Chapter 34
West of Kevilston, South of Mach 'Beh,
Highway K-5
Alshayra Continent
From up ahead, Emily saw Ifrit's Dervish dodge to the right to avoid a small swarm of angry autocannon rounds aimed right at it. Had he been a few hundred meters closer, they would have blown off half his left side. Oh, we got their attention all right… "Coyotes, Dirk here. Break right and start frogging! Someone get me a solid lock on that Trebuchet!
They had caught up with the rear echelon of the 2nd Legion, and they weren't happy to be tailed. They were even less happy to suddenly see the Renegades going renegade. The entire heavy battalion seemed to turn and come at both them and her new allies with the fury of a sports team being denied their big game with the defending champions, the RoughRiders.
She hated being in the rear of this fight, but it couldn't be helped. Her Cat was already down to almost zero frontal armor, and it wasn't designed for front-lining anyway. She thumbed the trigger on her forty LRM's, rocking backwards in her command couch slightly as all the propellant nudged the angle of the mech several degrees skyward. She rocked back to her original position as she turned her own mech to the right to run perpendicular to the 2nd Legion with her comrades.
The missiles landed near the Trebuchet, but he seemed ready for the volley and jumped out of the way. His trajectory was messed up as about a quarter of the missiles hit his legs, but an amazing display of piloting allowed him to keep everything level as he landed. Still, it took him a few extra seconds to begin moving again, likely rattled by the near-crash he just saved himself from.
As she picked up speed, she took a second to survey her people up ahead, now spontaneously playing a game of leapfrog with themselves. The two remaining Fire Javelin brothers with a working mech seemed to be doing just that, along with Clothesline. One after another they leaped, while the other two stopped to fire northward at anything slow enough to not require a lock. Their Wolverine looked more like a big brother looking out for his two little twin brothers.
Mother Hen was slightly out of sight, holding what used to be the left flank of their line. The two Firebees remaining in her lance had leaped into Emily's field of vision, each one having their own rotation for cover fire and movement. As the lead Firebee began to leap again, a large autocannon shell slapped it hard, ricocheting off of Adamman Sartika's chest, ripping off the right forearm mid-flight in a firey crash.
His callsign, Parkour, given to him after his acrobatics in the Gimli jungles was well-deserved. He was no stranger to midair hits, like the Trebuchet pilot to the north. Despite losing the large laser in his right arm just now, he managed to correct his trajectory and come to a stumbling run while he regained his balance. Emily caught a glimpse of the landing after the hit and smiled. They're all grown up, now. Even she had hardened up, no longer coming to tears at the losses of her people, though she doubted that was truly a good thing in the long run.
Meanwhile, the hectic chatter of her own reinforced lance of five mechs had its own cadence to it. Nymph was once again directing traffic as Vi's Spider landed well in front of Emily. It turned and fired its single medium laser while Ifrit took to the skies in his Dervish for a brief reenactment of the story of Icarus.
"Your tourn, Dierk!" Nymph's accent, thick with battle, stopped her brief analysis for a moment. Emily slapped her feet down once more on the foot pedals, but only briefly. Her Catapult did what could only be thought of as a brief jump, or a vain attempt at gymnastics. Several laser shots went high, anticipating a higher jump, and Emily hit the ground running once more at full speed.
Everywhere to her left, flashes of laser fire, explosions big and small, as well as random missile arcs went everywhere around her company. Most of everything went wide, some laser fire even catching Emily's mech but mostly too far to do anything but some surface-level scarring. She waited for her turn to jump while surveying the fight and floating her crosshairs over anything that would give her a lock. The rolling hills made that almost impossible at this running speed. She considered a longer leap to possibly get a lock in midair, but it took so long to get the sixty-five tonner through the entire jumping arc that she wagered she'd have a pot o' ammo waiting for her at the end of her leap, if she tried it.
"Coyote one, Renegade one. Where are you going?" Romero's voice cut in and had a touch of the pretentious even now, as what was left of his company was holding the farthest part of the left flank. Her maneuver had created a gap between the Coyotes and the Renegades southward. If the 2nd Legion decided to exploit it…the thought was once again interrupted by a pair of missiles slapping themselves into the left ear of her Cat. At least that spot still has some armor, but probably not anymore…
"Get back here, damnit!" His voice sounded like it was sliding on the spectrum from holier-than-thou to generally panicked.
"Shut up a second, Renegade! We want them to turn and come at us, remember? It gives more of an opening to the RoughRiders! Now can it and split up, so we can bait them further back." She cut the transmission before he could object and decided to go ahead and do a small hop with her mech just to give her mind something else to do.
She was rewarded with the bright streak of light from air below her mech being cooked from a flurry of LRM's aimed right where her legs used to be. She landed roughly, then pivoted the blimp-with-ears portion of her mech back to the north and attempted to get a lock on something moving slowly enough.
A half a kilometer north…
Hot firing the LRM's didn't pay off, and Kuri's targeting reticle kept snapping back and forth between the front-line mechs hopping around, so he couldn't get a lock on that Catapult in time. He knew that was their leader, and his only weapon in range missed completely. He had been forced to turn the entire black battalion to deal with this rearward threat, also ordering a halt for his red battalion up north, which was just now beginning to engage the RoughRiders up north.
They're closing around us like a vise…I guess it's now or never. He switched channels. "Gold actual, black actual."
"Go for gold?" His voice didn't sound too happy. He sounded like he had his own problems in the air for now. Or something shooting at him from below.
"Signal Wyverns one and two to join us at on highway K-5 at Lima-Lima-Juliet, One-Seven-One. He'll know where we are. We're surrounded and need their fire support. Let all our foxes in the sky know if they abandon us, they abandon the Dragon's glory."
"That's directly in the middle of the fight. You want to risk two Overlords for your personal glory?" It almost sounded like his aerospace commander wanted it confirmed verbally for investigative purposes.
Kuri's mech came almost to a complete halt with that insubordination. "You dare question your commander in the middle of a battle?! You will follow orders or hope your aero crashes before you can slice open your own gut. Get everyone in here. Black actual out." He noticed ahead the Coyotes were jumping over and over while almost at a complete retreat to the east. They were trying to lead him away, to split him up further. Not going to happen, Major.
He changed to his company commander channel. "Attention all battle rats. We have wyvern reinforcements coming in within five mikes. Give them a bigger landing zone than this. Black battalion, push south and push hard. Red battalion, regroup south and form the northern half of the ring."
A chorus of ayes responded from his company commanders. He was doubtful the RoughRiders would risk their own dropship support until it was too late. If he timed it right, he could create an opening for his reds to push north and isolate their artillery before they could train in on his Overlords. They each packed the firepower of an entire company of battlemechs, and for now they represented their only chance at escape if it came to that.
Well…I won't be going with them if it comes to that.
And he still had his final trump card to play. He flipped a cover of a button to his left, intended for one use only during this campaign. It sent the signal to reawaken the gun-cam virus buried deep within almost every unit aligned against him on this planet. It would start slowly as the virus needed time to get itself back in the proper files to do its job, and every mech had different computer systems. In time, he would be able to shoot properly, and everybody against him would not.
He lumbered his Cyclops back up to a fast walk to join his comrades as they scattered the mercenaries to secure his final move. The stale heat of the cockpit rose, and his lips were already chapped. His voice became dry and cracked again and he only took another sip of water for the sake of his men hearing him correctly. He figured at this rate, he was dead within an hour anyway. Nothing else mattered at this point. Only glory for the Dragon.
Underground bunker
Mach 'Beh
A blip on Alvarez's wristcom indicated a private message she needed privacy to receive. It actually required that she be the only heat source equal to a human within twenty meters before the message would even play. She politely excused herself to a nearby bathroom reserved for top-level planetary leadership in their safe haven several kilometers below the surface of Suk II.
As she hit the button, the message displayed holographically, allowing the text to be read much more easily just in front of her face instead of microscopic lettering that wore out the eyes.
"From Mr. Stanley Cornwell. This gift is in appreciation of the work you did last summer with Cornwell's Corncobs over on Gimli. We had a great harvest and never had the chance to thank you properly. Please accept this gift from some of our interns who were studying the latest crop-harvesting techniques in a tropical climate. It will be sent to you by the end of the month. Take care!" The file also included some pictures of young university students holding oversized ears of corn, almost the size of a small child. Despite this agricultural marvel that was actually true, it was nothing more than a cover story for this entire campaign. One in a few dozen side-stories in this operation that still managed to connect itself with the whole of humanity by only a few degrees of separation, despite the well-meaning intentions of each one.
She frowned at the message. It meant the virus had been re-activated, which also meant militia units would lose gun cams during this fight as well. Secretly she hoped the bulk of the carnage would stay away from them as the Dracs and the mercs slugged it out. Not that her caring about the lives of a few men and women who didn't need to die in this way meant anything at this point. She was so far down the rabbit hole, having sacrificed the lives of tens of thousands for her own ambition, caring for a few hundred soldiers did little to ease the pain.
She had no need to delete the message, for it disappeared about ten seconds after she read it. Shaking her head vigorously, her curly black locks wrapping around her shoulders, she swept her hair back and splashed some water on her face. Water of the treatment plants I had nearly completely destroyed across the planet. Water treated by people who's lives I had thrown away with a smile and a flick of a laser pen.
Her hands began to tremble as the gravity of what this had escalated to began to take hold. It felt like the planet itself had become heavier, dragging her arms down to the sink as she lost her strength and knelt to the ground.
Or was it something else that was making me weak? Had someone found out about all of this? Has an assassin reached me down here, or was it while I was topside? She knew of multiple ways to kill a person that made it look like natural causes, or a random affliction common to this planet.For a few seconds, she felt like she couldn't move, like she had been taken by a blood sugar crash. She felt helpless, and if she ever wanted to cry, this was the only moment left in her life she probably would.
She did not. She simply knelt there as the guilt passed as a warm gust of wind passes through a desert canyon.
After a few moments, her strength began to return. Maybe my conscience was trying for one last stand, or something. She pulled herself up to the sink and began to dust herself off. Apparently the power of her own ambition and greed was far stronger than any true humanity she had left.
After a long look in the mirror, she selected one of the masks from her personal mental inventory and went with a smile that appeared refreshed and optimistic. Splashing her face one more time, she strutted back out into the room, well protected from all the chaos above the surface she had created.
