelessly to herself, Cassie taped the offending strap down. Around them the rest of the raiding-party prepared for their ambush of a Planetary Police patrol. Cassie would not be going along. Don Carlos—probably at the behest of that interfering badger Sandra Ten Bears—had ordered her to stand down for a while. Ten Bears was afraid Cassie was driving herself too hard. That was nonsense; so what if I've lost a few kilos?

She patted Marly on the fanny. The girl gave her a perfunctory smile and went to squat by the wall, where she reflexively picked up her rifle and began to inspect it. What is it that bothered her about the girl? Cassie asked herself. That she was making an early exit from adolescence? Cassie hadn't had much childhood herself.

Maybe that's what bothers you. The last she heard, very distinctly, in Kali MacDougall's voice. She shuddered.

She was checking another militia volunteer's pack when a voice called from the door to outside, "Cassie, girl."

She looked up, already knowing she'd seen Tim Moon standing in the doorway, lit from behind by the sunlight trying bravely to make a dent in the Gunder-land Mountains snowpack, grinning at her. She turned and walked through the inner door into the main house.

He caught her in a corridor aromatic from the hardwood planking that made up the walls, grabbed her wrist and spun her around. "Will you keep running from me forever?" he asked.

She covered his hand with her free hand, peeled his fingers from hers, twisted his arm to lock-out the elbow joint and force his face to the rough floorboards. "Don't ever grab me like that," she said.

"Ow! I'm sorry. I admit my mistake. Now kindly let me up."

She released him and stepped back against the wall to stand with arms tightly folded. "What do you want?" she asked.

"You can be mad at me; I've earned it. And you never have to talk to me again, if that's your choice. But you're a fool to allow the likes of me to drive a wedge between you and your friend Kali."

She made an exasperated sound and turned to walk away. "Please. Don't make me grab you again. I can't fly my Voss very well if you break my elbow."

"Look, there's nothing to talk about. Ka—Captain MacDougall was my friend. But that ended with what she did to me."

"But she didn't do anything to you. She did it to me, and very nicely in point of fact—no, please stay, sometimes I let my facetious ways run away from me. But the point is, what happened was between her and me, and not intended to affect you in any way."

"Did you really believe it wouldn't?" she asked bitterly.

"It never crossed my mind, to be brutally honest. The point is, Lady K had made no compact with you to stay away from me. Nor did I ever promise to keep away from her."

Cassie squeezed her lips tight shut and blinked back tears. "You wouldn't understand."

"Of course I do. You're mad at your friend for breaking a promise she never made you. And it's eating you up. Look at you, girl; if you lose any more weight some rancher's wife will nail you to the side of a barn to dry."

"Well, since I'm so ugly now, I don't see why you should bother with me—"

"Oh, stop that. You're not ugly, you're beautiful, only looking a little peaked. And just because I never swore to make you my forever one-and-only doesn't mean I don't care for you."

He grabbed her hands. This time she did not break away. "And I care for Kali, too. And through no fault of her own she's flown into a thunderhead, and it's all she can do to keep herself aloft. She needs you, Cassie. And you need her."

Cassie was shaking her head so hard that strands of her long dark hair came free of the complicated knot she'd tied them in, and whipped her face. Tears fuzzed her vision.

"Yes," Tim said. "You can't stand off the universe single-handed, Cassiopeia; no one can. And with a friend like Lady K ready to take your side, you're blind foolish even to try."

She was clinging to him as if he had just saved her from drowning, sobbing convulsively. He held her and murmured softly to her, saying nothing in particular, only soothing as he stroked her hair. And when the worst had passed, he put a crooked finger beneath her chin, raised her face, and kissed her.

For a moment she resisted. Then she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him furiously. She couldn't help herself.

Yes, I can, a voice said from the back of her head. But I choose not to.

* * *

Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki, self-proclaimed Military Governor of Towne, was doing push-ups on his forefingers. His loyal retainers gathered around, clapping their hands and chanting the count: "Forty-five ... forty-six ... forty-seven ..."

I suppose it should not surprise me that we always seem to have these audiences in a gymnasium, thought Mr. Kimura, standing to the side with an outward serenity that belied his internal state.

At last the General collapsed, to applause and worshipful laughter from his flunkies. He rolled over and sat up, drank deeply from a squeeze-bottle offered him.

"Very impressive," Kimura said dryly.

"You should work out, Kimura-sensei," the General said, flushed with endorphin release. "It would strip years off you."

"I thank the General for his kind suggestion, but I have no wish to strip away my years. It's taken decades to accrue them." He bowed.

Kusunoki frowned, then laughed. His retainers laughed too. "I get it. That was a joke."

"If it pleases the Tai-sho"

Kusunoki rose and accepted a towel to begin drying his sweat-sodden hair. "You really should relax more, Kimura-sensei. You take life so seriously."

"I take my responsibilities seriously. And that is why I must disturb you at your exercise."

The General looked at him a moment, then waved a hand. The beautiful young retainers evaporated. Kusunoki sat down cross-legged, instead of in a traditional kneeling posture, and draped the towel around his shoulders.

"Well?"

"We are having problems with certain sectors of the economy. To put it bluntly, some of the people to whom we have entrusted the planet's productive assets are busy looting them to the walls, and in the bargain treating their workers so badly that they threaten rebellion despite the consequences. There have already been incidents."

"So ka? Most of the people we've given farms and factories to have been the cronies of your boss. Why bother complaining to me?"

"Ah. Your Excellency is perfectly correct. However, I find myself in a delicate position. I was therefore hoping, in my unworthy way, that you might be able—"

"You want me to do you a favor?" Kusunoki put back his splendid head and laughed. "Certainly, sensei, certainly. I'll squeeze a few until they pop, and the others will come around."

Mr. Kimura bowed low. "I thank the General." It was a serious issue and even Kusunoki knew it. If they were to integrate Towne into the Dragon's empire, there must be commerce with the Combine. The Combine was hungry enough for the copper, exotic lumber, and furs the planet had to export, but the seimeiyoshi-rengo had placed the world under virtual embargo to show their loyalty to the Coordinator rather than to the Black Dragon Society. If enough goods could be stockpiled, then some of the greedier kai would not be able to resist coming to buy, and the seimeiyoshi-rengo be damned. But the opportunistic lesser oyabun and hangers-on Toyama-sama had wished on the expedition were stealing everything first.

Because there was no telling how long the Tai-sho's elevated mood would last, Kimura decided to press another concern.

"General, I do not presume to advise you on the military arts."

"That is wise." The good-fellow edge was coming off now.

"Yet a servant who observes that the house is on fire does not serve his master by failing to tell him of it, no matter how little the master cares to hear it. The struggle with the mercenary bandits wears on, and while your forces are ever-victorious, all they are doing in the long run is spreading themselves ever-thinner across the whole Hyborian continent. And the longer the rebels are able to keep the field against us without being duly chastened, the more the people will be encouraged to consider resistance themselves."

The Tai-sho cocked an eyebrow at him. "So you suggest I find a way to bring the foreign money-soldiers and their deluded lackeys to a pitched battle and crush them?"

Kimura bowed. "Your Excellency expresses it so much better than my humble powers allow me to."

Kusunoki sprang to his feet. "I would deem your suggestion impertinent, Teacher," he said, "had I not this very day set in motion a plan to carry it out." And he threw back his head and laughed at the old man's look of astonishment.

BattleTech - LE5523

25

Camp Mariposa

Western Eiglophians

Gunderland Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

18 April 3058

They were coming out from hearing Mass said by Father Montoya in the Copper Queen commissary when Richard and Dolores Gallegos' youngest child, Natasha, tugged at Diana Vásquez's hand and pointed upward.

"Look, Diana," she said. "It's another sun, coming down to visit us. Is it Our Lady, like at Lourdes?"

Diana looked up. She knew at once the brilliant light piercing the high overcast was not an apparition of the Blessed Virgin. It was the drive flame of a DropShip. As she looked, a dozen other lesser fires appeared through the clouds: BattleMechs descending on strap-on jet-packs.

"Run to the shelter, Natasha," she said calmly. "The rest of you children follow. Hurry!"

The sky split open overhead to the supersonic passage of a lance of Sholagars. A moment later explosions began to blossom across the vast pan-shape of the open-pit mine. Why they were bombing the pit Diana could not say—unless they intended to show the defenders that resistance was futile.

The other children obediently dashed for the entrance to a subterranean bunker forty meters ahead. Natasha Gallegos clung to Diana's leg. Overhead still more 'Mechs were dropping through the cloud cover.

"Come along, honey." Holding Natasha by the hood of her jacket, Diana rushed to an ore-carrier parked ten meters away. The monstrous dump-truck could carry an Atlas in its bed; it was designed to accept the 100-ton bites the giant power shovels took out of the earth at each stroke. Though not armored as such, it would provide excellent protection.

Hunching over to shield the trembling five-year-old with her own body, Diana looked up in time to see 85 tons of a Drac Katana plummeting uncontrolled toward the surface.

* * *

"That's one to you, Nitro Three," Leftenant Sondra Prynn said, banking right to avoid a PPC lightning-bolt from a descending Panther 'Mech. Her voice was as uninfected as if she were asking to borrow a stapler. Her fellow Rangers didn't call her "Ice" for nothing.

"Thanks, Nitro Leader." Nitro Three's voice rang with triumph. She had just blasted loose a dropping Katana's jet pack with her machine guns. "This is what you call a target-rich environ—"

The voice broke off in a piercing pop of static. Ice never looked over. Instead she kicked the rudder and hauled her little Voss through a barrel-roll to the right that brought her nose pointing toward where her wingie had been a moment before.

All that was left of Three's Voss was a cloud of smoke and drifting debris. Annunicators shrilled in Ice's ears as the seeker-heads of her missiles locked on to the drive-flame of the Sholagar that had killed her wingie. She pressed the firing-stud. Once.

She had plans. They definitely included glory. Though not survival. Already she was all that remained of Nitro; Four had been shot down trying to take off, and her usual wingman's plane had been destroyed on the ground.

She had six missiles. She would spend them like a miser. And hope to die with empty racks.

The seeker flew straight, hot, and true. Its explosion shattered the ceramet venturi that channeled the blast from the fusion drive. The circle-winged fighter began to slew left as incandescent gas vented at an angle to its line of flight. Then it vanished in a white flash as its containment-field failed and the plasma of its fusion engine ate it.

Ice allowed herself one of her rare smiles. First kill! Her whole life had been aimed like a bullet at this moment—

She knew—didn't sense, knew—that another enemy was diving on her. She was still slow from her barrel-roll. She brought her wings level, kicked the pedals again and let the two extra-large rudders she had painstakingly installed herself snap her around in a non-banked turn.

It was a maneuver that would likely have sent an aircraft without the Voss's canard foreplanes into a flat spin. It took the Shilone jock making a firing pass at her completely by surprise. The pink beams of the big nose-mounted laser and the smaller pair on the aerospace fighter's wings missed the Voss as Ice pulled her pipper onto the heavy machine's cockpit and triggered a long burst from her machine guns.

It would have taken the puny Kicker MGs a long time to chew through the thick, slanted transpex of the Shilone canopy. But the sudden brutal impacts right in front of his or her face added to the enemy plane's weird maneuver, convinced the Drac pilot to want no part of this. The pilot cranked the big flying wing into a thruster-assisted maximum-gee turn.

Ice unloaded, dove scant meters beneath the fire-stream from the Shilone's engine—no less lethal than its weaponry—pulled up long enough to take an easy deflection IR shot at the huge flare. Short-range missiles leapt from the Thornbush rack in the aerospace fighter's tail. Ice dove and they streaked harmlessly overhead.

The missile blew Off a chunk of the Shilone's right rudder and cracked its exhaust nozzle. The flying wing went into a flat spin and took out an ore-crusher as it crashed.

Ice traded height for speed, streaked low over the great Copper Queen compound. Most of the enemy 'Mechs had already reached the ground and blown the explosive clamps to jettison their thruster-packs. Kusunoki had pulled out all the stops—there had to be at least a battalion in the assault, plus what Ice thought of as an aerospace group. The miserable two lances of mercenary 'Mechs assigned to ground defense, plus the weird pseudo-Naga, didn't stand a chance.

Up here it had only begun.

She began to climb. The sky was so full of Drac fighters that they were spending most of their attention on not getting in each other's way. As arrogant in their way as any MechWarrior, many of the aerospace pilots literally didn't see the tiny shard of Ice's Voss. And not just because of its low-visibility robin's-egg blue paint scheme: in the aerojock's world view, a ludicrous little bass-awkward prop job like hers could not possibly pose a threat.

But now the impossible had happened, not once but twice. She'd been noticed.

Suddenly the fire-trails were weaving all about her, above, below. She dodged, dipped, jinked, and soared.

She was the focus of attention of at least six Sholagars and two Shilones. Laser beams split the air around her. Streams of tracers sought her, came perilously close to Drac machines. She smiled tightly, imagining the enemy pilots choking their frequencies cursing each other for the near-misses.

The Drac pilots had to worry about more than shooting or running into one another. Ice still had four missiles riding beneath her wings. The aerofighters couldn't take long-range shots for fear of fratricide, but they had to make close-in passes without getting out in front of the poky little Voss. Which wasn't possible. She fired her heat-seekers as she got strong tones, forcing the targeted pilots to abandon thought of anything but losing the hatefully persistent hunter-killers.

A Sholagar broke hard right to avoid her next-to-last missile. Its pilot was canny enough to cut the drive, depriving the seeker head of its glaring target and causing it to go ballistic, flying on until it plowed harmlessly into a beam. Unfortunately, that inspiration so preoccupied the pilot that he didn't notice the Shilone diving on Ice from her two o'clock. The two fighters collided in an enormous yellow fireball.

The blast tossed the Voss like a leaf. Ice let the overpressure take her where it would, confident in her skill and the little plane's sky-keeping capability. It was all but impossible to stall one of the little rear-engine craft—and she knew the envelope of hers as she knew the contours of her own compulsively fit body.

She found herself almost face-to-face with another Sholagar that had chopped its drive and was firing full retros, trying to keep the Voss in the firing arc of its forward-firing armament long enough to kill. Ice switched to machine guns again, held a bullet stream on her enemy's windscreen. The two craft were closing at a negligible rate, barely making headway. Ice felt her wings beginning to lose their grip on air; in a heartbeat her craft's nose would drop, and it would dive of its own accord until it picked up enough speed for the wings to lift. The Sholagar jock was wringing maximum effect from the lift of its circular wing— high for an aerospace job—and counting on his rockets to save him from a fatal stall when that lift failed.

What failed was the transpex canopy. The Sholagar pitched down, its left wing laser slicing off the tip of Ice's starboard wing, passed beneath her and flew straight into the ground.

I'm an ace! Ice exulted. Annunciator whine pierced the adrenaline buzz in her ears. She launched her last missile, uncertain which of the swirling enemy craft was the target.

She never saw it miss its target. Her enemies seemed to solve their targeting problems all at once. Short-range missile salvos and laser pulses converged on the tiny white arrowhead.

The Ranger planes bought their maneuverability at a high cost: no armor to speak of. Ice and her Voss disappeared in a compound flash.

On the ground, the invaders were already beginning to round up their prisoners. The one-sided fight was done.

* * *

The face on the flatscreen was so perfect it was almost nondescript, framed with a faultless blonde hair helmet. "This is Dilonna Saunders, coming to you live from the courtyard of the Planetary Government's Administrative Center in Port Howard ..."

Dozens of Caballeros were jammed into the barn of the farm that was serving as the current venue of the Seventeenth's Permanent Floating Headquarters, watching in tense silence. Don Carlos had moved his HQ down onto the Nemedian plain between the central range and the southern Gunderlands to counter an aggressive move by Kusunoki, who had occupied the provincial capital of Numalia with a company each of Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery armor and infantry, stiffened by a Black Dragon BattleMech lance. The Colonel hoped to hand the invaders a showy ground-grabbing victory to encourage the Tai-sho to drain Port Howard even further of troops.

Then Camp Mariposa fell, and all calculations zeroed out.

The image switched to a diminutive woman standing with her back to the gray stone facing of the courtyard wall, head held high against the light rain, black hair streaming unbound down the shoulders of her orange denim jumpsuit. Her beautiful face radiated serenity. A name ran like an electric charge through the watchers in the barn: Diana.

* * *

On one side stood dignitaries, Tai-sho Kusunoki and his retinue, Mr. Kimura watchful and silent beneath his umbrella, Howard Blaylock all aglow and twice the size of life in his role as master of ceremonies. On the other side huddled twenty of the Caballero children captured at Mariposa, weeping, clinging to each other, crying out to the solitary captive. An electrified cordon and Planetary Policemen with stun batons kept them from rushing to her side.

A commotion. Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird pushed forward through a throng of journalists to confront Blaylock, two DCMS troopers trailing ineffectually behind.

"What's going on here?" he demanded. "You promised they'd be well treated! I kept my part of the bargain. I gave you the camp, and you only took casualties because your air-jocks were too incompetent to deal with a lone fanatic woman in a museum piece."

Kusunoki's frown at the interruption turned to a mask of rage, like an ancient samurai's mempo designed to dishearten foes on the battlefield. As a result of Sondra Prynn's farewell performance he had already ordered that any DCMS pilot who survived being shot down by a Towne Air Ranger aircraft should be stripped of rank and sent to the line infantry to atone for the disgrace.

Howard Blaylock pursed his lips. "This is a solemn moment here, Gordo. Back off."

The soldiers grabbed the tall man's arms. Irritably he shook them off. "You can't do this! It's inhuman!"

From the small of his back, beneath the tails of his dark suitcoat with the padded shoulders, Blaylock pulled a short-barreled revolver. He looked at it a moment, as if surprised to find it in his hand.

"You know," he said, "I never used to carry a gun. It was a question of prestige ... I figured I was too good for that. If I needed it, I had plenty of people to do the shooting for me.'.'

He looked Baird in the eye. "Funny how times change," he said. "I never shot anybody before." And he shot Baird through the forehead.

"Don't ever tell me what to do," Blaylock said quietly.

Some of the journalists screamed and jumped back. Others crowded forward, thrusting forth lenses as if to scoop up the scene. Blaylock turned to them, waving his gun hand in the air. "No pictures! This never happened. The real show's over there."

Green uniforms bustled forward to herd the journalists back to their places. They dutifully returned their attention to the woman and the wall.

The young Chu-i in charge of the firing-party had been chosen because he was a DCMS regular, he was very Japanese-looking, and he was male. These considerations were very important to Jeffrey Kusunoki, and while this was all Blaylock's show, General Kusunoki was footing the bill. The youngster's complexion was anything but a normal healthy wheat-color today; it was sick-pale beneath the black strap of his cap, cutting into his lower Up. He wore a MechWarrior's gray jersey with red stripe, and held a katana naked to the rain.

But giri overcame ninjo, and his voice was firm as he called out, "Ready!" Twelve rifles rose.

Diana Vásquez held out her hand to the children. "Sing, children. Please. Don't cry—sing for me!"

* * *

On the screen the woman, framed from the hips up, began to sing in a strong, clear alto: "Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe ..."

"Aim!" the young lieutenant cried.

Hesitantly the children joined in. Diana smiled as she sang, though the rain coursed down her cheeks like tears.

"Fire!"

Twelve rifles spoke in a brief pulse of sound. The front of Diana's prison denims went red. She dropped out of frame.

The barn filled with an inchoate scream of rage and grief. Don Carlos engulfed his face with his hands.

* * *

Dilonna Saunders, cool and long of limb, exquisite face showing no more reaction than if she were covering a gallery opening, stepped forward. "And now, a reaction from the man of the hour, Planetary Chairman Howard Devore Blaylock."

"Thank you, Dilonna," Blaylock said. His manner was serious but straightforward, "I'm sure we all regret the necessity of what's happened here today. But I don't think anyone can question the fact that the trigger was pulled by the renegade mercenaries themselves, and their commander, the self-styled 'Colonel' Carlos Camacho."

"And do you have anything to say to these foreign mercenaries, Mr. Chairman?"

"Yes, Dilonna, I do." He turned and looked straight into the camera. "You should understand that you are nothing more than common criminals. The lawful government of the planet Towne has repudiated your presence and your acts. Under the Laws of War third parties have no standing in such disputes. Therefore you have no standing, and are entitled to no protection under the Laws of War.

"So I'm begging you: be reasonable. Make it easy on all of us, especially yourselves—and your children. The offer generously extended by General Kusunoki still stands: surrender and accept relocation to Outreach. Otherwise—"

He held up his hands. "Justice will take its course. And as you have seen, the people of Towne demand that their justice be strict and swift."

"That was brilliant, Howard, simply brilliant," Saunders said as the network cut away to a break for a public-service announcement. Trusties in prison denims carried the body away.

Blaylock grinned slyly and nodded. "You bet it was."

"I disagree."

Blaylock spun and looked hard at Mr. Kimura. The small, dapper man stood unmoved. "Your rhetoric notwithstanding, the Seventeenth Recon Regiment retains the protection of the Laws of War. The traitor Chandrasekhar of Hachiman may be a scoundrel, but he is entitled to protect his interests. The money-troopers' presence is legitimate."

Blaylock accepted a squeeze-bottle of sparkling mineral water, shot a quick stream down his throat.

"You yaks crack me up," he told Kimura. "Seriously. You think you're such hot-shots, but you're so hopelessly small time. That means all of you, even your boss the high-and-mighty oyabun of your little greaseball prefecture. You think you're so sharp, making a living from breaking the law. If you had any goddamn imagination you'd get into the government. Then you'd be the law!"

Kusunoki was speaking quietly to one of his aides, who hurried away. Then he looked hard at Blaylock.

"I have ordered my men into defensive positions east and south of the city," the General said. "Will he come, this Colonel Camacho?"

"Either he comes, or I just cut his balls off on worldwide holovid," Blaylock said with a lupine grin. "Either way—we win."

Someone switched off the set. For a moment the only sound was the skreek, skreek of Cassie whetting Blood-drinker on her soapstone as all eyes turned toward Don Carlos.

He raised his head. His cheeks glistened with tears.

"There is only one thing to do," he said.

BattleTech - LE5523

PART FOUR

Hurrah for the Next One Who Dies

A glorious death! Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of petrol—to the last beat of the heart and the last kick of the motor; a death for a knight—a toast for his fellows, friend and foe.

—Rittmeister Manfred, Freiherr von Richthofen

BattleTech - LE5523

26

Shadizar

Zamora Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

It was not yet dawn. Michael Salstrup, Police President for the city of Shadizar, in Zamora province in eastern Hyboria, stared hard one last time at the yellow message form on his desk. It appeared to be nothing more than a routine fugitive alert from his counterpart in the Port Howard Metropolitan Police Force.

It was not routine. Indeed, he'd been expecting it— half hopeful and half fearful—since the day he'd succeeded his predecessor, killed by a car bomb, six weeks before. He left his office on the top floor and rode the lift down to the holding cells.

Sergeant Willoughby let him into the special block. For backup he'd brought Patrolman Clyde, skinny and nervous, and the steady Sergeant Mulcahy, armed with an automatic shotgun and looking like the former amateur boxing champion he was—though a return to the lightweight division was not likely in his future.

Salstrup walked between barred cells to the end of the block. He signaled Willoughby. The female sergeant punched a button, a buzzer went off, and the door to the guard room slid open.

"What the hell is going on here?" demanded Kommandant Stone of the local branch of the Planetary Police Howard Blaylock had instituted. Though he didn't have to, he wore his green PP uniform of stiff green twill. He was backed by a pair of uniformed rank-and-filers. One of them Salstrup knew from long acquaintance as a repeat offender, assault-and-battery.

"I need to interrogate some prisoners," Salstrup said mildly.

"These are Popular Militia scumbags," Stone said, getting up in the taller Police President's face. "Traitors. They're ours. You can't touch them without approval from above."

"All I want to do is ask them a few questions."

"Then let's see some authorization, buddy!"

"Very well," Michael Salstrup said. He reached inside his coat, drew his service semiauto from his shoulder holster, and shot Kommandant Stone twice in the belly.

As the Kommandant fell, clutching himself and moaning, Salstrup heard a multiple click from behind him. He turned his head to see Clyde, holding his freshly cocked service revolver at the extent of two badly shaking arms.

"What are you d-doing?" the patrolman asked. His face was white as a sheet of paper. "This is treason!"

"It's loyalty," Salstrup said quietly. "To Towne."

Clyde shook his head, causing his gun to wave alarmingly. "I'm sorry, sir. I can't let you do that. Put the gun down—"

Two loud cracks gouged Salstrup's eardrums like nails. Clyde half-turned, fell, lay still. The matronly black Willoughby stood by her stool, lowering her own revolver.

The two PP goons went for their sidearms. Mulcahy shattered them with a single blast each.

"Thank you," Salstrup told his two sergeants.

He felt lightheaded, almost giddy. The wait was so long. In Shadizar, as in cities and provinces all across Hyboria, the resistance had laid the groundwork weeks before, during the time Blaylock was firming his grasp on rulership and extending the sway of his Planetary Police: assassinating hard-core collaborators in key positions, keeping it up until they were replaced by others more willing to turn a blind eye to militia activity—or, as in Salstrup's case, were themselves members of the resistance.

And now it was begun. The wait was over. Win or lose, the dice were thrown. He felt as much relief as apprehension.

The gut-shot secret policeman was giving off bubbling sobs. Salstrup pointed his handgun down, shot the writhing Stone through the head. Then he indicated the cells on the north side of the block. "Get these open in a hurry. We have work to do."

* * *

A muffled boom echoed across the mountains, still snowy ghosts despite the alleged imminence of spring. A section of hillside fell away in a great boiling cloud of starlit snow.

When the powder settled it revealed the tarp-swaddled form of a Mad Cat, standing in a half-section of conduit.

"Voila" Marjorie Tunhill proclaimed, gesturing grandly at the unveiling OmniMech. "I told you it would be fine."

Don Carlos nodded in grim and wordless satisfaction.

Colonel José Carlos Domingo Camacho y DeBaca, Dfaz y Edwards—to give him his full name—was not a strategic genius, nor yet a tactical one. No one would mention his name in the same breath with Hanse Davion or Natasha Kerensky.

But he was absolutely brilliant at keeping his regiment—his familia—alive and intact. He was also a master at bringing his undisciplinable assortment of wild talents and wilder egos—egomaniacs like Astro Zombie and Vanity Torres; religious eccentrics like Com Guard deserter LtJG Thomas "Red Dragon" Noonan, the two Rastafarian 'Mech jocks "Buffalo Soldier" Marcus and "Burning Spear" Powerman, and the martyred LUG Teresa de Avila Chavez; and the probably insane, such as LtSG Suthorn and Bobby "Navajo Wolf" Begay, compared to whom Cassie was a marvel of socialization—into positions in which they could drive the enemy as crazy as they drove him.

And finally, he had a seasoned knife-fighter's unerring instinct for where a cut would draw the most blood, kill the most nerves, or sever the most crucial tendons.

With the help of expert advisors ranging from the mild Father Doctor Bob to the bloodthirsty Cassie Suthorn, he had prepared for months to accomplish those ends. Now he was forced to move, long before the preparation was done.

Whether what had been accomplished was enough was in the Virgin's hands. If it was not—he would win a death befitting a Knight of Galisteo.

As he settled into the familiar confines of the Great White's cockpit, with dawn still hours distant, a Shadow Hawk descended from the sky before him. "Buenas dias, father," Gavilah said over the radio.

"Buenas, my son. It is a good day to die."

"Como asi." Even so.

Don Carlos pressed a button. He felt the mighty 75-ton machine come to life around him as much as he saw the telltales spring alight on his board.

"Vamonos, mijo," he said. "We have our rides to catch."

* * *

In Kordava, on the southwest coast of Hyboria, a car bomb took out Planetary Police headquarters. The provincial PP brass were all inside, summoned by the local police chief to an emergency pre-dawn meeting. Oddly, the chief didn't show until after the blast.

* * *

The yellow cargo blimp floated above the sleeping city, its engines giving off a deep soft hum. A great bloated cigar shape, it was formed of six modular sections, the middle four of which carried a payload of almost 600 metric tons internally. Far stronger than it looked, capable of traveling at over 150 kilometers per hour, the airship stood up surprisingly well against the violent mercurial moods of Towne weather. Except in extremely severe storms, it was safer than conventional aircraft, and cost a fraction as much to operate.

The most important fact about it was that, at oh-dark-hundred of this early spring morning, it was making a regularly scheduled run from a logging operation in the Gunderland Mountains. Except for a two-week hiatus caused by the invasion, it had made the trip to the TTC yards weekly for the past twelve years.

Nobody paid the slightest attention to it.

It passed unremarked over the highway interchange where Route 55 crossed Highway 1, the north-south coastal road, over the modest skyscraper grove of Port Howard's central business district. The Admin Center, a sort of blocky letter "C," with stubby southwest-pointing arms and a main body so swollen that a substantial square chunk could be taken out of the middle for the courtyard, was soaked in light, and BattleMechs prowled the streets around it. But if anyone heard the purr of the blimp's engines, or noticed the great pallid shadow occluding stars overhead, they didn't mention it to anybody.

The airship was descending when it crossed the rail spur leading north along the Circle Bay waterfront, and it almost skimmed the top of the Markbreit before crossing Starry Wisdom Street and the TTC perimeter. Slowing, it eased to a stop beside the cement tower in the compound's northwest quadrant and let down lines. Ground crew seized them, bent them to winches, and cranked the craft down.

The first item of cargo to be offloaded was Lieutenant Senior Grade Cassie Suthorn, dressed in a black sneaksuit, with a suppressed Shimatsu-42 slung over her shoulder, Blood-drinker strapped to her right thigh, and a hands-free tactical communicator headset clamped over hair that she'd twisted into a knot at the back of her skull. Behind her came others, similarly outfitted: more Caballero scouts, militiamen and women, and finally the Dispossessed Mech Warriors of First Battalion.

CEO Fred Landrey stood waiting for them in a long coat with a fur collar. He was a big balding guy with a walrus mustache, the man who had faced off with the unknown orator the morning Wolf Girl downed Pipiribau's Locust. Cassie and several of the 'lleros walked over to him.

"Am I glad to see you," he said, shaking her hand and moving on to the others. "I got to tell you, it's been wearing me down kissing Drac ass for five months. And even worse having to put up with Blaylock's sellouts and bully-boys."

"What about the cargo inspectors?" asked Badlands Powell. He looked more like his name than ever. A rolled-up balaclava concealed his chemotherapy-induced baldness. A lit cigarette dangled from his lip, on the basis of, what difference did it make? Ten Bears was amazed he was still breathing as it was.

Landrey jerked his head at the warehouse behind him. A pair of dark figures lay sprawled on the blacktop just outside the muted light-spill from the door. Without attention being called to them they might have been grease stains.

The hatch of the second cargo module swung up. A Raven stepped daintily down to the pavement, shook its long-beaked head, walked a few paces away. Raven O'Connor had the trick of making her 'Mech move as if it were a real bird.

"You guys sure you're ready for this?" Landrey asked through puffs of condensation. "Counting the Towne Guards, the Snakes have twelve battalions in this burg—four regiments' worth of troopies."

"Yeah," said Cowboy Payson. "We got 'em just where we want 'em."

The TTC boss rolled his eyes. "Hasn't the Pretty-boy moved a lot of his troops out of town?" asked Buck Evans, scratching a grizzle-bristled cheek.

"What difference does that make? You got what? One beat-up regiment—which is more like two battalions, to be honest about it."

"We have friends," Cassie said. "Also, we cheat."

Landrey shook his head. "I think you're rushing this."

"Yeah, we are," Buck said. "But riddle me this: what would you think of us if we didn't move now?"

"I'd respect your heads," Landrey said in a measured way. "But I'd question your hearts—and your balls."

"And there you have it," Cowboy said.

The Rooster came strolling out of the night, with night-vision goggles pushed up onto his tousled red hair, lighting a smoke stuck in his ugly face. His bandy-legged little frame moved as if the fifty-kilo blaster's pack strapped to his back weighed nothing.

"So what's it gonna be, cousin?" he asked Landrey. "You with us? Or are you having second thoughts?"

"I got second thoughts to spare," Landrey said, "but I'm with you. Win or lose, I've had it up to here with this crap."

With a creaking of metal joints, Outlaw Leyva's Hurry Sundown emerged from the blimp. The black-clad, cowboy-hatted skeleton with stars for spurs beautifully airbrushed on the 'Mech's chest and belly was no more than a blur. A Shadow Hawk came clumping out close behind: Gabby Camacho's Red-tailed Hawk. They moved so as to keep the warehouse's bulk between themselves and the southeastern area where the captured 'Mechs were parked in lakes of light.

"What's the situation look like here on the ground?" Cassie asked.

"Your luck is in, sorta. Dracs never did quite sort out who was supposed to get the 'Mechs they captured from you when they landed. Pretty-Boy quietly doled out eleven of them to his own DCMS jocks who'd gotten Dispossessed thanks to you guys. That leaves seven still here, plus the seven they trolled in when they grabbed your people at the Copper Queen."

"What about the Naga?" Cassie asked. Since the Luthien Armor Works project was way classified, the 'lleros passed the prototype support 'Mech off as booty like the Colone's Mad Cat.

"They don't quite know what to make of that beast. They got it on display out in Robert E. Howard Plaza in front of the Admin Center, right next to the statue of old REH himself."

From the corner of her ear Cassie heard Frenchfry Ames, on foot, trying to hold a shouted conversation with his wife, who kept her 'Mech's beak turned resolutely away from him and wouldn't respond. They had reconciled and split up again at least once since Mariposa's death, to Cassie's knowledge. Evidently they were on the outs again.

"What's the security like in here?" Buck asked.

"One lance of 15th Dieron light and medium 'Mechs: a Sentinel, a Hunchback, a Jenner, and a Locust. Plus a platoon of 503rd infantry—usual spackle-for-brains Drac conscript groundpounders. If they don't have their thumbs up their butts it's 'cause they're sucking on 'em. Why stay awake when you got brick walls and BattleMechs to keep you safe?"

"Is the transport ready?" Buck asked.

Landrey nodded. "Trucks're waiting to go. You'll want to find a place on one; your Orion got farmed out."

Buck shrugged. "Your ride's still here, Payson," the TTC man said. "All right."

"Not even a Drac'd take that puny-ass Wasp of yours," Buck said.

"Dark Lady's on display in front of the Center, too. They got the right leg straightened out, but the knee actuator's still frozen and the Dracs didn't bring many Atlas parts along. From the test we watched, she's still got as much speed as ever, but any kind of maneuverability she had's long gone. Nobody was real eager to take her on, even if she is the biggest thing on the battlefield." He looked past the clump of listeners. "But maybe you'll want to reclaim her anyway, Captain MacDougall?"

Walking out of the dark with Zuma Gallegos alongside, Lady K shook her head. She was dressed in black and carrying a machine pistol, her laser pistol riding in a strap-down holster low on her right thigh.

"Maybe later," she said. "I've got other plans first."

"Everything's off the blimp," Zuma said. His voice was uncharacteristically flat. His wife and children were being held prisoner in the Admin Center—if they were still alive. He was decked out as a commando too.

"Then you people better get a move on before somebody catches a whiff of something he doesn't like," Landrey said.

Lady K stood next to Cassie. Cassie started to move away.

"Are you going to run away from me forever?" Kali asked, following.

"Only if you keep chasing me," Cassie said in a sullen voice, turning to face the taller woman. "If it were up to me you wouldn't be coming with us."

"I reckon I can hold my end up," Lady K said with a grim smile.

"That's not what I'm worried about."

"Is there anything to be worried about, after all this time?"

"Look. I don't want to be around you. Why do you care, anyway?"

"Because we're friends. And good friends aren't something you just toss away like an old candy-bar wrapper."

"Then why'd you do that with Tim?"

"For God's sake, honey, that didn't have anything to do with you. We're all grown-ups, you, me, and him. Nobody put a brand on anybody else."

"But you knew—you knew I—" Cassie felt herself starting to cloud up. This is ridiculous, she thought.

"Knew what? That you were screwing him? I figured as much. And maybe I shouldn't have fallen into bed with him—but that's because I don't have any pressing need for gallant, charming, worthless bastards in my life right now."

"You don't understand." Cassie turned away.

"Sure I do. You got a schoolgirl crush. And that's fine. But you're never going to be a thing to Leftenant Moon but a jolly good time—and neither am I. And no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that anybody who takes you to bed is in love with you, that's how it's going to be."

Wildly, incongruously, Cassie found herself choking back laughter. Me think Ninyu Kerai's in love with me? Come on.

So why do you think Tim Moon has to be?

She frowned. Whose side are you on, anyway? She asked her internal voice.

"I hate to disturb you ladies," the Rooster said, materializing next to them. "But it ain't getting any earlier. Ready for your tour of the scenic storm sewers of Port Howie?"

The Towne Guard company garrisoning Sarnath had gotten halfway through their breakfast in the cafeteria of Fritz Leiber, Jr. High School, where they were billeted, when some of them noticed they weren't feeling so good.

They were not due to start feeling better anytime soon. Parties unknown had dosed their scrambled eggs with lye. Coincidentally, the press-ganged kitchen staff had all vanished.

As the twenty-third of April dawned, it was not a good day to be with the invaders.

But Jeffrey Kusunoki still had the big guns on his side. A few pinpricks did not change the odds.

BattleTech - LE5523

27

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

As false dawn rolled like fog over the Gunderlands to the east a train rolled into Port Howard from the south. When it came to the railroad bridge across the Thunder, south and slightly west of downtown, it was shunted east onto a sideline and stopped.

The occupying forces consisted of soldiers and criminals, of varying degrees of pettiness. The collaborationist regime consisted of politicians and thugs. None of those groups was noted for its knowledge of how to ranch, or run a mine, or a lumbering operation. Nor how to run an airship line—or a railroad.

Even in those concerns where the regime had installed new bosses or overseers, most knowledge-intensive jobs on Towne were held by the people who'd held them before the invasion. And the invaders and their friends were not particularly easy to work for.

Kusunoki and Howard Blaylock operated on the principle that it's better to be feared than loved.

The difference between love and fear, from a practical standpoint, is that people still love you even when they don't think you can see what they're doing ...

End caps were popped off huge ceraplast culvert sections strapped onto flatcars. People picked themselves off the mattress pads stuffed inside and climbed out, stretching their limbs and rubbing themselves briskly to restore circulation after their cold, cramped, uncomfortable journey. Then they pulled the tarpaulins off the unidentifiable heavy equipment lashed to other flatcars, removed the packing-foam forms that had made a dozen covered BattleMechs resemble unidentifiable heavy equipment, climbed into the machines and fired them up.

Two other trains, approaching from the south and east, stopped out of sight of the defensive perimeter and unloaded the South and Third Battalions of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment.

Don Carlos would have liked to drive his whole force under cover into Port Howard's heart. But that would have been riding luck too hard. The blimp and Harley Company in the train were all he dared try to infiltrate. The 'lleros could only pray that they were strong enough to cut the guts out of the enemy force while their comrades outside Port Howard kept the outward-facing defenders from streaming back into the city to crush them.

And, in a way, the whole BattleMech assault was a diversion.

* * *

With a crack that was painful even through foam ear plugs and Cassie's palms, the shaped charge went off against the curved storm-sewer wall.

"Outstanding," Badlands Powell said.

Two of the strike force members who'd been flattened against the wail to either side of the charge instantly wheeled and knelt at the meter-wide mouse hole, poking suppressed Shimatsus through. On the other side lay the sparsely tenanted parking garage beneath the Admin Center. Two guards in Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery tans stood gaping from before the elevator bank forty meters away. The pair of strikers killed them with single shots.

"For Diana," one of them said under her breath, then the pair crawled through to take up kneeling positions flanking the hole.

Cassie went through next, moving rapidly to take up position by the elevators and the entrance to the well of the stairs that wound around them. As another pair of operators trotted up the ramp to confirm that the heavy bar-mesh gate was sealing the entrance, several fanned out to scatter finger-charges under the few vehicles parked in the basement. They were set to go off, not all at once, in about ten minutes, that being the longest anybody thought they could stay undetected as they infiltrated the Center. With luck, one or two of the little bombs might blow a gas tank, but that was lagniappe.

Rooster claimed that the shaped charge—hideously loud inside the storm sewer—would not make much noise inside the Center. The most anybody not actually within the underground garage was likely to have noticed was a rumble not perceptibly different from the little earth-tremors that were a daily occurrence in Port Howard. The bandy-legged little man knew his craft, but Cassie never counted on the breaks going her way. She would stay alert.

Others from the mixed Scout Platoon/Planetary Militia strike force trotted up to take over security duties. Cassie moved off to join the Rooster, who was headed for the locked door to the room through which the communications trunks passed. Secret resistance members in the city planning department had provided comprehensive blueprints for the building.

They had provided the key to entry, as well. The occupation forces had not been remiss in failing to guard the storm sewer, any more than they had by not installing security cameras in the underground garage, which was limited-access and under human surveillance. The Admin Center was another artifact of John Davion's post-Towne Debacle program. Among many special features his designers had specified for the complex was that there be no human-passable access between the city's sewer system and the Center itself. The nearest sewer access was a manhole on Cross Plains Street directly in front of the main entrance—and a pair of guardian BattleMechs.

But a Popular Militia computer gnome had run a comparison of the sewer system and the Admin Center blueprints—and discovered that a major storm sewer passed within half a meter of the parking garage.

Rooster found the door and reached back into his pack. "Now for some high-tech thirty-first-century lockpick gimmickry," he said. He pulled out a folding yellow pry bar, extended it to a meter's length, and popped the door right open.

"Ain't technology wonderful?" he said with a grin for Cassie. He slapped a charge timed to explode in ten minutes onto the thick bundle of wires and shut the door again.

Several commandos were setting up Claymores on reflector-trap initiators in front of the elevator. The reflector trap consisted of a low-power laser shining on an elevator door at such an angle as to reflect precisely to a sensor. If the door slid more than half open, it would pass from the laser's path, the beam would no longer impinge on the sensor, and the mine would go, blasting the elevator cage full of stainless-steel balls.

Others secured the stairways, preparing booby-traps to keep people from wandering down from above. Since they hadn't been able to learn where the captives were held, the strike team was going to have to clear the building from the bottom up. And they weren't yet on the bottom.

Like many public buildings of the age of the Succession Wars, the Admin Center had been built with an eye to the occasional arrival of smash-and-grab BattleMech raids. That meant it was designed to permit key personnel to fort up inside it for a few days and wait for the bad guys to go away. It boasted living quarters, commissaries, laundry, exercise, and entertainment facilities.

Though it was reasonably defensible, and hardened enough to keep the occasional shrapnel-spray or random laser beam away from the clerical staff, it had not been constructed to withstand full-scale bombardment or 'Mech assault; that would have been much too expensive for even the ambitious Prince John. If somebody was really intent on seizing the seat of government, or flattening the city core, key officials could instead repair to the three subterranean bunker levels, which contained more apartments, medical facilities, and food and water stocks for a month. The massively reinforced cement floor of the parking level served as additional overhead protection.

While the raid planners doubted that the captives were being held down in the bunker, they couldn't take the fact for granted. So unless the strike team could learn the captives' location some other way, they would have to descend to the lowest level and work up.

The team broke into two, preparing to go down the locked stairs at either end of the garage simultaneously. Marly Joles joined the element led by Badlands and Cassie. The girl had her 6 mm sniper rifle slung and a Rorynex SMG with screwed-on suppresser in her hands. Sticking close to her was her spotter, a square-built Zuni woman from Sierra, armed with a Federated assault rifle with a single-shot grenade launcher slung beneath the barrel. The peculiar construction of the Center, with its large courtyard, meant that Marly might get the opportunity to do some good work with that nail-driving piece of hers.

A few blocks back the team had left off Deadeye Barnes and his spotter beneath the Arkham Arms Hotel, which at twenty-five stories dominated Port Howard's not altogether prepossessing skyline. Scout Platoon's top sniper, Deadeye had once scored a confirmed hit on an enemy at 3,000 meters—and even at that range a hit was almost certainly a kill for his Zeus heavy rifle—so he reckoned an upper story of the Arkham was a good place to be. Except for dead spaces behind buildings, he could cover all of downtown, Harley Company's debarkation point across the river, and the eastern ends of the TTC yards where the captured 'Mechs were parked.

Depending on the success of the other teams headed for enemy 'Mech parts in several different sections of town, he could be the only support any of them could depend on for a long, hard time.

Across the room Cassie saw Zuma Gallegos, and beside him the distinctive long-legged form of Kali MacDougall, both waiting to go down with Rooster's team. Though he had no formal rank within the Popular Militia, as far as anybody knew, the little red-haired man was clearly most qualified to lead, and as far as the Caballeros were concerned, rank was just words when the hammer came down. He could do the job, so he would do the job.

She saw Kali looking fixedly at her and then wave.

Cassie looked quickly away.

Staff Sergeant Willard "Drygulch" Dix popped the locked fire door with a pry bar. Cassie burst down it, leading with her shouldered Shimatsu-42 as she ran down the steps to the landing. She spun, let inertia slam her back against the wall to brace her as she covered the switchback. Badlands Powell pelted past, dashed to the next floor, pressed his back to the wall on the hinge side.

"You O.K.?" Cassie asked as she thrust up against the knob side.

He showed her a brave grin. "Never better," he said. His wheeze belied his words.

Not my problem, Cassie thought. The Scout Platoon commander did not look as if he were in danger of imminent collapse, and as long as he had his pins under him there was nobody she'd rather have backing her up going through a door.

Powell reached forward, whipped the door open. Cassie popped through. Two tan-clad Drac guards were standing at a cross passage thirty meters away. She dropped the man on the left with one quick burst to the chest, chopped the other's legs out from under him with a second.

"For Diana," Cassie whispered.

The rest of the group emerged from the stairwell. "Luck," Cassie told them quietly, hunkering down to cover the doors giving onto the corridor. "We got a live one. He should be able to tell us where the captives are."

"I don't know," said a black militiaman named Stans.

Cassie gave him a look. "He'll talk," she said.

* * *

Dark figures flitted among the twelve BattleMechs standing silently in the Dunsany Sports Palace Stadium in the northeast quadrant of town. They belonged to a stood-down company of the Devotion Through Combat BattleMech regiment, most of whose MechWarriors were asleep in an apartment complex across the street from the stadium.

The foot-patrol guards were already down with their throats cut. The techs at work by spotlight maintaining the machines, and the standby lance of 'Mech jocks asleep in a tent pitched among the dormant metal monsters were downed with noise-suppressed weapons. Then they were shot In the head. At that they were lucky that time was too short for torture.

The Caballeros were not fighting for money, nor honor, nor even survival.

They were fighting for revenge.

* * *

False dawn paled out the sky above the Gunder-lands. Cowboy Payson admired the view through the faceplate of his neurohelmet as he rode the cherry-picker up to the cockpit of Yellowjacket, his Wasp. He hummed the latest hit by singer Sarah McCandless. That was a compensation about this Towne gig: they had some decent country-music stations here. They had Sierra for mariachi music, which was tough on the norteños, but no skin off any part of his anatomy. He hadn't inherited the taste from his mother.

"You, there!" an amplified voice boomed across the windswept Turanian Transport Company yards. "What are you doing by that 'Mech?"

Cowboy's head snapped around. Coming around the corner of the airship barn was a Hunchback, the security-detail 'Mech lumbering into a run toward the parked war-prize BattleMechs. "Oops," he said, and reached up to key his personal communicator, already tuned to the emergency-alert frequency.

"All poor little lambs," he said, "Big Bad Wolf. The sequence is Big, Bad Wolf. Baa, baa, baa."

Having transmitted the code-phrase meaning the op was compromised—with his own distinctive addition—he started tapping gauntleted hands nervously on the guard rail. "Come on," he muttered. "Hurry this bucket up. That booger's getting close."

Apparently he wasn't the only one who felt that way. The lift stopped. Cowboy leaned out over the railing to see the cherry-picker operator rabbiting for the shelter of some office buildings away from the onrushing Hunchback.

"I hate it when that happens," Cowboy said

Ruby flashes flickered from the little Sunglow pulse laser mounted in the Hunchback's head. Brilliant light-needles stabbed past the cherry-picker with cracks of displaced air, filling Cowboy's nostrils with the stink of ozone. He cringed down in the bucket. "Jesus!"

The front of the charging 'Mech exploded beneath a long-range missile volley. Chunks of Durallex armor fountained in all directions. The giant machine staggered, slowed. The armor plate had been peeled almost entirely away from the right side of its torso, exposing titanium-alloy skeleton and myomer pseudomuscle. The air sizzled with the sound of a light Ultra auto-cannon fired on overdrive. A sparkling cluster of explosions carried away the boxy Kali Yama autocannon that gave the 'Mech its namesake hunch.

Cowboy turned to see a Shadow Hawk with a red-tailed hawk—wings and talons extended, beak open in a defiant cry—painted across its frontal armor arcing down on its jump jets. A medium laser flared from its right forearm.

"Way to time it, Gabby," Cowboy muttered. Gavilan Camacho was pulling out all the stops, taxing even the double-capacity heat sinks retrofitted onto his ride on Hachiman. But nobody ever accused him of not being able to pilot a BattleMech—even if he was still hung up about not being the genius 'Mech jock his late sister Patsy had been.

The Hunchback gamely returned fire from its arm-mounted lasers, but its exposed innards were sparking and smoking like fireworks. As Cowboy glanced back its way the cover of the CASE system in its left torso blew off the 'Mech's back as the stored ammo for its lost autocannon cooked off.

Cowboy shook his head. "How do I get out of this chickensquat outfit?" he asked the air, and began to scale Yellowjacket's sloped right breastplate.

Cassie's strike team was leapfrogging down a corridor on the third floor, where the wounded Drac soldier had told them the Camp Mariposa survivors were being held, when Cowboy's warning, rebroadcast all over Port Howard and surroundings by the fusion-power transmitter in Gabby Camacho's Shad, came through her headset.

Crouched in the lead, against the left-hand wall, Cassie glanced back. Badlands met her eye and shrugged. The strikers themselves were maintaining radio silence, but there was no need to speak. They all knew the enemy was alerted now.

As Cassie covered, Badlands swung wide of her and dashed toward a place where the hall widened into a waiting lounge.

And at that moment Wolf Girl stepped directly out in front of him and blasted him with her machine pistol.

BattleTech - LE5523

28

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

When Cowboy Payson raised his alarm a lot of different machines were kicked into action.

Flights of long-range missiles hissed over folds in the terrain to explode among the dug-in Towne Guards and First Dragon's Joy infantrymen—the troops with the most volatile morale. Foot soldiers made up the bulk of the perimeter defense, but the missiles' targeting wasn't fortuitous. Contemptuous of the Townians, Drac commanders had deployed without sufficient concern for what they would have called "Yellow Birds"—their name for possibly hostile indigenes. The Caballeros had received detailed intelligence on their enemies' dispositions, not infrequently from rural dwellers with mobile telephones.

From the cockpit of his Mad Cat, Don Carlos addressed the forces he was leading,to the attack from the east, Second Battalion augmented by the remnants of First that hadn't gone in with the blimp.

"Caballeros y Caballeros, my prayers go with you all. But I attack without thought for victory or defeat I think only of killing our enemies, until we have saved our children, or found shelter at the feet of the Blessed Virgin."

A many-voiced howl of undiluted rage answered him. Followed by a few lances of Fusilier survivors in tanks that had been stationed outside Port Howard at the time of the invasion and several hundred Popular Militia volunteers in a jumble of civilian vehicles, the Seventeenth attacked.

* * *

Tai-i Taisuke Toyama was trying to purge his spirit of resentment against Tai-sho Kusunoki. Such emotion was unworthy of a warrior. But the occupation force commander made no attempt to be discreet in giving preferential treatment to his DCMS regulars at every opportunity.

The High Command was anticipating that the mercenaries would attack Port Howard, with the heaviest thrust most likely coming from the direction of the Gunderlands, where the money-troopers had forged such a redoubtable stronghold. The General planned to meet and destroy his foe on the outskirts of town. That was the whole point of the DropShip attack on the mercenary hideout in the Eiglophians, and the subsequent televised execution of the gaijin woman who had commanded the camp: to force the mercenaries, at last to fight.

The decision—and the glory—would be won today on the perimeter defenses: that was the Plan. And here Toyama's company was relegated to patrol duty around the Admin Center in downtown Port Howard, far from the likely scene of action. As outnumbered as the mercenaries were by well-equipped troops well-sited for defense, the young captain dismissed out of hand the likelihood of their ever making it this far.

Then came the bland advisory from battalion HQ that a Fifteenth Dieron Regular security 'Mech had reported unauthorized personnel observed around the captured BattleMechs standing in the TTC—followed almost at once by the excited voice of the Mech Warrior himself, breaking onto the emergency channel to announce that he was under fire from enemy 'Mechs.

Despite the background clamor that made it apparent a brother buso-senshi was fighting for his life, young Toyama grinned. He didn't know how the gaijin had done it, but somehow the resourceful devils had gotten in among the Tai-sho's trophies like hexwolves among a flock of sheep. There was glory to be won in Port Howard's alien heart, after all.

He keyed up his company command channel. "All Toyama Company elements will concentrate at once on the Turanian Transport yards. Stay awake, people—we have enemy on the loose."

* * *

Various resistance elements in and around Port Howard, already on alert, likewise heard Cowboy's message.

Preparations for the master plan had never been completed. The Port Howard militias had been eviscerated by Wolf Girl's treachery—but the survivors were smart and sneaky, and the excesses of the occupation forces and Howard Blaylock in particular had provided huge numbers of people with strong motivation to resist the government. The Popular Militia was bigger and more efficient than ever before.

Some militia leaders, fearing the mercenaries were, jumping the gun, held their forces out of the upcoming action. Some strike elements missed the call. Some were delayed, others betrayed, some went to the wrong places, and a lot were unable to carry out their preplanned strikes because of the innate perversity of events.

But one key strike came off. A van loaded with two metric tons of improvised explosives detonated right under the overpass where Highway 1 crossed Route 55. The blast dropped the upper span, killing a dozen hapless early-morning motorists and blocking the main access between the city's heart and the defensive perimeter.

* * *

Though Tai-sho Kusunoki disdained them, the yakuza Mech Warriors of Tai-i Harper's company of the First Spirit of the Dragon did a better job of securing their rides than did their comrades at the Dunsany complex to the east. They had ringed their bivouac at Tower of the Elephant Elementary School in northern Port Howard with three-meter fences topped with coils of razor tape, set armed patrols walking the inside of it, and put sandbagged machine-gun guard emplacements on top of the school cafeteria.

Their security was so tight that the mixed Caballero/ militia team that was targeting them could not figure a quiet way to get in. All that won the Black Dragon troopies was a respite.

When he heard his buddy's call that the Dracs had discovered the penetration of the TTC yards, Buck Evans turned his truck, put the pedal to the metal, and simply smashed through the wire. Militia troops set up their own machine guns and slaughtered the Dragon Mech Warriors as they spilled out of the school buildings where they were billeted. When the rooftop machine guns fired back, Buck and a former female jump-trooper from Stygia silenced them with shoulder-fired SRM launchers.

Among the 'Mechs standing here was Buck's old Orion. He and his buddy were fulfilling the roadside promise they had made to Cassie, almost four months ago.

* * *

Cassie winced, wondering if one of the militia soldiers would shoot her in the back. Amazingly, only those commandos along the right-hand wall fired, just as the book said.

It was useless, and Cassie didn't even try. Without apparent hurry Wolf Girl stepped back around the brick-faced corner, leaving Badlands Powell to lie bleeding on his back. Cassie turned her aim to the right wall, where, as anticipated, a high/low pair of green-uniformed PPs came around the pillar. She blasted them before they got off a shot.

Two commandos passed her, Zoneout Sedillo and a militiawoman with wiry blonde curls and a broken nose. "No!" she yelled at them, but they kept on, moving as professionally as if they had done this together all their lives. Sedillo dove, his skid on elbows and belly perfectly estimated so that he came to rest with only his Shimatsu, one forearm, and one eye exposed around the brick-faced structural column. The woman stayed upright, dancing sideways with her SMG's butt snugged into her shoulder.

It did them no good. The back of Zoneout's skull blew out to the first bullet of a protracted burst that climbed up and across the blonde woman's torso. She spun, fell, rolled over twice, came to rest unmoving on her face. A dark stain spread out around her on the maroon-veined marble sheeting of the floor.

Having written them off already, Cassie was taking her own remedial action. Letting her Shimatsu hang on its sling, she reached behind the small of her back with her left hand and pulled her 9 mm autopistol from its quick-draw sheath on her right thigh. At the same time she plucked a tear gas grenade from her ripstop vest. She yanked out the arming-ring with her teeth, which would have given regimental armorer Stacks Stachiew-ski fits.

She tossed the grenade into the right-hand lounge area. It went off with a pop and a hiss and a cloud of dense white smoke. As soon as she heard coughing she sprang to the left-hand pillar, stuck the machine pistol around the corner, and let the whole magazine go in a long blind burst.

At the same time she had laid her left arm in the crook of her right elbow and squeezed aimed shots into the half-dozen figures doubling up in the lounge to the right. She hit at least three before the others threw away their weapons and dropped retching and weeping to the floor.

Stuffing the nine into her web belt, she dropped the magazine from the Shimatsu's well and slammed home a fresh one. As she did that, she backed five meters down the hall.

She barely avoided tripping over Sergeant Dix, lying prone on the floor. He looked up at her with eyes wide. "Who is that bitch? She nailed Zoneout and that Holger woman like she knew where they was going to be."

"She did. Now get people to toss some flash-bangs and tear gas down there. Oh—and lend me your Shimmie."

He stared at her, then handed the weapon over and drew his FWL service 12. An MP in either hand, she dodged to the right-hand wall. Dix signaled that the grenades were ready.

At her signal seven canisters arced into the lounge area to clatter on the marble. The flash-bangs went off with four ear-shattering cracks and flashes bright enough tomomentarily dazzle anybody who happened to be looking toward them. The three gas bombs vomited smoke.

Cassie started sprinting with her eyes closed to avoid being blinded by the stun bombs. When they went off she opened her eyes and directed a stream of bullets from her right-hand Shimatsu against the far wall of the lounge area to the left.

Bullets fired against a hard surface at less than a 45-degree angle will rebound to fly parallel to the surface. Fired at a steeper and rapidly changing angle, Cassie's burst sprayed the inside of the left-hand lounge with random ricochets. Just shy of the pillar she launched herself in a long low dive. Twisting her body she landed on her right side and slid along the floor, blazing away until the machine pistol in her left hand gave out.

Wolf Girl was ducking through a swinging door that gave onto a catwalk overlooking the interior courtyard. The tinted floor-to-ceiling vitryl windows shimmered and boomed to the impacts of Cassie's fire, but the bullet-proofing held.

From farther down the corridor came a loud rattle of full-auto fire. Commandos tumbled into the cover of the lounge area. As they returned fire Cassie rolled to her feet. Letting her right-hand weapon hang, she hit the door with her left shoulder and blew out firing.

Wolf Girl was waiting for her. She opened up as Cassie appeared. Without stopping, Cassie used her training in the demanding and highly gymnastic madi-silat style. She hit the guard-rail with her left hip, let momentum roll her over it, catching an upright with her right hand. She fell to the extension of her arm, poked Dix's Shimatsu between the uprights, and fired.

Wolf Girl jerked open a door at her side and dove within.

* * *

Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki nodded with visible satisfaction as reports of enemy 'Mechs attacking the defensive lines from the east spilled from the radio in his living quarters and command center on the top floor of the Admin complex, hard on the heels of word of the LRM bombardment.

"Just as I suspected," he declared to his listeners, who included Blaylock and Mr. Kimura and well as his standard retinue. "The attack on the TTC yards is merely a feint, of small consequence. The real assault is here." He stabbed a wall-sized map display of the city with a collapsible pointer—he was a tactile type, who found the red dot of a laser pointer unsatisfying—on the eastern perimeter.

"And here." He stabbed to the south. As if on cue, his forces dug in near the starport reported that they were coming under 'Mech-weapons fire.

A foot soldier in helmet and armored jersey burst through the door. Kusunoki turned to scowl at him. Several of his retainers made as if to pitch the intruder out.

"Tai-sho," the man gasped. "We have reports of shots fired inside the building."

"Perhaps the situation is not so clear-cut as it at first appeared," murmured Mr. Kimura.

"It's nothing," Blaylock rapped out, his words like knuckles on hardwood. "My people will stop them. And even if they get to the captives, that's not going to do them much good. The guards there have orders to machine-gun the bastards at the first sign of trouble."

Kusunoki regarded him with splendid head tipped slightly back. "Perhaps you should go and supervise their efforts personally, Blaylock-san," he said, "since your head rides on their success."

Blaylock's dark eyes blazed with momentary fury. Then he laughed. "Fair enough," he said. "I'm gone."

* * *

Dug-in or not, the Drac ground troops gave way quickly to the mercenary thrust from the east. Sho-sa Maung, commanding the First Battalion of the Devotion Through Combat regiment, personally led a company of BattleMechs to the counterattack.

Slamming the tops of the rolling hills, a squadron of Ruedel ground-attack craft appeared. High above, out of range of the Drac 'Mechs' weapons, a squadron of Voss fighters flew combat air patrol.

The lead Ruedel made straight for the Sho-sa's big Mauler. The aircraft climbed slightly, then nosed into a shallow dive straight at the 90-ton 'Mech.

Though several of his subordinates opened fire on the aircraft, Maung ignored it. Those coddled Desolation Angels might soil their cooling shorts at the sight of the Ranger aircraft, but to a real warrior, they were no more than contemptible toys.

Unfortunately, the thousand-kilogram bomb that dropped from the Ruedel's centerline was anything but a toy. As neatly as if the Mauler were a stationary watertower at the Ranger airfield in Gunderland, the bomb struck it where the base of its head almost met the base of the 15-missile Shigunga LRM rack on its left shoulder.

The missile reload storage bins were cellular. It probably didn't matter. The BattleMech simply vanished from the armpits up in a single white flash. The two large-laser arms fell into the snow by its broad feet as it stopped and stood, rocking and erupting.

A Rifleman shattered the Ruedel with its arm-mounted large lasers and autocannon less than two seconds after the bomb decapitated the Major's Mauler. Striding forward with the full speed imparted by its Clan-built engine and myomer muscles, Colonel Camacho's Great White bathed the Rifleman in charged-particle death from its two arm-carried PPCs. The RFL-3N tried to traverse its torso to bring its weapons to bear on the land-borne threat. But the side armor first flowed and then sublimated beneath the Mad Cat's, PPC lightnings.

As he closed, Don Carlos fired a six-rocket volley from his right-shoulder Streak launcher. Two of the missiles found the gaping crater gouged in the Rifleman's side and detonated its stored autocannon ammunition. The RFL-3N's torso came apart like a watermelon dropped on a sidewalk from twelve stories up.

Strange trilled screams and wolf-howls blared from the external loudspeakers mounted on the gaijin 'Mechs. Slashed from the ground and shattered from the sky, the DCMS Mech Warriors faltered. Then they either died, or fled.

* * *

This time Cassie had bulletproof vitryl between her and her quarry. She made use of it, walking openly up and peering through the window-wall.

This was an office space, with computer workstations and a couple of cubicles set against the partition to the left. It was devoid of visible occupants. Cassie scrutinized the area carefully. There were many places Wolf Girl could be, but she saw no sign of her.

She didn't expect to.

She moved to the door, whipped it open, lunged for the nearest desk to her right, rolled over the top and went over the far side in an avalanche of loose paper and knickknacks, barely avoiding the swivel chair. She hit the floor with Dix's MP in her hands, her eyes scanning all along the floor for feet.

There—boots, seven meters or so away, behind the desk next to the first cubicle. She aimed, squeezed the trigger. The Shimatsu jumped and yammered.

The feet disappeared upward. Gunfire erupted. Bullets began to punch through the thin-gauge metal of the desk millimeters above Cassie's prone body.

Cassie made herself flatter than even she thought was possible. Somehow the bullets passed harmlessly overhead. When they stopped, she came up to all fours, forward-rolled to the next desk, lunged to the one after, came up to one knee as jacketed slugs ripped through the desk she had passed behind.

Wolf Girl had flung herself on top of the desk she had been hiding behind. As Cassie opened fire on her she rolled to the side, off the desktop onto the thin gray-carpeted floor.

In an intuition-flash Cassie realized that when her enemy landed she would shoot right through Cassie's desk—which was concealment but not much cover— and nail her. Unwilling to make the trade, she gave off trying to walk her fire into Wolf Girl. Instead she jumped up onto her desk as Wolf Girl opened up, then ran and jumped to the desk she had just come from. That took her momentarily out of Wolf Girl's field of fire. Spraying one-handed, more to keep her enemy occupied than with any hope of hitting, she jumped down into the aisle and flung herself on the other side of the desk to Wolf Girl's right.

The Shimatsu was dry. Her slung weapon was trapped between her back and the desk; she drew her nine from her belt. She took a deep breath, then stood up, turning and extending the gun across the desk.

She half-expected Wolf Girl to be coming up at the same time, as had happened back at the lodge. Instead, the bigger woman sprang into sight and knocked the autopistol spinning from Cassie's hands with a jumping crescent kick.

Cassie put her shoulder down, rolled across the desktop, and kicked Wolf Girl in the belly as she came back down.

Wolf Girl fell back across the next desk. Cassie came swarming after her like an angry monkey. Wolf Girl got a hand in the fabric at the shoulder of her black sweater and a boot in her belly and flung Cassie over her. Cassie struck the fiberboard wall of the cubicle and fell almost upside down into a swivel chair.

She was not stunned, and writhed around to get her feet beneath her as Wolf Girl sprang lithely onto the top of the desk and dropped into fighting position with right foot advanced and hands held at shoulder level.

With her feet on the seat of the chair, left foot forward, Cassie cautiously rose to a low stance. Wolf Girl grinned and jabbed for Cassie's face. Cassie ducked back on her rear leg, slipping the blow.

It was a feint. Wolf Girl twisted her hips counterclockwise and fired her right foot straight back in one of those Inner Sphere Taekwon Do Federation side kicks that was almost a back kick.

It was a very powerful shot, that would have busted any part of Cassie it struck and blasted her through the cubicle wall into the bargain. It was by nature a bit slow developing; Wolf Girl must have figured she had her opponent at a disadvantage, perched on that shifty chair like that.

But Cassie's pentjak training emphasized fighting from uncertain footing. She was right at home on the chair. She ducked low into a foreshortened lankah lipat stance, her hips perpendicular to her enemy and body bent so far at the waist that it was almost between her knees. The kick missed high.

Cassie spun, still staying low, bringing her right foot around, slamming her shin directly against the side of Wolf Girl's ankle. As the force of the sweep broke the contact of Wolf Girl's boot sole with the desktop, she put a hand on Wolf Girl's muscular rump and pushed.

Wolf Girl slammed forward as if she had a pivot through her ankles. She struck her short ribs on the edge of the desk, cracking bone and driving the breath from her body.

Cassie gathered herself to spring on her momentarily incapacitated opponent's back and break her neck. But by now the room had filled up with green uniforms and guns and a voice that shouted, "Freeze, bitch!"

BattleTech - LE5523

29

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

The prisoners captured at Camp Mariposa were being held in a third-floor recreation room at the end of Jhe short arm of the Admin Center that was on the northwest corner, nearest the bay. The furniture had all been removed, mainly to give the six Planetary Police guards a free field of fire to massacre the captives if the order came down. The prisoners had been given blankets, from which they'd made pallets along the walls, leaving the center of the floor free for the children to play.

The kids were beginning to wake up and whine to be fed or taken to the bathroom, when the door slammed open. A voice shouted in Spanish, "Get down!"

Spanish was a language understood by every Caballero—at least, that much of it. None of the guards knew it, though. And even the youngest, children were Caballeros too. When ordered to get down, they got.

Which left six guards, mostly trying to blink back sleep themselves, standing alone and very flat-footed. Black-clad figures burst in the door and stepped to either side, and a storm of gunfire knocked the guards off their feet.

While Rooster and the other militia members of the strike team secured the room, the 'lleros embraced each other in tearful reunion. Clinging to his liberated family, Zuma Gallegos wept to learn that, of the three children who had been captured at Mariposa, the second-youngest, son Hilario, and been killed by aerospace fighters during the assault on the camp.

But there would be time for joy and grieving later. Embraces were broken almost as soon as made as the adults began to round up the children in preparation for moving them to the bunker levels below the Center. With a 'Mech battle liable to break out around the complex at any time, and no transport to hand, they didn't dare try to flee the building.

In the commotion, Lady K slipped from the room. Aside from the guards at the door to whom she nodded, no one noticed.

* * *

It had been intended that as soon as the infiltrators' presence was discovered, two lances of Harley Company should cross the Thunder and head toward the Admin Center to aid in the hostages' escape, leaving the third to cover them against forces moving up from the south. But they had been spotted themselves. Within moments after Cowboy broadcast his warning, Harley was under attack by a patrol of 227th Armored tanks that had come prowling up to investigate reports of strange events at the riverside sighting.

More tanks and 503rd Mechanized Infantry elements quickly joined the fight. Far from being able to go to the aid of their comrades on the far bank, Harley Company shortly found its hands full trying to prevent the Drac regulars from forcing their way across the railroad bridge to join the attack on the embattled Turanian Transport compound.

Seven 'Mechs had been manned by Caballeros and were headed south from Tower of the Elephant Elementary. But they were going to have their work cut out for them if they reached the central business district. Reports from resistance sympathizers indicated that a whole DCMS 'Mech company was stationed around the Admin Center, with possibly a second regular company and one of Black Dragon BattleMechs patrolling the downtown area.

Eleven reclaimed or stolen 'Mechs marched downtown from Dunsany Sports Palace. But they were intercepted by Date's Company of Black Dragon BattleMechs as they tried to cross the Route 55-Highway 1 interchange. Now the two forces were engaged in a surrealistic battle amid the ruined overpass and traffic jam.

* * *

"Any Caballeros listenin' in out there," Raven heard her husband broadcast from his stolen Spider, "if we don't get us a little help down here at the Yards, it's gonna turn out to be a mighty long day."

Her Raven had found a moment of shelter looking out of an alley mouth across Starry Wisdom Street at the TTC compound. She had been playing high stakes hide-and-seek with Drac BattleMechs for what seemed like hours already.

A 70-ton Archer had been among the 'Mechs the Dracs caught at Mariposa, which gave Raven something to do other than run around and report on enemy troop movements, which under the current circumstances were more depressing than productive. She had tagged two enemy machines with Narc pods, a Whitworth and a Kintaro, both bearing the Black Dragon insignia. She had seen the Kintaro pretty comprehensively smoked by short-range missiles, but had been driven away by a Crab before she could confirm whether it was actually disabled.

It didn't seem to make a damned bit of difference. The Drac 'Mechs just kept coming, and she was starting to see ones without the dragon-rampant symbol, which meant Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery regulars were joining the party. Which was especially bad since there was already at least a company of the Black Dragon 'Mechs stuck into the 'lleros in the Yard.

The Dracs had gotten over the eastern wall of the compound and were pushing through a park filled with semitractor trailers toward the airship barn at that end. Others were marching down the street of the Markbreit Select to attack from the north.

From the harbor just beyond the TTC docks Frenchfry's Spider erupted, dragging a trail of greasy water. Pulse lasers flickered from their central torso mounts, and Raven saw the welding-arc flare that meant the beams were scoring armor plate from the shoulder-housing of a Dragon.

Her husband was good at combat jumping in a 'Mech, even for a Caballero—he hadn't named his normal ride "Jumpin' Jack" for nothing. But his normal ride was gone, and he was fighting from an unfamiliar machine. He miscalculated, and hung himself out to dry a little too long.

The two arm-mounted lasers of a Quickdraw found the Spider's side as it descended rapidly back toward the waters of the bay. Vaporized armor jetted away, and even at this distance Raven could see her husband fighting to keep the machine on its thrust-columns. Then a long-range missile volley streaked toward the Spider from the Delta Dart launcher in the left side of the QuickDraw's chest. One rocket struck the Spider's right foot, shattering it and flipping the 30-ton 'Mech end for end.

The Spider plummeted headfirst onto a concrete pier, and lay draped across it like a dead organic thing.

"Ahh!" Raven uttered a cry of agony.

But she was too much of a warrior to allow even her husband's death to distract her for long. In the three-sixty vision strip above her windscreen she saw movement behind her. Reflex kicked the Raven into motion, sending it scuttling out the alley mouth and crow-hopping sideways as four laser beams stabbed down the alley where she'd been hiding.

The damned Crab had found her again.

* * *

Watching his target fall, Taisuke Toyama grinned and pumped his fist. It was his first BattleMech kill.

Quickly he sobered, and in response to the words of praise his subordinate buso-senshi were pouring into his headset, he said, "It's what we're here to do. Keep moving!"

But he still felt the thrill of the kill inside, tingling in his belly. Even more gratifying, like a gulp of hot soup on a cold morning, was the growing certainty that his command, with the help of the regulars who had begun to arrive, would shortly crush the Yohei.

* * *

The non-regular forces on the east perimeter did not know of young Toyama's successes. They would have been little reassured if they had.

What they were confronting was an unexpectedly vicious frontal attack by an enemy they were told had no seishin, no warrior-spirit. At the same time the enemy air force, which they had been told was no threat to modern armed forces, had killed a regular battalion commander in his command 'Mech right before their eyes and was now busy tearing chunks out of the defenders, BattleMechs as well as hapless ground-pounders.

The vaunted aerospace fighters had shown up— finally—and while they were shooting down some of the enemy aircraft, the ludicrous and negligible enemy aircraft were also shooting down some of them.

Now came the most terrible news of all: there were enemy BattleMechs at large in the city behind them.

Even regular troops, even veteran troops, get antsy when an enemy gets in behind them. It is a deeply ingrained reflex, bred in for good reason: an enemy behind you can strike you down before you have a chance to defend yourself. But even more than a physical threat an attack in the rear is a morale attack. A man behind you feels like three, or even more.

Good troops can panic at the mere threat of an attack in their rear. The groundpounders on the line were not good troops. The Towne Guards were mostly bluster, the First Dragon's Joy troops unhappy conscripts whom the Caballeros had already gifted with the cruel nickname of "First Dragon's Tears."

Their morale had already taken body blows. At word of enemy BattleMechs in Port Howard they broke and ran.

* * *

"So you're the scout," Howard Blaylock said, turning Blood-drinker over in his hands. "Your blonde friend, my little playmate Kali, she talked about you a lot."

He grinned and laid the kris down on a table. "She told me you'd come and get her. And now here you are. Pretty funny how things turn out, isn't it?"

I will not cry, Cassie told herself. She had given up straining at the nylon passive restraints that bound her wrists behind her back after a few quick twists convinced her they were properly fastened. All she could do fighting the bonds was hurt herself to no purpose. She couldn't afford that.

She had to believe it still mattered.

"I did come and get her," Cassie reminded him.

"And now maybe it's time for her to come and kill you."

He backhanded her across the face. Her head snapped to the side. She turned her face resolutely back toward him.

Wolf Girl stepped forward between them. "Don't mistreat her. She's my prisoner. It isn't right."

Blaylock smiled thinly. "What's this? Straining at the leash?"

They were in Tai-sho Kusunoki's command center, as were six PPs, a small, impeccably dressed Japanese-looking man, Kusunoki's retainers, and Kusunoki himself, standing and staring at a large map display screen. Only the futon rolled up against the wall gave away that the room was also the General's living quarters. Evidently the reports that Kusunoki was not big on creature comforts were correct.

Wolf Girl set her jaw and said nothing.

"If you must play with your food, Blaylock-san," the General said over his shoulder, "why don't you do it elsewhere?"

"She's mine," Blaylock told Wolf Girl. "You have nothing. I'm the one who helped your sister, remember?

The woman lowered her good eye.

"Circumspection might be in order in ourtreatment of this prisoner, Blaylock-san," the dapper little man, Kimura, said. From lingering hints of inflection in his speech, Cassie made him as a yakuza—an atypically well educated yakuza, but yak nonetheless. "She seems to be highly valued by her associates. Alive and well, she might provide us a useful bargaining counter."

"I am so sick of you people!" Blaylock exclaimed, turning away and throwing his hands in the air. "You talk to me as if I'm some kind of half-trained domestic animal, you insist on my filling out a toilet-paper requisition form in quintuplicate every time I want to wipe my ass, and the next thing you know you geniuses've got money-soldiers and rebels crawling all over you like fire ants."

He wheeled back to face Kimura across the table, bracing himself on it on his knuckles. "Haven't you got the message yet? If you try playing hostage games with these people, it only makes them want to hurt you more."

Kusunoki turned his head, a look of irritation spoiling the perfection of his features. "Your impertinence—" he began.

"Tai-sho," one of the comm operators seated at a console before the General said. "We are receiving communications that the infantry has broken and is fleeing back toward the suburbs."

"Which infantry? Our infantry? DCMS infantry?"

"Iie," the comm tech said nervously. "The First Dragon's Joy and the Towne Guard."

"Tai-sho, Tai-sa Okabe reports that an enemy breakthrough may be imminent."

"So ka." Kusunoki shook his head. "There is no help for it. I must go and rally the troops myself."

He looked to Blaylock. "I leave you in Kimura-sensei's capable hands. Contain the situation here. Your head upon it."

Blaylock waved at Cassie. "It's a done deal, I tell you."

Kusunoki sneered. Then he swept out, his retinue in tow.

"Whew," Blaylock said. "That clears the air in here, doesn't it? Where was I? Oh, yeah."

He came to Cassie, crooked a finger beneath her chin, raised her face. "I usually go for the leggy blondes with big boobs, like your friend MacDougall. But I think you could be very interesting, for a little while. And when I get bored with your skinny little butt—-hey, who knows? I just killed a man for the first time the other day. Maybe it's time for me to open up still new vistas. The sky's the limit, when you're the man on top."

"No," Wolf Girl said. "You can't do that!"

Blaylock's eyes flared dangerously. He smiled with obvious effort.

"I can do whatever I please. And to show people what happens when something doesn't please me, I think I'm going to have those damned brats we took captive shot. That'll show Mr. Camacho Macho what happens when he screws with me."

Wolf Girl stood right in front of him. "You can't!" she screamed.

His right hand came out from under his coat-tails in back with a short barreled revolver. He shot her twice through the body. She staggered back against the table and collapsed to the floor.

"Don't scream at me!" Blaylock shrieked. He rolled open the cylinder of his revolver, spilled out all the contents, live rounds as well as spent casings. Then he began to pace as he stuffed fresh cartridges from his pocket into the weapon.

"Don't tell me what I can't do. Nobody tells me what I can't do."

He snapped the cylinder back in. "Oh, and about your slut sister. I've been meaning to tell you. I helped her, all right—helped her find meaningful employment in a whorehouse in McKellersport down in the Islands. I'm afraid she died as the result of a little rough treatment she received while entertaining the fleet. But, hey—she probably liked it. You know how these bitches are."

Breathing hard, muscles trembling, Wolf Girl had managed to push her upper body up off the floor. Blaylock shot her in the back.

She leapt to her feet, snatched the kris off the table, hurled herself at Cassie. "Stop her! She's nuts!" screamed Blaylock. He snapped shots after her. The comm techs dove for cover.

Wolf Girl tackled Cassie and bore her down to the floor.

BattleTech - LE5523

30

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

Together the women slid against a wall. Wolf Girl's arms were around Cassie. Cassie felt the knife's curved hilt gouge her rump, and then the tip slid between her bound wrists. It twisted, cutting flesh, and the passive restraint parted.

Wolf Girl kissed her on the lips. She tasted blood. Then the warrior-woman pushed herself off, jumped to her feet with surprising alacrity, turning and drawing s large autopistol from a cross-draw holster at her waist.

Blaylock bolted for the door. "Shoot her! Shoot her!" he yelled. He thew the door open and dodged out it.

His guards obeyed. Shooting deliberately despite the hits she was taking, Wolf Girl killed two green-uniformed Planetary Police before her legs betrayed her and she toppled to the floor.

Reaching beneath her for her knife, Cassie rolled over and launched herself at the nearest guard. She buried Blood-drinker in his groin and twisted his handgun from his grip when he bent over screaming.

Rolling onto her side, Wolf Girl shot a fourth guard. The fifth emptied his magazine into her. She slumped. Cassie shot the guard through the side of the head.

Mr. Kimura's hand came out of his tail-coat with a small gyrojet pistol. Cassie shot him through the chest. He glanced down at the stain spreading over his waistcoat with almost comic surprise, and folded to the floor.

The guard she had stabbed was still screaming. She yanked out her blade and shot him through the nape of the neck. Then she knelt to hurriedly wipe Blood-drinker clean on his green blouse.

She went to Wolf Girl's side. Wolf Girl lay on her back. Blood bubbled from her lips as she breathed.

Her right hand groped. Cassie took it. It squeezed with a crushing grip. Cassie bent forward, kissed Wolf Girl on the forehead.

The hand relaxed.

Then Cassie was on her feet and searching the dead guards for fresh magazines.

* * *

The Shadow Hawk crouched behind a train engine. Its expendables were gone but for the paltry short-ranged Streak two-rack missile launcher in its head. Under attack from two directions, what remained of Gavilan Camacho's command was being driven back on the administrative complex in the middle of the TTC compound. .

"All Caballeros," he broadcast, "this is Falcon, in the TTC yards. We can't hold on much longer. We need help. Please respond."

He quit transmitting, knowing he would get no positive response.

"Falcon," his headset announced, "this is el Cuco, coming on-line. Arrow IV volley, ready in three-zero seconds. Please light me up a target."

Gavilan stared at his board as if it had suddenly grown green fur. "Dolores? Señora Gallegos?" In Diana's O-Bakemono?

"You can just call me Red, Falcon," the woman's voice responded. "Now, how about that target designation?"

"I've got one," came Raven's voice. "A Quickdraw. The son of a bitch who killed John."

"The power is on the way. !Diana, la Capitana, y venganza!"

* * *

"Tai-i," came the worried voice of Talon Sergeant Miura, "my sensors show you are being illuminated by Target Acquisition Gear for an Arrow IV missile system."

Young Toyama laughed. "I have it too, Gun-san. It's absurd. The gaijin don't have anything like—"

The huge missile struck the Quickdraw between the shoulder blades and split the 60-ton 'Mech like the blow of an axe.

* * *

Howard Blaylock strode toward the elevator banks as fast as his long legs could carry him.

It's not all lost, he kept telling himself. I just had to get away from those crazy women for a while. My guards can handle them, and that martial nitwit Kusunoki can handle the mercenaries once he gets his crap-kettle commanders kicked back into shape.

Everything's fine, he told himself. Everything's under control. The mercs and those militia scumbags are going to shoot their whole wad here and now. All that'll be left is the mopping up—and what a lot of fun that's going to be ...

"Got a big date, Howard?" A tall black-clad figure stepped into sight from a lounge area to bar his path.

"Can't figure what else you'd be in such a hurry for, romantic cuss that you are."

He stopped. "Captain MacDougall," he said. His voice was steady, though his throat and lips were dry.

She smiled. Her hands are empty, thank God. She was wearing a laser pistol in a low-slung holster, though. God knew why the governments of the Inner Sphere allowed anybody but regular-army soldiers to carry them.

Cow her. "Listen, bitch," he shouted, letting spittle fly. "Get out of my way, now. That way maybe I'll be nice when I have time to deal with you!"

"I love it when you sweet-talk me, Howard," she said.

"O.K." He held up his hands—and shuffled a couple of steps closer. "O.K., I'm sorry. I'm under a lot of stress. I lost control for a moment there. But can't we just talk about this like two adults, you and me?"

"Sure, Howard."

"Swell." He reached behind his back, so smooth he could barely believe how good he was, and his hand came up with his little sneaky-pistol—

Magically, Lady K's laser was already out and leveled." He saw a red flash.

The beam punched through his forehead. It flash-boiled the fluids in his brain, causing them to expand, rupturing his skull and forcing his eyeballs out of the sockets.

She looked down at him. Bits of puffed-out brain showed here and there where they'd pushed through his skull. They looked like steamed cauliflower.

"And that's the best form of therapy," she whispered, holstering the weapon.

No sooner had it slid into place than a mighty explosion blew in the window facing the courtyard and slammed her against the wall.

* * *

"Kali!"

Cassie raced forward, skidded the last several meters to her friend's side on her knees. Lady K lay along the base of the wall with one arm outflung and a trickle of blood running from the side of her mouth. Cassie grabbed at her right wrist, which hung across her chest, to feel for a pulse.

"Oh, Kali, please don't be dead," she moaned. "I'm glad you killed Blaylock and I'm sorry I was mad at you and please don't be dead!"

Lady K's eyes snapped open. "HDLC, honey, gently!" she said in a raw-throated croak. "I'm not dead. Just resting my eyes. And you don't have to apologize for being mad."

Her voice got dreamy and she shut her eyes. Cassie sat on her heels feeling the tears pour down her cheeks. Outside, the sounds of a 'Mech battle roared like the worst thunderstorm to hit Port Howie in a century. The BattleMech force from Tower of the Elephant Elementary had arrived.

"You look like you ought to be dead!"

"The way I feel it'd be an improvement. Now, you better motivate out of here, before a second missile comes flying through the hole that first one made—"

"No! I won't leave you!"

Kali opened her eyes again. "Where's the Pretty-boy?"

"He went off to rally his troops."

"Somebody's got to get him." Kali coughed, spat blood.

"Oh, God, you've got a punctured lung."

"No I don't. I bit my damned tongue, and swallowing blood's making me sick to my stomach. Now, listen up, girl: you've got to get him. You understand? The bad guys still outnumber us by I don't know how much. They'll only quit if you nail Kusunoki. That's our only chance."

"But what about you?"

"Even with Blaylock... dead," Kali said, her speech becoming slurred and labored, "I don't want... to live if we lose."

Cassie nodded. "All right. I can steal a motorbike, head him off before he makes a klick."-

"No ... good. He took ... the Naginata. Not even you're ... superhuman enough to bring a ninety-five-ton 'Mech down ... on command."

Cassie sucked down a deep breath, started to tell her friend that she was the expert dismounted 'Mech-buster here.

Then she stopped herself and exhaled. Because Lady K was right She was a brilliant improviser. But that wasn't enough to rely on now. She was usually able to pick her spot for 'Mech-hunting, set things up to her advantage before ever taking action—the Christmas Eve fight at poor Percy's party had been a fluke, and she knew it This time she couldn't count on extraordinary luck—and she had no leeway for laying traps.

"But what can I do?" she practically sobbed.

"Look out... the front... window."

* * *

Downtown Port Howie's in a hell of a mess, Mouse Omizuki thought, bringing her boomerang-shaped Shilone down low above the Admin Center to try to sort things out.

The streets north of the big structure boiled with BattleMechs. No way could she sort out who was a target and who was a fellow servant of the Dragon. She took her ship around to the east toward where another air battle was raging. She wanted to be out there, shooting down the ground-attack aircraft that she knew from listening to her fellow pilots' chatter were laying such hurt on the ground forces. But she'd been ordered to support the security elements around the Admin Center, so she banked and came back in again even lower, and so slow she had to use her downward-angled thrusters to keep airborne.

It was still a bitch trying to pick 'Mechs out of city-center build-up, much less figure out who was who. She was focused on the ground, which meant she wasn't watching her three-sixty 'display.

The Shilone rocked twice, as if somebody had struck it twice with a very large hammer. Her pulse spiked as her eyes snapped to the three-sixty view strip. Her drive flame was about twice as big as it ought to be, and there was a little tiny insignificant white toy airplane with a red-painted nose apparently hovering over her left wing.

"Son of a bitch." Her board lit up red all over. When the board went that red in that big a hurry in a temperamental torch job like this, you punched out right now, and hoped that was soon enough to keep the doomed bird from taking you along to oblivion.

Mouse punched out. Right now.

Her 65-ton Shilone soared gracefully out over the bay and blew up. Well, there goes my career, she thought.

But that was followed immediately by the thought, That isn't worthy of a warrior. And then: Oh, screw it. I spend my whole adult life training to serve the Dragon as best I can, and some FedRat hotshot in a wind-up toy and that fruitcake Kusunoki blow it all to hell in about six seconds.

I wonder if the bishonen will let me have a broom-handle to swat gaijin 'Mechs with when he busts me back to. Recruit-for-Life in the Dragon's Toejam.

Noise was beating up at her like heat waves from below. She looked down.

"Oy, vay iz mir," she said, lapsing into the secret speech she'd learned as a child, which it was death to use around outsiders. She was well and truly over the TTC yard. And the 'Mechs slip-sliding away from it along slushy streets looked suspiciously to her—now that she had a certain amount of leisure to study them—like machines belonging to the thug Black Dragons and Kusunoki's fair-haired MechWarrior boys and girls.

She tried working the Shrouds of her parafoil chute to see if she could get clear of enemy territory. But there were a lot of fires burning down there, some of them in what used to be BattleMechs, and the winds were swirling. It would be all she could do to keep from coming down in a 55-ton oil-drum fire. Frak.

Well, at least! can stop wondering if Kusunoki'll stick me in a field brothel for the Towne Guards, she thought.

As she floated toward a semi-ruined cluster of buildings, a nasty little Wasp with a black-striped yellow torso came shooting up on its jump jets to look her over.

"Whoo-ee!" a voice boomed from a loudspeaker. "Check it out! They're dropping us supplies by air!" The voice spoke with an impossibly ignorant-sounding rustic accent that Mouse thought had to be fake.

"Let's get a look at you, honey," the 'Mech jock said, easing down beside her. "Ain't much in the face, but looks like you got the body to make up for it."

She shot him a finger. He laughed and let his 'Mech drop planetward into a swirl of steam and dust. She hoped he'd misjudge and splatter himself, but no such luck. He touched down as if being lowered from the hand of God himself.

A moment later her boots bit the ground. She ran a few steps, was pleased when by force of sheer will she was able to keep from falling over. She hit the quick-release button for her chute. It went billowing away across the switching yard as a party of burly civilians in laborers' clothes approached her, spanners in hand.

"Hey, now, boys and girls," that hateful voice said. "Play nice."

The group stopped and looked nervously up at the Wasp. It was amazing how huge even the smallest BattleMech looked when you didn't happen to be in a superpowerful war machine yourself.

"But she's one of them" one of the welcoming com-
mittee said. -

The 'Mech twitched an upraised forefinger at them. "Now, that's where you're wrong. She's a girl. Pretty-Boy Kusunoki don't like girls. That means she and he ain't exactly like this." The 'Mech's left hand crossed its fingers.

The laborers looked at each other. Their necks may have been wider than their heads, but they could see the holes in this logic.

"O.K., how about this?" The Wasp's head, adorned with paired antennae like antlers on either side of its head, looked at Mouse. "Do you surrender to me, Lieutenant Junior Grade William Payson of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment? So that I can stomp into a red throw rug any person or persons attempting to do you bodily harm? Think about it, then say yes; I got me a war to get back to."

Mouse took off her helmet and threw it at the ground. It bounced back and cracked her on the shin. She kicked it.

"All right," she said. "I surrender. And the Combine can shoot me for a traitor if they bloody well want to, but I am not going to work for that no-good bishonen bastard any more!" And she sat down and began to cry.

* * *

Tim Moon was feeling good. The Shilone was his second kill this sortie. But he'd burned up all but one of his missiles, so it was time to start thinking about heading to the airfield the Rangers had set up on Route 55, several klicks behind the Caballeros' jump-off point of the morning. He could refuel, catch a quick nap while the armorers were stroking his machine gun and hanging new missiles on the racks, and be back hunting in an hour.

From the corner of his eye he saw a flick of purposeful movement: a Crusader, down between a couple of high-rises, raising its outsized right forearm to bear on his Voss. He put the nose down and pushed the throttle forward, hoping to get out of the 'Mech's field of fire, limited as it was by tall buildings.

Long-range missiles swarmed all around his bubble cockpit. One exploded with a loud crack just off the tip of his left wing.

He grimaced at the shrapnel-holes torn in the wing of his beautiful little airplane. He felt and heard wind whistling into the cockpit. Apparently the fuselage had taken some damage too. But there were no red warning lights burning on his dashboard, and the Voss was handling fine.

He coughed. His mask was pulled to the side, unneeded for the moment. He covered his face with his fist, coughed again. As he did, he realized that the left side of his chest felt numb.

His glove was bright with blood when it came away from his mouth.

"Now, Timmy-my-boy," he said aloud, "this isn't a good thing."

BattleTech - LE5523

31

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

Unimpeded by combat, stepping without hesitation on the civilian traffic when it got in the way, Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki headed his Naginata east toward destiny.

Kusunoki was not a genius. He wasn't even very, bright. But in that as in many ways he resembled one of Napoleon's marshals: he was utterly courageous, charismatic, decisive, had a strong grip on the basics of war, and kept his head in action. Also he was lucky.

Despite the setbacks he had suffered today, infuriating as they were, he felt good. As Lady K had, he realized a fundamental truth: he still had the big battalions. His regulars were still holding the gaijin out of the city, if only barely; he was able to follow the battle in some detail, thanks to the powerful C3 computer built into his Naginata. He was heading for the fight for the wrecked highway interchange. If he could reach his troops there he could rally them, and if he could rally them they could beat back the money-troopers. Then they could whip the gaijin back from the eastern perimeter, and finally march back to smash the curs who had sneaked into Port Howard in a paltry attempt to thwart the Dragon's will.

Such a victory would surely enable the Coordinator to overcome his white-livered counselors and come out openly in support of the seizure of Towne. Kusunoki's action here would be merely the first pebble of a landslide that might sweep away the decadent Federated Commonwealth, and the money-obsessed Lyran Alliance as well.

He came over the top of a hill in a district of row houses to find a huge BattleMech blocking his path at the foot of the hill, two hundred meters away.

He stopped. The machine looked familiar somehow. With a shock he realized it was the captured Atlas that had been standing out in front of the Admin Center for months.

But it has a fused knee! How could it get here ahead of me?

Kusunoki was not as current in the saddle of a BattleMech as he might have been; he had spent the last few years coasting on his reputation, in some respects. But he knew at once what must have happened: the Atlas's not-particularly impressive speed—which was the same as his Naginata's—had not been impaired. And he had moved with a degree of caution, keeping alert for ambushes and other hazards. If he got stuck in a firefight—or if his 'Mech's foot went through a weak point in the road and he blew out a leg actuator of his own—he would never be able to rally his forces in time to rescue the eastern defenses.

If the other 'Mech pilot had been willing to push his machine with utter recklessness, regardless of the risks entailed, he might well have spotted Kusunoki a head start and still beaten him here.

How did he know which route I'd take? the General wondered. Then he noticed a small white speck in his three-sixty vision-strip. He rotated the 'Mech's torso for a look first-hand, and his suspicions were confirmed: it was one of the indigenous fighter craft, painted white with a red nose and trim.

He faced back toward the Atlas. It stood unmoving, its skull face seeming to stare through his curved windscreen and into his soul.

"Get out of my way," he said over his loudspeaker. "I have no time for you."

Slowly, painfully, the BattleMech limped into motion up the street toward Kusunoki. The General raised the Coventry Star Fire 15-missile rack built into the Naginata's right arm and fired.

His lack of current practice showed. He had forgotten to adjust for the downward angle. Most of the salvo missed high. The single hit blew a divot out of the armor on the Atlas's upper-right chest, but failed to penetrate.

The Atlas gathered speed. Already it was within minimum range for his LRMs. He could fire them, but they would not arm—which meant they would bounce harmlessly off the Atlas's legendary tough Durallex Special Heavy armor.

Thanking the Buddhas that his 'Mech mounted an extended-range PPC, which had no minimum range, he raised the Naginata's left arm and fired.

Blue lightning shot out and struck the center of the Atlas's chest. The great machine rocked back briefly, as if feeling the impact, then trudged on.

Kusunoki kept the firing stud mashed down. The Atlas's chest armor glowed red, yellow, white, began to drip, began to run, then began to boil away in clouds. The ponderous machine advanced inexorably.

Why doesn't he shoot? Kusunoki wondered. Perhaps his weapons were non-functional, perhaps the pilot was acting out some peculiar personal code of honor. One way or another, the Atlas made no attempt to attack or to defend itself, just waded upstream against fire.

The next question Kusunoki asked himself was, How long can this go on? His own Naginata was running cool on its hike east, and his double-capacity sinks could handle the full heat load of his Lord's Light 2. But the weapon was not meant to be fired continuously for seconds on end like this. Its heat output was so ferocious that it had special refrigeration units built in; Kusunoki feared the PPC might burn itself out from this abuse.

Yet still the Atlas came-on, step by infinitely weary step. A dark bar down the front of Kusunoki's self-polarizing neurohelmet visor did not eliminate the glare from the particle beam entirely. His eyes were beginning to hurt.

How can this MechWarrior stand it? he wondered. He must be made of iron. Even if the machine didn't have double-capacity sinks, it was amply equipped with coolers and was not itself doing anything to add to its heat. But the sinks bled heat out of the system as a whole. They could do little to mitigate the horrific localize heat around and above the impact-point of the man-made lightning of the PPC. The temperature in the cockpit must be soaring.

And then, when the Atlas was scarcely twenty meters away, it began to slow. The ammunition for its LRM launchers went off, the force of the blast vented out the back by its CASE. He could see other flares and flashes inside the torso of the tortured BattleMech now.

I've won, Kusunoki knew. That warrior might as well be a light year away. In another few seconds his armature will catch fire, or he'll lose containment on his fusion bottle, and that will be that.

As if to acknowledge its own futility, the enemy BattleMech reached out its arms to Kusunoki's machine. Kusunoki uttered a guttural cry of triumph.

Something filled the windscreen before his eyes. He looked up in time to see the little white aircraft with the red-painted nose plow into the Naginata's chest, right between the long-range missile racks, in a full-throttle power dive.

Flame washed out Kusunoki's forward vision. The flimsy little airplane did not damage the BattleMech's own Durallex Heavy Special plate. But its terrific momentum knocked the Naginata over backward.

The back of Kusunoki's head slammed hard against the rear of his seat. Bright needles of light shot through his head and his stomach turned over. The air was driven from his body.

Yellow telltales shone on Kusunoki's board, alerting his consciousness, badly defocused by impact, that the two chest-mounted launchers were in possible malfunction status. Otherwise the machine seemed perfectly functional. If only he could gather his wits, he could get up ...

The Atlas landed on the Naginata. It crawled forward; Kusunoki could feel the heat emanating from its ravaged chest. Before he could figure out how to meet this highly unorthodox attack, the enemy 'Mech had wrapped its arms around the Naginata's upper body, locking the 'Mech's arms to its sides.

Then it powered down.

No amount of abuse to the arm actuators could serve to dislodge the fallen machine from the dormant 'Mech's death-grip. Kusunoki screamed in frustration. It did as much good.

He popped the canopy and tumbled out, hoping to escape and continue his journey afoot. Perhaps he would even catch this enemy napping.

His enemy was standing on the curb seven meters away. A woman? he thought, momentarily too stunned to be appalled.

Her hair had been scorched to a brief, wild nimbus. Her clothing was black and still smoked. Her face was smudged with soot, and where it showed through, the skin beneath was angry red. She had a bundle over her back, wrapped in smoldering towels, and had a machine pistol trained on him from the hip.

She made an imperative gesture with the MP barrel. He knelt and put up his hands. This was all unreal to him. Surely it could not be happening.

"Who are you?" he croaked.

"You've met me," she said. "I'm Cassie Suthorn."

He goggled. Could it be? Possibly ... if one tried to imagine what she looked like before most of her hair was burned off. He was so off-balance he actually spent the effort.

"Young lady," he said, more graciously than he had spoken to any woman in many years, "you are a most accomplished MechWarrior, if unorthodox. I apologize; what I first took for your clumsiness was transcendent simplicity of technique. Please tell me, was it from NAMA you graduated, or the Nagelring?"'

"Neither," she said. "You were right about the clumsiness thing. I don't really know how to pilot a BattleMech."

He started to suck in a deep breath to vomit disbelieving rage all over her. Then he sat back on his heels and the air came out his mouth till his mighty shoulders slumped.

"What do you want of me?" he asked.

For answer she reached behind herself, rummaged in the bundle strapped across her back. She tossed him a smaller bundle, slim, slightly curved, and a little over half a meter long. When he caught it, he realized it was wrapped in a towel soaked in water, presumably to preserve the contents from heat.

He unwrapped it. It was the wakizashi from his own dai-sho, the large-small sword set he had been given upon graduation from Sun Zhang Military Academy. Around the scabbard was taped a piece of rice paper, slightly damp.

He stared at it. "What's this for?"

"You know."

With fingers that felt like socks filled with sand, he undid the piece of rice paper and unfolded it. A poem had been scrawled on it in hasty yet rudely sincere kanji.

False Dragon believes He alone is capable of surprising foes

He looked up at her.

* * *

A helicopter settled onto a lawn covered with well-tracked snow half a block away. Dilonna Saunders emerged, prodded by the Shimatsu-42s of two Caballero Aztechs. Enrico Katsuyama arid Risky Savage climbed out after her.

Hoisting a portable holocam to her shoulder, Risky pointed to the tableau where Cassie stood facing the defeated Kusunoki.

"You're going to broadcast this to all the people of Towne, honey," Risky said. "Make it as pretty as you did for Howard when he murdered Diana. Or we'll hand you over to the mothers of the kids who were killed when your pals attacked Camp Mariposa."

For a moment the news reader stared at her with the wide eyes of an animal, hunted and trapped. Then Saunders took a deep breath and visibly composed herself. When she walked forward, she was every centimeter the cool, professional newswoman.

"I'm coming to you live from a Port Howard street, in which Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki, defeated in 'Mech-to-'Mech combat by a young woman who is not even a trained MechWarrior, prepares to perform the final act of his long and colorful career ..."

Cassie unslung the bundle from her back, shook off the covering. Inside was the General's katana.

Jeffrey Kusunoki stripped off his cooling vest, opened the top of his sleeveless and legless body suit and peeled it down to his waist. He unsheathed the wakizashi and gazed down at it thoughtfully.

With a sliding-singing sound, Cassie unsheathed the longsword, and stood above him with the blade aglitter in the sunlight.

BattleTech - LE5523

It Seems That the Dead Are Here

If one has not given everything, one has given nothing.

—Georges Guynemer

BattleTech - LE5523

Epilogue

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

23 April 3058

The robed ComStar acolyte looked at the sodden red handkerchief the old man was pressing to his chest. It was actually dripping blood on the tile in front of the counter at the HPG station.

"Young ... lady," Mr. Kimura said with obvious effort, "will you please see that ... the following message ... is transmitted to Mr. Hiraoke Toyama of Dieron, the Dieron Military District, Draconis Combine? He will pay on receipt. He has an account."

It seemed that she moved her lips for several seconds before the word "yes" escaped.

Mr. Kimura pulled a pad and pen toward him across the countertop and wrote a final message to his oyabun. He slid the pad toward the young Woman, who stared at it as if it might possibly be alive, and venomous.

He smiled encouragingly at her, unaware that his gums were red with blood. She grabbed up the pad and scurried away into the back. Courteously, he tipped his hat, then turned and teetered out into the bracing air.

His legs were definitely beginning to fail. He made it across the street to a wrought iron bench at the edge of a little park, into which he lowered himself with a sigh of relief.

He looked up at the sky. The midday sun was burning the overcast away. It would be a beautiful day.

He removed his hideout pistol from a pocket of his blood-stained tail-coat, stuck the brief barrel up under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

Port Howard

Aquilonia Province, Towne

Dracon's March, Federated Commonwealth

26 April 3058

Cassie became aware of a floating sensation, and an infinite whiteness. With a combination of terror, annoyance, and relief, she decided she was dead.

Then she heard voices discussing what gown one should wear to an important State ball. It was ever so vital to make just the proper impression on young Duke Athelstan. He was ever so handsome ...

Deciding people didn't talk that way in Heaven— had she been thinking clearer she might have decided she had gone the other way—Cassie opened her eyes."

The room was painted white. The sheets and pillowcases surrounding her were white. The holotank bolted to a little metal shelf hung off the wall by a chain was showing Royals' Pride. Cassie groaned. Now she knew she wasn't in Heaven. Royals' Pride was an impossibly treacly soap opera based on a fictional version of the royal family who ruled the Federated Commonwealth. It was popular all over the Inner Sphere, and had been since before Cassie was born. She wasn't even sure it was still being made; this episode looked vaguely familiar, but then, they all did whether she had seen them before or not.

"All right, I know it isn't great art," said a familiar voice from her right. "But it kind of reminds me of poor Annie Sue Hurd."

Cassie tried to sit up. She lacked the strength. She turned her head, pushed it far enough to the side that she could see past her pillow.

"Lady K!"

"Guilty as charged. Lord, hon, we've been waitin' three days for you to wake up. And you managed to wind up looking worse than I do!"

Since what she could see of Kali MacDougall had a metal splint taped down the nose, two enormous black eyes, and a right shoulder so wrapped in bandages it looked like the shoulder-housing of a Grand Dragon, Cassie might have been perturbed at the thought of looking worse than her friend. But she didn't especially care how she looked.

"You're alive!" she exclaimed.

"Don't ask me how I feel about that for a few days," Lady K said. "I got off light: busted snout, half stove-in ribs, and sort of bag full of pea gravel where my right shoulder joint ought to be, if I got the medical lingo translated correctly. Could be worse: I could have an abscessed tooth."

Cassie wasn't always sure whether her friend was joking or not.

"How is the Regiment?" she asked.

Lady K briefly shut her eyes. "For now let's just say most of our friends made it through. Some of 'em a little worse for wear, though—when Raven found out Frenchfry only had a few bruises from being shot clean out of the sky, she busted his nose on the spot. He's a couple doors down; Those two are cute, but I think they got some issues to work out."

"Marly?" For some absurd reason she felt almost responsible for the girl.

"Fine. Physically, anyway. She got to pop some PPs, which made her happy as a blue goose. And all the Gallegos' who were alive when we got our tickets punched are still that way, and the Colonel and Gabby. Buck Evans, too mean to die. Cowboy, too stupid to. Right now he's shacked up with some Drac flygirl who got shot down right over TTC. Seems like she was about ready to switch sides even before she found out what kind of bill of goods old Pretty-Boy Kusunoki sold 'em about what Teddy the K really wanted."

"Badlands?"

Kali shook her head.

Cassie felt her eyes fill with tears. She started to speak.

"Hon," Lady K said gently, "we got enough grievin' ahead that we'll have to do it in shifts as it is. And I know I'm not helping by bringing poor Avengin' Annie into this. But it's getting a mite crowded in here as it is. Let's give some of the ghosts a chance to move on, why don't we?"

Cassie nodded, understanding. But the tears flowed free, and she had to ask, "Tim?"

Lady K sighed. "That was his last bow that you saw, hon. He didn't eject before he hit the Naginata."

Cassie turned her face upward and cried bitterly. When she could speak—sort of—she said, "He saved me. He saved all of us."

"Cass, he prob'ly saved you. But I really think you would've made the old battered Lady walk that last few meters, even if you had to carry her yourself. You would've died, I reckon, but you would've taken Pretty-boy with you. Your pride would've carried you. And love."

After an interval of sobbing, Cassie said, "I really did love him."

"Me too, hon," Lady K said. "Life's just that way sometimes, ain't it?"

Cassie found that by stretching her hand way out to the right, she and Lady K could just clasp fingertips. And doing so, she slipped back into sleep.

BattleTech - LE5523

About the Author

Victor Milan has published nearly seventy novels, including The Runespear, co-authored with Melinda Snodgrass, and the award-winning The Cybernetic Samurai and its sequel, The Cybernetic Shogun. Recent books include a technothriller, Red Sands; a Star Trek® novel entitled From the Depths, and Close Quarters, a very popular Battle Tech® novel. His dark military SF novel CLD was recently published by Avon Books.

The WASHINGTON POST has called Milan a "contender for major stardom" in science fiction. He is a charter member of the New Mexico-based Wild Cards Mafia, creators of the highly acclaimed SF shared-world anthologies.

Milan's house is infested with dogs and ferrets. He enjoys birding, playing games of various sorts, walking by the Rio Grande, and exploring the ancient network of irrigation ditches by mountain bike in Albuquerque's North Valley. He also practices taekwen-do.

He finds himself living in the science fiction world he read about as a kid and generally, he's pleased.

Black Dragon, another great Battle Tech® novel by Milan, will be published in November of 1996.