Jenny pulled back on the throttle. Below her came the descending whine of her Madcat's gearbox slowing down, as she reached the only bridge that crossed this river for eighty klicks. Behind her, the supply convoy she was escorting halted in unison as she stared ahead in disbelief.
There was a mech duel going on ahead of her. One was a Vulture, packing a standard loadout according to her battle computer. The other was some kind of customised Black Knight – a newer Inner Sphere model mounting mainly beam weapons but with almost unbeatable torso armour and enough heat sinks to let it fight for a long time before needing to stop and cool off. Its entire right arm comprised two PPC barrels, while the left – with the characteristic fin-like extra armour plate that always reminded her of an Awesome – ended in four pulse laser weapons. As she watched, they glowed blue and spat sapphire light directly into the left leg of the circling Vulture, whose missiles hit the dirt in front of the Black Knight as it took a prim step backward. So they were X-Pulse lasers; another fairly new design, engineered from Clan tech, with twice the recharge time of an ordinary pulse lasers, twice the heat, and almost three times as much damage potential. They carved through armour plating and myomer muscle strands, spilling sick green coolant fluid from the now-limping Vulture's left knee joint before the twin PPCs were brought to bear. A faint whine, a crackle of enough charged ions to give God a nosebleed, and the Vulture's cockpit was annihilated.
Jenny breathed in slowly. This guy was good. She keyed a 'stay' command to the convoy leaders, who responded in the affirmative, and then strode slowly forward. The Black Knight, with its famous chest armour only slightly pocked and no other damage visible anywhere else, had taken up a station right at the near end of the bridge.
Jenny flipped into open-frequency communications and addressed the Black Knight pilot in front of her. "Hey, pal, you're pretty good. Fancy a job?"
There was no response. She fancied the mech was staring at her, and imagined baleful eyes behind the cockpit glass boring into her mech. Shivering briefly before shaking off the feeling, she spoke over open band again.
"Look, it's just a suggestion. But we could use you in our merc company, and besides we have to cross this bridge. These are medical supplies, and - "
"None shall pass," came a voice from the Black Knight, interrupting her – not a deep voice, but commanding and dreadful in its own way.
"What?"
"None shall pass."
She paused, nonplussed. "Listen. You're good. But there are lives depending on us. We will cross this bridge."
"Then you shall die."
"Oh, come on," she muttered, "I don't have to put up with this. I run an entire merc company, damn it."
"I move," he stated implacably, "for no one."
She'd had enough. "Fine!" she yelled, her fingers blurring across the interface panel – ordering the convoy out of harm's way, bringing her weapons online, and then grasping the twin control columns that controlled her Madcat. Charging forward, she wished she'd brought along a high-impact short-range system instead of long-range weaponry. She'd been expecting light tank patrols, and had configured her mech for rapid-fire sniping to take out vehicles before they got their own weaponry in range. Now she was fighting a mech with equal weight at short range, whose close-in ability far outmatched her own. Damn.
The Black Knight circled, bringing up its X-Pulse lasers to carve open her shoulder joints. Her years of experience, although limited, had been eventful; she could virtually see the line the lasers would follow, to carve off her right arm and sever the large pulse lasers she was packing in it. She fired them instead, two streams of emerald light set to continuous-beam function that flashed out toward the enemy's cockpit. But he was advancing, and she was a metre or so off in her aim. Her lasers struck the torso, which was a hopeless place to shoot at when facing one of these mechs, and did almost no damage whatsoever. In response, the blue X-pulse streams scythed across her own torso armour and crumbled a couple of the ferro-fibrous plates.
She snarled and keyed all her LRM racks to fire at once. This was the closest she had to heavy weaponry; six LRM-5 weapons, each firing a single five-rocket salvo at a time. Together, they could do some pretty serious damage and generated little heat. Firing those and her pulse lasers at once, she managed to cripple the enemy machine's left arm. The X-Pulse lasers sparked and died; to make sure, she fired her lasers again and carved the limb right off. The Black Knight staggered and fell, its gyro and the pilot's sense of balance suddenly disrupted by the loss of so much mass on one side.
Jenny began ordering the convoy to move forward again, having shown the pilot that she wasn't to be tangled with. She got as far as opening the channel before a twin PPC shot smashed into her side and blew open a third of a ton of armour plating. She blinked and swore filthily before turning to face the attack.
"Come on, it's over," she said. "Give it up. I've done you enough damage already!"
"It's just a scratch," he retorted.
"A scratch? Your arm's off."
"No it isn't."
"Look!" She aimed low, at the severed limb, and fired a low laser shot to draw his attention to it. His remaining arm turned – a sure sign that the pilot's head, which controlled part of the arm orientation, had turned as well, to take in the sight of the destroyed weaponry – before training on her again.
"I've had worse," he protested dismissively.
"You liar!"
"Come on, you weakling!" he shouted, firing again. She swore and circled around him at the fastest speed she could manage in the mud banks of the river, unloading her LRMs into his back and risking a double-charge – which involved pumping twice as much energy into her lasers, making them extremely effective but could heat them up to the point of system ignition and internal explosions – before firing into his other shoulder and severing half of that. It hung limply, swinging as he turned to face her and got her right arm and weapon pod in the face. The immense clang had a screeching-metal undertone that predicted problems if the ejection pod was used. She used the shockwave of the strike as a distraction, to line up a perfect shot on what remained of the right arm. Green light flared, and a second arm fell to the floor. Already unbalanced from the physical strike, the Black Knight's gyro – which had just reset itself to compensate for one missing arm – overloaded and the machine toppled over again, its short-lived stability gone.
Jenny sighed. It was over. The Black Knight was totally unarmed now. She crouched and ran a quick systems check, searching for any damage beyond the PPC hits and the early X-Pulse burns. There was only one new ding in the Madcat; it was a slight dent in the knife-sharp edge of her right laser pod, from the punch to the head she'd delivered. The weapon wouldn't be affected by it at all. She smiled and patted the machine's consoles. "Good girl. You did well. Convoy," she continued in a different voice, "Prepare to - "
CLANG.
Her Madcat pitched sideways and she screamed briefly, more of a yelp of shock than anything else. The entire mech had been knocked over; wrestling it back to its feet, she turned in time to see the Black Knight charging at her with its head down. It was trying to headbutt her into oblivion.
This is bloody stupid. What's he trying to prove?
"Come on then," snarled the Black Knight pilot, lining up another shoulder-charge.
"What?" she cried. "You can't be serious! You were good, but I won this already!"
"Oh, had enough, eh?" sneered the enemy pilot.
"Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!"
"Yes I have."
"Look!"
"It's just a myomer wound," he replied, somehow sounding confused that she should think this to be a problem.
"Oh, bloody hell," she muttered, afraid to turn her back. Even without weapons, a full-on bodycheck from a seventy-five-tonner could do damage to her back armour.
"Chicken," he chanted, swinging his mech's right foot forward brutally to smack into her Madcat's own birdlike knee joints. "Chickeeen!"
"Look, I'll have your leg," threatened Jenny, keying all her weapons at once. The preheat lights and lock tone shone and sounded at once, her mech's entire potential focused on a hip joint. He kicked her again, regardless.
"RIGHT!" she shouted, pulling the triggers on both her columns. The green pulse lasers fired their deadly beams again, accompanied by thirty long-range missiles fired from only two hundred metres away. The collective boom of their impact sounded like an aerospace fighter flying into the side of a dropship, and the Black Knight's leg – although not fully severed – went completely dead. There was a long pause.
"Right," cried the Black Knight pilot, sounding somewhat frantic. "I'll do you for that!"
"You'll what?"
"Have at you!" he screeched, limping up to her and pushing against her Madcat.
"What are you gonna do?" she asked, completely exasperated but unwilling to fill out the forms for having killed someone. "Leak coolant on me?"
"I'm invincible!"
"You're a loony," she corrected, backing up slightly. The dark mech followed.
"My Black knight always triumphs! Have at you!" he screamed. "Come on, then!"
She sighed and fired again, this time at the other leg. There was a clonk, a scream of gears grinding in opposite directions, and then the Black Knight lost all motive power and collapsed from the hips down. There was enough power in the hip joints for the gyro to keep the mech's torso upright, but considering it was unarmed and immobile that wasn't much good. The auto-ejection would have kicked in already were it not for the punch she'd delivered to its head earlier; something had bent or snapped inside the machine's thick neck area, and the launch silo for the tiny escape pod was too damaged to function.
The Black Knight's torso turned slightly in either direction. It was looking for ways out.
"All right," conceded the pilot finally, "We'll call it a draw."
"Come on, Convoy," sighed Jenny, sick of this lunatic. The train of cargo vehicles moved forward slowly, making a wide turn around the still-raging Black Knight.
"Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you!" he screamed, his voice on the radio sadly not diminished by distance as they headed across the bridge. "I'll nudge your legs off - " His voice was cut off as Jenny deactivated the open radio circuit and sighed, sinking back into the command chair of her war machine. It'd been a long day already, and it wasn't even noon…
Still, she thought, it could have been worse. He could have fought Alex. The thought of her friend's thirty-five-ton Raven going against that much firepower, even with a delusional God-complex-bearing fool at the controls, made her shudder.
The convoy accelerated with her as they crossed the border and began their full-speed haul.