by Mike Moscoe
The olive-skinned woman smiled at him. “I didn’t say.”
“How can we get references from them if we don’t know them?”
Betsy laughed, a clear bell of an affair. Beside her, Ben muffled a chuckle, and Grace began to suspect today was not going to go as she planned. “Old man, I would not ask any of my former employers for references. I can’t recall one that would admit to having employed me, and I can’t think of one I would want to admit to being employed by.”
“Every good employee carries references,” Dev said.
“For jobs like maid or street sweeper,” Betsy shot back. “But that’s not what you want. You need someone who can kill a man five ways before his body hits the ground. You want a commander who can turn your town into a death trap for any ’Mech stupid enough to stalk your streets. People like that don’t come with fine pedigrees and completed paperwork. We are few, and we are rarely remembered fondly.”
“Turn our streets into death traps,” came in a gasp from several mayors. “What would that involve?” Garry asked.
“A ’Mech with a long-range rocket or laser can pick off what it wants, be it a man or a building. Out on the battlefield, you have to work hard to get close to a ’Mech without it making you very dead. I understand that quite a few of your local Constabulary, hired, no doubt, with full paperwork, ended up quite dead when they took on ’Mechs across grassy fields. Grace told us she barely survived her first battle.” Betsy stood, eyed the room, and walked around her chair. She continued, her body swaying gently on the balls of her feet.
“Grace survived because she had the luck of a few well-placed boulders—a few firing positions where the rolling hills rolled in her favor. With worse luck, she would be dead.
“If you want to kill ’Mechs, you hire ’Mechs. None being available, you train infantry in the fun sport of ’Mech hunting. It’s a sport best done in towns, where you know the sewers and basements.” She whirled to address the foot of the table. “I didn’t see many power lines on the drive in. Are they underground?”
“Yes,” a technician behind Garry answered. “The tornadoes and winds would whip them around all the time. We put them underground years ago.”
“So you have tunnels under your streets filled with com cables and power cables,” she said. Around the table a lot of mayors nodded.
“Good. We can pull the cables out and put explosives in. A ’Mech strolls by, we detonate the charge, and poof; no ’Mech.”
“But what would we do for electricity?” objected several around the table. “That’s our infrastructure. It cost money!”
“And you don’t think defense should cost anything?”
“Your salaries, of course,” Garry said, “but, but—”
“Grace, you might want to fill these folks in on your hiring efforts,” Betsy said, but didn’t sit down.
“I went to four merc units on Galatea. I got four cost estimates for a battalion-sized task force of ’Mechs, armor and infantry with support.” Grace read off the prices of each offer. Around the table mouths fell open, while others whistled softly.
“But we could never pay that,” Garry finally said. “We’ve never had to pay anything like that.”
Betsy barked a harsh laugh. “In The Republic you didn’t have to. One Knight shows up and everybody starts making nicey-nicey. Now your Legate’s dead and no Knight’s in sight. Folks, the HPG is dead, the night is full of hungry wolves, and you’re bare-ass naked to a cold winter wind.”
“Young lady, mind your language,” Garry demanded.
“You want me to mind my language, but you’ve already had your first visit from wolves that didn’t mind your gavel. Do you want to defend yourselves?” Betsy asked, slowly turning to let her eyes circle the room. “Or do you plan on throwing yourselves on the tender mercies of those who will rob, rape and kill you?”
“What we do, we will decide for ourselves,” Garry snapped, hammering his gavel. Dev was on his feet and quickly recognized.
“Grace O’Malley, we sent you out to find someone to defend us, not maniacs who would turn our streets into bombs. We’ve spent generations building up our property. Nuts from off-planet can’t just walk in here and tell us to turn it all into a wild shooting gallery. We won’t make our planet into someplace not worth raiding by making it someplace not worth living.”
“That’s not what she said!” Grace shouted, jumping up.
“We all heard it,” Dev shouted back as Garry whacked away with his gavel.
“Some places—maybe Allabad—might need to be fought for inch by inch,” Grace shouted, “but if we beat them back where they land, they’ll never get to the rest of us.”
“Right—never get to out-of-the-way places like Falkirk,” Dev shot back.
“Would everyone quit shouting!” Garry screamed as he gave up on his gavel and joined in the verbal slugfest.
“That woman is crazy,” Dev shouted. “Both of them!”
“Get out of here, Grace. It’s clear you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head,” Garry ordered. Two men at what Grace still thought of as her table stood, strong arms out, threatening. Betsy gave them a hard look that froze them in their tracks.
“I suggest you two ladies take a break to regain your composure,” Chato whispered. “I’ll stay here.”
“There’s nothing more to say,” Betsy said.
“No, you slapped them in the face with it fast,” Ben said.
“You know a better way?”
“No,” Ben said. “Not with the little amount of time these people have to decide their fate.”
“Little time?” Grace said as Ben led them from the hall and signaled for a cab.
Betsy shook her head. “It’s time for me to go my way and you to go yours.” She turned to Grace. “There are too many questions about who is doing what here. Let me hunt down a few answers while Ben helps you get ready for what’s coming as sure as grass grows.” Before Grace could argue, Betsy was gone and Ben was helping Grace into a cab, whose driver demanded to know where she wanted to go.
Flustered, Grace called Angus. “I’ve leased a warehouse from an optimistic young mechanic who opened a major IndiMech repair facility just before so many of the local ’Mechs disappeared.” He gave Grace an address in the district along the river, and she and Ben were there in ten minutes.
A large sheet-metal-and-pole building offered room to park four flatbed trucks and their loads. A fellow of maybe thirty extended a hand to Grace. “I appreciate the rental,” he said. “I really like working with your man Sven. He knows his machines. He’s got a few of mine humming like I’ve never heard them before.”
Grace found Angus at Sven’s elbow, the mechanic half under a drill press. Not far away, Sean was tweaking the programming of the control ’puter. Danny and George were prowling the building, examining other tools and figuring where to place their own. “I haven’t managed to rent a ’Mech loader,” Angus apologized. “All were lifted by the raiders, and we haven’t got any replacements.”
Grace glanced back at Ben. He didn’t seem surprised or bothered by this slowdown. Angus’ ’puter beeped, and he answered it. The old man’s happy smile morphed to a frown, then his eyes grew round and his breath came fast. “It’s my man at the port. There’s a new JumpShip in-system!” he gasped.
“Commercial?” Grace asked.
“No, no . . .” Angus listened for a second longer. “It didn’t use the main point. It jumped into the nearest La Grange point around Vesuvius. It’ll be here in two weeks.”
“Damn,” Grace said, “that’s got to be a raider. I need to get back to the Guild Hall.”
“Use my car,” Angus offered.
“We will gas the trucks and extend their leases,” Ben said. “Then we will get them moving for Falkirk.”
“You don’t think the mayors will fight?” Grace asked.
“I have found that dreams offer guidance, not road maps. Still, I would not depend too much on your assembly.”<
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Sven got to his feet. “I’d like to take some of this man’s machines along with us if I could.”
“You planning on shipping everything to Falkirk?” the young owner asked, a catch in his voice. Grace nodded.
“I got a wife and kids, ma’am. Everybody says we got off easy last time. It didn’t feel all that easy. One of my workers was in that attack on the spaceport. He left a widow and three kids. My Mara took them in. I don’t want no one having to take in Mara and my daughters. You see?”
“I do,” Grace said. “Sven, how much of his gear do you want?”
“All of it if we can get trucks to carry it.”
“I know a guy with three trucks,” the young man said. “I’ll get them over here. Can folks around Falkirk put up three new families?”
“We’ll make room,” Grace said. “I know Mick will be dancing a jig at getting all these tools to play with.”
“Then let’s get moving, crew,” Sven said.
Back at the Guild Hall, Grace found the news had preceded her. The council was already in an uproar; several chairs were empty. More small-town mayors left as Grace entered. “They ain’t gonna do nothin’,” one told Grace in passing. And nothing was what they did for the next hour. The big-town mayors rejected any fight that put their people in the middle of it.
Grace settled beside Chato and listened. As best she could tell, the debate centered on what kind of milk and cookies to offer the raiders. As more of the small-town mayors left, Grace stood to demand a vote on fighting. For ten minutes she stood, while Garry did his best not to notice her. Fuming, Grace stomped out. With luck, she and her Mech Warriors might make the Gleann Mor Valley too tough a nut for the raiders to crack.
8
Falkirk, Alkalurops
Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere
7 August 3134; local summer
Grace’s caravan pulled into Falkirk after thirty-two hours of straight driving. Grace put a sleeping four-year-old aside and climbed down from a truck’s cab. She tried to get the kinks out of her back as she crossed the dirt parking lot to Mick’s main shop. The morning was hot, but the scent of Scotch broom carried from the bushes along the verge of the road. It smelled like home.
“This place stinks,” Danny said as he dismounted a truck.
Grace ignored that as Mick came out to see what all the noise was. He took one look at seven flatbed trucks loaded with machine tools and whistled. “Gonna need more space.”
“Mick, I want you to meet a friend I’ve made. Sven, come over here.” The BattleMech mechanic stumbled over, rubbing sleep from his eyes and life back into his legs. The men eyed each other like two roosters, then went off to play “stump the genius” over the tool hoard. That should keep them busy for the day, Grace figured.
Jobe borrowed a jeep and raced for the Donga River Valley, “to see my second wife,” he said. Chato’s nephew was there, the hovertank fully operational and available to give Chato a ride home.
Grace filled in Wilson, Ho and Laird over lunch. She had to stop several times to let them absorb things. Wilson shook his head after she told him the Dyev’s cargo had not helped her cash problem. “This Santorini, he was on the Dyev and tried to have someone steal the diamonds. He probably queered the transfer of funds to you on Galatea. A real pain, huh?”
No one disagreed with that.
Grace finished with how the MechWarriors had signed for a pittance. “They deserve more, but that’s what they agreed to.”
“Not what one normally hears about mercs,” Ho said, patting his round belly. “Do you trust them?”
“Yes,” Grace said, with no hesitation. “Most are as straight up as you and me. True, they didn’t fit in where they were and probably won’t fit in here. But right now we need them. Syn, well, she’s a case all her own. Don’t let her in a card game, or let your wife see you with her,” Grace advised. “Sven’s a genius and knows it. I hope he and Mick get along because we need ’em both.”
“Wasn’t there another? Betsy?” Laird said.
“Betsy Ross. She stayed behind in Allabad to find answers. I sure hope she can.”
“So we fight,” Wilson said.
Grace took a deep breath. “That’s the way I see it.”
“Maybe the next raiders won’t get this far,” Ho said.
Laird agreed. “There are all those ’Mechs over at the big corporate mines. That would be the place to go next.”
Wilson snorted. “If Santorini is behind this, he’s already cut a deal with the corporations. We little guys are the ones that have to look out. And we’ll have to do it alone.”
“Then you think all this is no accident,” Grace said.
“Anyone disagree?” Wilson asked. No one did. “I say we fight, but I think we’ll be surprised at who we end up fighting.”
The town meeting went long, but the people of Falkirk were for a fight if one came their way. When the hands went up for the vote, Grace checked the eyes. Many were looking around furtively. They were ready to fight, but no one looked forward to it.
The next day the Net reported that efforts to raise the DropShip got no reply. Talking heads offered thoughts, fears, hopes, doubt. No one really knew anything. Grace ignored the Net.
She had plenty to do. Jobe returned with two dozen ’Mechs from the entire Donga River Valley as well as trucks, and men in the trucks to form the infantry. Chato returned, too. More Navajos were crossing the mountains to join him every day. No one could tell another the path for his feet, but where a man like Chato led, many followed. They made superb engineers.
But with Betsy gone, who’d train the infantry? “No problem,” Ben assured her. “It will be a while before there are any ’Mechs to train in. Danny, Victoria, Sean and I can organize an infantry school of some quality.”
“Yeah, Biddy could show them how to march by a pub without stopping.” Danny laughed at his own joke, but got serious when all three glared at him. “All right, I can show them how to march, too.”
“You can’t just order these men around,” Grace said. “They have to know why you need them to do what you tell them.”
“Sean will be perfect for that,” Victoria said as the young man reddened. “He knows battles. He can show your militia where good men made the difference.”
So that gave a purpose to the men and women who drove up from the valley and even from the plains, but that didn’t put a roof over their heads. Grandpa had had a large family, but Grace had found his house rather spacious for just Mother and her. It absorbed the mercs. Wilson’s bunkhouse took in the early-arrival volunteers, and other folks around town found room for the families who came with their would-be warriors. Tents in a wash above town where trees took the worst heat off the day handled others.
Constabulary Lieutenant Hicks brought in a dozen men, rigged a crane, and unloaded battle armor from a flatbed truck. Grace slapped him on the back. “You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you.”
The lieutenant flashed her a rueful smile. “You know, after that last raid, I was going to take up chicken farming, but the warehouse behind the shop had these boxes gathering dust for more years than I can remember. I figured I’d check on them as I left. Turns out we have twelve sets of Gnome battle armor. A note from the Legate five back told our commander to use these if he thought his men had time to master them. Guess my boss wanted us out giving tickets rather than learning ’em.” He turned to Ben, stood to attention, and saluted. “Sir, can you train my men to use this gear?”
“With a glad heart,” Ben said.
“There’re a few other Constabulary posts finding stuff in their inventory that dead captains didn’t want to mess with and the raiders missed. I’m just the first; there’ll be more.”
And there were. Of course, that meant more men and families to feed. Mother and Auntie Maydell took charge, but still Grace wasn’t left with time on her hands. Others saw to that. One afternoon Sven came out from Mick’s shop. “I have so
mething for you.”
“Problem?” Grace asked. Why would this man want to show me a problem? If he can’t solve it, I sure can’t.
“We’ve been taking ’Mechs apart. We’re about to put them back together. Thought you’d like to see what’ll make your Pirate a real cutthroat.” Grace followed Mick into the shade of the shop. It smelled of burnt plastic, hot metal and men’s sweat—not a bad perfume to attract a mining woman.
Mick joined Sven, a proud grin on his face. “You gonna show the mayor what we can do.” Thank God, St. Peter and St. Patrick the two fellows hit it off. Grace didn’t want to think what would have happened if they had pulled at cross-purposes.
“Here’s the chassis, stripped to the buff. I hope we’re not offending a young lady’s fine sensibilities.” Mick grinned.
Grace made a show of looking around. “Don’t see any ladies. Never met one in Falkirk. Just us hardworking miners with dirty fingernails,” she said, waving a hand at them.
“I’m using that fine carbon filament Sven brought to wrap the legs, arms and thorax. It doesn’t add much weight and should nearly double the load they can carry.”
“The engines are a given,” Sven said with a nod to the good word Mick had given him, “but your man here is a prince among motor men when it comes to jacking up the output. These engines will be putting out a good twenty percent above advertised horsepower. Thirty percent for short bursts.”
“It’s all in the injectors. What’s making ’em fighting machines is the armor this old scoundrel lifted from some blind man,” Mick said, pounding the other man on the shoulder.
“It’s easy to get this old rig to spew out composite armor,” Sven said. “The new armor-repair kits work only on the Armstrong stuff they use for IndiMechs. This old press was made from an even older design, when IndiMechs were new. It remembers where it came from. We run the outer armor through. Aligned crystal steel is ACS whether it’s for an IndustrialMech or BattleMech. That fine young man you recruited at Allabad was kind enough to donate the ceramic-fiber spinning mill he used to repair bumpers. It gives us everything we need for some serious ferro-fibrous armor.”