“Then let’s get out of here before they know we bamboozled them,” George said, joining in their laughter.
The wheeled trucks did a fast turn around the valley to collect their dismounts, and then Stillwell let them lead the way to the rear, his platoon going last. His final glimpse of the battlefield showed the Roughriders he’d fought regaining contact with the rest of their company as another team of gray gun trucks was just starting to circle their flank.
Ten klicks back, they drove into a resupply park under the happy management of Auntie Maydell from Falkirk. She laughed as George described their little ambush, but shook her gray head at the empty ammo boxes. “We can’t keep this up much longer.”
An infantry girl pointed at the five-kilo satchel charges in the bottom of the truck. “We were ready to take them down with those if George here had let them get close.”
Maydell and George exchanged glances. “Grace better figure out a way to end this or it’s going to be a bloody balls-up,” George said.
“Not my way of putting it,” Maydell sniffed, “but I do think she’d better put a stop to this before it gets past us all.”
L. J. flipped the radio switch. “Hanson here.”
“Art here. There’s something on the other side of that river. They put a lot of fire on the guys who tried to cross to set up an OP on that side. We don’t have a listening post over there yet, but we’re sure taking fire.”
“Art, B Company is coming up behind you. I’ll have them cross the river well out and swing behind your troublemakers. I’d like to pocket a few of these shooters for a change.”
“I feel a strong urge to talk to them myself,” Art said.
“How bad is it?”
“That explosion blew out the panels on the silo pretty hard. I got a Joust tank that had everything sheared off right down to the turret armor. Quarter-inch steel sheets can do a number on tires, tracks, you name it. Then that damn smoldering corn comes flowing at you like lava, and all you want to do is run but you can’t. We’ve dug most of our troops out but I don’t think I have a vehicle or ’Mech with a stone’s worth of offensive power. My Arbalest had one laser sliced in two by flying metal, something’s sticking out of my right rocket launcher and I have no lights at all on my left one. Never thought all this damage could come from just walking by a damn pile of food.”
“We’re learning to respect a whole lot of new stuff, Art. Let me know when you see B Company.”
Chief and Mallary eyed the map. They had only two markers for enemy battalions; they promoted aCOMPANY marker toBATTALION as L. J. dialed up B Company.
“Fisk, how long before you get up here?”
“I’ve got Kilkenny in sight, sir. Least I do if Kilkenny is the town with all the smoke.”
“That’s us. We have reports of battalion-sized forces of unknown quality on our left and front. Something blew up the granary on our right and is resisting any effort by us to probe it. I’m assuming another battalion. Until A Company can pull itself together, I need you to secure the right flank with a minimum force and serve as my reserve.”
“Understood. We’re nearly there, sir.”
“Swing a platoon out to the other side of that river and see if you can cut off a few hostiles. I’d love to have a heart-to-heart talk with a couple of them.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
The medic hollered for a wire-cage stretcher so she could get the radio operator down. Two troopers carried one up, along with several coils of rope. Once the wounded man was safely strapped in, they lowered him down the outside of the still-swaying steeple.
“That man’s earned his wound medal,” the Chief said as the radioman kept silent even when the wind twisted the stretcher around and hung him facedown, fifteen meters in the air.
“A lot of people are,” L. J. said as he glanced to the east, where smoke still filled the sky. It was getting late; there was less than an hour of daylight left. L. J. would not send his troops on a night pursuit across ground previously held by this enemy—not with their proclivity for turning holes in the ground into busted ’Mechs and hurt troopers.
Graf and Chang reported in. Both C and D Companies had engaged hostiles on their front who withdrew in good order, only to have more show up on their flanks and threaten their rears. Nobody was breaking. Nobody was running. L. J. called off the attacks. Graf and Chang began a retrograde of their own as the sun sank toward the mountains to the west.
It was no better on his right, either. Fisk did swing out a platoon, but the hostiles seemed to be expecting that. The platoon came under immediate fire. A large chunk of A Company was now in the field hospital set up just this side of the burning granary. With A dismounted, L. J. wasn’t in a position to pull back even if he wanted to.
He headed downstairs with Mallary. It was time to do a walkaround of his battalion. Let the troops see the skipper, and let the skipper see firsthand the mess he’d gotten them into. He had just powered up his Koshi when the command van’s undercarriage collapsed in a shower of slugs.
Grace sat in Pirate as she had since noon, when the first reports started coming in of Roughriders approaching Kilkenny. Her ’Mech almost touched the ceiling of Flaherty’s Dance Emporium. How Ben had gotten the big Atlas to damn near sit under its not-tall-enough roof was something she did not want to know. A half-dozen ’Mechs MODs stood waiting along the dance floor, like some gargantuan line dance. At the back end of the hall, infantry held in place the section of wall they’d blown out to get the ’Mechs in. At the other end of the hall, Betsy and more infantry made ready to blow another hole. Two blocks away stood the steeple Grace had used to plan this new battle.
Betsy reported that Hanson was up in the steeple now. May St. Peter, St. Patrick and St. Michael keep him from using it as well as Grace hoped she had. Reports from lookouts scattered around town and brought by messengers through the sewers said that the fighting outside Kilkenny was not going the Roughriders’ way. Except for that, Grace was deaf, dumb and blind.
Atop his Atlas, Ben stirred from his nap. “It is time,” he called to Grace.
“Time to move out,” she called to the other ’Mechs. The room hummed with electronics and began to fill with smoke as engines coughed to life. Grace made sure her neurohelmet was in place, then checked her cooling vest. She followed the new checklist, but her two gyros stuttered and did not sync. She let them spin for a minute, then shut them down and restarted them. This time they synced. “Watch them,” the gal who’d had Pirate told Grace. “If you take a hard step or knock into a building, the gyros go crazy. I’ve gotten to where I can restart them real fast.”
Grace was probably nowhere near as fast, but this was her fight and Grace would fight it herself. She tapped her radio. “Form two lances. Back four go out the back way and support us as planned. You two behind me, follow Ben. Understood?” They answered in the affirmative. Grace crossed herself. “Let’s go.”
There was a soft explosion as Betsy blew out the east wall of Flaherty’s place. Beside her, two guards kept a short balding man on a tight chain. Betsy gave the ’Mechs a jaunty thumbs-up as they strode forth into what Grace hoped would be the decisive battle for Alkalurops.
Two blocks away a command van stood just outside the Congregational Church. Troopers in Roughrider tan looked up in surprise. Grace gave the van a short burst, but thirty-millimeter tungsten penetrators do not just flatten tires and blow out a radiator. The undercarriage of the command van was shredded. Behind the van a familiar-looking Koshi and an Arbalest got moving just as Ben sent an SRM volley at the two.
Grace quickly moved to the left side of the street, Ben began to lumber down the center, and the other two ’Mechs took the right. The Roughrider ’Mechs backed up, zigzagging in a random fashion to complicate the big Atlas’ firing solutions. Ben squeezed off SRM volleys at random intervals, but only one struck a glancing blow to the Koshi.
The Koshi returned fire, sending rockets at the Atlas. One miss bounced Grace off the building beside her, and her gyros lost sync. Stalled, she managed to restart the pair and get moving just before the Arbalest burned the place she’d been standing with a laser burst.
Grace fired a short burst, sending sparks and shards of armor flying from both ’Mechs, to tell Ben she was still in the fight. The Roughriders concentrated on the Atlas as they backed up, failing to notice the four ’Mech MODs behind them until a barrage of rockets exploded around them. The Arbalest spun even as it danced right. Grace had a good guess what messages were flying between those two. If she was going to keep them from jumping out of this, she had to act now.
She mashed herLOUDSPEAKER button. “This is Grace O’Malley, Alkalurops Defense Forces Commanding Officer,” echoed off the walls of the two story buildings around them. “I wish to talk to Major Loren Hanson of the Roughriders.”
“This is Major Hanson,” blared back at her. “I am not prepared to discuss my surrender with you.”
“That’s fine, because I wish to discuss my surrender.”
“Your surrender?”
“Yes.”
“Is this some kind of trick?”
“I am a miner, Major, not a murderer. I wish to end this killing. If the only way I can is to discuss my surrender, that is what I will do. Haven’t I earned the right to talk surrender terms?”
“You have done that,” he said as the cockpit of his Koshi opened. “You could write a book on Fabian tactics.”
“Why write a book that others would just use against me?” Grace said as she opened Pirate’s cockpit. “My infantry leader has some data files she thinks you might like to review.”
“You mean my maid, Betty Rose?”
“A gal takes whatever job she can,” came with a laugh from behind Grace. Betsy was advancing along the sidewalk, machine pistol in one hand, a large ’puter in the other. Behind her trailed two guards with a very reluctant Field Marshal.
“I recognize the guy behind you,” the Major said.
“I thought you would,” Betsy called up to him. “Want to come down here and ask him a few questions? I think you’ll find him both entertaining and possibly lifesaving.”