Then she must have blacked out because, when she came to, she was looking through a veil of smoke from dying circuitry that burned her eyes. But she wasn’t blind; no, there was no mercy for her here.
Because she saw the DropShip, still coming, well enough.
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
Jonathan lumbered past the still-dazed and disoriented BattleMaster. Then time dilated and drew out, but not with the satisfying click that so often happened because, this time, Jonathan was the victim.
He was already past the BattleMaster, nearing the widening fissure in the ice, or so he imagined. The vast, nearly featureless white of the ice pack obliterated landmarks, made things seem infinitely far away. The ice was quaking more violently now, rippling and bucking like something come to life. Off-balance, the Panther swayed, and Jonathan instinctively moved to correct. The next shudder sent him pitching forward, coming down hard on his Panther’s right knee and outstretched right hand.
This probably saved his life because in the next instant missiles etched seams in the air directly over his canopy. The Bellonas were opening fire, and now the Destroyers got in on the act, punching out round after punishing round of autocannon fire at the Kuritan ’Mechs. The Raiders’ infantry had done their job at the cost of their lives, and clearly the tanks were to ensure that no one, not even they, left the ice pack. Risking a glance over his shoulder, he saw the missiles streak for the Locust, detonate along one of those spindle-thin legs, and then the Locust was reeling.
His alarms screamed and, jerking round, Jonathan caught the flashing sputter of tracer fire. He threw up his left arm in a reflex, and the uranium-tipped rounds ripped into the Panther’s elbow, at the joint. He’d silenced his DI and hit the heat lockout override, but he knew the arm was severely damaged; the only saving grace was that his PPC was wedded to his right. But the muzzle of his weapon was jammed into the ice, useless to him, and he was out of time for fighting. No more mistakes, no more errors! Even as he heaved back, struggling to right himself, his mind was racing: Have to get up, get up, get up!
The chasm ahead was pulling away from the glacier, and doing so with a preternatural swiftness that was otherworldly: first a half meter, then two, now four. The violence of the ice’s movement was so great the tiny forms of the troopers who’d planted their directed charges specifically to accomplish just this were jittering like insects on a hot skillet. Jonathan saw three hurtle into the yawning abyss; two more clung to the edges and were in shadow… Shadow? Yes, of course, he saw it now; the horizon shifting down, pushing up, the ice shelf where he stood calving away…
“Go, go, go!” he screamed, not to the BattleMaster, whose pilot now seemed to grasp what was happening; not to the Locust, limping badly now, his advantage of greater speed gone, his jump jets discarded. No, Jonathan screamed at himself to get moving, move! Desperately, he banged his PPC to life; blazing hot energy puddled the entrapping ice, and he yanked free. Heaving his Panther to its feet, he threw out blasts of PPC fire in the tanks’ general direction as a diversion, the bolts going wide, and Jonathan not caring, not thinking but pushing his Panther into a flat-out, lopsided run. He felt the jarring impact as a missile clipped his Panther’s already-injured left arm, smashing through armor at the left shoulder, and suddenly that arm was no longer functioning. The impact pushed him back, to the right, and for a heart-stopping instant, as the view from his cockpit was replaced with blue sky, he thought his ’Mech would crash to the ice to lie on its back, like a helpless, overturned beetle.
Then time ran out for all of them, every last one.
With a terrific, alien groan, the mammoth ice block sheared away from its anchoring glacier. What nature would have done in another five years, or ten, now occurred with weird, supernatural speed. The sounds were deafening and almost indescribable—a bellowing roar; a massive, throaty rumble like a volcano belching out flame and molten rock from a heart of fire. Violent shudders rocked the tanks and ’Mechs; two tanks too close to the brink simply teetered back and then vanished, one still spitting out laser fire that harmlessly punched the sea.
Jonathan felt himself falling—like being in a lift suddenly cut from its cable and going into freefall down an infinitely long shaft. His stomach lodged in the back of his throat; his head suddenly seemed to levitate away. With a scream, Jonathan hit his jump jets, hoping against hope that he wasn’t too late.
Now there was the roar of his engines as superheated plasma rocketed out, each jet channeled through a venturi baffle, funneling power! A blurring rush of ice, jagged shadows along the sudden face of a cliff that hadn’t been there five seconds ago, and now a glimpse of deadly blue water below; and Jonathan was blasting up, up, up! And something else now: piercing screams in his helmet; the other two MechWarriors trapped in their machines, going down, falling, hurtling toward death and a watery, dark grave—because neither had jump jets. And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had.
Then, ahead, above, below, Jonathan saw white ice, running men and rage burned in his belly, roaring out of his mouth in a battle cry of pure, unadulterated fury! Try to kill him, try to beat him? Angling in, useless left arm hanging limp by his side, Jonathan aimed his jets, engulfing the troopers in concentrated balls of fire that instantly seared through their armor, charring the men black—and then Jonathan crashed down atop them, finishing off a last trooper who’d somehow escaped the ice and his fury with a single burst from his PPC.
Gulping air, body still shaking with adrenaline and rage, Jonathan turned—and saw the ice simply fall away. The screams in his helmet suddenly cut out, as if hacked by an unseen hatchet.
And then the ice, the tanks, and the ’Mechs were gone.
DropShip Amagi over Iwanji Airspace, Saffel
“Heavy fighting, Tai-sho.” The Amagi’s pilot was grim. “A DropShip as well. We will be atop it in seconds.”
“Oh, God.” Crawford, by her side, and when their eyes met, Katana read his thoughts: Too late.
Not after all we’ve been through, to have it end here, now… Two days ago they’d winked in at the same pirate point as Parks’ JumpShip, and already knew that Parks had deployed his troops. Since then, they’d been racing to catch up, pulling as many g s as the crew could tolerate. They’d been lucky; they’d met no DCMS DropShips, had taken no fire—but if Parks and Sterling were dead as well…
She gave herself a mental shake. Stop. She wouldn’t let her people die in vain, not without giving her all. For now we see if Fate is with me, or against.
She nodded at the pilot. “Open a channel. Broadband.”
DropShip Dragon’s Pride
“I see it.” Worridge felt the skin tighten over her skull. Another DropShip, and not one of theirs. She looked back over her shoulder at the weapons officer, a young chu-i with skin as white as porcelain. “Is it hot?”
She saw the woman’s eyebrows fold into a frown. “Ie, they’re… they’re not,” she said, a trace of wonder in her voice. She glanced up. “They will be within range in the next forty seconds. Shall I plot a solution?”
Dare I do this, dare I?… Worridge sucked in a breath and said, “Negative. Give the order: Cease all hostilities. I want…”
But she never had a chance to say what she wanted because then the communications officer’s head jerked to attention. “Tai-sho! Incoming message, on all frequencies!” Then he gasped. “It’s Katana Tormark!”