Страница 5 из 64
Oh, God, no...the control surfaces! He craned his head around, saw smoke and tattered debris whipping aft from the laser-pocked ruin of his port wing. A violent thump marked the departure of what was left of his tail fin. Then the damaged port wing tore free, and the Sparrowhawkbegan tumbling, engulfed in an orange fireball, trailing debris.
Valasquez didn't start screaming until smoke boiled up into the cockpit, and the legs of his pressure suit began melting in the heat.
* * * *
Burn, Davion, burn!Uchita watched the fiery meteor streak across the cloudtops below her with a curiously cold and shuddering emotion that might, remotely, be termed satisfaction. Her own ship's engines were gone, wrecked in that final exchange of fire with the enemy Sparrowhawk.Her craft's thrusters had functioned long enough for her to flatten her trajectory and skip off the Folly's atmosphere like a stone from the surface of a lake. She was receding into space now, her Thrusha battered wreck--power out, engines dead, her cockpit open to vacuum. A strange, numb sensation from the attachments of her mechanical left leg had proven, on examination, to be nothing less than complete amputation. Her hull armor had failed at a critical point, and her left leg was missing below the knee. The heat from that millisecond pulse seemed to have partly melted the fabric of her spacesuit's leg, sealing it against what remained of her plastic knee and thigh, maintaining pressure in her suit. She took grim satisfaction in knowing that that hit would have killed any other pilot. She was the Automaton of Destruction—indestructible.
At least, indestructible if she were rescued. She followed the course of the battle on her screen. Including her kill—her thirteenth, she realized—three of the attacking Sparrowhawkshad been destroyed, the others damaged and scattered. Two Liao fighters had been put out of the fight, her own and Captain Chen's.
The DropShips were already maneuvering toward the atmosphere, as their fighter reserves emerged from cavernous cargo bays and descended to engage rising squadrons of Davion defenders in the atmosphere. The Davions would be at a disadvantage now. Dagger Squadron's thrust had blunted the leading edge of their defenses. The way was open for the Overlordsto drop their readied 'Mechs behind a screen of sheltering fighters.
Her own life, she realized, hung on the outcome of that invasion. Her life support would last for another day, time enough for the invasion to establish a foothold on Stein's Folly—or be repulsed. If the invasion failed, no one would have time for her, locked in her crippled ship, falling stern-first into deep space at well above the planet's ten kilometers per second escape velocity. If it succeeded, she would be rescued by DropShips homing on her automatic radio distress beacon. Her squadron-mates might not like her, but she had proven her worth to them time after time. She would rejoin Dagger Squadron again, would kill again.
Thirteen kills!
With a cool, almost remote sense of mild anticipation, Uchita Tucker watched the invasion ships deploy on her screens.
* * * *
Colonel Pavel Ridzik stood with arms folded across his barrel chest and smiled with grim satisfaction through his red beard. The sky above Steindown was heavily smudged with oily smoke from a dozen burning fuel tanks, warehouses, and shattered BattleMechs. Skeletal shards of blast-ruined buildings poked at the sky from rubble piles still smoldering. The landing field itself was heavily cratered, and shadowed by the vast bulk of the pair of OverlordClass DropShips that had settled their landing jacks deeply into the fragmented ferrocrete. Hatches gaped open beneath the upraised arm-and-katana sword emblems of the Capellan Confederation emblazoned on the curves of those black hulls. BattleMechs—Liao BattleMechs—were still being offloaded from both transports.
In the sharp breeze above the spaceport, the House of Liao flag, inverted green triangle with the raised arm-and-katana against a red field, snapped and cracked. The ground struggle for the port had lasted just fifteen minutes from the time the first Liao Phoenix Hawkhad touched down on flaming jets to the moment the Overlordshad grounded and begun disgorging their reserves. The defenders had thrown down their weapons the moment the Overlordshad grounded, had surrendered or fled into the surrounding countryside. A few had made it
The ground under Ridzik's boots trembled to the tread of a formation of heavy 'Mechs moving off the field. A pair of sixty-ton OSR-2C Ostrocs,the massive, armless, bullet form of a Catapult,and the eighty-five-ton thunder of a BLR-1G BattleMaster,Fire Lance of a Company of House Liao's St. Ives Armored Cavalry, raised dust and thunder as they made their way across the shredded ruin of the facility's security fence and into the grassland beyond. Another BattleMaster,an Archer,and a pair of TBT Trebuchetsfollowed the line infantry 'Mechs, the horse-and-rider emblem of McCarron's Cavalry freshly painted against their green-camouflaged right legs.
Ridzik turned and strode back toward the Administrator's Residence, the low, modern villa that he had made his headquarters at the edge of the field. After the seesaw battle in space, the ground battle had been almost anticlimactic, because the defending 'Mechs had been scattered at key garrison points across the planet.
House Liao intelligence operatives had long ago pinpointed the most important concentrations of Davion 'Mechs on the planet. The invasion fleet had concentrated on the four most important of those, overwhelming them in a firestorm of missiles and beams before the others could come to their aid.
Only twenty-four 'Mechs had been stationed at Steindown itself, and of those, only fifteen had been operational when the first space-dropped Liao 'Mechs and Death Commando infiltrators had descended around the port. One of the defenders still stood behind the villa, a fifty-ton Enforcer,intact except for its head. Trickles of flame and roiling smoke rose from the jagged crater between the 'Mech's shoulders. Its leg actuators had locked, leaving it standing erect like some monstrous ten-meter-tall piece of junkyard sculpture.
The defenders had not had a chance. Sprawled in the shadow of the Enforcerwere two sodden forms lying like ragdolls in pools of still-liquid blood—the fat colonel who had commanded this garrison and a young lieutenant from his staff, both cut down by fire from Liao Death Commandos dropped ahead of the main assault
A captain approached Ridzik, making the fist-to-breast salute of House Liao. His brown uniform was fire-smudged and muddy, the green trim nearly indistinguishable from the rest. Instead of the customary ceremonial katana, a 12 mm Hawking automatic pistol hung in a holster at his side. The man's helmet was missing, too, and his head was encircled by a bandage shockingly white against his dirty blond hair.
"Captain Dyubichev." Ridzik stopped and turned, returning the salute with a nod. "Situation report?"
"Yessir. Both the port and Steindown itself are secure, with light casualties. Forces at Lollan and Grebuchin report continued heavy combat, but all other DZs are secure as well. The entire peninsula is ours. A number of 'Mechs escaped into the swamps and hills north of the peninsula, and there are some isolated outposts still holding out, but..." The young face struggled a moment, then broke into a smile. "We beat ‘em, Colonel!"
"That we did, Captain, that we did. How many 'Mechs did we take here?"
"Nine in the repair bay. Eight more were crippled and abandoned in the fighting, but well have them repaired and in the field in a few days. Three were destroyed, and four escaped into the swamp to the north. We also captured a large number of Techs and Tech assistants, and quite a few civilians who were living on the base." He jerked a thumb back across his shoulder. "They're under guard at the hangar."