The Clan pilot watched the Hellcat'snose begin to dip. as the Stingraywent into the negative-G loop. He smiled as she inverted and shot back up in a teardrop loop above the Hellcat'snose. The Cat'spilot rolled to get back on Caitlin's tail, and started a long dive to pick up air speed. When he saw Carew, he punched his overthrusters, sending long flame jets out the back of the Hellcat'stail.
In his panic, the Hellcatpilot hit one pedal a second before the other, giving the fighter's engine a momentary burst of energy before the other engine kicked in. In most aerospace fighters this would have resulted in the start of a power turn, but in the Hellcatit created another problem. The leading edge of the right wing began to inch forward as the fighter started a rotation around its vertical axis.
It took a second or two to correct, and in that time Carew rolled his Visigothin right behind the Hellcat.When Carew punched his thumb down on the stick's firing stud, the nose-mounted particle projection cannon loosed a bolt of synthetic lightning that chopped into the Hellcat'sleft wing and nibbled away at the vertical stabilizer. As Carew also hit the missile launcher, the Hellcatjuked to the left, pulling the wing out of harm's way.
Thirty LRMs streaked from the Visigothand peppered the Hellcat'sfuselage. Carew saw two green-gray clouds from missile clusters that told him heat sinks had been destroyed. One set of missiles had pulverized thrust vector nozzles while another three LRMs had blasted away at the armor over the engine. None of the hits were fatal in themselves, but taken as a whole, they doomed the Hellcat.
The flying wing, unable to use the port thrust vectors, remained flying straight and level for what must have seemed an eternity to the pilot. Carew, riding close behind the craft, felt time slipping away incredibly fast, but his heat monitor showed the Visigoth'stemperature dropping back to normal ranges, so he fired again.
The PPC's blue lightning raked through the armor over the fuselage, and another heat sink exploded in a spray of greenish liquid. A pulse laser lanced red darts into the engine cowling and another blew more armor from the fuselage, again destroying thrust vector nozzles.
Carew glanced at his secondary display. The Hellcathad lost three of its fifteen heat sinks. The armor on the fuselage had been damaged but not breached. The pilot had to want to disengage, but his thruster damage prevented that and the loss of his heat sinks meant overthrusting would make him overheat. Still, the fighter was operational and—as the laser from the after turret reminded Carew—it was still dangerous.
How much damage will you take before you die ?Carew dropped the crosshairs on the plane's outline. And how long before one of your comrades scrapes me off your tail?
* * *
Phelan hit his radio as he brought his Star up at the extreme edge of what was likely to be the bandit's range. "Ragnar, we have to let them know we are serious. We need an example. Try the DropShip."
"As you will it, my Khan."
Phelan's eyes narrowed as he gazed at the OverlordDropShip sitting on the pristine ferrocrete of the landing pad. A reality of warfare in the thirty-first century was that it had become incalculably expensive. Over the previous three hundred years the Inner Sphere had managed to all but blow itself back into the Stone Age. Recovery of a memory core from the Star League era had begun a renaissance that brought with it more factories to produce the materiel of war, but most BattleMechs were still being cobbled together from bits and pieces salvaged after battles.
The Kell Hounds had been rebuilt after the battle for Luthien from just such salvage. The bandits would be stopped, but if the Hounds could convince them to surrender before their machines were destroyed, not only would it save lives on both sides, it would also enrich the mercenaries above and beyond the compensation promised by Victor Davion.
The DropShip Lionesswas a masterpiece of lostech— the Inner Sphere term for any item whose technology had been lost for so long. The robotic factories in the Inner Sphere turned out less than a thousand DropShips a year, making each one incredibly valuable. While the OverlordClass ship represented a staggering sum of money if it could be captured, it also represented the Baile's only way off Arc-Royal.
The ferrocrete of the landing pad had been poured over a metric quarter-ton of plastic explosive shaped in a cylinder and centered beneath the circle at the heart of the pad. When Ragnar hit a switch on the command console of his Viper,the plastique detonated. It blew up and out with a force that would have registered 5.2 on the Richter scale, vaporizing the ferrocrete and shooting a fiery plume half a kilometer into the air.
The Lionesshad landed somewhat west and north of center. The explosion crumpled the aft-starboard quadrant, rupturing the vessel like a hammer smashing a naranji.The ship lifted up off the ground and started to tumble, then came down again, bounced through a building, then started to come apart. Weapon magazines began to explode, spraying out armor and weapons, then the ship landed on a second building, creating an explosion that ripped the OverlordDropShip apart.
Phelan felt the Shockwave of the detonation and steadied his Wolfhoundagainst it. In Denton windows shattered and 'Mechs toppled. As he watched, most of the machines got back to their feet and braced themselves for the Kell Hound attack.
Phelan saw a light start to blink on his radio control panel and he punched the button beneath it. A bandit stared up at him from his secondary monitor. "Treacherous dog. Come to your monument and we will show you how real warriors die."
"If you werereal warriors, I would." Phelan's green eyes narrowed. "You are bandits. You will die like bandits and you shall be remembered as bandits." Then he broke the connection and reopened his link to Ragnar. "The school, then the municipal building. Drive them south so they won't harass Alpha Battalion."
* * *
When the plan was first proposed, Chris and his people had not liked the idea of being sent into the foothills after the Sidhe. The hills were a bonus to the defender, both because the aggressor had to attack uphill and because the defenders could arrange ambushes by lying in wait. The Red Corsair might be leading bandits, but in that terrain, even bad pilots could amass kills.
A blue light flashed on Chris's command console as telemetry began to scroll up his secondary screen. He opened a radio channel and sent the data out to his fire support lances. "The fix is in. Fire at will."
* * *
Deep in the foothills, hidden halfway down a wooded ravine that ran north to south, Evantha held the laser built into the right arm of her Elemental armor steady on the Vindicator.The bandit 'Mech's red and gold color contrasted sharply with the surrounding foliage, but it did not matter because she watched him on the infrared setting of her armor's holographic display. In addition to the normal heat radiating from the charging coils of the PPC that replaced the bandit 'Mech's right forearm, a small dot rode on the junction of its torso and right hip.