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The FFML Refugee List
Furinkan Combine WarShip _Imperator_
Approaching the planet Ryuugenzawa
Ryuugenzawa System, the Magistracy of Canopus
19 June 3025, 12:57 Local Time
"Speak," General Prince Tatewaki Kuno commanded his Operations
Officer.
Captain Kyle stepped forward.
"My lord Prince, we are detecting what appears to be a pitched battle
in orbit above the planet."
Tatewaki raised an eyebrow at this unexpected news.
"Dost thou know the identities of the principals?" he asked.
Kyle nodded. "Based on long range telescope observation, and what
we've been able to pick up through the solar interference, we have
tentatively identified a satellite defense network, and what appears to
be two large forces of DropShips attempting to make planetfall." He
paused for a moment to let this sink in. "One force appears to be from
the Commonwealth, though how they got here is a mystery."
Tatewaki's hands clenched the leather upholstery of his command chair.
The Commonwealth? Here?
"And the other force?" he demanded archly.
Kyle cleared his throat uncomfortably. "It appears that your sister
has come out of hiding, my lord."
"What?!" Tatewaki bellowed. "My sister is in this cursed star system?"
He reeled, apparently shaken by this news. "How is this possible, and to
further what foul end does she come hither to this place?"
"Unknown, milord," Kyle returned quietly.
Tatewaki placed a hand to his brow in thought. There could be only one
reason for her to come to this place - he would leave the explanations for
how she had found the way for another time. His suspicions were aroused at
the possibility that Nabiki's hand was at work here, drawing his enemies
into her nets of intrigue that they might destroy him at a distance well
removed from Nerima.
"There is naught but peril here," he said slowly, letting the
momentary
anxiety of the moment pass through him. "We must not tarry, Kyle, lest we
allow through our inaction that Akane Tendo might come to harm." He rose
from the chair, aware that all the eyes of the Executive Bridge were now
upon him. "Press on, man!" he bellowed. "If this day truly belongeth to
Tatewaki Kuno, then it is also true that he must seize it! Let not faint
heart, nor the foe's spitting cannon mouth keep the Blue Thunder from his
conquest!"
Tatewaki closed his eyes in rapture as the crew raised a lusty cheer
in response to his declaration. This was the climax to a long and weary
campaign. This day would see his cursed sister brought to heel, Nabiki's
treachery put to rout, and Akane Tendo's hand sealed forever with his in
marriage.
___________________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:
BATTLETECH: THE SAOTOME GAMBIT
PART TWENTY-EIGHT
by J. Austin Wilde
Super Critical Reactor Axe Man,
Fission Park Press
wildeman@gci-net.com
http://www.gci-net.com/users/w/wildeman/
The characters and situations of Ranma 1/2 are the
creation and property of Rumiko Takahashi and
Shogakukan/KITTY/Viz Video. Battletech and its
related materials are the property of FASA, inc.
No infringement of copyright is intended nor
should be inferred by this work of fanfiction.
___________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
NCWS _Tautog_
Geosynchronous Orbit
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
19 June 3025, 10:53 Local Time
"The lights are on," Hauptmann declared.
"I can see that, Johann," Captain Olivera grunted.
"Someone's beaten us to the space station, it would seem," Grand Duke
Tendo observed.
"The question remains, your Grace," Hauptmann returned. "Should we
put a landing party aboard to investigate?"
Soun regarded the former corvette commander for a moment before
speaking. Hauptmann was chafing under the command of Captain Olivera, not
for any personal reasons, but for the simple fact that he was a ship
captain
who had been Dispossessed. He needed command, any command, to feel like he
was needed.
"I can tell by your tone that you think we should," he replied.
Hauptmann jumped at the chance to justify his position.
"Your Grace, we've been tracking the Combine and Commonwealth ships
since we discovered them, and they haven't made a move for the space
station.
If the lights we saw around the drydock are indicative of people living
there, then it could only be survivors from the _Dragonfly._"
"There's no guarantee of that," Olivera cautioned. "Let's not rule out
the possibility of an indigenous population."
"After two hundred years without outside support?" Hauptmann snapped.
"That's bullshit, and you know it."
"Enough," Soun grunted. "Captain Olivera, I think Captain Hauptmann
has
made a valid point."
Olivera nodded brusquely for his lord. "As you wish, your Grace.
Captain Hauptmann, take a detail of your _Tang_ sailors over to the station
to investigate."
Hauptmann flushed with anticipation. "I've got a crew standing by to
act."
Olivera shook his head ruefully and sipped at his coffee. "Chief of
the
Watch, make preparations to break stealth integrity. Ready the shuttle
bay."
"Chief of the Watch, aye."
Soun clasped Hauptmann by the shoulder before he could leave. "I'm
counting on you to be right about this," he said in a low voice.
"So am I, your Grace," Hauptmann returned.
* * *
"Shuttle Bay One outer doors indicate shut," the Chief of the Watch
announced. "Superstructure realigned for stealth integrity."
"Very well, Chief of the Watch."
Soun watched the sleek black shuttle drift on tiny attitude jets
towards the drydock. From their position in orbit close to the space
station,
the _Tautog_ remained screened from the Orochi network, whose units now
seemed to be preoccupied with the invading forces from the Furinkan Combine
and Jusenkyo Commonwealth. The Combine forces looked like they would escape
the Orochis' wrath the same way that they had - namely using the chink in
the
defense system's armor created by the defunct satellite. The Commonwealth
fleet seemed hell bent on doing the job the Orochi Network had been unable
to manage.
What were these two fleets doing here? he wondered. The Combine force
was far too small to indicate the presense of Tatewaki Kuno in the system,
and the Commonwealth fleet was a hundred light-years from its own home
territory. Whatever had brought them here, it was clear that neither side
wanted anything to do with the other.
"Weapon directors," Sensory intoned nervously. "The Commonwealth ships
have opened fire."
Soun watched the holotank as two Combine DropShips sustained hits from
the Commonwealth destroyers. The damage wasn't enough to finish either
vessel, but it was clear that the fight would be very one sided if it was
allowed to continue.
"Contact Echo Two-Two is readying some sort of barrage," Sensory
announced abruptly. "The Commonwealth force appears to be the targets."
"My God," Olivera breathed. "That thing can actually *hit* them at
that range?"
They watched through a secondary telescope monitor as the Orochi
satellite blasted the distant _Wrath of Heaven,_ and the sudden shifting
of Commonwealth attention towards the satellite. Only fighters threatened
the Combine force now.
"They're going to make it if it's just fighters against them," Soun
declared.
Olivera's attention was fixed upon the holotank, where Captain Li's
two destroyers bore down on the Orochi satellite. "Begging your pardon,
your Grace, but I'm more concerned by what's taking place higher above us."
The two of them watched with detached horror at the tremendous display
of firepower put out by the Orochi satellite, and at the near suicidal
tenacity of the Commonwealth destroyers. The _Wrath of Heaven_ was
destroyed, and still the other ship kept coming.
The sudden cessation of weapons fire brought them up short.
"What happened?" Olivera asked Sensory.
The Sensory Supervisor consulted with her techs. "Radar emissions from
both vessels have ceased. Heat emissions are consistent with combustion. No
drive outputs. No commo signals."
Soun looked at the telescope monitor, where the two vessels winked in
the darkness with sudden flashes of flame.
"Have they crippled each other?"
"Quite possibly," Olivera grunted.
"Conn, Sensory; both contacts are on a collision course. Estimated
time to impact: ten minutes, two-zero seconds."
Olivera nodded absently at this. "It seems that the Orochi has taken
care of the most significant threat from the Commonwealth."
"In this case," Soun replied. "The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.
We may still have to face other Orochi satellites when we leave."
The holotank display shifted to show the Black Rose Terror Regiment
forces entering the atmosphere, having dispatched the majority of the
Musk Dynasty fighters. The survivors fled to their scattered carriers as
two units from the Orochi Network closed in on them.
* * *
Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002
Above the Ian Cameron Starport
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
12:31 Local Time
"Go get 'em, Tomboy."
Ranma didn't wait for a reply from Akane as he shoved the throttles
forward to the stops. The Super Phoenix Hawk LAM shuddered for an instant
as raw helium plasma spilled from the reactor vessel and into the linear
magnetic accelerators that served as the battlemech's HEPLAR drive. Then
it was roaring aloft on twin columns of superheated air, crashing through
the tree-top canopy and bursting above the forest that surrounded the
starport.
A flight of Black Rose Shilones passed overhead, their long wingspans
casting shadows over him as he rose to meet them. Their attentions were
focused on the dogfight that was starting to rage in the lower stratosphere
as the first of the Musk Dynasty DropShips made their final descent.
Despite
the acceleration forces that crushed him into the base of his ejector seat,
Ranma felt excited by the prospect of the battle he was throwing himself
headlong into.
The Phoenix Hawk's arms stretched out claw-like as he continued his
climb, rising above the two Shilone fighter-bombers. He pushed the LAM over
into a shallow dive, sweeping the wings back and keeping the drives at
maximum to intercept. His airspeed indicator began to flash amber, then
red as he approached the sound barrier - a velocity that he dared not
exceed in Airmech Mode if he wanted to stay in one piece.
The Shilones split apart abruptly as he closed the range to less than
a dozen meters, and he spat out a curse for his bad luck. Either they had
finally spotted him, or someone else had, and warned them. He vectored his
thrust and lurched after the fighter on the right as it tried to bank away
from him.
Four Short Range Missiles belched from the aft-mounted launcher on
the fighter as he pursued. It was a wild shot on the Black Rose pilot's
part, just something to get him off his back, but Ranma cringed inwardly
as a missile sailed over his cockpit canopy close enough to make out the
black and yellow stencils on the olive drab missile body. He had forgotten
about the Shilone's aft missile rack, and his error had nearly cost him.
The other Shilone was pulling a punishing nine-gee turn to get to him
- the mark of a pilot who was in excellent condition, and skilled enough
with his craft to fly at the bleeding edge of the performance envelope
without destroying himself. Ranma knew that he didn't have time to toy
around. He triggered the rifle-like heavy laser in his 'mech's hand,
releasing a rippling torrent of blue-green light from the muzzle that
splashed across the enemy fighter from right to left, boiling off whole
sections of armor and lancing deep into the thruster ports.
The effect of wielding that kind of firepower was so intoxicating to
Ranma that he kept his finger on the trigger, hosing the Shilone with
rapid fire bursts from the heavy pulselaser, and ignoring the fact that
his heat levels were rising to dangerous levels. The Shilone pilot tried
to evade, but Ranma walked the beams right back into him, blowing a wing
off at the wingroot, and sending the medium fighter-bomber into an abrupt
death spin that ended just as abruptly when it crashed into the treetops
and exploded into a cartwheeling fireball.
His finger eased from the trigger as overheat warnings sounded in
his headset. The heavy laser had shut down - a technical problem with
the weapon that had never been solved, even in the days of the Star
League, and one that hadn't been helped by his firehose tactics against
the Shilone. He only hoped it would come back online soon, as he was
going to need it against the second Shilone.
He had other problems as well. The waste heat generated by his
trigger-happy excesses had caused his fire control computer to shut
down the other weapon systems as well. Even with the double-capacity
heat sinks his LAM carried, he was still deep in the red.
Thinking quickly, he shut down the plasma drives and settled
back into cruise mode with the turbojets to bleed off some of the
heat. The fast chirping of the second Shilone's RCA Instatrac XI
weapons radar in his ears reminded him of the Shigunga LRM-20 rack
that was about to disgorge its lethal payload in his direction, and
he tumbled over into an aileron roll, transforming on the move to
Fighter Mode. The Shilone launched, and the letters 'ECM' began to
strobe in amber on his HUD - the Star League Phoenix Hawk had
recognized the threat and had engaged radar jamming countermeasures
automatically to deal with it. ECM systems were something he had
never had to think about as a mercenary, as they didn't exist on the
battlefield in great numbers anymore.
The missiles arced around him crazily, spoofed by his dramatic
change in aspect and by the radar jamming which had confused the
Shilone's targeting system into launching a much wider spread than
was indicated by the tactical situation. Most of them exploded into
the trees below, but in spite of his countermeasures, two out of the
twenty managed to strike the LAM, and he fought through the hits for
control. At high speed and low altitude, all it took was one minor but
destabilizing hit to spike him straight into the ground.
The Shilone was still nine hundred meters out as he looped over
into a Split-S to get his nose on the target. The Combine pilot had
enough time for one more salvo with the twenty-rack at him, and at the
worst possible moment, right before their paths would intersect. His
weapons were still reading offline due to the heat, limiting his
options.
He saw Yuka and Sayuri soaring aloft from their positions at the
other end of the starport. At least the noise he had made with his
attack had drawn Black Rose attentions away from them. They stood a
pretty good chance of getting clear.
The chirping of the Shilone's radar warned him that the fighter
had reacquired him after his maneuvers, and he weighed his options.
In about four seconds they would be in range to shoot - only he didn't
have anything to fire back. The override options installed on so many
Inner Sphere 'mechs didn't exist on a piece of test machinery for a
Proving Ground.
He decided not to turn tail and run. Not only was it asking to get
shot in the back, the very concept of running from a one on one battle
got his hackles up. He could survive a salvo of LRMs if the jamming
system did its part and his reflexes were up to the task, and if his
weapons didn't come back in time, he had another option.
"Ranma's in a bit of trouble," Sayuri noted as she and Yuka made
a break for the horizon.
"Stick with the plan," Yuka answered coolly. "Saotome can take care
of himself, and there are a lot of our people down there who are counting
on us to draw away any fighters from the starport."
"This is no time to make this personal," Sayuri shot back in a
clipped voice.
"Exactly my point!" Yuka barked. "We have jobs to do. Saotome knows
that better than anyone."
Sayuri's Sparrowhawk wavered for a moment, as if sensing its mistress'
indecision.
"Stay on me," Yuka commanded her in a calm yet insistent voice. "Do
you
think I don't know how Akane would feel if she thought we left Ranma to
die?
As soon as we reach our turn-around point, we'll head back to help him out,
but until then we follow the plan."
This might hurt, Ranma noted as the LRM salvo rushed from the
bow tubes of the Shilone. The pilot must have overridden the targeting
computer's input to the launcher, for the barrage was tight in spite of
the jamming.
He tugged at the transformation lever as the salvo of twenty missiles
looped in at him at short range. As the Phoenix Hawk shifted from sleek
fighter to bird of prey Airmech, his airspeed dropped off, extending the
time to intercept by a second, and granting him a few meters of clearance
as the ballistically guided weapons spread a little farther apart in their
arcs. His mind buried in the deepest alpha state, Ranma threaded the gaps
with his Airmech as proximity-fuzed missiles exploded around him, buffeting
him and sending hot bits of shrapnel ringing off his armor.
His weapons were still reading offline as he shifted his course
slightly
to ram the Shilone. A crackling beam of laser fire answered his move,
tearing
into the port engine-pod armor before the Black Rose pilot decided to climb
and evade. The Combine fighter began to soar into the sky as he transformed
into Battlemech Mode in midair, boosted into a climb that would match the
fighter's, and curled up tight to slam shoulder first into the port wing.
The wing shattered under his blow, blowing apart the port fuselage as
heat sinks ruptured and armor spalled into critical control surfaces with
explosive effect. Ranma's Super Phoenix Hawk LAM somersaulted through the
hit
as the fighter burst into flames behind it, his wings flaring out and his
leg thrusters firing to check his fall. As he slewed around with the grace
and stylings of a figure skater in midair, he saw with some relief that the
Combine pilot had ejected from his stricken craft.
The sky above the starport was clear for the moment. Any dogfighting
that was going on was happening much higher up than he was willing to
travel,
and in any event, every fighter shot down by the Black Rose Terror Regiment
or the Musk Dynasty was one less fighter that he had to deal with. He was
perfectly happy to let the two antagonists slug it out on their own.
In the meantime, he had a visit to pay to the Black Rose herself.
Akane breathed a sigh of relief as the Combine fighter crashed into
the
woods behind her position. She wanted to be angry with Ranma for being such
a show off - shooting down a Furinkan Combine fighter without even firing a
shot? - but in truth she felt a great deal of pride instead. He was an
amazing mechwarrior, there was no doubt about that.
"Black Rose 'mechs spotted at one-nine hundred meters," Doctor Tofu
advised her as they finished their march to the treeline guarding the
eastern
approaches to the starport.
"Hold fire until all units are in position," she replied. Genma's
Orion
was still a little too far back in the trees to be effective with the
missile
launcher. "Commander Saotome, move up five zero meters."
Genma did so, but by the way the battlemech moved, she could tell it
was
only reluctantly. What did he have to worry about? she wondered. They had a
good thousand meters of range advantage over the Inner Sphere 'mechs, and
Ranma had just removed their immediate air support!
She could see the first 'mechs clearly in her telescopic array as they
advanced along the highway, keeping to either side of the cracked pavement
to stagger their formation. It was a recon lance from the look of them: two
Spiders, a Jenner, and a Locust. The lance beyond had a Shadow Hawk, two
Hunchbacks, and a Griffin. Beyond them was the fire lance; heavy missile
'mechs like the Trebuchet, Archer, and Crusader.
"Let the Fire Lance come into range," she said tersely over the commo.
It would mean that the Recon Lance would be within five hundred meters when
the shooting started, but they had little in the way of firepower that
could
even reach them at that distance, much less hurt them. She had a very good
reason for letting them get close, and that was to let them see that they
were fighting the SLDF.
Her slender gloved hand rested over the controls for the NARC beacon
that would light up the Black Rose battlemechs and guide the missiles
unerringly to their targets. A shudder coursed through her body at the
thought of such power at her disposal. A single regiment of Confederation
battlemechs equipped to Star League standards would be worth an entire
division of Inner Sphere 'mechs. If they managed to escape Ryuugenzawa,
the Confederation could turn its losing war with the Combine into a
expansion of territory unheard of in the country's entire history!
She checked herself at the thought. She was fighting to end the
Third Succession War, not win it. She had seen enough destruction and the
hardships and sacrifices her people had endured in her tender few years to
know that she wouldn't wish it on anyone else - even her enemies. There had
to be a way to convince the Kunos and Gosunkugis and even the Shampoos of
the Inner Sphere that fighting over the ruins of the Star League was a
shameful waste.
But first, she had to live through this day.
Her hand lifted the red safety cover over the enable switch, and she
flicked it into position. A green box appeared on her HUD, and she thumbed
it over with her stick's tophat control to cover the smudge of black and
grey that was Black Rose Archer over a fifteen hundred meters away. She
squeezed the trigger on her control stick, and the box became red, and
subtitled with the ominous jargon word 'ILLUM.'
The NARC beacon was painting the Black Rose Archer, telling the
missiles that would follow exactly where to hit.
"Commence LRM fire," Akane said quietly, and waited.
Doctor Tofu's Centurion and Genma's Orion spat a volley of long
range missiles from the treeline. After the flash of the weapons leaving
the tubes, Akane noted that their propellant was surprisingly smokeless,
another advantage of Star League technology over the cheap and simple
solid propellant used by Inner Sphere munitions factories. The missiles
arced like normal unguided LRMs at first into the sky, then with uncanny
precision began to close ranks and ride the invisible NARC beam straight
into the distant Archer.
Halfway to the target, the Combine 'mechs noticed the barrage and
began to scatter, but the NARC beacon tracked the Archer's movements with
a clinical precision that terrified Akane. She could not imagine what the
Black Rose mechwarrior must have been feeling as all his efforts came to
naught.
The missiles struck precisely where she had aimed, the right torso
LRM-20 launch door. Through her telescopic camera she watched as each
missile screamed down upon the hapless Archer, blasting apart the armor
plating in under a second. The ready-fire missiles loaded in the rack
below the ruptured armor exploded an instant later, and from there, the
rest of the magazine.
The Archer was ripped in half by the blast, its severed right arm
flying high into the air as the ruined torso was blown to the ground in
scorched heap. Missiles corkscrewed crazily from the left-side launcher
as the ammunition cooked off with the tremendous heat released from the
breached fusion reactor. In a final insult, the severed arm came down
hard on the cockpit of the battlemech, crushing the pilot to death if
he had somehow escaped immolation by the ammunition explosion.
Akane didn't watch after the first explosion. Instead, she swallowed
hard and thumbed the NARC box over to the next Black Rose 'mech on her HUD.
More missiles flew from Tofu's Centurion and Genma's Orion. The Fire Lance
Trebuchet was obliterated as quickly as the Archer. Again, she did not
watch the battlemech's fiery death throes as she turned the cruel NARC
beacon on another Combine target and gave the order to fire.
This was pure slaughter, she realized. Nothing to feel proud about.
The rest of the company was rushing the treeline, desperate to find and
fix their hidden assailants under their guns before it was their turn to
die. It was Ryouga's job to hold them off, and Master Happousai's job to
pursue any stragglers that might escape the BattleMaster's attack.
The thunderclap of a PPC bolt marked Ryouga's first attack. The
Spiders had charged at the onset of the missile barrage, and now one caught
the hit square in the center torso. Armor boiled off in a fraction of a
second as the blast penetrated into the vital internals of the recon 'mech.
The spindly war machine teetered drunkenly for a moment as its gyro failed,
then toppled over to divot the pavement.
Akane returned her attention to the NARC beacon. It had taken a second
barrage to cancel the Fire Lance Crusader, as the pilot sacrificed his
mech's left forearm to stop the salvo aimed at his shoulder LRM launcher.
Doctor Tofu had twenty four volleys in his launcher, but Genma had only
sixteen, and it was their combined missile barrage that made them so
deadly.
They would have to conserve their ammo wherever possible.
She selected the Shadow Hawk next, as its autocannon would be the
first significant weapon to come into range. More missiles leapt out of
the launch tubes. The Shadow Hawk fired its jump jets to escape, but the
NARC beacon held its track, and enough of the missiles retained sufficient
reserve energy to alter their arcs in time to connect. The result wasn't
as precise as the previous barrages, but the midair pounding was enough to
make the enemy mechwarrior lose control over his jumping war machine and
crash head first into the ground. The 'mech did not make any attempts to
get up.
Ryouga blasted the second Spider as it jumped at him in a
near-suidical
death from above attack. The beam blew off the arm, but did nothing to stop
the leaping strike until Ukyou stepped in with her Hatchetman. Her battle-
spatula swung through a full arc to rip apart the 30 ton 'mech at the waist
in a shower of sparks and billowing clouds of spilled liquid nitrogen
coolant. As the crippled Spider tumbled impotently at Ryouga's mech, he
caught it up in his metalshod hands and sent it flying out of control over
his shoulder to crash into the trees behind the BattleMaster.
"Thanks, Ukyou," he panted at her.
"My pleasure, honey," she returned. Her Hatchetman then pointed to the
left. "Heads up now!"
Ryouga turned his attention towards the indicated direction. The
hulking assault 'mech then turned its pistol-like PPC on its next target,
a Jenner whose SRM launcher was firing at Doctor Tofu's Centurion. The bolt
slammed into the pod-like left arm, obliterating the pair of medium lasers
as Tofu answered the missile barrage with his autocannon, tearing apart the
identical weapon pod in the right arm. The Jenner pilot quickly established
his situation as untenable, and fired his jump jets to scoot clear of the
shooting.
"Let him go," Akane admonished them. "Don't break ranks."
Happousai was busy dueling with his opposite in the other Locust,
having ignored her orders in favor of showing the Black Rose pilot who
was master and who was student. Rather than shoot it out with the Black
Rose 'mech, the wizened little pervert cut inside his opponent's high
speed turn and lashed out a spindly armored chicken leg to *trip* the
enemy Locust, which subsequently tumbled over into the soft ground. A
single laser blast to the cockpit hatch ensured that the Black Rose pilot
would not be up for a rematch.
There were only the three 'mechs in the command lance now, plus the
sole surviving recon lance Jenner, and these were turning tail as fast
as they could. Akane lined up one of the fleeing Hunchbacks in her HUD,
but didn't have the heart to light him up.
"Be careful, Akane," Tofu admonished her gently over the tac net,
apparently realizing what she had chosen not to do. "You'll face him
sooner or later today, and the next time he might be in a better position
to fight back."
"But," she began, and let her voice drop.
"This is survival," Tofu replied. "This isn't martial arts. Fairness
and honor have nothing to do with living to see tomorrow. Think of seeing
Ranma again soon, and remember that."
"You're right," she said. By now the Combine 'mechs were out of range.
"Withdraw to our second line of defense," she ordered. Commander Malloy
would feed them with updates to the Black Rose's next move. She only hoped
that the slaughter she had just inflicted upon them would be enough to
persuade Kodachi to be more cautious. Caution bought the _Palomino_ time
to finish its repairs and escape.
Chapter Two
Headquarters Lance
Black Rose Terror Regiment
12:47 Local Time
Kodachi Kuno was beside herself with rage.
"What do you mean, you encountered heavy resistance at the starport?"
she demanded of her Snapdragon Company commander. "Tendo's forces don't
equal more than a lance at best. An hour ago you had an entire COMPANY at
your disposal."
"Mistress, they were Star League 'mechs!" the frightened officer
replied. "They tore us apart! Missiles that didn't miss their targets! I
saw them!"
"You saw what, exactly?" Kodachi asked him archly. Her Marauder's
derringer-like forearm weapon pods trained in his direction threateningly.
"The Cameron Star!" the captain protested in a high voice. "They bore
the SLDF's colors!"
Kodachi considered blasting him in disgust for his cowardice.
"He could be telling the truth," Tarou put in abruptly.
"The Star League Defense Force?" Kodachi snorted. "After all these
years?"
"It could be remnants of the original garrison," Tarou declared.
There was a hunger in his voice at the thought of possessing 'mechs with
the kind of firepower that ruined a veteran company while suffering no
losses of their own. "It might explain why we received such a warm
reception from the Orochi Network as well, if they were somehow directing
it."
"I don't like it," Kodachi said at length. Her voice wavered between
anger and concern. "I'm here for Akane Tendo's head, not to lose my
precious battlemechs to a phantom force of centuries old Star Leaguers
who don't like strangers."
She returned her attention to the captain. "As for you, reorganize
what's left of your unit and report to Captain Merril. You are to serve as
the shock troops for his follow-up attack, and if you are lucky, you won't
live to answer to me this evening." She gave him a harrowing look over the
monitor. "Have I made myself clear, captain?"
"C-Crystalline," the mechwarrior replied haltingly.
The Griffin saluted and beat a hasty retreat from Kodachi.
"What next?" Tarou asked her.
"What else?" Kodachi snapped. "Captain Merril will lead a force to
attack from the east."
"Is it wise to attack from the same direction as your last attack?"
Kodachi favored Tarou with a wilting look, a sign of how angry she
was at the moment. "Merril will be instructed to keep up the pressure
without committing himself to a full attack. That is what that coward
Lassiter is for. Whilst these so-called SLDF 'mechs are busy with them,
you and I shall slip around from the south."
"What if Tendo isn't at the starport?"
Kodachi cackled scornfully. "That is not your concern, lover."
Sasuke appeared on both of their monitors.
"My Mistress, I bring news of the Musk Dynasty's landing."
"What of it?" she demanded. "How many DropShips did we shoot down?"
"None, I'm afraid," Sasuke replied calmly. "Our fighters were heavily
outnumbered."
"Excuses!" she railed at him. "Why must I be hobbled with the excuses
of my subordinates?"
"In all fairness, Mistress," Sasuke countered gently. "Our pilots were
able to shoot down thirteen Commonwealth fighteres at a loss of only four
of our own, although two more are unaccounted for, having last reported
over the ruins of the starport."
"The starport," Kodachi noted with icy calm. "Why, perhaps if either
of the dolts who disappeared yet lived, they might tell a story of Star
League fighters that could outfight an entire squadron single-handed."
"Mistress?"
"Never mind, Sasuke," she snapped at him. "Direct our fighters to
continue harassing the Commonwealth landing zones, and leave the mystery
of the starport to me."
* * *
SLDF Drydock
12:50 Local Time
"Point that thing somewhere else before I shove it straight up your
ass, sailor."
Captain Hauptmann brushed aside the muzzle of a flechette 'nailgun'
that tapped against the side of his pressure suit visor as he said it.
The _Dragonfly_ crewman who held the weapon lowered it slowly, not sure
if he should believe his wondering eyes.
"C-Captain Ninomiya?" he called into his suit radio as the rest of
the _Tang_ boarding party spread out in the vestibule that linked the
_Coronet's_ quarterdeck with the drydock. "I think you should come down
here, ma'am."
Hauptmann didn't wait for a reply from the other end. "We're here to
rescue Lady Akane," he said to the sailor. "Is she here?"
"She's on the surface," the man replied. "Trying to buy time for the
other survivors to repair the _Palomino._"
Hauptmann remembered the two landing forces that were probably already
on the planet by now. Olivera and the Grand Duke needed to know what was
going on if they were going to do something about it. Captain Ninomiya was
probably the best source for answers to his questions, but until then...
"What happened to the _Dragonfly_?" he demanded.
"The Orochi got us," the sailor answered. "Blew the hell out of the
ship, even got a piece of the _Palomino,_ which is why they need to repair
it."
Captain Hinako Ninomiya appeared as he spoke, looking grubby and
worn in her child body. She had been forced to endure the indignity of
being an eight-year-old because her small size allowed her to reach into
tight spaces to conduct the start-up procedures for the _Coronet._
Hauptmann had heard about Ninomiya and her *difficulties,* but he
had never met her face to face. The insular environment of the corvette
community kept him away from most JumpShip commanders.
"Captain?" he asked haltingly.
"That's me," Hinako chirped. "It sure took you long enough to get
here!"
"What exactly are you doing up here?" Hauptmann asked. "Shouldn't
your crew be down on the surface repairing the DropShip?"
"To go where, silly?" Hinako asked, poking him in the chest with each
word. "No JumpShip means no way to leave the system."
The former _Tang_ captain looked around him. "You mean this ship is
operational?"
"Not quite," Hinako countered. "We're at the point where we can light
off the reactor, and the main computer is already up and running, but I
can't make any guarantees about anything else."
"How long?"
Hinako gave him a funny look. "We could start the reactor within the
hour. After that, I guess it's a matter of how well everything holds up
after being in layup for the last two-hundred years."
"The weapons?"
"Haven't even looked at 'em," she admitted. "Why? You have plans for
my ship?"
Hauptmann frowned at the idea that the ship might belong to this
little girl, even if she was a decorated Confederation Navy captain. He
had come to the drydock to make the _Coronet_ his!
"It might be necessary to shoot our way out of the system," he
declared. "The corvette we came here in is no match for the Orochi
Network, and there are other powers in the system."
"I know," Hinako chirped. "We were planning on letting them kill
each other, and sneaking out while they were busy doing that." She yawned
wearily, having had no sleep in the last thirty-six hours, and poked him
in the chest again. "You need to get in touch with Lady Akane. I have
commo frequencies that will allow you to communicate with my XO, who is
currently in the Orochi Control Bunker on the planet. He can patch you
through to her from there."
"Control bunker?" Hauptmann asked. "You mean you're controlling
the Orochi right now?"
"We wish," Hinako snorted, a gesture that was terribly amusing when
coming from an ersatz eight-year-old. "We don't have the access codes.
About all we can do is observe, but it also means that we can see
everything that the network can right now."
Hauptmann pulled out a notepad and stylus. "Give me the codes and
freaks, and I'll get them over to the _Tautog._ The Grand Duke will
probably want to speak to his daughter personally."
"Oooo!" Hinako squealed with excitement. "His Grace is *here*?"
"It's a long story," Hauptmann said, nodding. "Suffice it to say that
things have not gone well for the Confederation since your ship left the
Capella System."
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
13:12 Local Time
Commander Malloy could not believe his ears.
"Say again?"
The reply was clipped, but the voice was unmistakable.
"This is Grand Duke Soun Tendo, in orbit above you aboard the
Confederation corvette, _Tautog._ I wish to speak to my daughter at
once."
Malloy looked at his transplanted _Dragonfly_ bridge crew, who
returned with equally surprised expressions.
"A-At once, your Grace," he replied. "Patching you into the commo
net now."
* * *
"They're coming in from the east again," Happousai reported. His
Locust
bore a black scorch mark from a lucky laser hit.
"How many?" Akane asked, wondering why Malloy hadn't updated her with
this bit of news. Was he having problems with the network?
"Sixteen there, Sweet Cheeks," Happousai returned. "A company plus
what
looks like the surviving chumps of the company we spanked a half-hour ago.
I
recognize the Jenner at least."
Akane brushed his insulting nickname for her aside as Doctor Tofu's
admonition came back to her. They were indeed fighting the same 'mechs she
had let escape, and this time they had another full company to back them
up.
"I don't want to hit them in the same place as last time," she said at
length. She consulted her map display. "Let's draw them in to this complex
of ruined buildings to the southeast. There are lots of good crossfires in
there, plus a few fire lanes where we can hit them with long range
missiles."
Happousai brushed his Locust against the hull of her Warhammer in a
catlike show of affection that scraped the paint on both 'mechs down to
bare metal. "Oh, Akane!" he sighed. "I love it when you get all tactical
on me!"
"If you don't cut that out, I'll start getting medieval on you
instead!"
Akane fumed angrily.
Ryouga raised his BattleMaster's fist threateningly at the Locust.
"Why don't you make yourself useful and go back to scouting!"
"Fine!" the wizened master mechwarrior sniffed. "I'll do that!" The
Locust sprang away into the woods to the west, kicking petulantly at trees
as it went. Curiously, he did not turn around and start heading east, where
it might be expected to encounter the enemy, but continued west, towards
the
starport.
"The Master seems awfully upset," Genma cautioned from his Orion.
"I don't know about that..." Ukyou countered. Her Hatchetman's sensor
head turned to watch the retreating Locust. "He seemed awful eager to
leave.
I don't think he's turning coward, but it makes me wonder what he's up to."
Akane considered asking Ukyou to keep an eye on him and quickly
decided
against it. They were short on numbers as it stood, and while Happousai was
an excellent mechwarrior, his relatively puny Locust could only do so much
against Black Rose heavies. They wouldn't miss him that much, she
concluded.
Commander Malloy appeared on her display as she turned her Warhammer
towards their next ambush site.
"Eyes Front to Red Leader," he called to her. "You're not going to
believe this, ma'am, but I have an urgent commo dispatch for you from your
father."
"What was that?!" Akane returned. "My father? Here?"
"Soun?" Genma chirped.
Grand Duke Tendo's face took the place of Commander Malloy on their
commo displays.
"Akane," he said to her, his face drawn with concern. "What is your
current situation?"
Akane was flabbergasted.
"Dad? Is it really you? How did you get here?"
Soun shook his head. "That's not important right now. I'm here, and
so is Kasumi. We're here to evacuate you from the planet before Prince
Kuno's fleet arrives."
"He's on his way?"
"That is correct," Soun replied. "Our sensor operators aboard the
_Tautog_ have detected the approach of his fleet. We have less than two
and a half hours before they get here."
Akane thought about her last progress report from the repair crews.
"We need at least that long before the _Palomino_ can be made ready
to lift off, Dad."
"If necessary, we'll take everyone off the planet in shuttles," he
said. "Pass the word to Captain Grant that it may be required of him to
abandon the ship where it is."
"B-But, Tendo!" Genma spluttered. "We have Star League technology in
our possession. We can't just leave it all behind."
"I know that, Saotome," Soun sighed. "But my daughter's life is more
important right now. Furthermore, the very future of the Confederation
rests in returning Akane to Nerima to unseat Nabiki as Regent before she
manages to surrender everything to the Furinkan Combine."
"Nabiki?" Akane cried. "Regent?!"
"Again, there's no time to explain," Soun said to her. The radio
transmission broke up for a moment. "We're starting to enter the atmosphere
now. I'll speak to you more when we arrive."
"You're coming down?" Akane asked her father. "I can't recommend that,
Dad."
"You need all the help you can get to fight off the Combine and the
Commonwealth forces until the repairs can be completed," he said to her.
"I'm told you have a few 'mechs to spare for your sister and I."
Akane choked back a sob. How long had she dreamed of this moment, to
prove herself as a leader to her father, to fight alongside a man who had
at one time been a great mechwarrior serving the Confederation?
"We'll be waiting for you," she managed. He gave his acknowledgemnt
as the transmission broke up into static with the shuttle passing through
the ionosphere.
She flicked her commo over to the _Palomino's_ radio frequency. "This
is Red Leader, what's the status of the repairs?"
Petty Officer Tad Howard's voice came back to her in reply. "Wait one,
ma'am, I'm calling down to them now."
The harsh strobe of welders lit the cramped confines of the Reactor
Compartment in flickering blue-white light, hissing and crackling over the
sound of portable forced draft blowers supplying the repair parties with
fresh air from outside. Even then, the hot smell of melted metal and the
acrid tang of ozone filled the space.
"We're way behind schedule, Captain Grant," Akari lamented, watching
as one of her techs suspended himself upside down from a run of coolant
piping to reach the back side of the main header welds. The man strained
with the effort, knowing that he had to lay down a steady, even bead to
properly rejoin the ruptured main coolant loop to the heat exchange
circuit. When he finished on his side of the weld, he gingerly passed the
hot electrode to a tech below him, who completed the weld on the opposite
side.
The work was tedious, but vital. The header had to remain tight at a
pressure of hundreds of atmospheres and at temperatures up to a thousand
degrees Kelvin. They had already cut the last corner they could - the
twelve hour 'temperature soak' of the pipe with electric heating strips
at 400 degrees Kelvin that was recommended for welding on the high-yield
alloy, and they had foregone the use of the inert argon gas 'tent' as
well for the time it took to set it up and take it down between welds.
Akari knew that even if they possessed the radiography equipment and the
time to inspect the completed welds, that they would never pass. That
wasn't her concern. As long as the header held tight for just a few hours,
that was all that would matter.
"There's always Plan 'B,'" Captain Grant said to Akari without a hint
of enthusiasm. He referred to the use of thermite-welding techniques on
the last two welds that remained. In theory, the welding process itself
would take about thirty seconds as the thermite burned at five thousand
degrees to fuse the sections of header together, and the pipes themselves
could be ready to fill and press up in under thirty minutes, but the
process had never been attempted before by anyone on the ship. The battle
with error was already an uncertain one as it stood.
"We can repressurize the header in twenty minutes once we finish the
welds, sir," Akari said, knowing where the captain was going with his
statement. "There's no time for a proper hydrostatic test, but if it passes
the static drop test, then I think we can make it." She resisted the urge
to wipe at the sweat that beaded on her brow and matted her bangs together
under her bright yellow anti-contamination hood. Instead, she gripped a
stanchion with her rubber gloved hands and tried not to think about the
discomfort.
"Do we even have time for a drop test?" Grant asked her.
"If we do it while you begin the pre-liftoff checks and auxilliary
equipment startups, sir, we should have about ten minutes to watch the
pressure gauges to see if it will hold." She shrugged in resignation. "If
it doesn't hold, I don't know what we can do. Unless the leak is gross
enough to pinpoint easily and tack down with a blob of weld bead, we won't
have time to grind down the welds and start over."
The sound of a distant series of explosions rolled into the cramped
and crowded Reactor Compartment, reminding all of them of the urgency
of their repairs. Ryouga and the others were out there, fighting to buy
them time. Akari closed her eyes briefly and thought of her beloved and
his battlemech. Captain Grant reached for the ringing telephone that was
probably the Flight Deck demanding a status report.
"Two hours?" Akane repeated worriedly. She knew the answer to her next
question, but found herself asking anyway. "Tad, is that the best they can
do?"
"The skipper tells me they're doing everything they can, ma'am," he
replied.
Akane understood. Still, it was going to be a closer call than they
had anticipated.
They were at the next ambush position, a series of ruined buildings
that flanked the southeastern approaches to the starport proper and
provided
for two lanes of NARC-assisted LRM fire to soften up the Black Rose attack.
Even as she rechecked her observations of the place, the ominous red pings
of Musk Dynasty forces moving in from the northwest gave her pause. Should
she split her meager army in two to engage both adversaries at once, or
pray
that she could turn the Black Rose's next push in time to prepare for the
first Musk attack?
The scream of fighters overhead made her start in her ejector seat,
until she recognized them as Yuka and Sayuri doing turns and burns over
the starport as they duelled with a pair of Black Rose fighters. The two
Confederation pilots had caught their enemies by surprise, and their
combined attack had nearly creamed one Black Rose Slayer. Now all four
fighters wheeled above her, striving for shooting position. Storm clouds
loomed beyond the dogfight, threatening a cloudburst that would render
their orbital observation satellites next to useless.
Doctor Tofu's Centurion cast a worried glance around. "Has anyone seen
Ryouga?"
"He was supposed to be with you," Ukyou pointed out.
Tofu's battlemech shrugged. "I know that," the doctor replied curtly.
"He was just here. Now I can't find him on my scopes."
"Marvelous," Ukyou muttered. "Of all the times for him to wander off."
"Red Leader to Red Two, respond please," Akane called over the commo.
The tac-net was silent.
"Ryouga, come in please. Where are you?"
"He's in a BattleMaster," Genma observed at length. "How hard could it
be to lose track of something as big as that?"
"In these woods," Akane remarked. "Not that hard at all. Ukyou, do you
think you could look for him?"
"I don't mind it," she replied. "But is that a smart idea? The Black
Rose 'mechs will be here any minute now."
Akane looked crestfallen on the display. "You've got a point, but I
still want you to look. Don't move more than a few klicks from our
position,
and if we call for you, come running."
"Will do, sugar."
The Hatchetman stalked off into the woods, leaving Akane to wonder
what
had happened to Ryouga. And where the heck was Ranma? she wondered. It had
been too long since she had heard from him.
"Red Eagle Lead, this is Red Leader," she called on the tac-net.
"Respond please."
There was no answer. She tried again to no effect. Still nothing. She
then tried another tack. "Red Eagle Deuce, Red Leader, respond."
Yuka's strained voice came over the airwaves as she gutted out a turn.
"Eagle Deuce copies," she replied. "Wait one."
An explosion in midair marked the destruction of the wounded Black
Rose
Slayer. The other Slayer, finding itself suddenly outnumbered, made a break
for the horizon.
"Red Eagle Deuce standing by, Red Leader."
"Yuka," Akane called to her friend. "Have you seen Ranma since he took
off?"
There was a strained silence. "No."
"He hasn't reported in," Akane returned, her voice cracking slightly.
"If you spot him, could you let me know?"
"Y-Yes, ma'am," Yuka replied, her own voice taking on a guilty edge
that almost made Akane question it. Instead, she tried to reach him again.
"Ranma?" she called out into the ether. "Answer me!"
"Ran-chan?!" Ukyou chimed in worriedly, realizing that there were now
two missing mechwarriors. "Are you there, honey?"
Genma's Orion moved from its position.
"The boy's probably just busy," he said, trying to believe it himself.
* * *
"Come on, you piece of crap!"
Ranma wrenched at the access panel to his LAM's heavy pulselaser
rifle, finally getting the recalcitrant portal to open. The weapon
should have reset by this time, but something was holding it back. Worse,
the shutdown was forcing certain weapon interlocks that kept the rest of
his armament offline. Ranma suspected that there was a safety disconnect
open within the pulselaser's power electronics, something that he would
have to land and dismount to fix. The LAM now rested in Airmech Mode in
a tiny clearing that did little to screen him from the air.
He peered inside the pulselaser's innards as rolling booms of
thunder and exploding battlemechs surrounded him. A tangled mass of
coolant piping and power conduit revealed itself, and he had to go by
touch to figure out which was which. He leaned into the access, hissing
with discomfort as the heat from the weapon's components remained high
in spite of the liquid nitrogen cooling system.
At last he spotted what he thought was the failed disconnect. The
component would have to be forced back into position, though he saw with
some relief that it could be locked shut to keep it from popping open
the next time he got a little too eager on the trigger. He reached in to
get a grip on the throw switch, and cursed when he couldn't quite fit far
enough inside the weapon to touch it.
A thunderclap overhead startled him, and he slammed his head against
a coolant pipe. Still cursing, he fell out of the access hatch and landed
on the ground. It was going to rain, he saw, and very soon. The steady
thud of battlemechs in motion made it clear that if the rain didn't get
him, they soon would. He could see the treetops swaying in the distance
as they pushed through the woods to reach the starport.
The first sprinkling of rain began to fall as he realized that he had
no tools on him that could reach inside the weapon. Finally, in
desperation,
an idea came to him, and he looked up at the sky with shaking fists.
"Rain, dammit!" he yelled. "I dare you to rain on me!"
A cloudburst opened up over his head with a flash of lightning and
the peal of thunder, granting his request, and turning him into the buxom
redhead that had been his curse for the last six months. The enemy 'mechs
were close now, close enough to see them through the sudden rainy gloom.
Ranma wasted no time, pulling herself back inside the weapon, where
her smaller body could squeeze into a position to reach the disconnect.
She grasped the handle tight and forced it shut with all her strength.
The disconnect slammed shut with a *bang,* and the weapon began to hum
with power once again. She cried out in triumph, barely remembering to
pin shut the disconnect in her excitement before wriggling clear.
A Black Rose Rifleman loomed overhead, its Garret radar array
spinning slowly over its head as it searched for enemy fighters. Ranma
could tell that its mechwarrior's attention was focused on the sky, and
not on the Phoenix Hawk LAM at its feet. It was easy enough, since if the
Black Rose pilot had noticed it, she would be dead by now.
She pulled her helmet back on as she scrambled for the open cockpit.
The Rifleman couldn't miss her for long, and there were other Black Rose
'mechs stomping around who might recognize an easy kill when they saw one.
The canopy locked closed with a hiss as she adjusted her seat straps for
her smaller body. As the last strap locked into place, she pivoted the
Airmech on its heels and brought up the heavy pulselaser.
She squeezed the weapon trigger and held on, sending streams of blue-
green laser light into the Rifleman's right knee joint. The coruscating
beams were quickly lost in wispy clouds of steam from vaporized rainfall,
but not before cutting through the battlemech's thin leg armor to the
fragile knee actuator beyond. The Rifleman's twin-cannon arms flailed
wildly as the pilot lost his balance, and with a shove from the pulselaser
muzzle, Ranma toppled it over into the trees.
She goosed her thrusters even as it pitched over, blasting into the
sky while the other Black Rose 'mechs trembled in surprise at her sudden
appearance. A wild volley of LRM fire exploded behind her, throwing
shattered trees into the air as she fought for altitude. Laser beams
from an entire company sizzled through the air, discouraging any further
attacks from her.
Ranma muscled her way through the low hanging storm clouds and
pondered her next course of action. It had taken far longer than she had
hoped to fix her weapon systems, and there was no telling how far the
Black Rose and her troops had advanced to the starport. She needed to
put some pressure on their landing zones if she was going to put them
off balance.
The small Electronic Warfare panel on her right lit up with ambers,
blues, and reds as it detected and identified the radar beams and commo
arrays of a half-dozen Black Rose DropShips obscured from sight by the
rainstorm. Glyphic symbols scrolled across her HUD as she put her nose
on target and boosted into supersonic flight, haloing ASX-002 in its own
sonic boom. The Super Phoenix Hawk LAM bit into the cool air with a
vengeance as it tore through the cloud bank with a lightning bolt
cracking in its wake.
The egg-shaped Overlord Class DropShip _Thorn_ was the first thing
she saw as she broke through the clouds and dove into the rain. She aimed
for the deployed communications array at the very top of the ship, and
loosed a pair of Streak SRMs at it as she passed overhead. The two short
ranged missiles were self-guided, needing no external radar illumination
to reach their mark.
The missiles' aim was true, and Ranma noted with some satisfaction
that an entire band of color faded abruptly from the Electronic Warfare
panel, marking the sudden loss of the DropShip's commo link. She hoped
that Kodachi was in the middle of talking to someone back at the Drop
Zone when it happened.
The Phoenix Hawk LAM dropped down to the deck as battlemechs in the
security detachment shook off their surprise and began to shoot back at
her. Ranma transformed to Airmech Mode, the most versatile of the three
modes for hit and run attacks, and rocketed back at them with the heavy
pulselaser at the ready. She all but ignored the enemy battlemechs as
she ranged in on the crates of ammunition staged for ready use by
returning units seeking to reload, and let loose with a full salvo.
The laser beams tore into the crates, detonating the ammunition
in a blinding fireball that raged against the falling rain. Ranma shot
through the roiling cloud of smoke and steam to spoil the aim of the
enemy battlemechs, then transformed back to fighter mode to make her
escape. Though she could have tangled with them for a little while
longer, her purpose was terror and disruption, and that purpose had
been fulfilled. She was needed back at the starport now, before her
tomboy fiancee got in over her head.
Chapter Three
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
13:35 Local Time
"Mark time to shuttle arrival," Commander Malloy ordered.
"Any time now, sir," a commo tech replied. "The pilot wants to make a
quick scan of the surroundings before he puts down."
Malloy nodded anxiously.
"Uh, sir, this doesn't look good," Lieutenant Davidge declared
abruptly
as he manned the main display.
"What is it?" Malloy demanded.
"The primary Orochi unit is making an orbital insertion burn," Davidge
replied, scrolling through line after line of command code and
calculations.
"It's hauling ass, sir; a full burn with its plasma drive."
"Where's it going?"
Davidge scribbled some numbers furiously on a notepad as the other
_Dragonfly_ bridge crew called out updates to Black Rose and Musk Dynasty
positions. "High orbit, roughly eighty thousand klicks altitude, right
smack
dab over our heads. ETA is one hour and ten minutes."
"Unit Three is illuminating the surface with radar," one of the former
sensor operators announced. "Looks like it's gonna light up someone's
life."
"Warn Lady Akane," Malloy ordered. He turned back to Davidge. "Any
idea of the Big Guy's intentions?"
"Yeah," Davidge replied as the ground shook around them. "He's gonna
blow the hell out of us."
"Beam strike near Musk Landing Zones," the sensor operator declared.
"Damage assessment impossible due to the cloud cover."
"Better them than us," someone intoned.
* * *
Musk Dynasty Regimental Landing Zone
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
13:37 Local Time
The particle beam bolt split the dark sky in a convincing imitation of
the wrath of God. When it struck the ground, the planet seemed to shake
with
the force of the hit, and a terrible shock wave rolled out from the impact
point with the force of a gale. Cries of panic from the men led to their
battlemechs casting furtive glances to the clouds above, dreading the next
strike.
Mousse steadied his Crusader as falling chunks of the ground pelted
his
pristine white armor. He turned his mech's head to see a steaming crater to
the west, near one of his assembly points. The hole was at least forty
meters
deep, and of the lance of 'mechs that had been standing there, only red hot
bits of metal remained, pattering down with the tortured clods of earth
uprooted by the energy of the blast.
Orbital bombardment had gone out with the First Succession War, and
with it the defensive tactics that could have spared those men. Realizing
that this battle was not going to be like anything he had ever experienced
before, he gave orders to his commanders to disperse, and commanded his
DropShips to lift off to safety. Black Rose fighters were nothing to be
feared compared to another blast like that one.
This is suicide, he thought darkly. He had nothing that could engage
the Orochi satellite responsible for that costly attack.
"<Send to General Herb," he called to his signal group. "Inform him
that the Orochi network is subjecting us to bombardment from orbit. Humbly
request his permission to withdraw from the planet until a way can be found
to neutralize it.>"
General Herb's face appeared on his display even as the commo officer
repeated back his orders.
"<There will be no withdrawal,>" the serpentine Musk commander said to
him. Mousse was surprised by the lack of interference in the transmission.
"<My ship will be landing within an hour, Colonel. If you feel that you are
incapable of carrying out your orders, I will personally relieve you.>"
Landing within an hour? Mousse wondered. Herb must have decided to
proceed to the planet himself not long after dispatching the main force to
Ryuugenzawa. Had he not told him of his departure out of mistrust, or was
it a spur of the moment decision on Herb's part?
"<That won't be necessary, honored lord,>" Mousse demurred. "<I was
about to investigate a curious group of signals from the surface that might
be the control center for the network.>"
Herb's eyes lit up. "<Capture it intact, if you can,>" he commanded
him. "<We can always use the Orochi against Prince Kuno when he gets
here.>"
"<Prince Kuno, my lord?>"
"<He's on his way, according to the fleet. It should make for a very
interesting battle.>"
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
13:41 Local Time
Shinnosuke watched from a position of cover against the rain as the
black shuttle from the _Tautog_ flared out into a hover, and settled down
on the muddy meadow with the scream of turbojets. The nose ramp dropped
down, and men in battledress carrying rifles fanned out to either side
of the action. Though Konatsu had told him of the coming arrival of the
Grand Duke of the Nerima Confederation, he was taken aback by its matter-
of-factness. Shampoo's Panther tracked the shuttle with its PPC arm for
a moment, then, apparently satisfied with its identity, stomped off on
another circuit of the bunker's surroundings.
The kunoichi ran out to meet them, ignoring the readied weapons aimed
at her and bowing deeply for the Grand Duke and his entourage. Shinnosuke
decided to follow after her, a little shamed by her courage. He bowed as
well for them as they took their first steps onto Ryuugenzawa soil.
"Your Grace," Konatsu said in his breathy voice.
Soun studied him for a moment, seeking recognition in him and not
finding any.
"Where is Commander Malloy?" he finally asked.
"Please forgive him, your Grace," Konatsu replied. "Given the current
tactical situation, he was unable to meet you on the surface. He is still
below in the bunker."
Soun grunted acknowledgement. "That's fine," he replied. "Kasumi and
I have to join Akane at the starport. We're only here to put off some non-
combatants." He gestured to an attractive middle-aged woman with a striking
resemblance to Captain Saotome, and to a deeply-tanned man in a floral
pattern shirt with a Polynesian entourage.
"My lord?"
"The _Tautog_ is about to engage the Orochi network," Soun explained.
"A space battle is no place for civilians."
Konatsu bowed again, at last understanding what the Grand Duke
expected of him.
"I would be honored, your Grace," he said in reply.
"Take good care of them," Soun said. "The Shogun is my personal guest,
and his entourage are to be treated with the utmost respect and courtesy."
He turned to Nodoka and the Shogun. "With luck, we'll be seeing you again
very soon."
Nodoka bowed gracefully for him, then kissed Kasumi's cheek. "Both of
you be careful, and when you see Ranma, give him my love."
"You'll see him soon enough, Mrs. Saotome," Kasumi replied with a
wan smile. She did not relish going back into combat so soon after the
Battle of Oni, but again, duty called.
Shogun Kuno gave him the 'hang loose' sign. "Take care, bruddah." He
and his entourage stepped off the shuttle and into the rain. "De sooner we
get dis over with, de sooner we go surfin'."
Konatsu placed a gentle hand on Shinnosuke, making him blush. "You
should show them to the bunker while I make another round."
The caretaker stammered agreement, and turned to lead the civilians
away from the shuttle. The middle-aged woman produced an umbrella from her
kimono, though Shinnosuke's eyes were drawn to the curious bundle tied to
her back with a length of silk. It looked rather like a sword.
The Shogun led his hula girls and beefy Polynesian men towards the
bunker while Shinnosuke found himself on Nodoka's arm. As soon as they were
clear of the shuttle, the ramp closed and the engines spooled up. The group
paused to watch it lift off, and then nose away to make a high-speed, low
altitude transit to the distant starport.
"We get out o' dis rain, ya bruddah?" the Shogun asked Shinnosuke.
"Right this way," he replied, feeling useless and a little put off
with having to shepherd a bunch of offworlders - even supposedly important
ones.
* * *
Happousai hadn't intended on coming to this place until well after the
fighting, but his greed had gotten the better of him. He needed to check up
on his trove just one more time to feel secure. The service pit in the
reinforced concrete floor of the quonset hut was lined with old sheets of
armor plate, making it about as secure as one could get on such short
notice. Within the pit was an armored and padded case, the lining shielded
against electromagnetic interference.
He opened the padded case with care, as if the contents would crumble
to dust at the slightest mishandling. It wasn't true, but considering what
he had, a little caution was never a bad thing. His eyes lit up at
beholding
the Treasure of Ryuugenzawa, and a thin line of drool cascaded down his
lips.
"How beautiful," he sobbed.
Overcome by the emotion of the moment, he stood back from the case,
trying not to cry. The Inner Sphere would never forget him after today.
He would be a savior, a messiah, and the way he figured it, and with few
exceptions, most messiahs did pretty well in the booty call department.
"When did you plan on telling the rest of us about this?" a gruff
voice behind him demanded.
Happousai spun around to see Ryouga looking down at him. It was clear
by the angry scowl on his face that he had seen everything. A thunderclap
outside the quonset hut punctuated the man's angry glare, and rain began
to fall.
"R-Ryouga," he cried out greasily. "Didn't hear you coming."
"I know," the fanged mechwarrior growled. "I followed you after you
left us."
Happousai did a double-take. Since when was Ryouga even able to walk a
straight line?
"So," Ryouga continued. "Are you going to answer my question, or do I
have to beat it out of you?"
Happousai edged back to the case and shut the lid, while keeping his
eyes fixed on Ryouga. "I was going to tell everyone," he replied. "Honest
I was. The timing just hasn't seemed right, that's all."
"I may not know much," Ryouga snarled. "But I've learned to tell when
you're lying, Happousai."
"O-Oh yeah?" the wizened mechwarrior replied, looking for an opening
to make his escape. "How's that?"
Ryouga's eyes narrowed to burning slits. "Your lips move."
Happousai took a slow and deliberate step towards him. "Now take it
easy, Ryouga," he soothed. "There's no need to get angry. I'm willing to
cut you in on this."
Ryouga eyed him warily. "Go on."
Happousai's face turned up into an easy smile, surprised at Ryouga's
reaction to his offer. "We both know how much the contents of this case
are worth. I'm willing to share the take with you if you keep your mouth
shut about it." He stepped up to Ryouga and gave him a conspiratorial
nudge. "Think about it for a moment. A girl as beautiful and sweet as
Akari deserves a good life, and with even a fraction of what I'm offering
you, you can give her everything she's ever wanted. A nice mansion on a
landed estate, the most expensive fashions, gorgeous jewelry from across
the Inner Sphere. Hell, you could build her her own little 'mech workshop
and let her tinker to her heart's content for the rest of her life."
He looked away for a moment. "Think you can do that for her as a
lousy lieutenant in an army that's gonna end up on the Furinkan Combine
payroll someday? Or as a wandering mercenary?"
"No..." Ryouga replied sheepishly. "No, I guess I couldn't do all
those things for her if I was one of those."
"So whaddya say?" Happousai cried, offering up a wrinkled hand.
"Share and share alike?"
Ryouga took Happousai's hand in a firm grip. "I could never give her
those things as a lousy lieutenant in the Nerima Confederation Army," he
said to him. "Just like I could never live with myself for betraying the
people who have come to mean so much to me if I do what you say!" He
threw Happousai down to the ground and gave him a savage kick.
"What was that for?!" Happousai wailed.
"You--" he spluttered at Happousai, who cowered at his feet and
whimpered. "You incredible bastard! Doesn't Akane mean anything at all
to you!? Or Grand Duke Tendo!? Or even Ranma!? You'd sell them all out
for the contents of that case!?"
"You idiot!" Happousai howled as Ryouga pinned him with a foot.
"Don't you understand what a Library Core is? Everything, I mean
EVERYTHING the Inner Sphere lost to the wars is in that case. That
knowledge and technical information is the greatest treasure in the
galaxy! A ransom for a thousand star systems!"
Ryouga grabbed Happousai by the scruff of his neck and held him up
to his face.
"You won't get one C-bill of it!" he shouted, spittle flying off
his lips and into Happousai's eyes. In his rage, he threw the little
mechwarrior to the concrete. "Tarou was right! I should have helped
him kill you on the _Dragonfly!_"
His fist plunged down at Happousai, intent on crushing the very
life out of the twisted little man. Happousai turned the blow aside
with a casual flick of his hand, dropping Ryouga's fist into the
concrete with a crash. Chunks of the floor exploded around them,
battering Ryouga and stunning him long enough for Happousai to make
his break.
"Come back here, you!" he called after Happousai.
Happousai dashed for his Locust, which was parked outside the hut.
It was a fortunate circumstance, for Ryouga's BattleMaster was also
outside. He couldn't chase after him without turning into a pig in the
rain.
He hated to do this, but there was no choice. Barring a lucky
shot, he would be forced to bring down the hut on Ryouga. When the
fighting was over he would dig out the rubble for the case, which he
was confident was protected against any collapse. Ryouga had seen too
much, and more to the point, had refused to play along.
Ryouga watched Happousai flee into the rain and stopped short of
following him. As a pig he would be defenseless. The little bastard was
running for his Locust, though his intentions beyond escape were unknown.
It did not occur to him that Happousai would actually try to kill him,
even in spite of what had just passed between them.
When the Locust's turret-like medium laser projector pivoted to
bear on the hut, he knew he was wrong.
A rippling beam of laser light cut across him to blast apart a
section of wall on the opposite side of the hut. Though the beam had
barely missed, the heat was tremendous, searing his skin and nearly
blinding him with its intensity. He staggered backwards, his vision
filled with painful blotches of color. The water-filled cooling vest
on his torso spat out a jet of hot liquid from the safety relief,
reminding him of how close he had come to being fried.
Happousai sent another beam at him, tearing up a trench in the
concrete floor and blasting shards of it into the air. Stinging bits
of the stuff pelted him, and he covered up instinctively against the
barrage. Still half-blind, his watery eyes groped for a place where
he could take cover.
A third blast ripped into the hut, though now it was clear that
Happousai was no longer trying to hit him. He was going for the quonset
hut's supports instead. The ancient building groaned in protest as a
section of the struts that held up the curved roof were evaporated.
Rain began to spill through the holes in the roof that Happousai
had made, and Ryouga tripped clumsily around them as he staggered for
the only shelter he could think of. A fourth blast took out an entire
corner of the quonset hut, and the tortured metal shrieked as it
failed. The building was collapsing on him, and all he could think
about was Akari.
Happousai took no satisfaction in watching the quonset hut fall
in on itself. He blamed himself for his clumsiness in being followed,
even for his weakness in wanting to take another look at his treasure.
He took a calming puff on his pipe as wisps of steam from rain
evaporating on superheated metal wafted up from the uneven pile of
debris.
It was possible that Ryouga had survived the collapse. He was a
tough one, and the idea of stomping on the rubble with his battlemech
crossed his mind. When the time came to dig out the debris to recover
the Library Core, Ryouga was much better off being dead. Especially if
by some miracle, the Confederation managed to pull off a victory.
The scream of distant weapons fire distracted him from his internal
debate. Akane and the others were probably mixing it up with the Black
Rose forces again. For a moment he considered himself to be on Akane's
side, and knew he was needed there. He let it pass. A true master of
the Anything Goes School knew when to cut his losses, and this was that
time.
The Locust turned and began trotting south with the intention of
skirting the fighting and waiting out the battle from a safe distance.
The Library Core wasn't going anywhere now that it was buried under a
few tons of rubble. As he fled, he felt a pang of conscience, the first
he had felt in decades.
Ignore it, he told himself. You've never needed it before. No need
to start now.
Chapter Four
SLDF Drydock
14:02 Local Time
"We have approximately half an hour before the primary Orochi
satellite takes up a position above the starport," Captain Hauptmann
said to an freshly adult Hinako Ninomiya on the _Coronet's_ quiet
Bridge. The _Dragonfly_ sailor who had made the brave sacrifice of
energy for his captain floated in peaceful unconsciousness in free-fall
nearby.
Hauptmann could see that the auxilliary systems were online, though
many of the stations were unmanned as the crew finished up preparations
for launch. "The _Tautog_ will do what it can to distract the damn thing,
but that won't be much. We need to launch this ship."
"I'm not so sure that we'll be able to make much of a contribution,"
Hinako replied. "We don't even know if we can leave drydock, much less
use the ship's weapons."
"What about the torpedo systems?"
She shook her head. "The torpedoes were offloaded before the ship
went into drydock. They were probably put on some tender in orbit, and
that ship probably joined Kerensky in the Exodus."
Hauptmann didn't want to give up. "The spinal mount, then," he
said.
The _Coronet_ was one of the few Star League ships to carry a
particle beam cannon so massive that it was laid along the very backbone
of the vessel for support. Such weapons were known as spinal mounts,
drawing their power directly from the fusion reactor. Though they were
the most powerful energy weapons known to man, they required that the
ship itself line up with the target, making them difficult to use in
battle. It was one of the primary reasons why they weren't very common
in the SLDF fleets.
Hinako rolled her eyes. "There doesn't seem to be any reason why
the spinal mount won't function, aside from the fact that the reactor
hasn't had to answer that kind of instantaneous power demand for over
two hundred years. We could knock out the entire electrical generation
and distribution system trying to fire it."
"You're right," Hauptmann snorted. "We should just sit here and
watch the planet get blasted by the Orochi."
"That's not what I'm saying," Hinako retorted, her sultry voice
taking on a hard edge.
"Then what *are* you saying?" the former corvette skipper demanded.
Unlike most men Hinako had known, he seemed to be immune to her many
charms. She regarded him for a moment before replying. "Believe me, no
one wants to see Lady Akane and the others safely off the planet and out
of the system more than me. I simply don't see how we'll be doing them any
favors by facing the Orochi in a ship we have no experience with, and one
that might not even function in battle."
"We don't have time to debate this," Hauptmann countered. "In thirty
minutes this discussion becomes academic." He gestured to the viewport,
where the planet below shuddered with another particle beam hit from Unit
Three. "One of the smaller ones is already pounding on them. The big Orochi
has ten times the firepower."
"All right!" Hinako cried angrily. "I'll order the countdown for
launch. But for the record, I think this is a terrible mistake."
"I'm not going to concern myself with it," Hauptmann replied. "If
it is a mistake, none of us will be alive to regret it."
* * *
NCWS _Tautog_
14:05 Local Time
"Tommy, what have you got for me?"
Captain Olivera watched his Executive Officer make a last check of his
information before replying.
"Well, skipper, the lesser Orochi satellites have these sensor/commo
nodes running through the vertical axis in the dorsal and ventral quarters.
If we hit them both, it should knock out all but their low-frequency radar
and some low bandwidth radio links for backup commos and telemetry."
"Will that make it blind and deaf?"
"Mostly," the XO replied. "With the LF radar it will still be able to
detect targets, and our stealthing is particularly vulnerable to LF and
VLF radar frequencies, but the lack of resolution will make it very
difficult to target anything with its weapons systems, and the low
bandwidth commo links will make it difficult for other Orochi units to
provide it with targeting data."
"Sounds great," Olivera remarked. "What's the catch?"
"The catch, sir," Tommy replied. "Is that both nodes are relatively
small targets versus the bulk of the entire hull, and both are ringed with
a dozen point-defense gun turrets."
"But you have a way around that, don't you."
The XO opened his helmet visor to wipe away the sweat. "If we get
really close, and I mean close enough to see chipped paint without a
telescope, we can get off a volley of torps at point blank range that
might get past the turrets and knock out the nodes. If we use our laser
turrets, we'll have better odds of hitting, but we'll expose ourselves to
detection from the other Orochi units closing in, and we'll have to be
almost as close."
Olivera was nodding his head as the XO spoke. "We'll have to put
our most vulnerable quarter to the planet and creep up on attitude jets.
That damn Orochi unit has to go before it starts targeting parts of the
planet we care about."
He thumped his XO on the arm. "I'll leave the approach to you, Tommy.
In the meantime, we need to brainstorm a solution to the primary Orochi
satellite."
"That might not be necessary, sir," the Sensor Supervisor declared.
"The main Furinkan Combine fleet is on a course to intercept. Estimated
time to weapon range is four-two minutes."
Olivera looked at the holotank. "I never thought I'd be glad to see
the Furinkan Combine, but I'm sure it'll pass soon enough."
* * *
Near the Starport
14:11 Local Time
Ukyou screamed into her commo mic as her battle-spatula cleaved
through the hull of a Black Rose Wolverine that had nearly gotten the
drop on her. The enormous 'mech blade severed the enemy battlemech's
left arm in a shower of sparks and flame and dug deep into the torso
armor, knocking it off balance. Crying out in a frenzy, Ukyou wrenched at
her controls, bringing her Hatchetman's knee up to strike the Wolverine
as it teetered, and sending it to the muddy ground with a crash.
She pulled at her embedded battle-spatula to free it as more
Black Rose 'mechs appeared through the gloom. Cursing to herself, she
let the weapon go, and fired her jump jets to spoil her enemies' aim.
A cat's cradle of laser fire cut through the air around the Hatchetman
as it sprang airborne under the shriek of fusion heated turbojets.
Knowing that it was dangerous to do so, and even more dangerous not
to, she lined up a Black Rose Phoenix Hawk in her gunsight and fired her
hip-mounted heavy autocannon in midair. The recoil sent her tumbling,
and she fought her battlemech into a somersault, putting all of her
martial arts intincts to the test to land upright. As she touched down
and prepared to fire another round, she saw that her shell had hit its
mark, blowing the enemy battlemech's head apart in a shower of smoke
and flames.
There was no time to gloat over her marksmanship though, as the
Wolverine she had cleaved pulled itself to its feet. The six-pack
SRM launcher on its shoulder spat a volley of missiles at her, and
she threw herself into a copse of trees to avoid them. Missiles
exploded into the tress and cratered her armor in three places as
she called out for help over the radio.
She had gone looking for Ryouga, and had found a Black Rose
reconnaissance lance instead. Now she was outnumbered and cut off
from the rest of her companions.
"Anybody out there?" she cried into her radio once more. The
Wolverine crunched over the fallen Phoenix Hawk towards her, its
hand-held autocannon spitting out a hail of shells that chopped
down the trees in front of her with murderous efficiency. Her battle
spatula was still embedded in its armor. Beyond the Wolverine was a
Griffin and a Valkyrie. The Griffin tracked her with its PPC, waiting
for a clear shot.
"What is your position?" a voice, Akane's, called out over the
commo in return.
Ukyou's eyes flicked to the map display for a second as she
ducked and weaved her Hatchetman between trees to avoid fire from
the Black Rose 'mechs. "Three klicks southwest of you," she managed.
A PPC bolt carromed off her shoulder, lighting up the woods for a
moment as some of her precious armor boiled off into hot gas.
"Can you disengage?"
Ukyou spat out a curse before answering her. "If I could do that,
I wouldn't be begging for help!"
"We can't break away right now," Akane returned, her voice just
as urgent. The sounds of battle were clear enough over the commo to
let Ukyou know that Akane was in the middle of a tremendous fight.
"Avoid contact if you can, and try to work your way back towards us."
Ukyou knew then that she was truly on her own. The Wolverine
and Griffin were working in tandem while the Valkyrie protected the
rear, each covering the other's advance while she stumbled on through
the woods trying to escape. The only problem with her strategy was
that she would enter a clearing on her present course, giving them an
unobstructed shot at her while remaining in cover themselves.
She needed a better plan, and she needed her battle-spatula back.
The Hatchetman stopped running and turned around. She fired the
autocannon to keep their heads down, then triggered her jump jets. The
'mech lurched into the air as the Wolverine shrugged off the cannon
hit, its ball-turret medium laser tracking her arc through the sky.
The laser blast bit into her Hatchetman's torso, but the armor
held. The Wolverine raised its autocannon too late to gun her down,
and she crashed into the 'mech feet first. The crunch of armor and
the groan of actuators filled the rain soaked woods as the Wolverine
crumpled and fell to the ground once again.
This time she wasn't going to let him get up. The autocannon
barked, blowing the Wolverine's head clean off. The Griffin that had
dogged her was now too close to use its PPC or its LRM launcher, and
decided to throw down in hand to hand combat instead.
Ukyou wrenched frantically at the haft of her battle-spatula
as the Griffin fired its jump jets for a death from above attack of
its own. The trees shivered as it crashed through the canopy on its
fatal collision course. The battlefield became shrouded in mist from
the steam of evaporated rainfall.
The spatula ripped free of the armor that held it fast, and she
brought it up to strike the Griffin as if fell upon her. The scream of
pierced metal deafened her, and the shock of impact knocked her senseless.
Alarms wailed in her cockpit as the Hatchetman fell over.
When she opened her eyes, the view out of her armored cockpit
visor was dark. A quick scan of the cockpit told her that her 'mech
systems were still online, but the clock was reading twenty minutes
later than the last time she had looked. Had she been unconscious
that long?
She tried to move her 'mech, but something was keeping the limbs
pinned in place.
With some trepidation, she undogged her cockpit hatch and opened
it. The Hatchetman had fallen onto its back, and as she crawled out
of the hatch, she discovered why she had been unable to move. The
Griffin lay over the top of her 'mech, its arms splayed out to either
side of the Hatchetman's head. Her battle-spatula had cleaved through
the bubble cockpit canopy of the enemy 'mech, and she had to look away
at the sight of a smear of blood that trickled down the blade to wash
away in the rain.
Of the enemy Valkyrie, there was no sign. It must have written
them both off for dead and left to rejoin its company. All that remained
were the enormous footprints of its passing that filled with rainwater.
The adrenaline of combat was starting to wear off, and she wobbled
unsteadily on her feet. She had never fought in such an ugly, desperate
battle before. Her days as a general in the Federated Shiratori had
simply not prepared her for this.
She plopped down on the muddy ground and hugged her knees to her
chest. The rain continued to fall as the sounds of thunder mingled with
the sounds of battle to the north. She just needed to rest for a little
while, she told herself, wiping the rain out of her eyes. Then she would
go back to the fighting.
Chapter Five
Red Leader
14:19 Local Time
Akane lashed out at the Black Rose Hunchback she had let escape in
their first encounter, clouting it with both PPC cannon arms. The squat,
ugly war machine pitched over, its torso caved in and gouts of nitrogen
gas from its breached cooling systems venting through rents in the armor.
She stomped over the top of it as she drew a bead on the next enemy 'mech,
blasting it with a double barrage of particle beam fire that plowed through
the thin rear armor of the enemy Thunderbolt. The heavy 'mech fusion
reactor
exploded with such fury that it took a wounded Rifleman with it, and ended
the battle as abruptly as it had begun.
She blinked away the spots that swam before her eyes. It might have
been a foolish thing to meet the enemy charge head on, but the alternative
was to be completely overrun. The Black Rose's troops were fighting with a
fanaticism that she had never seen before - not even on Port Said.
Doctor Tofu's Centurion drew a wary bead on the tree line with its
heavy autocannon as she stomped back into cover. The cannon muzzle on his
'mech glowed a dull red, even in the rain. Two ugly tears in his torso
armor
made it clear that he wasn't fit to be mixing it up at close range anymore.
Even Genma's Orion was battered. His instincts for self-preservation
made him a poor choice for front rank duty, but she had to admit that he
was
a formidable mechwarrior in a pinch, having destroyed or seriously damaged
four 'mechs single-handedly. Of course, he had been completely cut off from
help at the time and it was fight or die, but the results were still the
same.
"Still no word from Ryouga or Ukyou," Doctor Tofu said to her.
"I hope they're all right," she returned anxiously. There had been
no word from Ryouga, and Ukyou had gone silent after her last transmission
begging for help. Ranma wasn't answering the commo, though the reasons for
this weren't clear. The situation did not look good for them, even with the
Orochi network bombarding the Musk Dynasty positions and keeping them busy.
"I'm almost out of ammunition," Tofu added. "One shell left in the
gun; no missiles."
"I'm out of missiles *and* shells," Genma chimed in.
"All right," Akane panted. "We'll fall back to rearm. I want to see
if we can link up with Ukyou, or at least find out what happened to her,
so we'll take the southern route back to the DropShip. Keep an eye out for
Black Rose units along the way."
The three battlemechs formed up into a loose wedge and moved out.
* * *
Test Area North, near the Orochi Control Bunker
14:18 Local Time
Shampoo was a hunter. Next to a lightning fast raid, she preferred
nothing more than stalking her prey unawares. It was even more enjoyable
for her when her prey belonged to the traitorous Musk Dynasty.
She could see them moving through the rainy gloom. The Orochi network
had been unleashing deathbolts from orbit on their positions for forty-five
minutes now, and they were too busy keeping one eye on the sky to watch out
for a lone Panther with a mistress that was out for blood. She hadn't
bothered to tell anyone at the bunker that she was leaving. In fact, she
was rather concerned about becoming the victim of orbital bombardment
herself, and standing next to a target like that was asking to get killed.
Now she was free. Free to hunt her clan's enemies. Free to take
revenge on Mousse for his betrayal. He was out there somewhere, commanding
the troops that had come to make Ryuugenzawa theirs, and she would kill
him.
The Musk Dynasty 'mechs were much closer now. Their radars probed the
woods around them, but with the heavy rainfall and all of the trees, it was
doubtful that they could see her. Thermal sensors were almost useless.
She kept her Panther's reactor powered down anyway, content to let
the lance of 'mechs pass her by. They trudged past from a distance of one
hundred meters, dark shapes moving through the woods oblivious to the
source of their own deaths. She breathed a silent prayer to the gods of
war, then flicked the combat start-up switch for the reactor.
The fusion plant came to life with a low rumble. Two weak plumes of
steam vented from her Panther's heat sinks in response. She waited until
the plumes disappated, then moved forward at a crawl.
The Musk Dynasty Dragon at the rear of the file did not detect her
approach. She followed it as quietly as a 35 ton war machine could, which
when matching the Dragon's footsteps with her own, was silent indeed. As
she closed the range, her PPC arm rose slowly to target a known weak spot
in the battlemech's armor. It was too small for an average mechwarrior to
target in the heat of battle, but for a skilled mechwarrior such as
herself with the element of surprise for an ally, it was no challenge.
The PPC erupted at the touch of the trigger, sending a ball of
blue-white lightning into the Dragon's back. The battlemech lurched with
the hit as it annihilated the thin rear armor and blasted deep into the
internals. The Dragon's autocannon ammunition exploded an instant later,
gutting the 'mech in a shower of green and orange flame.
Shampoo leaped her Panther to the side, taking advantage of the steam
clouds produced by the bolt and by the rain to conceal her. The other
Musk Dynasty 'mechs spun around to face the apparent direction of the
attack. One even began firing blindly with its autocannon. Tracers lit up
the gloom as she circled around behind them once more.
She aimed once again for the weak spot, smiling to herself at how
easy this was. Were these not the greatest men in the Inner Sphere? She
had to laugh as she touched the trigger and obliterated another Dragon.
Fools. Pretentious upstarts with no conception of what true skill in
battle meant.
Again the surviving Dragons spun to face their attacker. She could
almost hear their panicked cries over the radio, and was tempted to tune
her commo array to their tac-net channels. Again she slipped around to
attack them from another direction.
Autocannon fire streamed from their guns as they fired wildly into
the surrounding woods. Several shells spanged off her armor, but she did
not react with answering fire. Crouching her Panther to practically crawl
through the muddy undergrowth, she crept slowly into position, and waited
for them to run out of ammunition.
They were wary now, turning in slow circles that denied her a clear
shot at their weak spots. Undaunted, she twisted her torso to the side
while keeping her PPC arm levelled at the closer of the two. From the
chest of her 'mech erupted a volley of four short range missiles. They
were Streak SRMs, which was a pity to waste under the circumstances, but
they had their desired effect.
As the missiles exploded into the trees, the Dragon pilots turned to
face the blasts. Shampoo aimed carefully for the cockpit, which was no
easy shot given the protective cover of the 'mech's oversized shoulder
armor, and fired. The bolt grazed the canopy, blinding the mechwarrior,
and giving her time to jet into the air.
Laser and autocannon fire pounded her late position as she sailed
over their unsuspecting heads to land on the opposite side. The crash of
the trees alerted them, and they lumbered around to face her once more.
Shampoo was ready for them, aiming once more for the cockpit, and was
quickly rewarded with the sight of one of the two turning right into her
gunsight. The thick-barrelled autocannon of the Dragon spat out a single
shell before running dry, a shot that carromed off her armor as she blew
the cockpit to smithereens.
The last Dragon lurched after her, intent on clubbing her to the
ground with its depleted autocannon. Shampoo stood her Panther up, and
let the charging Dragon have a bellyfull of SRMs before jetting clear.
The missiles cratered the 'mech's thick frontal armor, and the blasts
obscured her from sight.
She let the foolish Dragon pilot thrash around in the woods. He
would have called for help by now, and she was late to set up her ambush
of the relieving forces. With luck, perhaps Mousse would be leading them.
* * *
Headquarters Lance, Black Rose Terror Regiment
South of the Starport
14:20 Local Time
Kodachi's Marauder broke out of the treeline to see the ruins of
the colony town laid out before her. The place had been destroyed over
a century ago, and the prolific plant life of Ryuugenzawa had quickly
moved in. There was good cover here, which concerned her. It was an
ideal spot for an ambush.
"What is it?" Tarou asked her.
"It's nothing," she replied. Ever since the _Thorn_ had been
attacked by an unknown LAM with SLDF markings, she had been on edge.
She was here to kill Akane Tendo, not tangle with the locals in a
turf war.
The most curious aspect of her brief campaign was knowing that her
hated rival was somewhere close at hand. Her SIGINT people had been able
to identify her voice on several occasions during the past hour, and the
limited Direction Finder fixes they had obtained seemed to indicate that
she was east of the starport proper - where Captain Lassiter had suffered
his first defeat, and then, if the lack of signals from him was any
indication, his death.
In trying to reconcile the mystery of the Star League battlemechs
that had mauled her precious regiment with Akane Tendo, she could only
conclude that the Tendo witch had found the 'mechs in the ruins. Tarou
had obviously come to the same conclusion, for he had become increasingly
bold as they neared the starport. Her lover wanted a share of the spoils,
and if only Akane Tendo and a rag-tag handful of Confederation pilots
stood in the way, there was nothing to be feared.
"Advance," she ordered her troops. Akane Tendo and her men were
too far north to reach the ruined colony town in time to set up an
ambush for her.
Tarou stomped out onto the cracked pavement of the colony town's
main drag. He passed several deep pools of water, taking care to note
their tactical use in case they ended up having to fight in this area.
He did not know that they were craters formed by orbital bombardment at
the time of the town's destruction, nor would he have cared. The Orochi
network was preoccupied with the Commonwealth landing zones, as the
regular flashes of light and dull booms of thunder on the horizon
confirmed.
As he thought warm thoughts of the Commonwealth's annihilation,
the sight of a Locust tromping past his Hunchback drew him up short.
The pilot of the light 'mech had apparently missed seeing him as it
rounded the corner of a ruined building. From the battlemech's distinct
loping gait, and the fact that a Cameron Star was crudely painted on
its hull, he decided that it could belong to only one person.
"HAPPOUSAI!!!" he roared at the Locust, and fired his monstrous
Tomodzuru Type 20 autocannon. The depleted uranium dart punched a
neat hole through one of the SRM launcher pods projecting from the
tub-like hull, and the force of the impact blasted it into glowing
shards of hot metal.
The Locust staggered with the hit, but did not fall over. It turned
to face him as Kodachi and the rest of the lance moved to join him.
"Well, I'll be!" Happousai replied over the commo. "Fancy meeting
you here, eh, Monster Boy?"
The use of Ryouga's hated sobriquet for him made his blood boil
even hotter than before.
"I'm here to kill you, Happousai!" he shouted back.
The Locust darted off into the ruins. "Take a number and stand in
line, loser!" Happousai cackled.
Kodachi's Marauder fired a twin blast of PPC bolts at the fleeing
Locust. The bolts burst apart a low wall just short of their target. Tarou
stomped off in pursuit as she drew up alongside him.
"Is this the man you were talking about earlier, lover?" she inquired
sweetly of him.
"The same," Tarou grunted.
"Would you mind if I tagged along?" she asked, eying him with an
expression of faint amusement.
"Be my guest," Tarou replied tersely. "But remember that the final
blow must come from me!"
She cooed huskily. "You know how hot it makes me when you talk to me
like that, my dear." She then gave a shrill laugh at the prospect of
fighting a master mechwarrior. "Charge into battle, my dears!" she called
to her 'mechs.
END OF PART TWENTY-EIGHT
Author's Notes:
Nope, not quite there yet. Maybe by next installment(!). I decided to
put out what I had rather than hold off any longer, as it's been about a
month since the last time I posted an installment, and 102KB makes for a
decent length. For everyone who has read this 'fic from the beginning
(thirteen months ago?! o_O), I thank you for your patience, and want you
to know that the end is indeed in sight.
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