15
Kilkenny, Alkalurops
Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere
28 August 3134; local summer
Damn near getting killed while leading a losing fight had to be the worst day of Grace O’Malley’s life. Or so she’d thought. Now she knew she’d thought wrong. Leading a losing battle while safely in the rear, chained to maps, was a whole lot worse.
Worse still, it left her time to think she just might be winning.
Grace looked out over Kilkenny from the Congregational Church steeple. For a moment she let the wind blow in her face and blow the cobwebs from her brain. She didn’t feel any better.
The plan seemed to be working. Hanson was leading his hard-charging mercs right down her throat. In the Gleann Mor Valley, people shot and fell back. Chato said the ground around Falkirk was ready for the coming fight.
But did the fight have to be there?
Day after day refugees streamed past Grace. Did she want her friends in Falkirk reduced to that? She eyed a pile of reports held down against the wind by a thirty-millimeter shell. They said the mercs were paying for every klick they advanced. Tanks lost treads to mines. Hovertank fans were bent. Infantry used up their fantastic armor, which deflected sniper shots from their hearts, and now advanced much more cautiously. BattleMechs were a whole lot more careful where they put their feet. It didn’t take long to fix a busted footpad, but every bent foot meant another ’Mech awaiting repair rather than charging forward.
Grace rested her eyes on the west and its just visible hills. Ben was out there, racing for Kilkenny with someone he said she had to talk to. Someone Betsy and Hanson would really want to talk to. Grace was new to this fighting thing. But new as she was, she knew that you planned the fight and fought the plan. Being a miner, she knew plenty of folks who’d paid dearly for not following their plans.
Despite it all, Grace slowly walked around her map. Done, she called Victoria to climb the steeple stairs and go over the map with her. Grace had a new plan to talk through.
L. J. scowled at the map in front of him. With the Net down and his client unwilling to bring it up for a “minor” thing like the decisive battle for Gleann Mor Valley and maybe this whole stinking planet, L. J. was reduced to pushing pieces of paper around a paper map and hoping the real fighting men and machines were somewhere near where his map table showed them to be.
Once upon a time, say three hundred years back, this planet had a Global Positioning System. But the satellites had worn out, and no one had replaced them. So now Roughriders had to read geodetic ground markers to find out where they were, and report their location over the radio. Even his artillery was reduced to line of sight unless he wanted to waste what little ammo he had. God! And I’ve wanted to command a battalion since I was a kid!
L. J. worried his lower lip as he studied his western flank. He’d finally ordered the platoon guarding his left to advance and make contact with the missing Black and Reds. They’d found them . . . or what was left of them.
The good news was that the opposition was running. They’d left anything they couldn’t grab, even some of their dead. The bad news was what he’d learned from the damaged ’Mechs left behind. Their armor was good. Their SRMs, from the damage done, were very good. L. J. rubbed his chin. Why had they taken off? He’d only sent a platoon. They could have smashed it. But when the platoon happened on the ambush, the enemy was long gone, not even dust on the horizon of this usually dusty planet.
No, Grace’s troops had found something they considered important enough to make them abandon their own dead. L. J. shook his head. Whoever had taken out the Black and Reds could have charged straight for Allabad. Threaten Allabad, and Santorini would have been screaming for the Roughriders to protect his delicate hide.
L. J. flipped through the file he had of the mercs Grace had signed up. Woman, woman, woman . . . Hold it. He’d seen that woman before. That was Betty Rose, the maid he’d tried to hire! Betsy Ross, huh? Wonder what her real name is. He glanced down the file on her. Too damn short. He didn’t need Intelligence to tell him this was a false résumé.
He shuffled the file again. Boy: tank driver . . . No tanks so far. “What have we here?” he said. “Benjork Lone Cat. Bet you’d enjoy taking Field Marshal Fetterman’s thugs down.” L. J. froze. He checked the platoon’s report. Yep, there it was. The big, hulking Atlas was missing. “Not something I want to meet, not with just my little Koshi.” But if they captured the Field Marshal, they captured the Atlas.
Damn; what I’d give for some decent pictures of my left flank. L. J. shook his head. Fighting with no bandwidth was like fighting in one of those ancient wars with the first tanks or knights on horses. “I don’t know shit,” he whispered.
The satellite had just made a pass over the valley. The Chief and the Network Services team had cobbled together a way to take very low-resolution pictures off the overhead coverage. He studied what he had. A major enemy force moving fast up the west road. That road led straight to Falkirk. It also met with a side road that could take you to Kilkenny. That town had a fertilizer plant turning out rockets. If he kept the pressure up, he could be there by late tomorrow. The valley narrowed there. He’d strung his forces across two thirds of the valley for most of the push from Amarillo. Kilkenny looked like a place to concentrate. “Mallary, do you have a moment?” he called.
“Be there in a minute,” she said, then arrived sooner. “Casualty reports, sir.”
“Bad?”
“No. Not if we had the spare parts to fix what’s broken.”
“Deaths?” L. J. asked, suspecting he knew the answer.
“Not a one again today, sir. Two more ’Mechs lost their footpads. Two more tanks are hung up waiting for spare treads. We’ve got three types of tracks on our rigs, sir, and six types of fans. We’ve grounded one of each and are parting them out to keep the others running.”
“But no deaths. Grace has managed to inflict, what, twenty percent casualties and still not kill anyone?”
Mallary provided the exact level of his reduced strength. “Twenty-three percent, sir.”
“She’s trimming us, but not making anyone mad.”
“Maybe the civilian doesn’t have a taste for the jugular.”
L. J. shook his head. “No, I’ve fought that woman. She’d have gladly killed me when I was chasing her up that hill. And she has to have people who’ve lost loved ones to the damn B and Rs.”
“They kill Black and Reds, sir. Come out looking for them.”
“But never came out looking for us. They fight us, careful not to hurt anyone, then run. Give up ground.” L. J. tapped the map. “They run out of ground at Falkirk.”
“So,” he said, making a decision. “Let’s concentrate the battalion at Kilkenny. We can blow that plant and get used to fighting together before we hit Falkirk.”
Mallary eyed the map of the town, measuring the distance between the four scattered companies, and nodded. “We can be there by late tomorrow. Assuming this Grace you’re always talking about doesn’t decide it’s time to fight more and run less.”
“Issue the orders.”
“You are changing the orders,” Ben said as soon as Grace showed him her map laid out in the church steeple.
“I think this is a better plan,” Grace said. Victoria didn’t offer an opinion.
“But you have attritioned him only fifteen, twenty percent.”
“We think we’re over the twenty percent mark,” Grace said, feeling like a schoolgirl who’d done the wrong homework and now had to convince the teacher it was a better idea than the original assignment.
Ben eyed the map table, unblinking, for a long moment. “You assume he will concentrate here,” he said, putting a finger on Kilkenny.
“Yes.”
“And if he does not?”
“We go back to Plan A.”
“Order, counterorder, disorder,” Ben said.
“That’s what I told her when she first showed it to me,” Victoria said.
“And Grace answered you how?” Ben asked his fellow MechWarrior. Grace answered instead.
“He knows we have to fight at Falkirk. He’s watched us fall back from every other roadblock. He’ll expect us to fall back at Kilkenny. We can use that expectation against him.”
“So this is the dream that drives you,” Ben said.
Grace took a deep breath. “Yes, this is the dream that drives me.”
“I will have to tell Danny that we go into battle obedient to your dream. He said he was afraid of mine. We shall see how confident he is in yours.”
Grace just shrugged.
“Well,” Ben said, looking up from the map. “I have a man downstairs you must meet. He strode into battle commanding an Atlas. Powerful machine. Could have—should have—slaughtered our ambush all by itself.”
“Why didn’t he?” Victoria asked.
“This Field Marshal of Special Police thought that listening to one lecture by a MechWarrior would tell him all he needed to know to drive a BattleMech. He left yellow sticky notes on the switches he had to activate when he spun up his ’Mech in the morning.”
“Sticky notes?” Grace said, having a very hard time believing it. “I tried them once to keep track of this or that on a busy day. I’d post them up on the inside of Pirate’s cockpit. The pounding and vibrations around made them fall off.”
“They fell off his board, too. He had all his switches in all the wrong places. He couldn’t have hurt a flea except by stepping on it, and he got so confused when we attacked him that he was moving his hands instead of his feet.”
Grace barely suppressed a laugh as she followed Ben down the stairs from the steeple map room. In the vestibule, Lieutenant Hicks stood with his sergeant. Between them was a small man with sweat pouring off his bald head.
Betsy Ross was just coming through the side door. She took one look at the man and actually growled. The man saw her and stumbled back as far as the chain between his handcuffs and the sergeant would let him.
“We meet again,” Betsy said, advancing on the Field Marshal. She didn’t sound pleased to see him.
“Down, girl,” Ben said, putting out an arm to restrain her. “I want him to tell Grace what he did with his loan payment book. The one for the Atlas we now own.” Ben eyed the man, then Betsy. “Then, if Grace doesn’t have any further use for him, you can have him.”
“Please,” the former maid said to Grace. “This scum has nothing of interest to you.”
“Yes I do. I do,” the man begged. “I told him, and he said you’d want to hear this,” he said, nodding to Ben then pleaded with Grace. “Let me talk.”
“Talk,” Grace ordered.
“Yes,” Betsy said, pulling a knife from the lieutenant’s belt and playing it lightly across the captive’s face. “Talk.”
L. J. climbed the steps to the steeple of the Congregational Church. As promised, it gave him the best view of Kilkenny and its environs. To the southeast several large grain elevators blocked his view, but his main interest was to the north.
To his surprise, he found a table and chair already there. Mallary was right behind him, leading the Chief and the specialist who nursed the jury-rigged long-range radio. The radio operator hooked a wire to both of the bells as the Chief spread a map over the table.
“Fits. Think someone had a map up here yesterday?” he said.
“I never said Grace was dumb,” L. J. muttered as he glanced down. In front of the church stood his command van. Two maintenance types were going over it, his Koshi and Mallary’s Arbalest. The two ’Mechs were fast and together provided a balanced force. At the moment they were the main protection the advance headquarters company had.
The Chief put weighted markers on the map—the wind up here was strong, hot and dusty. “C Company moved through town as ordered and set up a perimeter at the dry riverbed about three klicks north of town.”
“They’re taking fire, sir,” the radio operator reported. “Nothing they can’t handle. Mostly rifle shit.”
“Repeat only what you’re told, Specialist,” the Chief said.
“That’s what he said, Chief.”
“Then clean up Captain Graf’s language for him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“D Company should be pulling into town about now, sir,” the Chief said. “We’ll have them dismount and police the place, burn the fertilizer plant, and serve as our reserve.”
L. J. looked down the main road he’d just come up and saw a line of tanks and trucks with ’Mechs along their flanks. “Pass the word to Captain Chang. Tonight he’s our reserve, but first he has to clean this place out.”
“Yes, sir,” the radio operator said, and passed along his orders.
L. J. was looking to the east, so he missed the incoming missile until it exploded close enough to make him duck to the floor. Silly reaction when you’re twenty meters in the air.
He turned to see a second missile arcing in from the west. It fell short—or at least it impacted a block short of the church. Another one was already in the air and aimed more to the south. It exploded just ahead of C Company’s lead gun truck.
“Give me the radio,” L. J. said, and took the phone from the specialist. “Chang, you there?”
“Still here, sir,” came with a dry laugh.
“Slight change in plans. Hook a hard left and go see what’s happening on the west side of town. I’ve got a low hill blocking my view, but there’s another rocket heading in. Be advised, we don’t know what the west flank has, but somebody on our left took out the Black and Reds.”
“I’ll give them the regiment’s thanks, sir. But if they’ve only faced that crap, they don’t know what a real fight is.”
“Knock ’em down, dust ’em off, and bring ’em in,” L. J. said, even as the column that was C Company did a left wheel, spread out, and took off. Two more rockets and the fire died away. That could be all that the west had to offer. Then again, L. J. would wait to see what Chang reported.
“Where are A and B?” L. J. asked.
“A is just pulling into town on River Road, sir,” Chief reported. “B’s a bit behind them. It was held up by an ambush earlier today. Captain St. George left them to clean it up, and pushed on with A.”
L. J. nodded. Art knew he wanted the battalion here, so he was making sure at least one of his two companies was.
It didn’t take binoculars to spot A Company. Their ’Mechs strode into town from the southeast, walking past the grain elevator. A missile came in from a hill to the east, lazy and slow. If the battalion had had any area antimissile defense, shooting this one down would have been duck soup.
But Santorini hadn’t funded them for that.
“It’s going to miss,” Mallary said. L. J. nodded. The missile was well short of the road. If anything, it was going to hit the grain elevator. Huge complex, must be a block long.
Something niggled at the back of his brain. Grain silos. They exploded if people weren’t careful about the dust in them. “Oh my God. Everyone down!” L. J. shouted, and pushed Mallary to the floor just as the elevator blew with a force that probably exceeded anything the planet had seen. He landed atop Mallary as the steeple tried to launch itself into orbit. Failing that, it swayed back and forth beneath them.
When the swinging slowed, L. J. rolled off Mallary. He tried to get up, but either his legs were still shaking or the tower was. It took him a moment to work his way up to his knees. “You okay?” he asked Mallary.
She took his offered hand. “Wasn’t quite what I’d fantasized, but for a first time, you weren’t too bad.” She managed a grin as she got to her knees.
“It was good for me, too,” he told her, risking putting his weight on a broken railing to pull himself up. Mallary put her hand on the table leg in front of her, then thought differently and took his offered hand to stand up.
The operator had grabbed for his radio when L. J. shouted the warning. He was still holding on to it, but the table had been upended, and the left side had come down hard on his groin.
The Chief pulled the table away, then knelt down. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, sir,” the man said, but there was blood on his lips. “Hurts a bit.”
“We need a medic up here,” L. J. shouted to his command van.
“On her way,” a sergeant shouted as a blonde with a first-aid box raced into the church. She was beside the radio operator a minute later.
“A few steps will need watching on the way down,” was her only comment about the trip up. She took over caring for the radio operator as L. J. gently removed the equipment from his bloodstained hands. Mallary righted the table, and the Chief again spread out the map.
L. J. checked the radio, found it still on A’s allotted command frequency and called Art. “XO, you there?”
“Yes, but I’ll never enjoy the smell of a bakery again,” he said. “We’ve got wheat and corn burying half the company. We’ve got hovertanks on their backs like turtles. We’re digging troops out as fast as we can.” From the sound of heavy breathing, Art was doing that while talking. “Is anything else headed our way?”
“I’m up a church steeple in the center of town. I can’t see past the smoke in your sector.”
“Fourth Platoon, get an observation post on the other side of that damn river,” came as a distant shout over the radio. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I know anything. We’re kind of busy, sir.”
“Stay busy. The Aid Station is still en route. I’ll have them join you as soon as possible,” L. J. said. Then he called the company support column under the Adjutant.
“Eddie, A Company is bleeding from an explosion.”
“We saw the cloud. For a second I wondered if there was a Blakist around here throwing atomics.”
“No, just more dual use of civilian stuff,” L. J. growled. “They need your medics and supplies, and I need the artillery. Someone’s shooting at us with long-range stuff sighted on preselected targets.”
“They haven’t done that before.”
“First time for everything.”
“We’ll put on all the speed this road will allow.”
“See you soon,” L. J. said, and switched frequencies. D Company was flashing. “Hanson.”
“Chang here, sir. They’ve got quite a demonstration going on the west side. I make it a dozen ’Mechs on the next ridge. They’ve got infantry. Some I can see. A whole lot I can’t. Gun trucks with machine guns and grenade launchers. I’d say they’re at battalion strength at least. I’m digging in to defend, sir, but if they start spreading out, they can overreach both my flanks.”
L. J. stared off to the west trying to see what at least one ridge hid from him. Could these guys maneuver? If Chang hit them, would they fire and fall back? Maybe trip over themselves? Hell, Chang was only outnumbered three to one; he should be able to take a bunch of green civilians.
L. J. started to click the radio, then remembered this might be the group that had at least one attack, maybe two under their belts. Sure, they’d only chewed up Black and Reds, but they’d taken fire and still chewed them up.
“Chang, probe ’em. See if you can make them do something. Charge. Retreat. Something.”
“I’ll get back to you, sir. What was that big bang?”
“A Company is up to its ears in popcorn,” L. J. said.
“Okay, sir. Excuse me for asking. I was just curious,” said the man, who didn’t believe the answer he got and wasn’t going to push his CO. L. J. didn’t have time to set the record straight. C Company was flashing. He changed frequencies.
“Sir, there are an awful lot of bad guys on my front. Right now they’re not doing much more than looking at us look at them, but ’Mechs keep walking over a ridge and walking back. There could be four of them, there could be forty.”
“How are they armed?”
“Damned if I know, sir. We haven’t exchanged fire yet, but those look like large-caliber multibarrel machine guns and something that gives off an IR signature.”
“They had one of them in Falkirk when I fought them. Field burner or something.”
“It’s the ‘something’ that I worry about. What was that racket back in town, sir?”
“Grain elevator exploded. Buried A Company in hot corn.”
“Grain elevators do tend to explode if you don’t treat them with respect.”
“A missile hit didn’t meet with this one’s idea of respect. D is on your left facing a battalion-sized force. I’ve got Chang probing it. You up to probing the force on your front?”
“No reason why not. We’ve got them where we want them and outnumbered one to three. I’ll do a bit of tapping, see if they run like they’ve been doing.”
L. J. wouldn’t bet on that, but a commander did not share negative comments with his subordinates. “Go for it.”
George Stillwell grinned to himself. The Roughriders were coming out. He would have made the same mistake. No company of mercs could back down from a battalion-strength bunch of rabble. Problem was, the Falkirk militia weren’t rabble—not after what George and the other MechWarriors had put them through.
Standing in the front seat of a gun truck, he signaled to the rest of his platoon. “Follow me.” He could have had the Condor tank they’d captured, but he’d always argued that it wasn’t the fancy toys, but the guts of the guys behind the guns that mattered—not that all of the folks behind the guns following him were guys. It made for an interesting team.
His gun truck bounced over brush and rocks as it shot forward, three more swinging out in rough echelon as they zigged and zagged behind him. Gunners hung on to their 20mm Gatling guns attached to the roll bars on the enemy side of the trucks. Missileers steadied their single launchers on the same bar to the right. Stillwell pointed his driver at the far right of the troops advancing from Kilkenny. “Swing wide of that Centurion. It has several ways of ruining our day.”
The driver did. The Centurion tracked them as they crossed right to left across its front, then burned sagebrush behind Stillwell’s truck with its extended-range medium laser. It and a Demon medium tank adjusted their course to confront Stillwell’s team. Infantry squads in Gnome and Cavalier battle armor spread out around them.
“Good deployment,” Stillwell breathed. If he wasn’t careful, they’d cut him off and up. “But I’m just here to do some raiding and scaring,” he said, and reached for the mike. “Task Force George, see if we got their range.”
Behind him, 20mm rounds reached out for the Roughrider team. Some hit, but only at extreme range. No damage.
“Hold your fire. Let’s see if we can draw them off.” He pointed for his driver, and the turn got wider. In the distance, the Roughriders began a careful pursuit. “Ah, so you fellows have heard about the way our moles dig.” Stillwell grinned—he was driving a gun truck for the same reason.
Only after Stillwell’s task force drew even with the Roughrider line did the enemy task force step up the pace of its pursuit. “You don’t want me getting behind you now, do you?”
Now that the Roughrider task force was in slow but earnest pursuit, Stillwell pointed his driver to do a hard right, and he led the platoon in what must have looked like serious flight. The Roughriders, true to their name, put the hammer down and came hot after him.
Which didn’t bother Stillwell at all as he topped a small rise and dropped out of sight. Hardly visible in the draw that ran through the shallow valley, eight jeeps sat ready, Gatling guns and rockets balanced on their roll bars. At the sight of him, infantry vanished into their fighting pits. Task Force George was now complete: three platoons of gun trucks, two of infantry.
The Centurion used its height to snap off some Gauss rounds and LRM volleys to send George’s gun trucks seriously into random S-turns. George timed his next move to the arrival of the Roughrider task team at the crest of the hill.
“About-face!” he shouted, and his four gun trucks did hard U-turns and gunned from cover. From trucks and hidden infantry, rockets reached out to slash into the Roughriders.
“Charge!” George yelled. Zigzagging, racing for all they were worth, guns blazing and rockets flying, the trucks advanced. Militia infantry fired off rocket after rocket, marking their fighting holes, but the Roughriders were hardly interested in them.
The Roughrider infantry took hits but held their line long enough to fire off a volley. Then they backed across the hill. Firing off lasers and short- and long-range missiles, the Roughrider’s BattleMech and tank covered for the infantry withdrawal, but flying shards of armor showed they were paying a high price. Finally the Centurion backed up, firing even as its legs disappeared in defilade. Lastly, the tank roared out of the valley in reverse, firing all the time.
There was no question in Stillwell’s mind that he would not lead his task force across that ridge into whatever trap the Roughriders were setting for him. Cheers from the troops were softened by the LoaderMech behind Stillwell holding up a single rocket.
“This is my last, sir.”
The gunner beside her laughed nervously as he dug two 20mm shells out of the box magazine attached to his Gatling gun. “I was about empty, too.”
“Then let’s get out of here before they know we bamboozled them,” George said, joining in their laughter.
The wheeled trucks did a fast turn around the valley to collect their dismounts, and then Stillwell let them lead the way to the rear, his platoon going last. His final glimpse of the battlefield showed the Roughriders he’d fought regaining contact with the rest of their company as another team of gray gun trucks was just starting to circle their flank.
Ten klicks back, they drove into a resupply park under the happy management of Auntie Maydell from Falkirk. She laughed as George described their little ambush, but shook her gray head at the empty ammo boxes. “We can’t keep this up much longer.”
An infantry girl pointed at the five-kilo satchel charges in the bottom of the truck. “We were ready to take them down with those if George here had let them get close.”
Maydell and George exchanged glances. “Grace better figure out a way to end this or it’s going to be a bloody balls-up,” George said.
“Not my way of putting it,” Maydell sniffed, “but I do think she’d better put a stop to this before it gets past us all.”
L. J. flipped the radio switch. “Hanson here.”
“Art here. There’s something on the other side of that river. They put a lot of fire on the guys who tried to cross to set up an OP on that side. We don’t have a listening post over there yet, but we’re sure taking fire.”
“Art, B Company is coming up behind you. I’ll have them cross the river well out and swing behind your troublemakers. I’d like to pocket a few of these shooters for a change.”
“I feel a strong urge to talk to them myself,” Art said.
“How bad is it?”
“That explosion blew out the panels on the silo pretty hard. I got a Joust tank that had everything sheared off right down to the turret armor. Quarter-inch steel sheets can do a number on tires, tracks, you name it. Then that damn smoldering corn comes flowing at you like lava, and all you want to do is run but you can’t. We’ve dug most of our troops out but I don’t think I have a vehicle or ’Mech with a stone’s worth of offensive power. My Arbalest had one laser sliced in two by flying metal, something’s sticking out of my right rocket launcher and I have no lights at all on my left one. Never thought all this damage could come from just walking by a damn pile of food.”
“We’re learning to respect a whole lot of new stuff, Art. Let me know when you see B Company.”
Chief and Mallary eyed the map. They had only two markers for enemy battalions; they promoted a COMPANY marker to BATTALION as L. J. dialed up B Company.
“Fisk, how long before you get up here?”
“I’ve got Kilkenny in sight, sir. Least I do if Kilkenny is the town with all the smoke.”
“That’s us. We have reports of battalion-sized forces of unknown quality on our left and front. Something blew up the granary on our right and is resisting any effort by us to probe it. I’m assuming another battalion. Until A Company can pull itself together, I need you to secure the right flank with a minimum force and serve as my reserve.”
“Understood. We’re nearly there, sir.”
“Swing a platoon out to the other side of that river and see if you can cut off a few hostiles. I’d love to have a heart-to-heart talk with a couple of them.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
The medic hollered for a wire-cage stretcher so she could get the radio operator down. Two troopers carried one up, along with several coils of rope. Once the wounded man was safely strapped in, they lowered him down the outside of the still-swaying steeple.
“That man’s earned his wound medal,” the Chief said as the radioman kept silent even when the wind twisted the stretcher around and hung him facedown, fifteen meters in the air.
“A lot of people are,” L. J. said as he glanced to the east, where smoke still filled the sky. It was getting late; there was less than an hour of daylight left. L. J. would not send his troops on a night pursuit across ground previously held by this enemy—not with their proclivity for turning holes in the ground into busted ’Mechs and hurt troopers.
Graf and Chang reported in. Both C and D Companies had engaged hostiles on their front who withdrew in good order, only to have more show up on their flanks and threaten their rears. Nobody was breaking. Nobody was running. L. J. called off the attacks. Graf and Chang began a retrograde of their own as the sun sank toward the mountains to the west.
It was no better on his right, either. Fisk did swing out a platoon, but the hostiles seemed to be expecting that. The platoon came under immediate fire. A large chunk of A Company was now in the field hospital set up just this side of the burning granary. With A dismounted, L. J. wasn’t in a position to pull back even if he wanted to.
He headed downstairs with Mallary. It was time to do a walkaround of his battalion. Let the troops see the skipper, and let the skipper see firsthand the mess he’d gotten them into. He had just powered up his Koshi when the command van’s undercarriage collapsed in a shower of slugs.
Grace sat in Pirate as she had since noon, when the first reports started coming in of Roughriders approaching Kilkenny. Her ’Mech almost touched the ceiling of Flaherty’s Dance Emporium. How Ben had gotten the big Atlas to damn near sit under its not-tall-enough roof was something she did not want to know. A half-dozen ’Mechs MODs stood waiting along the dance floor, like some gargantuan line dance. At the back end of the hall, infantry held in place the section of wall they’d blown out to get the ’Mechs in. At the other end of the hall, Betsy and more infantry made ready to blow another hole. Two blocks away stood the steeple Grace had used to plan this new battle.
Betsy reported that Hanson was up in the steeple now. May St. Peter, St. Patrick and St. Michael keep him from using it as well as Grace hoped she had. Reports from lookouts scattered around town and brought by messengers through the sewers said that the fighting outside Kilkenny was not going the Roughriders’ way. Except for that, Grace was deaf, dumb and blind.
Atop his Atlas, Ben stirred from his nap. “It is time,” he called to Grace.
“Time to move out,” she called to the other ’Mechs. The room hummed with electronics and began to fill with smoke as engines coughed to life. Grace made sure her neurohelmet was in place, then checked her cooling vest. She followed the new checklist, but her two gyros stuttered and did not sync. She let them spin for a minute, then shut them down and restarted them. This time they synced. “Watch them,” the gal who’d had Pirate told Grace. “If you take a hard step or knock into a building, the gyros go crazy. I’ve gotten to where I can restart them real fast.”
Grace was probably nowhere near as fast, but this was her fight and Grace would fight it herself. She tapped her radio. “Form two lances. Back four go out the back way and support us as planned. You two behind me, follow Ben. Understood?” They answered in the affirmative. Grace crossed herself. “Let’s go.”
There was a soft explosion as Betsy blew out the east wall of Flaherty’s place. Beside her, two guards kept a short balding man on a tight chain. Betsy gave the ’Mechs a jaunty thumbs-up as they strode forth into what Grace hoped would be the decisive battle for Alkalurops.
Two blocks away a command van stood just outside the Congregational Church. Troopers in Roughrider tan looked up in surprise. Grace gave the van a short burst, but thirty-millimeter tungsten penetrators do not just flatten tires and blow out a radiator. The undercarriage of the command van was shredded. Behind the van a familiar-looking Koshi and an Arbalest got moving just as Ben sent an SRM volley at the two.
Grace quickly moved to the left side of the street, Ben began to lumber down the center, and the other two ’Mechs took the right. The Roughrider ’Mechs backed up, zigzagging in a random fashion to complicate the big Atlas’ firing solutions. Ben squeezed off SRM volleys at random intervals, but only one struck a glancing blow to the Koshi.
The Koshi returned fire, sending rockets at the Atlas. One miss bounced Grace off the building beside her, and her gyros lost sync. Stalled, she managed to restart the pair and get moving just before the Arbalest burned the place she’d been standing with a laser burst.
Grace fired a short burst, sending sparks and shards of armor flying from both ’Mechs, to tell Ben she was still in the fight. The Roughriders concentrated on the Atlas as they backed up, failing to notice the four ’Mech MODs behind them until a barrage of rockets exploded around them. The Arbalest spun even as it danced right. Grace had a good guess what messages were flying between those two. If she was going to keep them from jumping out of this, she had to act now.
She mashed her LOUDSPEAKER button. “This is Grace O’Malley, Alkalurops Defense Forces Commanding Officer,” echoed off the walls of the two story buildings around them. “I wish to talk to Major Loren Hanson of the Roughriders.”
“This is Major Hanson,” blared back at her. “I am not prepared to discuss my surrender with you.”
“That’s fine, because I wish to discuss my surrender.”
“Your surrender?”
“Yes.”
“Is this some kind of trick?”
“I am a miner, Major, not a murderer. I wish to end this killing. If the only way I can is to discuss my surrender, that is what I will do. Haven’t I earned the right to talk surrender terms?”
“You have done that,” he said as the cockpit of his Koshi opened. “You could write a book on Fabian tactics.”
“Why write a book that others would just use against me?” Grace said as she opened Pirate’s cockpit. “My infantry leader has some data files she thinks you might like to review.”
“You mean my maid, Betty Rose?”
“A gal takes whatever job she can,” came with a laugh from behind Grace. Betsy was advancing along the sidewalk, machine pistol in one hand, a large ’puter in the other. Behind her trailed two guards with a very reluctant Field Marshal.
“I recognize the guy behind you,” the Major said.
“I thought you would,” Betsy called up to him. “Want to come down here and ask him a few questions? I think you’ll find him both entertaining and possibly lifesaving.”