Right into his line of fire.
“Sterling, no!” Parks screamed, horrified and—too late. “NO!”
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
Sakamoto was gone, and it didn’t matter because, as his Panther screamed from the sky, Jonathan understood everything in a sudden flash. His mind raced, working furiously as the ice field loomed. Once down, the Locust was faster but had no jump jets of its own; the disposable jets strapped to its undercarriage would be jettisoned as soon as it hit the ice. If Jonathan could maintain the advantage of surprise, he still might pull this off. But that BattleMaster was a brute, much heavier and with superior firepower; his Panther was no match for it, unless… Hands moving in a blur, Jonathan brought his targeting computer online. The active IFF transponder automatically blocked any ability to fire on a friendly ’Mech, but Jonathan saw what he was looking for. The BattleMaster still had short-range missiles. All right. He would have the advantage of surprise, if it came to that. Leaning forward, Jonathan brought his left fist down over the transponder controls. In instant later, his DI flashed that the transponder was off-line, no longer recognizing who was friend, or foe.
A pity it went on the fritz like that. His eyes clicked left, to the Raiders. And how far have you gotten, have you managed…
No time left to wonder. Got to get down now, now! Teeth bared, Jonathan powered down his jump jets as far as he dared. As he accelerated, the sky whirring by, his vision grayed and he grunted, forcing blood to his head, fighting to remain conscious. Jonathan honed his concentration into a single bright point as he bled altitude, gained speed, numbers blearing into a pulsing red datastream as the ice got closer and closer. Got to time this just right, got to time it, steady, steady…
“Now!” he shouted, banging his jets active. The Panther lurched, and his stomach catapulted to his throat before his body was smashed into his cushion by the force of his jump jets countering the machine’s gravity-enhanced vertical acceleration. His vision swirled, and his head went hollow… A few more seconds of thrust and then he had to cut the jets, take his chances…
And then he ran out of distance and time. He killed the jump jets at the precise instant his ’Mech slammed the ice. The impact was so hard, the ice cratered with an ear-splitting roar that was loud as a bomb. Instantly, he was aware that his DI was screaming a warning as thirty-five tons of endosteel and myomer groaned under the strain, the force of his landing exhausting his Panther’s shock absorbers. His temperatures soared to the red.
“Shut up!” Jonathan hit the override rocker switch, silencing the alarms. In the next second, as his cockpit temperature spiked to the near side of broiling, he was already pivoting, putting the sea to his back and hitting his jets again, this time leapfrogging from the ice crater onto the hardpack. He throttled up, pumping his Panther’s legs, pistoning in a charge for the BattleMaster. A monitor glowed an angry crimson, and he saw the impact had damaged the comparatively lighter ceramic housing of his gyro, and he didn’t need a computer to tell him that he’d also damaged the primary yoke assembly of the Panther’s right ankle.
If all I take away from this is a sprained ankle… Out of the corner of his right eye, Jonathan caught a glimpse of twin plumes of flame cutting out and knew that the Locust was down. He would deal with that later, if he even had to. First, he had to get further inland, closer to the BattleMaster and those tanks, the SM1s now pummeling the ’Mech with autocannon in earnest, leaving jagged blossoms of fractured armor blooming along the BattleMaster’s right torso and leg while the three Bellonas nipped at the great machine’s heels. In return, the BattleMaster pounded one Destroyer with four concentrated laser strikes. In a flash, the Destroyer’s armor puddled along its right side, punching the craft into a counterclockwise spin. A spurt of smoke, and then a Bellona spat out missiles that bloomed along the BattleMaster’s right hip. Jonathan’s external feed picked up the grating squall of endosteel as primary armor bled away, and the giant machine swayed.
By now Jonathan was nearly even with the BattleMaster, coming up on the right side, and instantly he straight-armed his PPC, cutting loose with a blast of supercharged energy. The crackling bolt, bluer than the sea just behind, chewed through the Destroyer’s skirt, spilling its air, and the SM1 flipped once, twice, three times before Jonathan hit it again. A mushroom fire-cloud boiled skyward as autocannon ammo ignited, and the Destroyer blew apart.
The roar of the explosion nearly covered the others, but Jonathan heard them just the same because they were the ones he was waiting for: a rapid-fire, staccato whumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhumpwhump! Not from behind, where the Locust, on its spindle-thin legs, was already sprinting for them; and not from the remaining tanks that were, even now, racing back for their base; but from his right, where the men had finished their work.
A voice, male, not Kyle in his Locust but the BattleMaster’s pilot: “What the…?” The ’Mech’s torso swiveled; Jonathan caught a glimpse of amber light, the stark silhouette of the MechWarrior, green shadows darkling over gray vest and bare skin. “Who…?”
And then the first shock wave hit as the ice protested, groaned—and began to break away.
DropShip Dragon’s Pride
Carillon Sector, Iwanji, Saffel
The words hung in the air like ghosts and were so thoroughly stunning that Tai-sho Carol Worridge’s brain clicked out for an instant. Sakamoto, dead! If she hadn’t heard it with her own ears, listened as Black Wind’s pilot shouted out his report, she’d never have believed it.
She came back to herself and looked around the bridge. A decision; they were waiting for her to lead them in battle. Yes, a battle—but with whom?
A small voice that she recognized as conscience freed from tyranny: Follow your heart. Follow your honor.
And then suddenly everything fell into place, and she knew what she must do. She turned to the communications officer. “Open a channel. Get me our troops.”
Carillan Sector, Iwanji, Saffel
“STERLING!” Parks bawled, and in the two years she’d known him, Sterling had never heard so much anguish in the man’s voice as she did then. “NO! Get out of the way, GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
But she couldn’t answer, didn’t have time because she was twisting in midair, executing an aerial pirouette, twirling, the DropShip now behind and the missiles arrowing for her face. And then she did something Andre Crawford swore up and down ought to work, in theory. She brought all her lasers to bear, aimed for an intersection point, and snap-fired them at once—and prayed like hell her armor was as good as the manufacturer said.
The laser fire coalesced into a fiery ball of ionization just as the missiles arrived. There was a tremendous blast as some but not all of the missiles detonated. A hail of raining armament boiled around her, and she was engulfed in a roiling ball of gas and fire. The flash was so bright her polarizing filters couldn’t snap into place quickly enough. But it didn’t matter. Her helmeted head snapped back, banging against her couch, and she was aware of a sensation of flying faster than a laser beam. She screamed—a long, drawn-out wail that cut out as her Ocelot crashed into the grove, snapping trees like twigs amid a tidal wave of sound.