Mercenary's Star

by William H. Keith

"Right. Come on through!" Ramage opened his combat transmitter and spread the word. He didn't want an anti- ‘Mech team burning down friendly BattleMechs as they emerged unexpectedly from the tunnel.

  "Sergeant!" A soldier tugged at his sleeve, pointing across the rubble barricade. "Something's coming out of the service area!"

  He twisted around to see, and fought the panic that rose gibbering at the back of his throat. Lumbering from the dark cavern of the repair facility it was a Marauder, 70 tons of deadly fighting steel.

  "God," he said. "They've been holding back in there, waiting for us! That monster is going to trap our ‘Mechs as they come up out of the tunnel!"

  Hurriedly, he opened his combat channel. "Anti- ‘Mechs! I've got a target for you, a big one! Get up here!"

  A moment later, three black-clad youngsters scrambled through the rubble to Ramage's side. Two of them carried satchel charges. The third cradled the squat, bulky shape of a portable inferno launcher.

  Inferno launchers were among the deadliest of soldier-carried anti- ‘Mech weaponry. They were twin-barreled, over-under projectors that fired 20 mm shells containing CSC or another highly flammable compound designed to ignite moments after it left the muzzle of the launcher. Liquid fire, like napalm but hotter and more viscous, sprayed in a ravening sheet across armor, circuitry, and heat sinks.

  Grayson had captured a light ‘Mech singlehandedly on Trellwan merely by threatening it with a portable inferno launcher. That was how he'd first met Lori Kalmar, when her Locust had been on the other side. Even monsters like a MAD-3R Marauder could be fried by a trooper with good aim and a steady hand.

  Ramage had picked and trained this assault team himself. He gave the orders, pointing out the damage he'd noted on the BattleMech's cockpit. If white-hot inferno streams could be directed at that opening, they'd fry the Kurita pilot before he even knew what had happened.

  The Marauder lumbered closer. Ramage opened his throat mike. "Now, boys! Take him!"

  37

  Grayson saw the black-suited commando team roll across the rubble barricade, lugging their satchels and the deadly, twin-tubed shape of the inferno launcher after them.

  "Lori, quick! Undog the canopy!"

  "Huh? But..."

  "Do it, or we're dead!" She squeezed past the control seat, reaching past the instrument consoles to twist the hatch lugs. The Marauder mounted several hatches in its flattened, egg-shaped hull, one up topside, another in the belly between the legs. The canopy was designed to open as well, making it easier to repair or replace circuitry in the instrumentation. It also gave Marauder pilots cramped in the stifling heat of their enclosed cabin an opportunity to let in a bit of cool air.

  Lori hauled at the hatch release. It didn't move.

  "Grayson, I can't budge it! It's stuck!"

  From his control seat, Grayson could not reach the hatch release without disconnecting from the neurohelmet, a process that would take a number of seconds that they simply did not have. He could see one of the commandos bringing the inferno launcher to his shoulder.

  Desperately, Grayson scanned the control board. Somewhere in that maze of instrumentation was the switch to the Marauder's outside hailer, but he couldn't decide which of a dozen controls it might be. Simulators taught the use of basic controls and suggested the feel of a particular machine, but they could never teach the arrangement of secondary controls, which often differed from ‘Mech to ‘Mech.

  And it was useless to try the radio. Each BattleMech and infantry unit had microprocessor-monitored guards on all transceivers. Those simple-minded computers used a programmed code to scramble and unscramble all communications within the unit. The result was that enemy units who happened upon the right radio frequency might hear a battle transmission before or during combat, but they would never figure out what was being said unless they had access to the same computer transceiver program. Grayson knew what frequency the commandos were using, but they would hear only electronic gibberish when he spoke.

  His own throat mike was gone, knocked away and lost during his scramble with the Kurita interrogator. The Marauder's radio was useless until it could be reprogrammed to translate the Gray Death's battlecodes.

  Grayson gave no thought to any of this. In his mind's eye, he could see the commando's finger tightening on the trigger.

  Lori pulled again on the stubborn hatch release. As she hauled back, she looked up, saw the shapes ahead, and gasped.

  "Down, Lori! Down flat!" When she didn't move, he swept a booted foot out, knocking her ankles from under her. She fell, bringing her arms up over her head. Grayson brought his hand down on the emergency eject controls, slapped off the arming switch cover, and stabbed the bright red button exposed underneath.

  Explosive bolts banged on the outer hull, and the canopy split over their heads, its two halves falling away to either side in the sudden gust of fresh air that spilled in from a green sky. Grayson was already on his feet. Though encumbered by the tangle of cables spilling from his neurohelmet to their connectors behind his seat, he was plain in the sight of the commandos twenty meters in front of him.

  Then Ramage was on his feet, waving and shouting, and the trooper with the inferno lowered his weapon with the reluctance of a professional denied the chance to demonstrate his craft.

  Grayson sank back in his seat, suddenly drained. "It's all right, Lori," he said as she levered herself up to her knees using the seat's armrest for support. His voicecracked, and he felt a strange sensation in his hands. Looking down at them, he realized they were trembling. Death by fire had brushed close by them both. To be trapped, helpless, consumed in agony...

  It took him a second more to control his voice. "I think I finally know what you've been feeling all this time."

  Governor General Nagumo motioned to his bodyguards and turned from the communications center. Kodo had been alerted to the situation and would arrive with reinforcements from Verthandi-Alpha in a few hours.

  Not that he really needed Kodo's presence, but Nagumo did not believe in doing things by half measures. The DropShips landing outside Regis would serve to warn the Verthandians in the city to keep the peace in the wake of the pitched battle in and about the University grounds. With luck, the landings would trap some of the rebel soldiers who'd been reported in the fields outside the city proper.

  Somewhere in the distance, a fire alarm was wailing. A blaze was out of control in the lower levels of the Tower, and gunfire or some other cause had wrecked the automatic sprinklers built into the University ceilings. The fire control crews were all Loyalist Verthandians, but most of them had already fled, abandoning their Kurita masters to their fate. According to the building monitors, that fire was spreading with ferocious speed through the lower sections. The Tower's remaining staff would have to evacuate Very soon.

  There was still time to win the battle in the courtyard and to crush the rebel forces outside the city as well. If the reports were accurate, most of the mercenary BattleMechs were inside the walls of the University now, trapped by the sudden redeployment he'd ordered from the Tower a few moments before. From his vantage point, Nagumo could see the Courtyard spread out like a sand-table battle at the Luthien Military Academy, could look beyond the main gate and see his own forces massing for their assault. It had taken only a moment to consult computer records and find the forgotten passageway. That rebel woman, Helgameyer, had spoken of the tunnel during her questioning.

  The tunnel would be part of Nagumo's trap now. Once the mercenary BattleMechs had been herded through it and into the courtyard, Nagumo's ‘Mechs would close in, Company A of the 3rd Strike Regiment through the main courtyard gate. Company B through the tunnel itself. Eighteen ‘Mechs would be more than enough to finish the four ‘Mechs that had been reported outside the walls.

  The Gray Death would die at his feet in the courtyard below.

  He hurried to his office, noting the empty passageways. Many of the building's workers had already fled. News of the fire in the To
wer sublevels had spread quickly.

  "Wait here," he told his guards, and he stepped through into his office. A strange drama was unfolding in the courtyard below his window. A Marauder—Kevlavic's Marauder—was emerging from the repair facility and advancing on the enemy commandos' perimeter.

  Strange. The Colonel was in the hospital, still recovering from the amputation of his arm. Had one of the Techs powered up the machine in an attempt to rush the commando defenses?

  The door hissed open behind him. He turned, a puzzled scowl forming on his face. "What do you..."

  He stopped, open-mouthed. The girl who stood there held a stun pistol in one hand, a long, keen-bladed combat dagger in the other. She stepped past the senseless forms of the two bodyguards, her face an expressionless mask. She wore a form-hugging black outfit and combat harness, and her face was smeared with black camouflage paint.

  "Who the devil are you?" he demanded with a scowl, though she looked familiar somehow. "Do I know you?"

  "Don't mind me. General," she said. There was a strange light in her eyes, a touch of wildness. "I'm just one of the things you... used once."

  "Now wait a minute. Put that thing down! Look, I've got money. I can make you..."

  She continued speaking, her voice honey-sweet. "You really should be more careful of your toys. General. Sometimes they can turn on you, just when you're least expecting it."

  She had stepped closer. Desperate now, he grabbed for the stunner in her hand. Her fighter pilot's reflexes proved faster, and her finger tightened on the trigger.

  She had reset the stunner for a light charge after she'd used it to dispatch the guards outside. Nagumo was quite conscious when she tied him to his chair, conscious and fully aware of what was happening. His stunned nervous system simply had no control over his muscles.

  For some time after, he couldn't even muster the muscular control that his throat and diaphragm needed to scream.

  * * * *

  Moments later, the Gray Death BattleMechs plunged into the slanting, early morning light in the courtyard. Khaled, the last one through the tunnel, reported that enemy ‘Mechs had been breaking into the factory compound just as his borrowed Shadow Hawk had ducked into the passageway entrance.

  They were surprised at the sight of the Marauder standing there among the battle-haggard commandos, but Ramage was explaining as they stepped through into the light. Lori used a lightweight line to haul a combat transceiver up into the cockpit of the captured ‘Mech.

  "Good morning, Sergeant! What's the situation?" she asked, once the unit was in place, clipped to her ear with the thin pick-up extended in front of her lips.

  "Lori! It's good to have you back!"

  "It's very good to be back." Her voice was unsteady, and the adrenalin pumped into her system at the sight of that inferno launcher still had her trembling. She kept her voice light, though, hoping Ramage wouldn't notice. She knew that Grayson already had, but she didn't mind that. "I'm relaying for the Captain," she continued. "What's happening?"

  "They boxed us. They swung something like a company of ‘Mechs around outside and caught our people against the factory wall. Now they're out there and we're in here...and I expect something to be coming through that main gate, too, any minute now."

  She paused to relay the information to Grayson, then reopened the channel. "O.K., Sergeant. Orders from the chief. Get clear of the tunnel. We'll take care of that. You all deploy to cover the main gate. Clay? McCall? Khaled? You all copy that?"

  There was a chorus of assents. The Marauder, its canopy still hanging open, made its way toward the archway through which the Gray Death BattleMechs had just emerged. A short way into the shadows, a ramp opened, leading down one level. Beyond that, the tunnel entrance yawned, twelve meters tall and ten meters wide to accommodate the lumbering AgroMechs that had passed that way in more peaceful times.

  Lori looked back at Grayson, hunched forward in the control seat.

  "Careful of the control panel, Lori," he said. "Remember, our eject system is armed. One touch, and...whoosh!"

  She glanced up at the cracked gray plaster of the ceiling, half a meter above the autocannon extending just over their heads.

  "Just watch what buttons you push," she replied.

  "Hold it...quiet a moment." He appeared to be straining at the darkness, listening.

  "They're coming," he said at last. "Slow and cautious, but they're coming. It's a good thing there's no way to make a twenty-ton metal monster silent. I can hear a BattleMech's leg joint down that tunnel creaking and popping like a rusty old door."

  Lori could hear the sounds, too, a far-off, hollow echo of metal scraping against ferrocrete. The Marauder positioned itself close beside the mouth of the tunnel.

  "Okay, Lori. When it goes down, I want you down, flat to the deck. With the canopy open, we won't have any protection from the dazzle or the UV bleed from the PPCs."

  Her eyes widened. "You're going to unleash those things in here?"

  "None other. They won't be expecting it, either.”

  “That's one way to look at it."

  A long moment crawled past. Then Grayson spoke quietly. "Right, Lori. Dig yourself a hole in the deck."

  Somewhere on that alien control panel there was a switch for the Marauder's floodlights, twin lenses under the canopy chin that could have bathed the black tunnel with the radiance of a sunny day. There was no time to find that switch right now. Instead, Grayson waited until he guessed the enemy ‘Mechs would be close, then stepped across the tunnel entrance.

  The particle projection cannons mounted in each of the Marauder's forearm heavy weapon mounts had been charged for several minutes already. He triggered the right'arm cannon first, squinting through the dark visor of his helmet with one eye only, the other squeezed tightly shut.

  Man-made lightning glared with intolerable brilliance, starkly illuminating the clustered band of BattleMechs in blue-white radiance. For the split second of its existence, the beam of charged particles burned low across the left torso of the Centurion that led the pack. The beam snapped off, plunging the tunnel back into darkness again, leaving the eyes and optic systems of the Kurita ‘Mech pilots momentarily dazzled by the PPC's glare.

  Grayson opened his left eye, the one he had held closed, and peering into the darkness. Then he squeezed the eye shut again. His right eye still danced and watered with the green and purple disks planted there by the beam's brilliant discharge, but had cleared enough for him to place his second shot The Marauder's left arm fired, and again lightning seared through the narrow tunnel. The shot was higher this time and more toward the center. It caught the Centurion squarely in the chest LRMs in the ‘Mech's chest pack rocketed into the startled darkness, trailing fire. Explosions sent fireworks flashing down the length of the tunnel, lighting up the company of ‘Mechs in sharp relief.

  The Marauder discharged both arm lasers in a quick one-two shot that scattered burning fragments of armor through the passageway. A Phoenix Hawk behind the Centurion also opened fire with its heavy laser, but the bolt went wide, scoring the ferrocrete wall across the passageway from the Marauder.

  Both PPCs fired again. One bolt caught the Phoenix Hawk, shearing away an arm in flaming chunks of debris. The other drilled the Centurion high in the torso a second time. The unfortunate Centurion pitched backward, flame and molten gobbets of metal and plastic spewing from a gaping crater in its chest.

  The Marauder stepped back away from the tunnel mouth. Bolts spit and burned from the tunnel mouth, followed by a pair of missiles that exploded against the far wall. Smoke was pouring from the tunnel opening now, and something burning in the passageway lit the darkness.

  Grayson swung the Marauder's right arm into the tunnel mouth, exposing only as much of the heavy machine as he needed to make the shot. The enemy ‘Mechs were caught in complete confusion behind the flaring light of the burning Centurion. Grayson triggered the PPC and the laser together. An Archer took both hits, one in an arm, the o
ther in the torso. Considering the thickness of the big ‘Mech's armor, the damage was minor, but the Archer collided with a Stinger as its pilot attempted to back out of the line of fire.

  Lori rolled over on the Marauder's deck and looked up at him. "Gray! Ramage is calling! They're coming through the front gate!"

  "Damn," Grayson replied. "Do we hold here, or go help?"

  "He says the gates have been blown clear off their hinges. He says that there are at least eight ‘Mechs coming through the gap, and that he sure could use our firepower."

  "I guess that's the answer. Flatten down again, Lori." The Marauder stepped fully into the opening again, ignoring the wildly aimed bolts and missiles that whirled down the tunnel at them. Both PPCs triggered together. Blue light engulfed the struggling Archer, which still had not disentangled itself from the Stinger. In the dying light of the burning Centurion, Grayson fired his lasers into the tangle, watched the Archer stagger and topple in flailing metal limbs, dragging the Stinger down with it. The tunnel was blocked, at least for the moment. It would take a concentrated effort to get the passageway clear enough for BattleMechs to squeeze through.

  With the surviving ‘Mechs in full retreat down the sheltering darkness of the tunnel behind them, Grayson didn't think they were going to make that concentrated effort very soon. He had Lori suggest that Ramage post an anti-Mech team to watch this route into the courtyard, and then took the Marauder thundering up the ramp to the upper level.

  An explosion rocked the tunnel behind them as a damaged ‘Mech exploded, bringing chunks of rock and ferrocrete down in dust-spewing ruin.

  That was our way out, Grayson thought, grimly. With the tunnel closed, the Gray Death was trapped within the University Courtyard.

  38

  Smoke wreathed the Courtyard, providing some slight cover for the black-clad men crouching behind their barricades. The Courtyard grounds were still shadowed by the surrounding walls and buildings, but slanting, red-gold rays of Norn sliced through the rising smoke and dust clouds. The Courtyard gate had been blasted open, the cast steel warped and blackened by satchel charges packed with high explosives.