by Victor Milán
"Maybe it's a bit late to be thinking about this," the fighter jock went on in Japanese, "but I'm worried. You're a Drac too. Maybe you can help."
"I was born in the Draconis Combine," Cassie said guardedly. She was wearing her own leather jacket today, looking even more dwarfed by it than Omizuki did. Slung over one shoulder she carried a light rucksack of the kind Caballeros called a possibles bag. "But I was raised in Liao space. I'm a Capellan as much as anything."
Omizuki laughed, shrugged, and shook her head. "Still, I suspect you'll understand better than most of these crazy Cowboys and Indians I've gone and hooked myself up with."
"Probably."
"I'm concerned about, you know, the terms of my separation from service in the DCMS," Omizuki said.
Cassie nodded. It had been pretty informal. Omizuki's Shilone aerofighter had been shot out from under her during the final fight on Towne. She'd been splashed by a puny atmospheric fighter, propeller-driven, no less, piloted by Tim Moon of the Towne Air Rangers, one of the local militia groups. Though Omizuki was a company commander and double ace, General Jeffrey Kusunoki had decreed that any of his pilots who suffered such disgraceful defeat should be stripped of flight certification and demoted to the ranks of the infantry. Her belly already full of the man's misogynistic antics, Omizuki had been happy to surrender—despite her training in the Drac warrior tradition—to the first Caballero she came across. And that happened to be Cowboy Payson. She had resigned her commission on the spot, and asked to join the Seventeenth Recon.
At the time she'd fully expected to be recaptured and sent to the wall just as soon as the invasion force overwhelmed the impertinent Towne rebels and their offworld allies. She was prepared to face the firing party. Not only was she disgusted with Kusunoki and his Black Dragon sympathies and allies, she had come to suspect the truth, that the whole invasion was taking place in defiance of the wishes of Theodore Kurita. And though she had served the Dragon her whole adult life with courage, skill, and passion, she owed the Combine little: her family secretly practiced Judaism, which was punishable by death under Kurita law.
But she hadn't died. The invasion had folded like a cheap fan after Kusunoki's globally 'cast seppuku. After a brief, tempestuous affair with her captor (which was pretty much the only kind Cowboy had), Sharon Omizuki found herself in command of the Caballeros' new aerospace lance—and bound for the capital of the Draconis Combine.
"Don't forget that Uncle Chandy got his cousin to issue a decree allowing any DCMS personnel from the Towne invasion to resign," Cassie said. "Made it retroactive, too. Chandrasekhar-sama takes care of his people."
Omizuki looked around nervously, fingering the little silver Star of David she now wore openly around her neck. "I just hope the Internal Security Force didn't overlook that piece of paper."
Cassie laughed. "I don't think you've got much worry there. Unlikely as it seems, we Caballeros and the Dragon's Breath have history. After what happened on Hachiman and Towne, the Smiling One either had to kill us off or work with us. We've proven too darned useful to the Dragon to kill."
"So far."
"So far." Cassie agreed with a fatalistic nod. "You know, if you're concerned about that, you didn't pick a real great place to talk about it. The ISF's got its Metsuke operatives up there in the mob with long-range holocams trained on us right this instant, you can bet, and they have lip-readers who can reconstruct every syllable we've let out of our heads."
Omizuki jumped like a startled cat. "I didn't think about that. See? You've got a better head for this kind of thing than I do."
And that's the difference between a pilot and a scout, Cassie thought. MechWarrior or fighter jock, you fight all swaddled up in your nice, spotless metal cocoon while we're down in the dirt. She didn't vocalize the thought; the newly recruited flygirl seemed a decent enough sort. And while empathy was not Cassie's strong suit, she knew in her gut the kind of culture-shock abrupt immersion in the South westerners' bizarre world was laying on Omizuki.
"Try growing up in the Capellan Confederation," she said. "The ISF is brutal as a matter of policy. The Mask is brutal just for fun."
"Yow," Omizuki said. "You make it sound so attractive. Say—is it a good idea for you to talk about ISF like that?"
Cassie laughed. "Subhash Indrahar knows what the ISF is, and what he is."
"You almost talk like you know him."
Well, I am sort of a friend of the family, Cassie thought with unwonted impishness.
"Maybe I should go ahead and change my name," Omizuki said, "just to be on the safe side. I've been thinking about it anyway. 'Omizuki' was never anything but camouflage, and I'm none too attached to it."
"Go for it," Cassie advised. "Here in the Caballeros, people change their names the way they do their pants."
The pilot made a face. "Well, come to that, I'm not too enamored of my traditional family name, either. 'Goldblatt' just doesn't have much of a ring to it."
"Why don't you talk to the Maccabee?"
"Who?"
"Force Commander Bar-Kochba. He's Second Battalion CO and the regiment's chief rabbi. He's got a lot on the ball. He can give you better advice on that than I can."
"I don't know," Omizuki said, shaking her head. "Kya, I hate this—uncertainty. But—the Southwestern Jews are so, so defiant. What'll he think of the fact that my family's hidden its Judaism all these years?"
"The Jewboys' ancestors moved to the Trinity to keep from getting assimilated into the Catholic church," Cassie said. "Your bunch has kept the faith for generations in spite of ISF and everything. I think you'll be just his kind of girl." Jewboys was the group's own name for themselves.
A roar went up from the crowd. The Luthien mob was a lot more ruly than crowds on Hachiman. But then again rioting wasn't the most popular outdoor sport here under the very eye of the Coordinator—and his Internal Security Force.
Still, the inhabitants of Luthien loved a spectacle just as much as the Hachimanites did. And now the show was beginning.
A BattleMech stalked down the DropShip's ramp. It was an NG-C3A Naginata, 95 tons of malice, one of the newest and most formidable 'Mechs in the Dragon's arsenal—so new that an audience less sophisticated than Luthienites, who got to see the best and the brightest of the Combine's BattleMechs on a regular basis, would likely not have recognized it. As it was, the onlookers gasped to see such a valuable piece of equipment in gaijin hands.
But the twelve-meter-tall machine was spectacular enough in its own right. From the tips of the fin-like heat-sink radiator flanges mounted just inside the shoulder housings to the ends of its broad, blunt feet, the Naginata was painted blood red. On the front plate of its right-hand Coventry Star Fire LRM launcher was painted the insignia of the Seventeenth Recon Regiment: a coyote couchant, raising its head in a defiant howl against a full moon. On its left was the gaunt figure of a lone knight on horseback against a red ground, the personal arms of the BattleMech's pilot. And on the broad plate of Durallex Heavy Special armor that curved smoothly from its right shin to its foot was a beautifully airbrushed painting of an angel with his steel-shod foot on the neck of a vanquished dragon and a fiery sword upraised: San Miguel Vengador, St. Michael the Avenger, namesake of the 'Mech itself.
The crowd applauded. They wanted barbarian flash, and here it was.
After the Naginata stalked a Shadow Hawk. The audience oohed at the red-tailed hawk, wings and talons outspread, beak open, painted in gorgeous detail across its chest and belly.
And then the onlookers fell silent, because the third machine to stalk into view was the most feared shape in the Inner Spere: the bullet-nosed form of a Clan Mad Cat. The Clans had bigger, meaner, more powerful BattleMechs, but somehow the Cat had come to symbolize the invaders' implacable might.
This 'Mech was enameled glossy black all over. Angry red eyes glared from behind the cockpit, and a mouthful of sharp white teeth was painted on its snout. On the outside of each of the extended-range PPCs that tipp
ed its arms was painted a sword of curious design, with a flaring pommel and knuckle-duster hilt, whose broad, straight blade split at the end into two single-edged tips.
It struck the crowd at the same time that the Clans would scarcely have given this magnificent and terrifying mechanism to these doitsujin yohei. The crowd went crazy—by Luthienite standards.
"Nobody's even hitting each other," Cassie observed. "These folks are pretty uptight." On Hachiman, the onlookers' response would have signified the mildest form of approval.
"Sir Boxer did a hell of a job repainting Kali's 'Mech," Omizuki said. "Gives me goosebumps just to look at it."
It gave Cassie a clammy feeling in her stomach pit. Not because of the design, impressive though it was. But for what the scene implied for hexfamilia.
Ever since the Clan invasion and the retreat from Jeronimo, Colonel Carlos Camacho had piloted that Mad Cat. He had killed its pilot in single combat, after the Clanner killed his daughter Patricia, known as la Capitana. The 'Mech had symbolized the Seventeenth's loss and perseverance alike.
But Tai-sho Jeffrey Kusunoki's Naginata had been captured intact on Towne. And since the machine was the most advanced command 'Mech deployed in the Inner Sphere, complete with an excellent C3 computer, sheer practicality dictated that it become the ride of the Caballero commander.
So Don Carlos Camacho, not without regret, had passed his former "Great White" on to the new commander of First Battalion, Kali MacDougall, promoted to that position when Camacho's son Gavilan got boosted upstairs to Lieutenant Colonel and regimental operations officer. Kali herself had lost her BattleMech on Towne, so the change made sense.
Cassie knew about that, all too well: it was she who'd ridden Kali's Atlas to the death, bringing down Kusunoki.
Cassie felt only a little remorse at burning up her best friend's 'Mech. She had a pathological hatred of Battle-Mechs, and none more so than the Atlas, one of which had destroyed her childhood home and killed her father before her eyes when she was a mere child. And while Kali MacDougall, convalescing from her injuries, had had little chance to practice piloting her new machine before embarking for Luthien, the skill that had enabled her to handle the ponderous Atlas as if it were a medium 'Mech should by rights make her a demon at the controls of a fast and shifty Goto Loco.
But the only thing that unsettled Cassie more than the changes that had come over her friend in the last few weeks were changes to lafamilia. The two machines in their splendid new jobs symbolized both all too vividly.
"Whoa," Sharon Omizuki said, breaking in on the darkness of Cassie's thoughts. "Even in this overcast, that thing hurts my eyes."
The blood-red Naginata had marched most of the way to the roadway cut into the blast-wall, with the rest of the regiment following like baby ducks. Cassie looked up to see the 'Mech belonging to Frontera Company's commander lumber down the ramp. It was a solid-gold BattleMaster that dazzled even in the heavily filtered sunlight.
During the fight for Towne somebody had finally pointed out to Cassie's none-too-friendly rival Captain Vanity Torres that, if her BattleMaster really was "Vanity's Mirror," as the name had it, it meant Vanity weighed 85 metric tons and had thunder thighs and a huge ass. Vanity—who lived up to her call sign religiously—promptly rechristened her ride "Golden Vanity," and had the damned thing anodized a mirror-finish gold.
For a few moments Cassie stood beside the pilot and watched the parade. It was an impressive show, even she had to admit. But for her it was mainly an exercise in controlling the visceral, nape-hair-raising dread that came with seeing so many of the metallic monsters at once—and the frustrated itch, situated somewhere between her belly and her sex, at not being able to kill any of them.
And here was another sign of change: there were more 'Mechs than the Seventeenth had ever boasted before, lots of them. According to the surrender terms, the four DCMS regular units involved in the Towne invasion—the 15th Dieron Regulars: Devotion Through Combat; the 5th Galedon AeroSpace wing: Desolation Angels; the 227th Armored Regiment: Hard Targets; and the 503rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment: A Better Tomorrow—had received the honors of war, getting to keep such of their equipment as had not already been destroyed or otherwise fallen into the planetary defenders' hands. The Black Dragon units, however—the 1st Spirit of the Dragon BattleMech Regiment, known as The Eight Corners of the World Under One Roof, and the 1st Dragon's Joy Infantry Regiment: The Drawn Sword—had been permitted to carry away from Towne only their personal effects, their uniforms, and their lives. Their 'Mechs and other arms had fallen as booty to the victors.
The resulting windfall had gifted the 'lleros with 141 functional 'Mechs and a handful of aerospace fighters. Manning the plundered machines was little problem, as there were always Dispossessed MechWarriors among the ranks. Volunteers kept trickling in from back in the FWL, mostly fellow Southwesterners unable to put up any longer with Thomas Marik's dictatorial ways or his attempts to impose the Word of Blake as the League's official religion, or simply avid to seek glory among the Trinity Worlds' favorite sons and daughters. Finally, no few Townians had stuck to the Seventeenth when it lifted offworld, including the Rooster, once-and-again FedCom MechWarriors such as Pik Vosloo and Ganz Harter, late of the Towne Popular Militia, and even some disenchanted Dracs like Mouse Omizuki and her fellow Desolation Angel Johnny "Smoke" Herlihy.
The Caballeros wound up with enough machines and pilots to create not only Omizuki's aerospace lance and a dedicated artillery-support lance—sadly without long-time chief artillerist Diana Vasquez who had been executed by Howard Blaylock's quisling regime on Towne—but an entire Fourth Battalion.
Cassie didn't feel altogether easy with that, and she wasn't the only one. Fourth Batt was led by fresh-minted Force Commander Robert Begay, callsign Navajo Wolf. Bobby the Wolf was a devilishly handsome man with a mane of straight blue-black hair and eyes that flashed like obsidian mirrors in his leather-dark face. The long-time boss of Cochise Company, he was in line for the new command. And too successful as a combat leader and Griffin pilot to be denied the promotion.
But there were some problems with Bobby. For one thing, he hated Cassie. His old Wolverine had been the very first BattleMech Cassie downed, back on Larsha where she grew up. That wasn't enough to unfit him for command, even in Cassie's mind, but he was also crazy. The names he had chosen for himself and his machine, Navajo Wolf and Skinwalker, both signified a witch who was also a werewolf. The Navajos of the Trinity took that sort of thing very seriously: it was as if a Cowboy MechWarrior had chosen to call his ride "Baby-Sacrificing Satan Worshipper," or if a norteño used "Protestant" for a callsign. He had made himself an outcast from his own people; no Navajos or Apaches would consent to serve in Fourth. And aside from the tact issues his choices in nomenclature pointed up, his wild-eyed brand of courage might not translate too well to a larger command. Cochise Company hadn't been the safest unit in the regiment to be in as it was.
There had been rumblings already ... a drumbeat throb in the sky drew Cassie's eyes up, and her thoughts away from Begay.
"Here comes your chopper," Omizuki said. "Catch you later." She waved and strode away.
And here, here came the Rooster, with his trademark bandy-legged banty-cock strut, looking as if the whole damned Black Pearl of the Combine was his personal henhouse, and Teddy the K, his Ottomo, and all of ISF be damned. Cassie got a guarded look again. She respected his skills as scout and operator, and that respect was not lightly given. She'd go through a door or window with him at her back any hour of night or day. But trusting him as a combat comrade and trusting him as a man were beasts of two distinct genera.
He's going to pull rank, she told herself with a sinking feeling, pull me off this and go himself. The thought sickened her. Her familia needed her. And she needed ... to be needed.
"Hey, Cass," he said as he approached. "Senior Lieutenant."
He cocked an eyebrow at the unaccustomed formality. "Just wanted to make sure you're squa
red away on this, nothing else you need."
"I'm ready," she said, bracing herself.
He nodded. "All right, Lead Scout. Go do some scouting. I'll catch you when the rest of us hit that place they call Cinema City." And he went rolling off, leaving Cassie blinking.
The chopper touched down with a swirl of noise and bits of debris.
5
Takashi Kurita Memorial Spaceport, Imperial City
Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
20 June 3058
A small man in a shirt printed with a war of colors hopped from the hatch of the VTOL and came running toward the waiting Caballeros, bent low to clear the whirling rotor. Once out of the circle of death he straightened to his full height, which wasn't much.
"Hi, I'm Mishcha Kurosawa, of the Voice of the Dragon," he said with a big smile full of bright white teeth. "Welcome to Luthien, Black Pearl of the Combine. I'll be your guide." Voice of the Dragon was the Internal Security Force's propaganda division.
Standing next to Cassie, the stocky woman dressed in businesslike skirt-suit, a dusting of freckles across her dark, broad-cheekboned face and hair the color of red wine, nodded. "Thank you. I'm Force Commander Dolores Galle-gos. I'm the Executive Officer for the Seventeenth Recon Regiment."
Mishcha smiled again, shook the hand she offered, bowed over it. Cassie, the Caballeros' resident expert on Drac culture, had briefed the contact party in advance that it would be a big help to use titles whenever possible, even to Draconians as evidently accustomed to dealing with gaijin as Mishcha was. The XO part was a typical Caballero divergence from common military usage. The actual second in command was Gavilan Camacho; Red Gallegos was actually a combination of S-l and S-4, handling personnel, supply, transport, and of course accommodations for the regiment. Her own description of the job was "chief cook and bottle-washer."