She stopped, realizing that she might have said too much. The transmission between her and Natasha was not going through a private channel. Ravill Pryde was undoubtedly monitoring them. He would want to know about the spies, and Joanna would have to tell him. But that did not seem to matter while she was caught up in this strange palaver with Natasha Kerensky.
"I'm not sure how you know what you know," Natasha said softly, "but it impresses me that you're sharper than I had thought. I'll suggest this. We can have a fairer battle out on the Plain of Curtains. Same challenge, but a more warriorlike combat than us bouncing off the walls of the Gash."
"And what will you do if I agree?" Joanna said. "Attack me from the rear as we go out? We can hardly go out side by side, as you can see."
"I'll wait here until you're on the Plain. I won't follow you till then."
"You are a warrior of Clan Wolf. You plotted an ambush on that plateau up there hoping to lure the Falcon Guards into the Gash and repeat the humiliation of the past. Now you do not want to fight here because, without the ambush, it is inconvenient. With all that, I should trust you?"
"I am Natasha Kerensky. My word is—"
"Truth to tell, Natasha Kerensky, your word may indeed be trustworthy. I suspect it is. But the essential piece of news I have for you is that nobody dictates the rules to me. I do not do what my enemy says is right. I do what I say is right."
"You're independent then?”
“I am Jade Falcon!"
Joanna did not wait for further words from Natasha. Instead, she triggered an SRM salvo at a rock formation on the Gash wall above the Dire Wolf. She had not aimed it directly at the Dire Wolf because she was not yet sure whether she had impaired or even destroyed Natasha's antimissile system in her earlier attack, and Joanna was not prepared to waste a shot just yet. The missile exploded the rocks and sent a small avalanche down toward the 'Mech. The alert Natasha Kerensky countered by taking a step toward the Summoner so that the bulk of the rockfall missed the Dire Wolf altogether, although the fringe of it knocked off some shoulder and back armor.
She came at the Summoner, her Gauss rifle and lasers blasting away. Joanna felt her 'Mech tip backward dangerously as it absorbed several ruinous hits. She countered with a steady firing of her PPC, hitting the Dire Wolf again and again. Many shots ricocheted off the Gash's walls. Rocks and armor fragments seemed to fall together in a density resembling a storm.
Joanna, in the taller 'Mech, lowered her LB 10-X autocannon and aimed it outward at the Dire Wolfs SRM missile rack, realizing that the shot could be suicidal as well as murderous. She was almost right, as the explosion of the fully armed missile rack rocked the Gash, and shrapnel slammed against the Summoner. Joanna had to guide its steps backward, down the slight hill to the point where the burial ground of the original Falcon Guards began. As the smoke cleared and the debris fell, she found the height advantage reversed. At the top of the rise, the Dire Wolf, its left shoulder missile rack a tangle of metal and wiring, looked down at her. Natasha Kerensky continued to press on, using her remaining weaponry recklessly but efficiently as Joanna's 'Mech took hit after hit.
* * *
For a long while Diana crouched behind a large rock and tried to discover the whereabouts of Castilla and Cholas. It had not been pretty, her retreat from them, but it had made sense. Rather than staring down two weapons fixed on her, she had fallen to the ground, where she got off a couple of ineffective shots, then rolled away, jumped up, and took off at a run. She did not want to trade shots with them when she could do better by seizing her own advantage later.
Now, behind the rock, she wondered why they had not pursued her. They had obviously stayed behind for something. When they had talked together before turning and firing, had they worked out some kind of plan, one bigger than merely doing away with Diana, one that might even affect the battle below? It had to be something like that, else why attempt to murder Diana?
The Great Gash duel, after the first shot and burst of light, had become silent. That was unusual for any combat, especially one involving a Jade Falcon warrior. What could be happening? she wondered.
At first dark seemed near-total, but Diana's eyes adjusted somewhat, and she thought she saw movement near the rim, on the other side of one of the Wolf transports. Her perception was verified by the sound of the vehicle's engine starting up. Diana needed no more motivation than that to leave the protection of the rock and run forward, toward the vehicle. She was not sure what Cholas and Castilla were planning, but she knew she had to stop it.
As she started to run, the fighting in the Gash began again, the flashes of light coming like lightning from below. The sounds of devastation and damage were loud and reverberating.
* * *
Joanna felt battered as shot after successful shot sent her Summoner reeling. With her 'Mech's back against the Gash wall, and its front facing up toward Natasha's BattleMech, Joanna found that she had difficult gauging her return fire in these narrow confines. A couple of her SRMs sailed over the head of the Dire Wolf and did more damage to distant rock than to the intended target. Her PPC and autocannon fire also went awry as Natasha Kerensky worked on hitting the upper limbs of the Summoner with an intense precision. The old woman seemed able to maintain a varied pattern of fire. What concentration she must have, Joanna thought. I must duplicate it.
A flashing light indicating damage came on at the side of Joanna's control panel. The outline of the Summoner on the main screen showed a red aura around the end of the 'Mech's right arm. Several shots from Natasha, all concentrated on the same area of the right arm, had hit the extended range PPC. There was a moment of hesitation, then an explosion and the lower arm seemed to come apart. The impact of the explosion sent the Summoner sideways along the Gash wall. Regaining control, Joanna saw that the arm was partially severed at a point where a wrist would be on a human being. What remained of the PPC hung down uselessly, a construction of wires and red-hot metal. She tried to move the arm, which would elevate only halfway with no side to side movement. As part of her arsenal, it was gone, as good as amputated.
Screaming with rage, Joanna focused on the Dire Wolf's torso. Now was the time to see whether or not Natasha's antimissile system was still operative. Although she found that the overall imbalance caused by the damaged arm threw her aim off slightly, a missile did graze the side of the Dire Wolfs torso, chipping off a slab of thick armor as it flew by. Something had to be wrong with the Dire Wolf's antimissile system, a piece of information that encouraged Joanna greatly.
Swinging the good 'Mech arm around as she also swung the Summoner itself away from the wall to face the Dire Wolf, she used the advantage of her lower position to fire a burst of cluster munitions from the autocannon against the other 'Mech's legs. She did not bother to gloat over her direct hit as she simultaneously aimed several missiles at the already damaged missile rack on the Dire Wolf's left shoulder. She had perceived many live missiles in the rack's tangles and she hoped to explode some of them.
She did, exploding almost all of them.
The Dire Wolf careened sideways from the explosion and its recovery of balance was hampered by the Gash wall it rammed against. Joanna smiled, knowing that the collision with the wall would, at the very least, send a massive neurological pulse through the neurohelmet and into the aging head of Natasha Kerensky.
But the Dire Wolf came away from the wall firmly on its feet and, with the best speed a lumbering OmniMech could manage, charged at the Summoner, its Gauss rifle spitting fire. The undamaged arm of Joanna's 'Mech took a dangerous hit, and the lower part of the arm started to bob up and down. It was out of her control, she realized, as she frantically pushed her joystick and felt no response from the arm.
The Dire Wolf was closing in on her. Hoping to slow it down, Joanna triggered an SRM blast toward its torso. At the same time, she realized that a strategic retreat might be in order. She would have to jump her 'Mech backward.
Engaging in her jump jets, she
felt a sharp jolt as the Summoner abruptly began its rise toward the top of the Gash walls. Another jolt told her that Natasha, firing from below, had scored another hit on the Summoner's left leg.
* * *
As Diana sprinted forward, she saw that Cholas had stepped out from behind one of the piles. But he did not see her yet. He was waving the vehicle on as it headed toward the pile, its tires launching gravel and stones into high arcs. Diana saw immediately what they were up to. Cholas was waving at Castilla, who was driving the vehicle, to push one of the dummy 'Mechs down into the Gash, where he had probably pinpointed the Summoner's present location. If Cholas timed the fall well, the pile of junk with its explosives inside could do a lot of damage to Joanna's 'Mech.
Cholas was moving too fast for Diana to manage an accurate shot on him. Anyway, Castilla had enough warrior instinct to continue on, whatever happened to her compatriot. Diana had to disable the vehicle first.
Stopping and taking careful aim, she ruined the right front tire and left rear tire with two quick shots. It was enough to make the vehicle swerve from its path and come to a screeching stop. Diana heard Castilla jump out of the vehicle's far side. She was momentarily visible behind the vehicle, but dodged back as Diana got off a shot at her.
With Castilla pinned down, Cholas was already running in a zigzag pattern toward the vehicle, firing intermittently at Diana, who went into a crouch and looked for cover. She found it in back of a mound of 'Mech parts that had not been included in the ambush. For a moment it occurred to her that her current position must resemble what Joanna had experienced during the honor duel against these same two warriors. The predicament might have drawn a smile, but she had to attend to returning the fire of the desultory shots that came from the disabled vehicle, followed by the footsteps of Castilla and Cholas running in the other direction. Diana sprang up to follow.
At the disabled vehicle, she peered around it and saw the pair of dark shadows several meters away, running with impressive speed and threatening to disappear into the blackness. Diana felt her best move would be to ignore caution and merely pursue them.
The sounds from the Gash shifted. It seemed as if the fight was moving toward the Plain of Curtains. Did that mean that Joanna was being defeated? Could she be retreating?
The two Wolves came to a jeep, leaped into it, and quickly got it running. Instead of aiming toward a pile at the Gash rim, they drove directly at Diana. Seeing that the jeep's windshield was flattened against the hood, Diana stood her ground and fired into the vehicle. Her shots were so steady that they forced Castilla, at the wheel, to veer away from the shots and forget about crushing Diana beneath the wheels.
The two leapt from the jeep, one on each side, as it careened onward. Diana also jumped aside as it sped past her, hit one of the large rocks that were all over this plateau, and flipped over.
Diana did not watch the fate of the vehicle. Her attention was on Castilla and Cholas, who had apparently abandoned the search for any more Wolf vehicles to use, and were running toward the rim. Diana raced after them, expending some useless fire at their adeptly maneuvering bodies.
All three were stopped in their tracks for a moment as the missile rack and part of the upper torso of Joanna's Summoner briefly appeared above the rim, then dropped back downward. Cholas took a futile shot at it, and its beam arced over the Gash like a single colored rainbow.
* * *
As the Summoner descended toward a targeted point several meters to the rear, Joanna found that she could only move the lower part of the 'Mech's left arm in a small upward arc. Natasha's last hit had damaged it as well as the leg, but it was movable.
Natasha Kerensky had apparently calculated the Summoner's landing point, for her Dire Wolf lumbered steadily toward it. Gauging her progress and steadying the left arm's arc until it was lined up with a point just ahead of the Dire Wolf's path, Joanna fired her autocannon. Her aim was slightly off. A few of the submunitions gouged the Dire Wolfs shoulder, but most struck in front of the 'Mech. Joanna thought she had done little damage until she observed, as she landed, that the Dire Wolf swayed to the right. But Joanna had to attend to her own landing before she could assess the extent of the Dire Wolfs damage.
The landing itself was rough. The Summoner swayed, the havoc Natasha had wrought on its left leg throwing it off balance. Joanna suspected the landing was made uneven because one of the 'Mech's arms was completely useless and the other was partially disabled. As she located the Dire Wolf, she did another test of the left arm. It barely moved. The weapon was all but useless.
For the moment the Dire Wolf seemed propped up by the Gash wall. Joanna could see the large hole she had blown out of the 'Mech's right leg. It started at the knee and went downward in long pointed gashes almost to the enormous 'Mech foot. Inside the hole, wires dangled and some myomer bundles appeared to have been pushed inward.
"Best you can do is limp," Joanna said aloud softly. "Unfortunately, the only effective weaponry I have is a rack of SRMs with only a few salvos left. Unless you lay down on the Gash floor where I might be able to tickle your toes with my autocannon. Well, no fight was ever won by muttering."
Slowly advancing toward the Dire Wolf, she triggered a series of missiles, alternating targets from side to side. One missile caught the Dire Wolf as it tried to straighten up and get back to the center of the Gash. It hit the right arm at shoulder level and, in a clean slice, separated the arm from the torso. Joanna was so surprised by the effectiveness of the shot that she almost forgot to maintain her attack. But she could not resist thinking. Well, that equalizes us—almost, anyway.
Something had to be wrong with the Dire Wolfs internal systems. The missile should have passed right by the 'Mech and landed ineffectually further down the Gash. A pilot would never have walked her 'Mech into a shot like that. If it was not the 'Mech systems, then it had to be the pilot herself. The earlier jolt when the Dire Wolf crashed against the Gash wall may have thrown off Natasha Kerensky's equilibrium. Maybe she was dazed or unconscious.
Well, not unconscious, Joanna thought, as the Dire Wolf's Gauss rifle initiated a fierce attack on the Summoner. The rifle fired low, blasting her left leg in several places. Freebirth! She wants the Summoner as disabled as her 'Mech. Joanna concentrated her missile fire on the Dire Wolf's left arm, hoping to disable it or its weapon before Natasha could finish her. At the same time she tried to maneuver the Summoner out of the Gauss rifle's line of fire. But the Gash was too narrow at this point. Any adjustment she made, the rifle easily tracked.
Suddenly the Gauss rifle made a vital hit on the Summoner's right hip joint, and this time it was the turn of Joanna's 'Mech to bounce off one of the Gash walls. With no use of her upper limbs, Joanna could not regain balance. The Summoner, veering off the wall, twisted grotesquely and collapsed.
Suddenly Joanna and the Summoner were on their backs. Ferociously Joanna slammed the controls one way and then another. Only the left leg moved at all. Her missile rack tracking system was offline, damaged by the fall. She could manually fire the remaining salvo, but it would just go straight up and fall back on the Summoner. A unique kind of suicide, Joanna thought, but not her style.
Uneven sounds of 'Mech footsteps told her that the Dire Wolf was limping forward slowly. To deal the final blow, no doubt. Joanna looked out through her viewport. All she could see was the high wall of the Gash and some of the sky. Suddenly, there was a speck coming out from the top of the wall. Whatever it was, was coming straight down, right toward the Summoner, it seemed. Joanna soon realized it was a body. The person's arms flailed, accompanying a scream that reverberated through the Gash, with several fading echoes that went on long after the body had landed somewhere at the Summoner's feet.
* * *
When Diana recovered from the surprise of the Summoner's brief appearance over the Gash rim, she saw only Cholas ahead of her, still gazing toward the rim. As she moved toward him, her pistol raised and sighted on him, he suddenly turned to fire a
t her. But Diana shot first. She hit him in the arm, forcing him to drop his pistol. Cholas quickly knelt to pick up the weapon with his other hand. But Diana was already racing toward him. She grabbed him around the neck and forced him sideways, at the same time kicking away the pistol, which skidded across the gravel. She stunned Cholas with a blow against the side of his head with her own pistol barrel.
Scrabbling around the ground to make sure the now-limp Cholas was between her and Castilla, who she was sure was between them and the Gash's rim, she shouted, "Castilla!" Her answer was a futile burst of fire that went far over Diana's head. It seemed to come from near the rim.
"Do not shoot, Castilla! I have your—Cholas here, and I can kill him easily."
"So what is that to me? Kill him."
But Castilla's voice was shaky, unconvincing. She was still acting the part of a Jade Falcon warrior.
Diana peered toward the rim intently, but she could not see Castilla. The Twycross atmosphere, even this high up, tended to compress distances, as well as distort shapes. A voice could also sound as if it came from one place at one time, another a moment later, without the person moving a centimeter.
"I do not believe you really wish his death. Or there is something strange about your love."
"Love? Diana, do not be absurd."
"I have seen your vile looks at each other. And I know you are not Jade Falcons. You are spies sent by the Wolves."
"Diana—"
"Do not even try to deny it. I saw you two here last night, as did Joanna. If not spies, why did you turn on me here?"
"It was Cholas. He said you were a spy, and you were to execute us."
"That is feeble, Castilla. Let us stop this talk. Surrender your weapon, and you will save Cholas' life. His life means nothing to me. I can take it easily."
"Kill him then." Castilla's voice seemed closer. Diana surveyed the area for movement but still saw no moving shape, no suggestive shadows.
I am Jade Falcon Page 25