by Gavin Smith
‘You’re pissed about Nyukuti?’ Vido said. There was a bit of lag as the signal reached her from the Hangman’s Daughter docked at Waterloo Station.
‘And with you.’
‘Want me to take him off combat duty?’
‘No, that’s just one less competent gun down here. I’ll find something for him to do.’
‘Best lesson I ever learned about leadership, you don’t have to make the right decision, you just have to make a decision,’ he told her. Miska spent a moment trying to decide if there was a hidden message in his words.
‘What do you want, V?’
‘Triple S and New Sun have lodged a complaint with Salik about the attack, citing theft and claiming that you executed prisoners … again.’
‘I didn’t …’ Miska started. ‘Theft? Haven’t they ever heard of the spoils of war?’ She knew it was part of the game but she found the politicking exhausting. Uncle Vido, however, seemed to love it. ‘Fine, anything else?’
‘Yeesss.’ He sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.
‘I don’t have the time, V.’ The Offensive Bastards were already making their way onto the two shuttles.
‘The network security officer for the mech base we just attacked …’ Vido started. Miska already had a sinking feeling. ‘… Was found brain-dead in a sense booth. That’s going to land on you.’
Miska looked around. She found Raff leaning against a poured concrete wall. She guessed he wanted to get on the shuttle at the same time as her to reduce his chances of ending up as footstool again.
‘I want to know what happened,’ she told Vido.
‘You sure?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t do it, V.’ At least not knowingly.
‘Okay, I’ll get onto it. What do I tell Triple S? I’m guessing they’re not getting their gear back any time soon.’
Miska started heading back towards Pegasus 1.
That if they liked that, they’re going to love this, she thought.
‘Tell them to go and fuck themselves,’ Miska said, smiling.
Chapter 4
This time Miska had bagged herself a bench seat in the back of Pegasus 1, Nyukuti next to her. The Cyclops was balancing on four of its six limbs above the heads of the Offensive Bastards.
I’m spending entirely too much time in the back of assault shuttles, she decided. It wasn’t just the boredom factor. The two Pegasi had seen a lot of action in the two months they’d been in-country. They weren’t just doing the work of assault shuttles, they were also working as gunships and transports. McWilliams had been speaking to her about maintenance. They were robust, well-engineered vehicles, but everything was subject to wear and tear. These were the kinds of things that she had to worry about now. She preferred worrying about getting shot.
She checked Pegasus 1’s external lens feed. Both shuttles were hovering above the Turquoise River, so named for its iridescent algae. Leaning trees, which seemed to defy gravity, formed an arched tunnel of greenery and multi-coloured moss over the deep river. The shuttles were holding back, hopefully beyond the sensor network that surrounded Port Turquoise. Waiting. She couldn’t tell if the Offensive Bastards were nervous or eager but then reading people had never been her thing. Nearly all of the legionnaires had seen combat in the two months since they’d arrived in-country. They had even lost people, but frankly the fighting had been pretty well-mannered so far. Most of the mercenaries in this conflict knew each other and socialised on Waterloo Station, and their parent organisations didn’t want to pay out too much in death duties and lost equipment. What tended to happen was that shots were fired, to keep face, and then surrender was negotiated based on who was most likely to win any ensuing battle. It led to a lot of arguments among mercenary commanders but the casualties were kept low. This was one of the reasons that the ‘violence of action’ approach that the Legion was taking was working so well. That and she was treating it like a war rather than a game. But she was careful to observe the niceties of the articles of conflict, whatever her detractors might say.
Two flashing icons appeared in her IVD. She sighed. It looked like she was going to be another tourist in this battle. Her head throbbed as she opened the lens feed from the two Satyr-class scout mechs.
‘You okay?’ Torricone asked over a direct link. She hadn’t even realised that she’d closed her eyes and been rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. Miska looked around. She also hadn’t realised that Torricone was still on the shuttle. She found him sat on the deck close to the bulkhead that separated the cargo bay from the steps that led to the cockpit. He was watching her. She couldn’t read his expression. There was just a slight moment of irritation as she wondered if he was stalking her.
‘Fine!’ she snapped and too late realised she’d said it aloud. A number of legionnaires glanced her way. She saw Torricone frown. She was aware of one of the Cyclops’s lenses swivelling around to look at her. She decided to concentrate on the lens feeds from the Satyrs. This battle was shaping up to be just like watching a viz, again.
Both the lenses had been extended on telescoping arms from the top of the scout mechs. They only just broke the surface of the river, iridescent water lapping at them, occasionally obscuring the view. Port Turquoise was the regional capital for the area. Half its waterfront was given over to a small-scale commercial port. Cranes, cargo-handling mechs and exoskeletons served a small fleet of flat-bottomed riverine drone craft that ran luxuries and construction and arboculture supplies for the vertical farms up and down the river, and brought harvested crops, meat and other animal by-products back to the port. The other half of the port had been a marina, not just for the wealthy, it seemed like everyone owned a river craft in Port Turquoise. Now, however, the waterfront had been fortified. Smartcrete bunkers and barriers provided blocking strongpoints in key areas. Between the two lens feeds Miska could see two heavily armed patrol boats in the water and one Medusa-class mech on dry land.
The two Satyrs moved a little closer to the port, the tops of their armoured, reactive-camouflaged hulls breaching the bright turquoise-coloured water enough for them to launch similarly camouflaged rotor drones. Two more blinking lens feed icons appeared in Miska’s IVD. She opened them as well. As the rotor drones rose in the air, the town behind the port was revealed. It lay in a small basin of clear-cut hills in the shadow of the jungles. Before the current unpleasantness it had been home to about fifty thousand people, the majority of them involved in the gas mining industry, arbocultural industry, the port, or the Colonial Administration. Until New Sun’s mercenary forces had bewilderingly invaded.
The small town was set out in a neat orderly grid, and few of the buildings were much higher than three storeys. The shuttle port had been on one of the clear-cut hills around the town. It had been expanded into a military shuttle port and a base for the occupying mercenaries. The port was well protected, the town had a number of strongpoints with heavy weapon emplacements, but the majority of Triple S’s defences were jungle-facing. It was the most obvious direction of attack. Which was exactly the reason that Miska hadn’t come that way.
The rotor drones were busy mapping the town’s defences, the missile launchers, point defences, the gunships, the four Medusa-class mechs and so on. They would be feeding the information back to the waiting Medusas as target packages. Then, between the tactical computers and the pilots, they would start prioritising and doling out the targets. The shuttles would head in once the missile launchers and point defences were dealt with. She just hoped that Mass and the others remembered their rules of engagement. People lived in that town. They were about to take thirty-foot-tall armoured behemoths in and start a fight among the people they were, in theory, there to ‘liberate’. Miska felt the shuttle shift a little underneath her. They were waiting for Mass to start it all.
She saw the bow waves first. Six of the seven Medusas marching in a rough spearhead formation towards the port. Heads breaking the water first, huge metal hands tea
ring waterproof coverings from their weapons. Miska couldn’t see the seventh Medusa as the two understrength mech platoons waded through the increasingly shallow water, glowing slightly from the water’s residual iridescence.
Several of the shore point defence batteries exploded but Miska hadn’t seen anyone fire yet. Then she saw a strange disturbance in the air and recognised it as a one of her fast moving scout mechs hidden by reactive camouflage. Another point defence battery was turned to wreckage by Dory fire from one of the nearly invisible Satyrs. The Triple S mech guarding the port was turning to face the water only to be hit by pellets of hydrogen superheated to a plasma state from Mass’s mech’s shoulder-mounted plasma cannon. At the same time he was firing the 105mm mass driver from the combination weapon the mech carried in its hands. The plasma bolts turned much of the enemy mech’s armoured torso to burning liquid, then one of the electromagnetically-driven mass driver rounds shot straight through it and hit a cargo harbour crane behind the mech. The burning mech collapsed in on itself, sinking to the ground.
Hemi’s mech was putting round after round from the larger calibre shoulder-mounted 200mm mass driver into one of the patrol boats just at the waterline. He used the flame gun element of his combination weapon and sprayed a line of napalm over the deck of the patrol craft. Enemy combatants leapt into the river, still burning as they sank beneath the water.
Missiles were blown out of the sky and then the launchers destroyed. Both the patrol boats were sinking now. The shoreside bunkers burst by the mass drivers were now both burning. Miska could make out infantry and light-skinned military vehicles fleeing the area. An APC jumped into the air, buckling as a mass driver round hit it. The mechs were still waist-deep in the river.
‘Heavy-One-Actual to all Heavy call signs, watch your field of fire,’ Mass warned them, a little hypocritically. Mass was taking his three-mech platoon through the marina. Hemi was taking his platoon through the commercial port. The firing was sporadic now. They were taking heavy weapons fire from vehicles and rooftop strong points but nothing that was giving them too much pause. As they climbed up onto dry land, Mass seemed content to let the Satyrs hunt the heavy weapons emplacements.
Missiles streaked across the rooftops from launchers in the hills surrounding the town. The mechs’ point defence lasers blew them out of the sky before they got close. Depending on their configuration, all six mechs were firing their carried 105mm or shoulder-mounted 200mm mass drivers over the roofs of the town and into the missile launchers and point defence systems protecting the Triple S base. As soon as the point defence lasers were destroyed, the mechs launched missiles from the batteries on their backs. Targeting packages provided by the stealth rotor drones guided the missiles into defensive emplacements, heavy weapons and armoured vehicles that Miska would have loved to steal but that were too dangerous to leave in play. With the town’s missile launchers and point defence systems down, Pegasus 1 and 2 started their approach.
All six of the Heavy Bastards’ Medusas were advancing through the town now, their combination weapons raised to their shoulders, looking for all the world like two giant infantry fire teams. Miska wondered what had become of the seventh Medusa but she didn’t want to distract Mass by asking. As individual mechs got hit they turned and checked the source of the fire. If the target was a significant threat, or their background was clear, they destroyed it with their own weapons fire. If not, they soaked up the damage and continued going. The two understrength mech platoons were trying to use the two-and three-storey buildings for concealment only, as even the indigenous hardwoods provided very little cover from railguns and lasers. More than one building was burning.
Miska watched as Mass kicked a soft-skinned light strike vehicle into the air and then removed the magazine on his 105mm mass driver, sliding home his second and final magazine for the huge weapon.
‘Heavy-One-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual, they’ve got man-portable plasma weapons down here that are—’ Mass started and then his mech staggered. For a horrible moment Miska thought the Medusa was going to topple over. Instead Mass’s mech went down on one knee, a hand out to steady itself.
‘Mech, mech, mech!’ Hemi said over the comms link. Four Medusas had just walked out of the treeline and were heading through the Triple S hillside base towards the town. Miska assumed that Mass must have been hit by a mass driver round. The other five mechs, still shrugging off small arms and man-portable heavy weapons fire, immediately turned their weapons on the enemy mechs. Mass driver rounds and plasma bolts impacted on the Triple S mechs cratering armour plate or turning it to slag. This was the benefit of being trained by Miska and her dad. Even with mech combat they had trained her legionnaires in the primacy of aggression and violence of action. Counter attack as ferociously as possible, worry about the resources afterwards.
Mass’s Medusa was back on its feet, advancing on the mech that had shot him, firing round after round from his 105mm mass driver. Miska could almost hear the clanging as the huge tungsten-cored electromagnetically-driven penetrators hit the enemy mech’s thick armour.
‘Heavy-Two-Two to all Heavy call signs, we have multiple gunships preparing to take off from the pads to the south and east of us,’ one of the Whānau mech jockeys said.
‘Heavy-One-Three and Heavy-Two-Three, engage the enemy ass with your mass drivers, the gunships with your Vengeances,’ Mass told them. Two of the Bastards’ mechs, one from each of the sections, turned towards the south and east and knelt down behind two-storey buildings.
Each of the mechs had a slightly different configuration. One-Three and Two-Three were set up to destroy bunkers with the 200mm mass drivers mounted in the hardpoint on their right shoulders. The flamethrower element of their carried combination weapons would then be used to clear out any surviving enemy personnel in the busted bunker. Like all the other mechs they each had a missile battery, currently folded down against their back, mounted on their left shoulder hardpoint. Heavy-One-Three and Two-Three reversed their mass drivers so they were pointing to the north, the direction of the enemy mechs, and resumed firing. Meanwhile they each lifted their combination weapons to their shoulders and aimed the 30mm Vengeance railguns over the tops of the town’s buildings. Each Medusa had a huge ammo hopper affixed to its lower back that chain-fed ammunition to the automatic cannon as the rounds tore up the hillside and shredded the VTOL gunships as they tried to take off.
‘Incoming!’ McWilliams shouted over comms. Suddenly the shuttle banked violently. Bodies slid into each other in the overloaded shuttle as people grabbed hold of whatever they could. Nyukuti thumped into her hard and squashed her against a member of first platoon. From the rotor drone’s lens feed she saw what had happened. The Triple S mechs were targeting the shuttles, trying to distract the Heavy Bastards. Both were burning hard and coming down low over the town in a rain of glittering chaff, bright flares and tiny sensor-confusing Electronic Counter Measure decoys. The air burned red as the Heavy Bastards and the shuttles’ point defence lasers shot missiles out of the air. The shuttle bucked and more of the legionnaires were thrown about. Miska heard the audible snap of a leg breaking, which was followed a moment later by screaming.
‘Medic!’ someone shouted.
Fuck this noise, Miska decided.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-One, you’re going to put down in the plaza at Eighth and River Street. LSM, you’re taking first platoon and going heavy weapons hunting in town,’ Miska told them over comms.
‘Understood,’ her dad replied.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-Two, you’re going to take third and fourth platoon and drop them as close to the enemy Command Post as possible. I’ll follow with second platoon.’
‘Understood,’ Perez replied.
‘Permission for a missile run on the enemy ass once we’ve dropped you guys off?’ McWilliams asked.
‘Negative, Pegasus-One, I want all airborne elements in close air support once we’re on the ground,’ she told the Comanche
ro pilot. ‘Offensive-Three-Actual, I want you to sweep south along the hill back towards the river, secure the landing pads and any of their VTOLs,’ she told the commander of Third Platoon. She could hear something that sounded like railgun fire bouncing off the assault shuttle’s armour as it came in to land. The cargo ramp was already down, the air fresher near the river. The Pegasus lurched to one side and she heard the screeching of tortured metal as the assault shuttle presumably crushed a car. First platoon piled out of the Pegasus accompanied by the Cyclops. The ramp closed and they climbed into the air to the sound of more tortured metal and the poorly syncopated tattoo of railgun rounds bouncing off the shuttle’s armour. The shuttle lurched as it was hit by a la-la, a multi-role, man-portable, light anti-armour rocket.
She could see Torricone kneeling over one of first platoon’s legionnaires. He was cutting through inertial armour with the penny cutter scissors from his trauma kit to reveal a compound fracture that was slowly painting the deck red.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Offensive-Two-Actual,’ she said to the lieutenant in charge of second platoon. ‘You’re going to sweep north—’
‘Towards the mechs?’ he asked. He sounded scared. She supposed it was reasonable but she couldn’t wait to get out there.
‘Leave the mechs to the Heavy Bastards,’ she told him. From where she was crouched, by the bulkhead close to the ramp, she could see him nod. He didn’t look convinced.