The Victor'sneural helmet was already tuned to his brain patterns, of course. He brought the helmet down from its storage mount suspended above the back of his seat, eased it across his shoulders, and clamped it shut. Gradually, the Victorwoke up. Feedback through the helmet gave Ardan a sense of the machine's balance and position through the nerves of his inner ear. He felt...power.
Fear melted, and his uncertainty with it. Rumor had it that MechWarriors controlled their massive charges by thought alone, as if the 'Mech became their body through some sorcery in the neuralink. Human technology had never been capable of that, of course, though there were speculations that such control might one day be possible. Donning a BattleMech neural helmet was far less taking on a new body than it was taking on a new outlook on the world. A man's viewpoint changed somewhat, from eight meters up, with eighty tons of juggernaut combat machine responding to the touch of his fingers.
His eyes flicked to the chronometer set above his faceplate. Four minutes to drop. The ride became rougher, more violent He could feel sudden shifts of upand downthrough his neuralink as Captain Danelle maneuvered his ship.
"There they are!" The voice was Danelle's, sharp through his helmet commlink. "Bogies, dozens of them, coming up out of the clouds!"
Ardan could not see them and had to rely on the running commentary from the Exeter 'sbridge. Sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip, and it wasn't even hot yet.
"We've spotted 112 of the bastards so far," Danelle continued. "They must have been bunkered underground, masked or camouflaged from our scouts. They rose from a dozen points all across North Continent...strange, though. I think they vectored wrong. They're rising to meet us, but they're having to burn a lot of mass to shift from their original course." There was a pause. "Combat Intelligence believes they were vectored on a course to intercept us if we were on an approach path toward Steindown. We're well north of that course, and they're having to scramble to adjust"
That was the trap, Ardan thought, exultant They were waiting for us at Steindown! I was right!
"Our fighter cover is engaging them. Ha! Got that one! Oops...that one broke through, but the old Denebburned him down. Look at him burn! Here come our reserves..."
There was a long pause, then Ardan heard, "We're coming up on the drop site. Nav fix is positive. DZ in sight! Twelve seconds, people." Another pause, an eternity. Every MechWarrior reserved a special dread for death striking in the last seconds before a drop, while men and machines were still cradled helplessly aboard their DropShips. Then Danelle yelled, "Good luck! Give 'em hell!"
12
The world exploded in Ardan's ears, as the
Exeter
Ardan fired a burst from his thrusters, stopping a vicious tumble before it could properly begin and orienting himself into a spread-eagle, face-down position. He was now a ten-meter tall, eighty-ton skydiver, accelerating to terminal velocity. After instructing his computer to disregard the metallic debris all around him, he clicked on his proximity radar and got his bearings.
The fighter battle that Danelle had been describing still raged among the clouds quite far off. Ardan was alone, except for the radar images of the other 'Mechs in his unit being fired out of the hurtling DropShip as it receded toward the southeast. The ship's course helped to orient him. There was the Highland Peninsula, bloated, huge, and ragged under scattered clouds, stretching down to a cobalt, island-dotted sea. Streaks of fire marked other DropShips on their run low over the Peninsula. Those would be Lees and the Capellan March Militia, making their diversion—and the Liao ships rising from Steindown to meet them. Clouds obscured the isthmus as well as the vast expanse of the Ordolo Basin, which was almost under Ardan's feet now. Mountains extended toward him from the east. As nearly as he could tell, he was dead on course.
He had ejected at 16,000 meters and been in freefall for seconds that dragged like hours. His altimeter flickered the dwindling meters as he kept his hands solidly planted on the controls that would trigger his rockets. His 'Mech had no parachute. Fire his jets too early, and he would run short of fuel for jumps in combat. Wait too long, and his comrades would scrape what was left of his Victoroff the flank of those mountains. God, but they looked close!
At 1,000 meters, he plunged into the clouds. Fog whipped past the Victor'sforward screens, completely disorienting him. The plummeting 'Mech was bucking some now, too, as it encountered the turbulence of a growing storm within the cloud. I thought this was supposed to be the dry season, thought Ardan, and felt anew that twinge of fear. Suppose...?
He burst through the belly of the upper cloud layer. Green patched with ragged white spread out in twilight beneath him. Eight hundred meters. He was level with the highest of the mountain peaks. He fired his jets, dialing up their thrust gradually. If thrust came too suddenly, the connectors to the 'Mech's backpack assembly could shred like paper. The effect on Ardan would be similar to a crashlanding into those mountains at terminal velocity. His descent slowed—to eighty meters per second...forty... ten...Treetops groped at his feet. His jets were firing steadily now, gulping fuel at a ravenous pace, but slowing his headlong plunge and lowering him toward the surface of a broad, flat field. A quick glance showed him the vapor plume of three other 'Mechs close by. Good. They'd not scattered much.
At fifty meters, he examined his chosen landing spot again. It looked like an irregular field covered with bright green vegetation, bordered by a tangle of swamp growth. He wasn't certain, but this site might be farther north and west into the Ordolo Basin than he'd planned. His designated DZ was further east on a barren slope along the flank of the mountain ridge. Still, judging by the lay of the ridge, he wasn't more than a kilometer or two off. Ardan began his final landing sequence.
Odd. From thirty meters, the ground looked peculiarly flat, with no depressions or irregularities at all. And the color...Panic struck him like a blow. He was committed now to a landing, but he had a horrible premonition that the deceptively solid-looking surface below him was, in fact, the surface of a marsh or pond covered by weeds or algae scum. If he hit that at ten meters per second in his feet-first landing mode, the eighty-ton Victorwould plunge straight to the bottom of the marsh, driving itself so deeply into the mud that he would never be able to free himself, and would never, ever be found.