There were soldiers around Grayson, he realized, brown-uniformed Militia and a sprinkling of richly-clad Guardsmen, dirty-faced and ragged but with a growing determination in their faces. They were armed only with personal weapons, but were adding the volume of their firepower to the metal hosing from Grayson's machine gun. Kai Griffith had been right The troops had responded to someone taking action. His single-handed duel with the BattleMech had rallied them, and they were forming up on his defensive line.
"The head!" He found himself screaming," his voice burned raw with the effort. "Aim for the head!"
There was a flash and a deep-throated explosion as a grenade detonated in black smoke and dirt by the 'Mech's foot. The Waspfell, dropping to hands and knees with a clatter of armor and mass. It left raw dirt grooves in the blue sward where it moved. Grayson leaned over and adjusted the drift of his vehicle, sending it in a slow glide toward the downed 'Mech. Then he straightened up, took careful aim, and ripped out another long, rolling burst of machine gun fire.
Armor splintered, fragmenting, flashing in the air about the head of the stricken battle machine. Bullets were penetrating the head now, smashing into the cockpit and riddling it through and through. The BattleMech sagged and collapsed, face down in a junkyard heap, its metal elbows and feet akimbo, pointed at unnatural angles into the sky. Bright red blood trickled from jagged rents in the shattered cockpit.
The troops around Grayson let out a cheer that drowned the roar of battle. His hovercraft dipped and swayed as several eager troopers piled on.
"Great shooting, sir!" one yelled. Strange how they assumed he was someone in authority. He certainly could not LOOKlike an officer in his ragged civilian's tunic and caking of dried mud and smoke stains. Was it because he had taken the initiative?
Whatever the reason, take advantage of it! "You!" His voice was hoarse, painfully raw, but he packed it with all the authority he could muster. "Drive! Get us to the Palace main gate!" He could see the flash and smoke of another firefight down the curve of the avenue. "You!" he shouted at another. "Help me load."
His gun duel with the 'Mech had gone through four linked, 250-round belts. Ten rounds on the last belt dangled unfired below the feed slot. With the soldier's help, he discarded those rounds and snapped in a fresh belt. Warm air whipped past his face as the driver gunned the GEV past the fallen 'Mech and skimmed back into the street. Troops, dozens of them, ran along behind, shouting, shaking their weapons in the air, rooting out other soldiers hiding along the street and pressing them into the column.
A second Waspkneeled before the entrance where the front gate had once stood. It was firing its laser with steady deliberation up the drive in the direction of the Palace. Burning vehicles and dead Palace Guards littered the grass before it. Grayson felt his new-found confidence ebbing. He had managed to catch the first Waspby surprise, opening fire from close range while the 'Mech was down, helpless in a pile of spilled rubble. He could expect no such good fortune from this machine.
"Skew us, quick!" His shout to the driver saved them. The 'Mech had sensed their approach, and had dropped to the ground in a thundering shoulder roll, bringing its laser up to point as it did so. The pulse of coherent light sliced through the GEV's port skirts. Air spilled, and the vehicle tilted sharply, sliding off to the left.
Grayson opened fire, a long, stuttering burst. He could see the sparks and puffs of dust as his shots struck home, but the range was too great to allow him the accuracy required to zero in on a target as small as the BattleMech's head. Paint scarred and flaked as the heavy rounds pounded along the machine's upper torso. Then, Grayson saw soldiers moving through the dense white smoke to the left. Squinting at them through burning haze, he noted black armor and helmets that enclosed their faces completely. Pirate troops!
A wild firefight had broken out on the avenue before the Palace entrace. The attackers opened up on the speeding hovercraft. Feeling bullets zing just centimeters above his head, Grayson ducked involuntarily. He swung the machine gun on these new attackers, firing now in short, searching bursts that probed the piles of rubble and collapsed buildings where the black-armored figures moved. Three armored men in a line jerked like puppets and pitched off a rubble mound. The others scattered, diving for cover.
The hovercraft smashed into a pile of bricks with a shriek of protesting metal and the ragged thud and rattle of a bent fanblade. The craft pitched and spun wildly, still circling to the left as air spilled from the damaged skirt. Grayson reached out and grabbed the driver's shoulder.
"Hey, get it under control, will you?" But the driver's head lolled back, and when Grayson pulled away his hand, it was slick with blood. A bullet had entered the driver's mouth and snapped his neck cleanly at the base of the skull.
The hovercraft grated along the pavement, striking sparks from its damaged fan. Grayson muscled the dead driver out from behind the stick and pushed him onto the street, then slid into his place. The GEV was losing power, and he had to fight to keep it from circling left.
The Waspwas standing now, crouched in a gunfighter's stance with its laser held out before it. The weapon fired, and an eye-searing pulse arrowed down the street toward a cluster of approaching vehicles. It seemed to have forgotten about Grayson's GEV, for it was facing partly away from him as it traded shots with the approaching infantry.
Grayson yelled to his loader to jump, then gunned the little machine's engine into a yowling keen broken by the deadly thumping air, canting the vehicle to the right to haul the torn left skirt clear of the ground on a faltering cushion of air. He rammed the stick forward as hard as he could. The hovercraft leapt across the street, engines shrieking and pounding with the effort. The Wasp'spilot sensed danger at the last possible moment, rose, half turning, bringing the laser around to bear.
The hovercraft hit the giant behind the right ankle at almost 200 kph, and Grayson went hurtling forward through fire and the noise of hell.
13
Grayson was airborne for the eternity of a second or two, then landed with a rib-smashing blow in the blue grass. The fall had knocked the wind from his lungs, and he lay gasping for breath. Managing to roll over on his back, he saw the gleaming mountain of the Waspagainst the green sky.
The hovercraft had smashed into the 'Mech's right ankle. Grayson had hoped to clip the back of the leg in such a way that the Waspwould fall, perhaps damaging itself. The hovercraft was nearly half as long as the ‘Mech was tall, and packed considerable mass in its stubby frame. But it hadn't worked. The 'Mech had shifted at the last moment, taking the wrenching impact on a skirt of armor plate that protected the side of the foot. The skimmer had bounced and crumpled, spilling itself across the ground. Grayson had been lucky that the crash had thrown him past that armored pillar and into the grass, and not smack into a metal wall.
His luck was rapidly becoming a moot point. The foot was lurching into the air, was dropping toward him. Grayson dove to the left, rolled on his shoulder, then scrambled to his feet. The armored boot gouged a meter-wide furrow in the spot of grass where he'd just been. It surprised him to find he could still move so fast His chest hurt, probably from a cracked rib, but the picture of himself being stepped on like a beetle gave a special impetus to his flight. Ahead, the soldier who had loaded for him waved him on.
Then he was among a number of soldiers, most of them city Militia. A trio of open-topped, six-wheeled armored vehicles was driving up, with ungainly light PPCs, or particle projection cannons, mounted on their rear decks. They fired as he turned to look at the Wasp.