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If the young ensign was nervous, she didn’t show it. “Hai, Tai-sho. I have taken the liberty of assessing communications’ capabilities between our JumpShip and our commanders stationed at Galatia III, Ronel and Hean.”
Katana nearly smiled at the woman’s eagerness; she could see that the sho-i was just busting at the seams to relay some good news for a change. “And?”
The sho-i’s eyes sparkled. “Receiving and transmitting, Tai-sho. The black boxes are working like a charm. Command Hean reports that boxes have been dispatched to Sirius and Irian.”
“Excellent,” Katana said, and she was rewarded with a grin from the sho-i, who squared her shoulders and settled into her task. She glanced at her ship’s tai-sa. “Qui
The grizzled captain gave a gruff nod. “Ready when you give the word, Tai-sho.”
“Good. No u
“Perfectly.”
“Very well.” Katana took a deep breath. “Jump.”
JumpShip Eastern Moon,Sadachbia Nadir Jump Point
Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere
25 July 3134
Tai-sa Orrin Sand stretched, yawned, gave himself a good, full-body, doggy shake. Going on two months of this detail, hanging around, waiting for something to happen… Sand scrubbed grit from his eyes. He was ready for some serious R&R. He understood why his duty included tag-team pony express runs, ferrying messages to and fro, or evacing troops. But he didn’t have to like it. Besides, all the shooting was over weeks ago and…
A shrill alarm spiked his ears and Sand winced, pulled out of his slouch in a hurry. “What?” he snapped at Con.
“Ship coming through! It’s got to be an enemy ship, sir! There’s no friendly scheduled for…”
Sand caught movement from the corner of his left eye and snapped his gaze back to the viewscreen. He saw the space at the jump point pucker, flash red, tear—and cough out a JumpShip, its long, slender body like the most delicate dragonfly, and so thin it was nearly invisible as it passed into Eastern Moon’s shadow.
“Report!” Sand cut his eyes to his communications officer. “Are they hailing?”
The chu-i’s eyes were huge. “Negative, sir! Invader–class! Designation…”
But whatever else the lieutenant was about to say, Sand would never know—because, in the next instant, space folded, puckered, became crimson all over again. Sand blinked, wanted to scream for the other ship to wait. Of course, it didn’t.
Instead, the ship winked out. It jumped.
32
Kaffeli, Shinonoi
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
15 August 3135
Rain spiked the ferroglass canopy of Viki Drexel’s Shockwave, with a sound like seed corn drumming tin. Usually, she liked rain: liked curling up with a mug of tea and a good book. But tonight Drexel was nervy, her muscles taut as banjo strings. They’d come in on the night side of the planet and it was dark as pitch, the halogens dotting the perimeter of the defensive complex, Shinonoi’s primary center, blurry with rain and mist. She couldn’t see for shit, and she was worried, too. They’d come in at a pirate point, but surely Sakamoto’s men must have known their DropShip was inbound for days already. And yet there’d been no reaction, and it was killing her. Wincing, she shrugged her shoulders and rolled her neck, listening to the crackle of her vertebrae. Her neurohelmet chafed her shoulders, her head felt flatter and a sharp pain knifed up her spine between her shoulder blades. She let out a curse.
A voice, male, faintly amused, sorted itself out from the general background hiss. “Just say when, and I’m your man.”
Jing Smith, in his Thunderbolt. Her eyes ticked right, and she made out the fuzzy amber patch of his cockpit lights. The Thunderbolt was a good fifteen tons heavier, but Smith moved the ’Mech through its courses with the facility of a ballet dancer. Drexel’s lips worked in a smirk. “Sorry, but I’m taken, big guy.”
“Break my heart. What’s McCain got I don’t?”
“You really want an answer?”
“No. Here’s what I really wa
“Wondering that myself.” Drexel flicked a glance to her HUD, saw nothing she hadn’t seen before—a whole lot of nothing. “They got to know we’re here, but my thermal imaging’s for the birds, and with all this steel, forget MR.”
“Leaving good, old-fashioned viz. I don’t like it.”
“Me neither, big guy.” Smith wasn’t big. At a stocky meter and three-quarters, Smith wasn’t tall, but he was solid muscle; a kickboxer in his pre-Brotherhood days, and a damned good one at that.
Drexel checked their distance and then called up a map of the complex from her DI’s database. “Still, no matter how you cut it, this is the best approach vector. This used to be an old lake bed, but The Republic filled it in, leveled it out, so it’s really nothing but a big old field. Hard to pull off an ambush with no cover.”
“Also hard to hide if they start lobbing LRMs.” Pause. Then: “I don’t like it.”
“You never like anything,” she said, though she’d stopped liking it on the way down, the moment they got close enough in their ’Mechs for her to see just what Sakamoto’s men had done. Blast craters, twisted girders and smashed cities—the planet looked like it’d been car-jacked then left in a gutter. As they moved in across the dried-up lake bed, the terrain had turned progressively more difficult to negotiate. Deep troughs cut out of the ground, hummocks of ruined vehicles, most of them identifiable as Blues by their insignia—and there were bodies, whole and in pieces, littering the route. She’d played her Shockwave’s headlamp over the bodies, working hard to keep her rage from boiling over. Those people had been dead a long time; months, probably. Working the ER on Junction, she’d learned a few things about bodies and decay. These people were way beyond bloat, and Shinonoi’s native animals and insects had been busy.
They were a bare four kilometers from the complex when Smith sang out, “Hey. Dead ahead. Twelve o’clock. You see that?”
“I see it,” said Drexel. She had, too, a split second before Smith’s warning: a shadowy, hulking blob that suddenly reared up between them and the complex, as if coalescing from threads of blackness, or—and this was crazy, she knew it was nuts—like a robed and horned devil rising from a pit. In the next instant, she knew something else. Her alarms hadn’t so much as burped. Throttling back, she came to a dead stop, then keyed for Smith. “Pull up. Just hold up a sec. You getting anything?”
Smith sounded just as mystified. “No target lock. Whoever he is, he’s not ru
Drexel’s stomach bottomed out, but a quick check of her HUD as her targeting crosshairs dropped into place confirmed. A Shiro : one of the newest, deadliest heavy ’Mechs in the Combine’s arsenal. Four LRM-10s, two to each side of the torso, an autoca
She made a decision. “Stand down. Take your targeting off-line, and drop back a couple six, seven meters.”