The Spider clearly fell into the fighting category. He raced upstream, back the way he’d come, his laser raking the back of the fighting holes, killing men and women as they killed those around the trucks.
“Get him!” the Lone Cat shouted, sending bursts after the Spider and leading Sean and Maud in chase. Behind them, militia infantry began peeling drivers out of damaged Black and Red ’Mechs. Four men in Gnome battle armor began an assault on the still befuddled Atlas.
In a shower of white water, the Spider jumped for the top of the stream bank. He landed well, twisted around, and fired twin lasers. He missed Benjork, but there was a short scream on the radio before it cut off.
Ignoring everything but the fleeing Spider, the MechWarrior put his engine in the red, raced for the wall, chose a fallen stone for his launch pad, and threw himself at the top of the riverbank. Here it wasn’t quite ten meters high, and he landed just below the lip. Firing two rockets to keep the Spider busy, Ben used his repaired rock cutter to slowly pull himself up the rest of the way. Not pausing to regain his balance, he threw himself after the Spider, converting the near fall into speed.
Behind him, Sean’s voice was intense. “I’m coming. Quick, s-somebody give me a hand up.”
Benjork left Sean to others. The Spider was just disappearing over a small rise. Following, he upped his periscope for a quick check before crossing that rise.
The Spider was trotting backward, both arms up, lasers aimed back at the exact spot where he had crossed the hill.
Benjork sent his ’Mech ten long paces past that point, then pedaled it into a turn. Using his periscope—this time for targeting—he lobbed his last two missiles over the hill. The Spider staggered sideways, firing his lasers at nothing. Benjork trotted his ’Mech across the rise, sending stream after stream of heavy tungsten slugs at him. The Spider’s right winglet took hits—possibly the right rocket outlet as well.
“No more flying, rocket boy,” Benjork growled.
The Spider backpedaled, bringing his lasers around to aim at his tormentor. Then a burst of thirty-millimeter fire from the right grabbed the Spider’s attention as it shattered his left laser.
“G-got you that time!” came from Sean on radio. “How do you like that, you bloody hangman?” He loosed two missiles that sent the Spider hopping sideways to escape them. The Spider regained its balance and fired its remaining laser at Sean.
That left Benjork free to carefully aim his Gatling gun at the Spider’s side. Rounds slammed into the BattleMech, spalling off its armor. The Spider tried to sidestep out of the line of fire, but Ben followed him, holding him, pinning the Spider and hammering it with shot.
So the Spider hit his jump jets.
Maybe he didn’t know how damaged his wing and rocket outlet were. Maybe he forgot. It didn’t matter. The Spider shot up, arcing to the left as soon as it left the ground. The pilot tried to correct, but the damaged wing drove the Spider to the left as misdirected plasma from a split rocket motor burned through the bottom of the ’Mech.
The flight ended in a pair of wild uncontrolled loops. Then the Spider buried itself in a surprisingly small hole only a hundred meters from where it had taken off.
“Let that be a lesson to you, Sean. Never trust one of those jumpers,” Benjork told the young MechWarrior and anyone listening on the radio as he turned to the young man’s gray ’Mech.
The ’Mech stood deathly still, a red-hot hole in its chest sending up wisps of smoke.
“Sean!” Benjork shouted, and put his engine in the red as he raced for the ’Mech standing frozen in place, as if even a soft breeze might be more than it could handle.
He slammed to a halt in front of the ’Mech. Now he could see that a laser had cut through it, straight as a diamond drill. He peered into the armorglass hood as it slowly fogged over with sweat and blood. Sean’s lips moved. Over the radio Benjork heard a weak, “W-we got him.” Then the gray ’Mech that had meant so much to the young man whose regiment would not entrust one to him, toppled over.
As a Nova Cat, Benjork had learned that the universe is a fickle place. He did not expect material things to reflect what other people call rationality. He knew that karma rules us all whether we be rock and water or flesh and blood. Nova Cats do not weep for what must be.
Benjork Lone Cat knew all of these things—not as a man might know it in his head, but as only a dreamer can know it in the deepest essence of his being.
So now he walked apart from the others who gathered around their fallen comrade, murmuring about how sad it was that the young girl had died, too. Distant from all others who mourned, Benjork opened his cockpit and let the spurious dampness that some might mistake for tears flow from his eyes and be swallowed down by the thirsty red dirt of Alkalurops.
When the dampness was gone, the Lone Cat lifted his right arm to the universe. He shook it, his threat to the very stars. “Know you who watch, you who send dreams. I will stand with Grace and all her kin. This land beneath my feet is my land, the land of my dream. And neither hell nor demons may take it while I breathe.”
15
Kilkenny, Alkalurops
Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere
28 August 3134; local summer
Damn near getting killed while leading a losing fight had to be the worst day of Grace O’Malley’s life. Or so she’d thought. Now she knew she’d thought wrong. Leading a losing battle while safely in the rear, chained to maps, was a whole lot worse.
Worse still, it left her time to think she just might be winning.
Grace looked out over Kilkenny from the Congregational Church steeple. For a moment she let the wind blow in her face and blow the cobwebs from her brain. She didn’t feel any better.
The plan seemed to be working. Hanson was leading his hard-charging mercs right down her throat. In the Gleann Mor Valley, people shot and fell back. Chato said the ground around Falkirk was ready for the coming fight.
But did the fight have to be there?
Day after day refugees streamed past Grace. Did she want her friends in Falkirk reduced to that? She eyed a pile of reports held down against the wind by a thirty-millimeter shell. They said the mercs were paying for every klick they advanced. Tanks lost treads to mines. Hovertank fans were bent. Infantry used up their fantastic armor, which deflected sniper shots from their hearts, and now advanced much more cautiously. BattleMechs were a whole lot more careful where they put their feet. It didn’t take long to fix a busted footpad, but every bent foot meant another ’Mech awaiting repair rather than charging forward.
Grace rested her eyes on the west and its just visible hills. Ben was out there, racing for Kilkenny with someone he said she had to talk to. Someone Betsy and Hanson would really want to talk to. Grace was new to this fighting thing. But new as she was, she knew that you planned the fight and fought the plan. Being a miner, she knew plenty of folks who’d paid dearly for not following their plans.