Another Waspstepped out from among the boulders, up the hill from her position, and between Lori and her friends. She didn't need to trigger the IFF for this one. It was scarcely 50 meters away, but its paint scheme was totally unfamiliar. The orange-black tiger stripe camouflage was designed for jungle warfare, and created a stark contrast with the greys and browns of the boulder field. Her shot caught the Waspby surprise, a clean hit on its right arm that sent the 'Mech spinning back to slam into a rock. Its arm and the laser it had held lay twisted and torn in the sand.
"Good shooting!" Lori didn't know whether that voice was Enzelman's or Yarin's. She fired again, missed, then saw a lone HEAP warhead catch the Waspsquarely in its back. The enemy pilot managed to stabilize his 'Mech, though, and turned to face Lori head-on. A pair of short-range missiles spat from twin launch tubes set on the 'Mech's left leg. They missed as Lori strode forward to 30 meters' range and fired her laser again. The beam savaged the Wasp'shead, leaving a twisted, smoking, half-molten ruin where the pilot had been sitting only a second before.
Lori didn't have time to gloat. Her external mikes were picking up the grinding thud of another approaching ‘Mech off to the right. She nudged the Locustinto an ungainly but brisk trot up the hill, anxious not to be cut off from the Rift again.
Lori's 'Mech crested the top of the rise. There, it opened into a broad ravine that angled across the hill face toward a steeper, more rugged slope with vertical cliffs of striated red and ocher rock. Beyond, cliffs that were only half visible from below opened wide. They soared above her on either side of the valley, which grew narrower as its walls continued to rise like a vertical gash across the face of the mountain.
She scuttled the Locustback among the boulders, and found a place with a good view of the slope below. Then, she lowered the 'Mech into a leg-folded crouch, with the hull less than two meters above the ground and the long snout of the laser cannon protruding from beneath the cockpit. On either side of her, several hundred meters off, she caught glimpses of the Waspand the Stingerlying prone among the rocks with their lasers extended. There was other movement here, too, as ground troops and hovercraft weapons carriers edged forward among the barricades, falls, and fire traps hidden across the ravine.
Lori's mind rapidly assessed their position. They'd knocked out two 'Mechs, both light scouts. That left ten, possibly eleven enemy 'Mechs. Ah... there! Two more scout 'Mechs, a Stingerand another Locust,advanced into the open at the bottom of the ravine. Behind them came two more, a Riflemanwith its odd, twin-barrelled arms, and the ponderous lurch of a 55-ton Griffin .
Lori bit down hard, triggering a com circuit. "Sergeant Ramage!"
"Here, Sergeant!"
"Are you ready?"
"All set, Sarge. Give the word."
Lori waited, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she studied the unfolding situation. Two more 'Mechs had appeared behind the first four. They were too distant for her to make them out by sight, but her battle computer tagged them as two more Wasps.The range to the nearest targets was just over half a kilometer. The attackers kept moving, struggling up the loose-packed slope, but moving quickly.
The Duke must really be anxious to catch us, Lori thought. She zoomed her telescopies in on the lead 'Mech, a Stingerwith a dull grey camou pattern and the black and red Kurita dragon bright against its chest. She had already spotted a pair of boulders designated as markers at the base of the ravine. Only a few meters farther...
"Okay, Sergeant! Now!"
Explosions drew a curtain of hurtling rock and black smoke across the entire breadth of the ravine. They lifted the enemy Stinger,and hurled it with a mighty push. Meanwhile, the ground rippled under the Locust,creating waves of dizziness in Lori through her neural helmet. The wall of debris collapsed on itself like the tumble of an ocean wave, raising lighter-colored dust, and revealing a second 'Mech, the Rifleman.It lay on its back with the twin barrels of its right arm wrenched apart and bent back upon themselves by the force of the blasts.
The other 'Mechs were in full retreat. It was only too bad that the explosion represented nearly all the Lancers' small supply of explosives.
Someone was yelling in her helmet phones, a rolling, unending litany of "We won! We won!"
"Silence on the commline!" Lori snapped. "They're just regrouping." She could see the movement of men and 'Mechs through the air clearing much farther down the slope, perhaps two kilometers away. By the way they were deploying across the ravine, she could tell they had no intention of returning to the port. The Lancers were in a good defensive position, but it would not take long for a determined push by overwhelming numbers to climb back up the ravine and overwhelm them.
"Come on Gray," she said with unexpected fervor. "Stow that antenna, and then get the hell up here."
She turned her eyes to a monitor that looked up the hill toward the vapor-wreathed opening of the Rift two kilometers behind her. Through her mikes, she could hear the muted thunder of its waterfall. Their three 'Mechs and the hovercraft defenders were rapidly running out of room to run.
31
Tor let the computer direct a last correcting burn that reduced the DropShip's closing speed to just over a meter per second. The freighter Invidiouswas large on the bridge screen images from aft, under the DropShip's tubes.
Like most JumpShips, the old freighter was built around the needle-slim dagger of a central drive core. Those clean lines were broken, however, by an unsightly clutter of cargo modules, the stubby, rounded prow of the pressurized crew section, the off-center bulge of the Invidious'second DropShip still strapped to the aft cargo compartment, and the menacing, misshapen blisters of the ship's meteor defense particle cannon and lasers. Tor's practiced eyes searched for signs of damage or incompetence, but found none. The stationkeeping drive appeared to be functioning, though the only sign of that was the LED traceries on the DropShip's console instruments registering a magnetic flux. All the same, he had calculated this path to keep the DropShip well clear of those particle streams, which, even at a thrust measured in thousandths of a G, could kill.
Aft, far aft of the freighter, the red disk of Trell now appeared as a crescent of light caught in a black circle that seemed to be devouring the star. It was an artificial eclipse, Tor knew, brought on by the Invidious'jump sail ten kilometers aft
There was a burst of field-induced static from the bridge speakers, and then a man's voice speaking. "DropShip on vector four-five, reduce speed to point five meter per sec, over."
Tor touched a button, fed a correction into his computer console. There was another, almost imperceptible nudge. "Complied, freighter."
He'd kept ship-to-ship chatter to an absolute minimum on the approach for fear of giving something away. So far there had been no challenge, no order to change course or kill vector. The freighter's deck watch must be satisfied with the DropShip's IFF broadcast
The last sliver of Trell sun was swallowed by the black jump sail, and the DropShip plunged into shadow. The hull of the freighter was only a few hundred meters distant now, masked in shadow, but outlined by the glimmer and steady-paced blinks of acquisition and running lights. A green beacon pulsed at the screen's crosshair-marked center, where docking latches were blossoming open to receive the DropShip stern to.