Lethal heritage Page 15

  "Roger." Static shot over the open channel for a second, then came Anika's voice again. "What the hell are Davion fighters doing out here? Did I miss a declaration of war? I mean, did Prince Hanse Davion get married again or something?"

  Tyra knew that Stukas and Corsairs were key Federated Suns military spacecraft, but something told her that these fighters were not from the Federated Suns. Before she could say anything to Anika, lights blazed to life on her command console. Then came the keening alarm resounding through her cockpit. "I've got a hostile radar lock on me! Juke left high!" Tyra shouted.

  She sideslipped her Shilone right, which jammed her shoulder into the left side of the cockpit. That dropped her fighter directly beneath Anika's craft, with only twenty-five meters between them. As the computer updated its sensor data, painting one image over the other, Tyra boosted thrust to the right vector. The Shilone rocketed off to the left, streaking up beyond where Anika's Shilone had been while Anika executed a similar move that took her high and to Tyra's right.

  The warning lights died. Good. Mixing our silhouettes, then ripping them apart confused it. She punched her right fist against the targeting computer. Why the hell did they get a lock on me and I didn't reciprocate? This is not the time for my computer to go out on me.

  She glanced at the auxiliary monitor, dropping the visually guided crosshairs onto the scanning image of the lead enemy craft. In the flick of an eye, she armed her long-range missiles and waited for the dot in the center of the crosshairs to light up, confirming a sensor lock. Instead of the dot, she got a running meter clicking off the distance separating her target from the LRM's effective range. What? They had a lock on me at three times effective range. Who the hell are these guys?

  She opened a radio channel. "Valkyrie Three, bogies might have advanced target capability. Advise caution."

  She heard the sensor lock sirens blaring through Ljungquist's reply. "Roger. Kinda busy here, Val One." His voice slurred its way through the next sentence as he put his Slayer through a high-gee maneuver to shake the lock. "No, dammit. Arrgghh!"

  A sizzling pop snapped through the radio speakers. Before Tyra could find out what had happened to Ljungquist, the computer gave her a lock onto her target. Her right index finger hit the trigger beneath it, and the LRM pod mounted beneath the cockpit spat out a score of missiles in rapid-fire succession. The missiles streaked away until their rockets seemed little more than stars in the distance, then a series of explosions cast light into the void. Hit!

  She knew better than to hope one volley of LRMs had destroyed her enemy, and she gained quick confirmation of that fact as both aerospace fighters shot past each other. Instantly, her computer stopped its vacillation between Stuka and Corsair fighters. It settled on neither and instead filled the secondary monitor with a digitized visual representation of the craft she faced.

  The craft had definitely been built along the lines of a Stuka. The rectangular body and stubby wings supporting large weapons pods were unmistakably those of an STU-K5. It also had the forward stabilizers, located beneath the dome-covered cockpit, which added stability to the aerospace fighter when forced into atmosphere. Slight variations in the outline of the weapon canisters on the wings suggested, however, that they carried even more weapons than the standard complement of twin heavy lasers, which did not please Tyra at all.

  What did please her was the ruined armor on the Stuka's nose and the gaping, fire-blackened hole where the computer reported a short-range missile launcher should have been. Good! In a tight fight, that will be to my advantage, though his lasers are more than enough to destroy this thing. And not only is it packing more weapons, but its performance profile suggests it has more armor, too.

  Most intriguing, the visual image showed the craft's crest. At first glance, it looked to Tyra like a polar bear silhouetted against a black moon. No, that can't be right. No bear has six legs. And why is there a white star in the middle of the moon?

  Tyra kicked her Shilone around in a split-S, sending it arcing up and off to the right and then rolling the craft back around, its nose pointed one-hundred-eighty degrees from where it had just been. She tried to get another weapons lock onto the enemy fighter, but it had pulled a similar move, sending their warbirds straight at each other again. Tyra, seeing that the abbreviated range of the battle would give her heavily armed enemy the advantage, let the Shilone continue its slide to the right. Then she brought the craft over and around in a broad barrel roll that looped her around her enemy's line of attack.

  She armed another weapon as her scanners reported her foe nosing up abruptly and rolling in an Immelmann. Fancy flying, but real risky. You gotta be woozy from the gees you've just pulled. She looked at the icon of the craft behind her, then when the rim of her display disk pulsed gold, hit the switch beneath her left thumb. Here's where you earn your pay.

  Four SRMs shot straight in on their target, hitting the enemy fighter just as it completed its roll. The missile explosions marched in succession up the nose of the fighter and onto the cockpit canopy. Tyra's combat computer updated the picture of her enemy by ripping holes in armor and denting the crystalline cockpit dome.

  The pilot reacted to the attack after only a moment's hesitation. During that moment, the craft continued its roll, so the pilot increased thrust to bring the craft down and to the right. Tyra jerked her fighter up onto its left wing, then feathered the pitch controls to bring up the nose. The maneuver slammed her down into her seat and ground her teeth together, but she hung with it. Boosting the thrust from her right wing, she sent the Shilone spinning back down to where it dove like a hawk on the fleeing raider craft.

  Shimmering, multicolored balls danced before her eyes as she brought the Shilone's nose back up. My dive arc is steeper than his. Gotta come up to target... She pressed her left foot down, vectoring more thrust to that wing, which brought the left side of the craft up and around by fifteen degrees. Hold it! Hold it! Her Shilone swung in behind the raider as though being towed on a string. Now!

  Tyra fired all her forward weapons at the enemy, and in turn, took damage from the medium laser he fired back into his rear arc. The scarlet beam of light slashed a blackened scar through the armor on the right side of the Shilone's fuselage. Tyra's combat computer updated the status of her ship, but no warning lights flashed or sirens sounded. Clean bill of health.

  The nose-mouthed large laser pumped kilojoules of energy into the enemy fighter. The ruby beam swept over the fuselage like a spotlight, but concentrated its attack on the left rear-thrust port. In combination with the medium laser mounted on the Shilone's left wing, it fused the port shut, instantly bouncing the enemy fighter to the left. The Shilone's other medium laser sliced armor plates from the aerospace fighter's right wing, but did little more real damage than melt the moon and bear insignia from its surface.

  Tyra rode her fighter over to the left, relentlessly tracking the enemy. With the left vector port gone, the pilot can't easily turn right. I've got him!

  Before she could lock her weapons onto target for another savage assault, the piercing wail of warning alarms filled her cockpit. "SRM lock!" She stomped down with both feet, engaging the overthrusters and hurtling her craft forward. Smashed back into her seat, she overshot her intended target and tried to pull another wingover to cut out of her current vector. Just as the Shilone began to react, the trio of SRMs launched by the raiders's wingman hit.

  One blasted into the surface of her left wing. The explosion rocked her craft and blew chunks of armor from the Shilone, but the inertial reaction to the blast actually helped her bring the fighter over on her intended maneuver. The other missiles slammed into the engine in the Shilone's aft. The computer dropped her power output by 7 percent and flashed two small icons against the Shilone's outline on the primary monitor.

  A wave of heat washed into the cockpit to tell her what the computer silently displayed. Great. Two heat sinks hit. I lose speed with the engine damage and now this baby will slowly r
oast me. Well, I won't have to worry about that if this new raider gets a lock on me again. "Nik, where are you?"

  "On him, Cap. Break left. Three, two, one ... missiles and lasers away!"

  Tyra rolled her Shilone to the left, and Anika's fighter shot through the area she'd just left. As her ship corkscrewed through space, Tyra saw a series of explosions on the ship Nik had been chasing. Righting her craft, Tyra radioed a quick congratulation to her wingmate, then looked at her sensor screen and found her quarry. Easing back on the thrust, she sent another flight of SRMs from her rear-arc launcher at him.

  The missiles missed their target, but forced the pilot further left in his wild attempt to elude them. That pulled him even with Tyra only thirty meters off her left wing. The pilot actually tossed her a salute, then began to pull up. Of all the ... salute this!

  Tyra sent a microburst of ion thrust through her right yaw control and cut all acceleration thrust. Unfettered by atmosphere, the Shilone rotated on its vertical axis, tossing Tyra forward against her safety belts and the left side of the cockpit. The fighters continued to sail along in the same direction, but suddenly Tyra's craft brought all weapons to bear on her foe.

  The raider whipped his ship over on its left wing and vectored thrust through the belly ports to pull away. Tyra's targeting system locked onto this new heat source and flashed the dot in the crosshairs. Without thinking, Tyra triggered all three lasers through the forward thrust port. Armor vaporized at the lasers' touch, and the half-melted vector louvers spun away amid clouds of ionized thrust. The hellish beams stabbed up into the body of the craft itself, but at first, Tyra could not tell if they had done any damage at all.

  Almost as if her attack had not taken place, the raider's nose continued to pull out of line. The unbridled thrust pouring through the forward port stressed laser-heated stabilizers in the fighter's body, and warped the metal out of shape. As the aft belly thruster pushed the ship forward, the nose thruster just pushed it away. Like a wax model in unbearable heat, the fighter began to bend in the middle, then the nose snapped off right behind the cockpit. The two halves slammed into each other, crushing the cockpit like an eggshell, then spun off in a ball of twisted metal and fused ceramic armor.

  "Val Two, this is Val One. I'm free. Where are you?" Tyra looked anxiously at her scanner. It registered two enemy craft and three friendlies, including herself, but the added heat pouring into her cockpit had temporarily fried whatever circuit painted the identifier tags on the scanner icons. "Who did we lose?"

  Another of the enemy craft winked out of existence before Anika answered. "Sorry, Cap. Needed to concentrate there. I have minor damage to a vector thruster, but I'll survive."

  "Valkyrie Four reporting. My target is breaking off." Karl Niemi's voice carried no emotion with it. "Sven lost it in the first exchange. He took damage to the cockpit and was in and out thereafter. He did box one in for me and I got him."

  Tyra felt a lump rise in her throat. "Damn! He was a good man. How are you doing?"

  "I'm leaking fuel, but I should be able to coast to the Bragi. I've plotted a return vector. If I can't land in the bay, I'll punch out. I can't raise the ship, so I'd appreciate it if you'd radio and have a rescue team standing by."

  "Roger." Tyra looked down at the frozen image of the black moon and six-legged bear insignia on her secondary monitor. "Anybody know what pirate unit this crest belongs to?"

  Giddy with having survived, Anika called out, "Does it matter. They die like other pirates. Whoever they are, we fight them just like we fight everyone else."

  Tyra felt her mouth go dry. New pirates in new machines? I think we're in for the fight of our lives.

  16

  Turtle Bay

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  30 March 3050

  Smoke coiled like oily black ropes against the red dawn sky. Scanning the horizon, Yodama knew it was more than just the heat churning out of his Phoenix Hawk's fusion reactor that made the sweat pour down his face. First Battalion must be in the fight of its life! If that's the petrochem refinery burning, it means they've fallen back to their final line of defense. He pushed his 'Mech forward, but only with the most powerful sense of doom.

  As the disk of the sun appeared over the line of low hills between Shin's forward lance and the First Battalion's last stand, it flooded his infrared scan with white fire and so he shifted sensor modes over to vislight. While the computer was cycling through, a quick flash on magscan made him punch a button and switch the scanners back to magnetic anomaly detection. The computer painted, plain as day, humanoid silhouettes against the background of the vectorgraphic landscape.

  Shin stared at the display. Another puzzle. They've given this flank over to infantry in metallic IR-baffling equipment! Shin opened a radio link to Hohiro Kurita. "Sho-sa, I have infantry detected on magscan at 500 meters. We have been anticipated." He keyed a feed of his sensor data over to Hohiro's Grand Dragon.

  "Are you certain, Tai-i?" Hohiro's voice was calm, despite the possibility of ambush. "Check the magnification on your scan. Could they be 'Mechs?"

  "It's normal, Sho-sa. I would guess they're infantry with Inferno missiles meant to slow us down." Even as he spoke the word, Shin experienced a jolt in the stomach. Inferno rockets, fired from a handheld launcher, exploded in a fiery flood of jellied fuel that clung to a 'Mech like burning honey. Besides making a 'Mech an easier target for heatseeking weapons, Inferno hits spiked the internal temperature of a 'Mech high enough to bake the pilot inside his war machine.

  "I think you're right." Hohiro's voice remained confident despite the bizarre nature of the raid. "I'll move the rest of the unit south of that position while you and your lance scatter the infantry. Join us as soon as possible, but be wary. Who knows what other surprises these raiders may have for us."

  "Hai," Shin replied smartly, all the while experiencing the same uneasiness he'd felt at the first staff briefing on the raiders coming in toward Turtle Bay. The raiders had popped in at a "pirate point," an arrival point much closer to the planet than most astronavigators felt safe plotting. They had obviously intended the raid to be a surprise, as it would have been except for an emergency oxygen run by a crew mining the rings. They had spotted the incoming DropShips and tight-beamed a warning to the planet.

  That warning, however, had preceded the raiders' own radio message to the surface by only minutes. The raiders identified themselves as the "Smoke Jaguars," a name never previously associated with any Periphery pirate band. They wanted to know how many units the planet offered in defense, and took it easily in stride when told they were facing the Fourteenth Legion of Vega. The raiders then reported their targets and said they were only going to attack with two clusters. Shin didn't know what a cluster was, but their 'Mechs had been ripping the hell out of First Battalion.

  He keyed the radio frequency open to the rest of his lance. "Arrow Lance, shift to magscan and drift north-northeast.

  We're to harry those infantrymen and drive them back. Be careful. They may have Infernos." As his men acknowledged the order, Shin moved his Phoenix Hawk out to the battalion's left flank. Massive jump jets, looking like a folded pair of wings, clung to the back of the eleven-meter tall 'Mech. The war machine carried a pistol-like large laser in its right hand and each arm mounted a medium laser and a 50-caliber machine gun for anti-personnel use.

  Using the joysticks on both arms of the command couch, Shin dropped the crosshairs for his weapons onto two of the hidden raiders. I hate to see 'Mechs warring on infantry, but I can't let my people be broiled alive in their machines. Maybe most of those groundpounders will run if a couple get hit. Swallowing hard, Shin tightened his middle fingers on the firing studs and sent the familiar thrumming of machinegun fire echoing up into the cockpit.

  Tracer rounds burned white lines from the weapons to their targets hidden in brush. The magscan in the cockpit scored both volleys as direct hits and shifted the target icon from standing to prone, but S
hin was sure some of the brilliant tracer rounds had lanced up and away as though ricocheting from their targets. But that's impossible! Must just have hit some rocks behind them or something. A 50-caliber round will go through any body armor a man can wear.

  The other targets glowing like fireflies on his tactical display did not move and run as he had hoped. He swung the crosshairs onto two more human icons and pulled the triggers. Bullets burned into the targets, but one of the two targets seemed to jump away from the stream of projectiles. Leaping up, the icon bounded across the computer-generated landscape like a triple-jumper.

  Stunned, Shin glanced back at the first two targets he had hit. Both were back up and bouncing across the battlefield like gazelles. With the same foreboding he'd felt earlier, the MechWarrior snapped his sensors over to magnified vislight. May the Dragon have mercy! What the hell are those things?

  They looked like men in form, but their mottled gray and black flesh and the abnormal thickness of the armored plates on their bodies marked them as utterly alien. With no necks to speak of, their heads looked like lumps raised from the shoulders and breastplate as an afterthought. A dark V-shaped viewport passed for the mechanical creature's face. Thick cylindrical structures reinforced the forearms, but clearly served more than a strengthening function. The right arm ended in the muzzle of a laser, while the left forearm boasted an underslung machine gun muzzle. The left hand consisted of only a thumb and two abnormally thick fingers, and the feet looked like nothing so much as overlarge, bifurcated hooves melded onto the legs of a smaller creature.

  Only when the double-barreled, back-mounted missile launcher lipped flame and sent a missile at his Phoenix Hawk did Shin realize he was looking at a suit of infantry armor instead of a living entity. The missile exploded against the Phoenix Hawk's left breast and spalled off armor. A tremor ran through the 'Mech on impact, but Shin barely noticed because his mind was running riot.