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And to the one hurtling toward the sea, fast as a meteor.
“Mother of God,” Whistler said.
Falling, tumbling, twisting, the ’Mech bulleted for the sea, hit—and shattered.
Carillan Sector, Iwanji, Saffel
“Damn you, Sterling, get out of here!” Parks throttled up, pushed his Jupiter into a lumbering trot. Not enough to outrun a DropShip, but that wasn’t the point. If he could just clear the trees, he could lob his remaining LRMs, give Sterling a fighting chance and then…
A clot of troopers reared up at the grove’s edge, just to his right, and instead of canting left, he lowered his Jupiter’s cockpit and charged. He saw the troopers flinch back in surprise, then settle to ready their shot just as he veered and crashed into a trio of sycamores the troopers had been using for cover. Hesitation—then the trees gave, falling away from his cockpit, torn earth and exposed roots sheeting over ferroglass; the roar grinding out the troopers’ screams.
He was so busy looking right he forgot to look left. His alarms shrilled as an armor-piercing round bored into the rear housing of his left PPC, perilously close to his left rack. The impact made him stumble, and he came down hard on the weakened left leg actuator. No need for the DI’s report; he felt the leg crumple, heard the grating of actuators. Parks screamed in fury as his Jupiter toppled like a felled tree. Desperate to avoid landing face-first, he twisted, threw the Jupiter’s right arm out to break his fall. To his horror, his autoca
A shrieking yelp that knifed his brain, and then Sterling’s Ocelot sailed over the Jupiter’s canopy, both pulse lasers snap-firing. Her strategy came clear in an instant as the downed foliage and felled trees ignited in a roar of flame and black smoke that momentarily hid him from view.
Parks had no time to give his thanks. He was in the clear now, even if he was cantilevered, left rack useless unless he could get it turned around… Straining, knowing what he was about to do but doing it anyway, Parks rammed his Jupiter’s torso hard left. His heat scale rocketed into the red, and the DI bawled out a warning, then began countdown to auto-shutdown. “Frac that!” Parks roared. Moving at lightning speed, he punched in the heat lockout override code on his keypad, and then he kept pushing, pushing…
“Please,” he grunted, praying that his power wouldn’t go, knowing he was going to die; this was so stupid, this was cockeyed, but it was the only way, the only way! “Please, please, please!…”
There was an unearthly scream, a shrill of metal as the Jupiter’s right elbow joint gearing sheared, buckled, snapped. Instantly, Parks was falling, his ’Mech crashing onto its back. He might even have blacked out for a second but no more than that. Now, blue sky overhead, then smoke, and then the DropShip looming closer, and then balls of gray smoke from some circuitry giving up the ghost, making his lungs seize… but no matter; the whole thing had taken no more than ten seconds and nothing mattered anymore because he still had power and there was this last thing he had to do.
Coughing, gagging, fighting for breath, Parks brought his targeting HUD up at the flick of a finger, acquired and touched off his last volley of fifteen missiles—at the precise instant that J. Sterling, probably hoping to save his ass, jumped again.
Right into his line of fire.
“Sterling, no!” Parks screamed, horrified and—too late. “NO!”
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
Sakamoto was gone, and it didn’t matter because, as his Panther screamed from the sky, Jonathan understood everything in a sudden flash. His mind raced, working furiously as the ice field loomed. Once down, the Locust was faster but had no jump jets of its own; the disposable jets strapped to its undercarriage would be jettisoned as soon as it hit the ice. If Jonathan could maintain the advantage of surprise, he still might pull this off. But that BattleMaster was a brute, much heavier and with superior firepower; his Panther was no match for it, unless… Hands moving in a blur, Jonathan brought his targeting computer online. The active IFF transponder automatically blocked any ability to fire on a friendly ’Mech, but Jonathan saw what he was looking for. The BattleMaster still had short-range missiles. All right. He would have the advantage of surprise, if it came to that. Leaning forward, Jonathan brought his left fist down over the transponder controls. In instant later, his DI flashed that the transponder was off-line, no longer recognizing who was friend, or foe.
A pity it went on the fritz like that. His eyes clicked left, to the Raiders. And how far have you gotten, have you managed…
No time left to wonder. Got to get down now, now! Teeth bared, Jonathan powered down his jump jets as far as he dared. As he accelerated, the sky whirring by, his vision grayed and he grunted, forcing blood to his head, fighting to remain conscious. Jonathan honed his concentration into a single bright point as he bled altitude, gained speed, numbers blearing into a pulsing red datastream as the ice got closer and closer. Got to time this just right, got to time it, steady, steady…
“Now!” he shouted, banging his jets active. The Panther lurched, and his stomach catapulted to his throat before his body was smashed into his cushion by the force of his jump jets countering the machine’s gravity-enhanced vertical acceleration. His vision swirled, and his head went hollow… A few more seconds of thrust and then he had to cut the jets, take his chances…
And then he ran out of distance and time. He killed the jump jets at the precise instant his ’Mech slammed the ice. The impact was so hard, the ice cratered with an ear-splitting roar that was loud as a bomb. Instantly, he was aware that his DI was screaming a warning as thirty-five tons of endosteel and myomer groaned under the strain, the force of his landing exhausting his Panther’s shock absorbers. His temperatures soared to the red.
“Shut up!” Jonathan hit the override rocker switch, silencing the alarms. In the next second, as his cockpit temperature spiked to the near side of broiling, he was already pivoting, putting the sea to his back and hitting his jets again, this time leapfrogging from the ice crater onto the hardpack. He throttled up, pumping his Panther’s legs, pistoning in a charge for the BattleMaster. A monitor glowed an angry crimson, and he saw the impact had damaged the comparatively lighter ceramic housing of his gyro, and he didn’t need a computer to tell him that he’d also damaged the primary yoke assembly of the Panther’s right ankle.
If all I take away from this is a sprained ankle… Out of the corner of his right eye, Jonathan caught a glimpse of twin plumes of flame cutting out and knew that the Locust was down. He would deal with that later, if he even had to. First, he had to get further inland, closer to the BattleMaster and those tanks, the SM1s now pummeling the ’Mech with autoca