8

Falkirk, Alkalurops

Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

7 August 3134; local summer

Grace’s caravan pulled into Falkirk after thirty-two hours of straight driving. Grace put a sleeping four-year-old aside and climbed down from a truck’s cab. She tried to get the kinks out of her back as she crossed the dirt parking lot to Mick’s main shop. The morning was hot, but the scent of Scotch broom carried from the bushes along the verge of the road. It smelled like home.

“This place stinks,” Danny said as he dismounted a truck.

Grace ignored that as Mick came out to see what all the noise was. He took one look at seven flatbed trucks loaded with machine tools and whistled. “Gonna need more space.”

“Mick, I want you to meet a friend I’ve made. Sven, come over here.” The BattleMech mechanic stumbled over, rubbing sleep from his eyes and life back into his legs. The men eyed each other like two roosters, then went off to play “stump the genius” over the tool hoard. That should keep them busy for the day, Grace figured.

Jobe borrowed a jeep and raced for the Donga River Valley, “to see my second wife,” he said. Chato’s nephew was there, the hovertank fully operational and available to give Chato a ride home.

Grace filled in Wilson, Ho and Laird over lunch. She had to stop several times to let them absorb things. Wilson shook his head after she told him the Dyev’s cargo had not helped her cash problem. “This Santorini, he was on the Dyev and tried to have someone steal the diamonds. He probably queered the transfer of funds to you on Galatea. A real pain, huh?”

No one disagreed with that.

Grace finished with how the MechWarriors had signed for a pittance. “They deserve more, but that’s what they agreed to.”

“Not what one normally hears about mercs,” Ho said, patting his round belly. “Do you trust them?”

“Yes,” Grace said, with no hesitation. “Most are as straight up as you and me. True, they didn’t fit in where they were and probably won’t fit in here. But right now we need them. Syn, well, she’s a case all her own. Don’t let her in a card game, or let your wife see you with her,” Grace advised. “Sven’s a genius and knows it. I hope he and Mick get along because we need ’em both.”

“Wasn’t there another? Betsy?” Laird said.

“Betsy Ross. She stayed behind in Allabad to find answers. I sure hope she can.”

“So we fight,” Wilson said.

Grace took a deep breath. “That’s the way I see it.”

“Maybe the next raiders won’t get this far,” Ho said.

Laird agreed. “There are all those ’Mechs over at the big corporate mines. That would be the place to go next.”

Wilson snorted. “If Santorini is behind this, he’s already cut a deal with the corporations. We little guys are the ones that have to look out. And we’ll have to do it alone.”

“Then you think all this is no accident,” Grace said.

“Anyone disagree?” Wilson asked. No one did. “I say we fight, but I think we’ll be surprised at who we end up fighting.”

 

The town meeting went long, but the people of Falkirk were for a fight if one came their way. When the hands went up for the vote, Grace checked the eyes. Many were looking around furtively. They were ready to fight, but no one looked forward to it.

The next day the Net reported that efforts to raise the DropShip got no reply. Talking heads offered thoughts, fears, hopes, doubt. No one really knew anything. Grace ignored the Net.

She had plenty to do. Jobe returned with two dozen ’Mechs from the entire Donga River Valley as well as trucks, and men in the trucks to form the infantry. Chato returned, too. More Navajos were crossing the mountains to join him every day. No one could tell another the path for his feet, but where a man like Chato led, many followed. They made superb engineers.

But with Betsy gone, who’d train the infantry? “No problem,” Ben assured her. “It will be a while before there are any ’Mechs to train in. Danny, Victoria, Sean and I can organize an infantry school of some quality.”

“Yeah, Biddy could show them how to march by a pub without stopping.” Danny laughed at his own joke, but got serious when all three glared at him. “All right, I can show them how to march, too.”

“You can’t just order these men around,” Grace said. “They have to know why you need them to do what you tell them.”

“Sean will be perfect for that,” Victoria said as the young man reddened. “He knows battles. He can show your militia where good men made the difference.”

So that gave a purpose to the men and women who drove up from the valley and even from the plains, but that didn’t put a roof over their heads. Grandpa had had a large family, but Grace had found his house rather spacious for just Mother and her. It absorbed the mercs. Wilson’s bunkhouse took in the early-arrival volunteers, and other folks around town found room for the families who came with their would-be warriors. Tents in a wash above town where trees took the worst heat off the day handled others.

Constabulary Lieutenant Hicks brought in a dozen men, rigged a crane, and unloaded battle armor from a flatbed truck. Grace slapped him on the back. “You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

The lieutenant flashed her a rueful smile. “You know, after that last raid, I was going to take up chicken farming, but the warehouse behind the shop had these boxes gathering dust for more years than I can remember. I figured I’d check on them as I left. Turns out we have twelve sets of Gnome battle armor. A note from the Legate five back told our commander to use these if he thought his men had time to master them. Guess my boss wanted us out giving tickets rather than learning ’em.” He turned to Ben, stood to attention, and saluted. “Sir, can you train my men to use this gear?”

“With a glad heart,” Ben said.

“There’re a few other Constabulary posts finding stuff in their inventory that dead captains didn’t want to mess with and the raiders missed. I’m just the first; there’ll be more.”

And there were. Of course, that meant more men and families to feed. Mother and Auntie Maydell took charge, but still Grace wasn’t left with time on her hands. Others saw to that. One afternoon Sven came out from Mick’s shop. “I have something for you.”

“Problem?” Grace asked. Why would this man want to show me a problem? If he can’t solve it, I sure can’t.

“We’ve been taking ’Mechs apart. We’re about to put them back together. Thought you’d like to see what’ll make your Pirate a real cutthroat.” Grace followed Mick into the shade of the shop. It smelled of burnt plastic, hot metal and men’s sweat—not a bad perfume to attract a mining woman.

Mick joined Sven, a proud grin on his face. “You gonna show the mayor what we can do.” Thank God, St. Peter and St. Patrick the two fellows hit it off. Grace didn’t want to think what would have happened if they had pulled at cross-purposes.

“Here’s the chassis, stripped to the buff. I hope we’re not offending a young lady’s fine sensibilities.” Mick grinned.

Grace made a show of looking around. “Don’t see any ladies. Never met one in Falkirk. Just us hardworking miners with dirty fingernails,” she said, waving a hand at them.

“I’m using that fine carbon filament Sven brought to wrap the legs, arms and thorax. It doesn’t add much weight and should nearly double the load they can carry.”

“The engines are a given,” Sven said with a nod to the good word Mick had given him, “but your man here is a prince among motor men when it comes to jacking up the output. These engines will be putting out a good twenty percent above advertised horsepower. Thirty percent for short bursts.”

“It’s all in the injectors. What’s making ’em fighting machines is the armor this old scoundrel lifted from some blind man,” Mick said, pounding the other man on the shoulder.

“It’s easy to get this old rig to spew out composite armor,” Sven said. “The new armor-repair kits work only on the Armstrong stuff they use for IndiMechs. This old press was made from an even older design, when IndiMechs were new. It remembers where it came from. We run the outer armor through. Aligned crystal steel is ACS whether it’s for an IndustrialMech or BattleMech. That fine young man you recruited at Allabad was kind enough to donate the ceramic-fiber spinning mill he used to repair bumpers. It gives us everything we need for some serious ferro-fibrous armor.”

“And I had plenty of artificial diamond monofilament,” Mick chortled. “What do you think I use to retip all the drills you miners bring me to sharpen? The cubic boron nitride composite looked to be the show stopper, but Ho had a ton of the stuff. He uses it to insulate freezers. We have to melt it out of the honeycomb matrix, but it works fine.”

“One run through the autoclave makes the outer skin. The next run makes the inner protective layer. A third run binds the two together. Not quite as solid as you get from the factories, but damn better than any other stuff.” Sven finished, and both men grinned like a pair of well-fed cats.

“Great,” Grace said, “but can the ’Mechs take the weight? Mick, didn’t we about max out Pirate’s gyros when we added that armor? Brady landing on his ass was funny, but his own gyros had as much to do with that as the rocket that just missed him.”

The guys looked at each other. “We can’t make bigger gyros,” Sven said, as though he was admitting to not having the right screwdriver, “so we’re doubling up on them. The raiders took all the ’Mechs around Allabad, but they didn’t hit the spare parts all that bad. Mick got the word out, and we’re due for a truckload of gyros that’ll let us put two sets in every ’Mech.”

“And the good part is, I got one hundred and twenty days to pay for them. With luck, we’ll be converting these ’Mechs back to workers by the time the suppliers want their bill paid,” Mick crowed.

“They’re charging you!” Grace exploded.

Mick just shrugged. Grace had the feeling she’d taken the hook in bait and switch. “About those gyros . . .” she said.

The guys eyed each other. “Well, there’s a reason there’s only one set of gyros,” Mick said. “You get two sets and they can argue with each other, end up working against each other. Anyway, in the spin-up checklist, we’ve added SYNCHRONIZE GYROS.”

“And if you take a knock or a hard hit, the gyros can go out of sync, so you may have to resync them. Nothing we can do about that,” Sven said, scuffing the toe of his boot on the floor.

“That’s why we insist that only the smart ones operate the ’Mechs,” Grace said, then took the guys off the hook. “Okay, we’ve got good armor, but I’d kind of like to do something nasty to the raiders. Throwing dirt clods isn’t the fun it used to be when I was ten and trying to get even with the boys.”

“Oh, you haven’t heard,” Sven said.

“No, she hasn’t heard,” Mick agreed.

“What haven’t I heard?”

“We’ve got two things up our sleeves,” Mick said. “Sven here brought in everything we need to make a nifty thirty-millimeter Gatling gun. Not as fancy as an autocannon, but something we can make here. Johnny Shepherd, our gunsmith, came up with a caseless shell that feeds real nice and lets us keep the machinery pretty simple.”

“Caseless, no brass,” Grace said, trying to think fast.

“Yeah, we don’t got a lot of brass,” Mick said.

Grace frowned. “But if you’re using glue or something to hold the propellant together . . .”

“It kind of gums up the works,” Sven agreed. “Gatlings are pretty forgiving, but we’ll have to clean ’em good after a fight.”

This whole lash-up was one compromise after another, but Mick was still grinning. “A painter drove in yesterday. Brought a whole load of paint with him.”

“So now we can paint the ’Mechs?”

“Yes, but not with his stuff. His aluminum powders are going straight into the explosives mill,” Sven said.

“I don’t think the girl understands you,” Mick said.

“Aluminum is great for sheeting,” Sven said. “In a fine powder, it gives paint that silver look that lasts and lasts. But aluminum powder makes great rocket propellant, too. Mix it with the stuff coming out of the Kilkenny fertilizer plant, and we’ve got power for medium-range rockets. The painter knows a chemist with a magnesium supply. I think we’ll have everything we need for shaped charges on our rockets. I know you look at every new joe who walks in as another mouth to feed, but some are bringing in the know-how we need to equip a damn fine army, ma’am.”

Three days before the DropShip was due, Grace called a supper meeting at her home for her leadership crew. To the seven mercs, she added Wilson, Ho, Laird and Mick. Chato and Jobe saw to their own interests. The composition wasn’t exactly representative, but at least there was no bickering over rules. They knew why they were here. With luck, they’d all agree on what they were going to do.

Done with one of Mother’s great meals and ready to move to business, Grace turned to Wilson. “Did you bring them?”

“Signed, sealed and attested to. All registered at the courthouse,” he said, handing Grace a folder.

Grace stood, and let her eyes rest on each of the six MechWarriors at her table. “All of you were kind enough to sign on to train us. To fight with us. I want to personally thank you for that.” The muttering around the table told her it was nothing, just their job. Ben eyed her quietly.

“We, the people of Falkirk, want to thank you. We have a saying: ‘Words are cheap. Land is forever.’ So I’m not going to say a lot, just give these to you.” She walked around the table, placing before each warrior a deed for six hundred and forty acres of prime foothill land. “If you want to farm, there’s good bottom land and water on each of these. Wil, there is water, isn’t there?”

“I checked each plot,” Wilson said. “There’s enough water there to support a good herd. If not, bring that deed back to me and I’ll personally swap it for any square mile of land I have.”

“There’s also solid rock under the hills above your farmland. There’s no way to tell, but most every hill around here has some valuable minerals in it. As for petrocarbons, you’ll just have to take your chances with the rest of us.”

Grace paused back at her chair. “I know you are warriors, and land may not mean the same to you that it does to me. But this is the best that I have to give you . . . this land that we stand on . . . and my thanks.”

Ben stood as Grace took her chair. He glanced at his comrades, then spoke to the townspeople. “Times have been strange for us. We trained in the art of war, but lived in a time that did not demand greatness from us. When the fighting came, no one wanted us. I thank you, Grace, for giving us a chance to show our skills. And I thank you for giving us this land, the land of your ancestors. Now we stand with you, on land that is yours and ours. Thank you.”

The others said thank you, though Grace doubted Danny was interested in land that lacked a pub. Probably none of them ever thought of more ground than the six-foot plot they would be buried in. Well, times were changing for all of them. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, Grace thought, and cleared her throat.

“Getting down to business: Are we anywhere close to ready?” Around the table, heads shook slowly. “They’re good men and women,” Danny said, “but they’re good men and women who’ve spent less than two weeks learning how to soldier.”

Ben leaned forward. “The Navajos have shown them how to dig, and Sean has told them why a shovel is the infantry’s best friend. Most know to hold their first shot until it counts. Beyond that, I don’t know. They don’t know the men to their right or the women to their left nearly well enough. When the first one runs, the next one may run, too,” he said. “How is our ammunition?”

Sven pursed his lips. “Not as bad as I feared. The chemist is a miracle worker. We’ll have high-explosive antiarmor shells for the rocket grenades and tungsten penetrators for the thirty-millimeter guns. Any ’Mechs meet our infantry, they’ll know we are there. Medium-range rockets for the ’Mechs and the gun trucks. One load, no more. I’ve got Gatlings enough to go around, thirty-millimeter for the ’Mech MODs, twenty-millimeter for the gun trucks. And don’t shoot it all off the first time a blade of grass bends, you warrior types. There’s not a lot more ammo where that comes from.”

“So the raiders show up tomorrow, and we are not ready,” Grace said in summation.

“You didn’t really think it would be different,” Syn said, lounging in her chair. The ex–Bannson’s Raider wore a brightly colored wisp of cloth she’d bought from a Donga River merchant. Jobe eyed her as though he wanted to make her his third wife, or at least tonight’s wife. The eyes she threw his way were full of yes.

There was a knock at the door, and Angus ducked his head in. “I thought I’d find you here. Have you been monitoring the Net?”

“Not since it quit saying anything helpful,” Grace said.

“The inbound ship broke its silence. It wants all town mayors to meet the ship on landing. It rattled off a list of fifty. You were right there in the O’s.”

“Were Jobe and Chato included?”

The old lawyer paused for a second. “I don’t think so.”

“Why do I not feel offended at that?” Jobe said with a toothy smile. “Grace, you cannot go. This smells like a white man’s plot to get all his enemies in one place and kill them.”

“Jobe, you have to quit assuming everything is a white man’s trick to get at everyone else. As young Sean can tell you, the English white man was using it on his Irish and Scottish cousins long before he knew there was anyone else to beat up.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Grace,” Chato said, “but I agree with Jobe. This does not look like a place you want to be.”

“She could wear battle armor,” Sean said.

Grace shook her head. “That’s not the image I want to project.”

“I agree,” Ben said. “Go gracefully or not at all.”

“I am going. If the rest are greeting the raiders with drinks and munchies, I don’t want to stand out like a grenade among the chicken wings,” Grace said, smiling at her own joke. “Let’s play it the raiders’ way for now since we aren’t ready to waltz into the spaceport and start the fight.

“Chato, Jobe, Ben, you’re in charge while I’m gone. You call the meetings and see that everyone is happy by the end.”

“Grace, I will not be able to. I go with you,” Ben said.

“You aren’t required to.”

“That’s exactly why I go. You need backup. It can come from an unexpected direction if I am with you.”

“You’re needed here.”

“Now, didn’t they tell us the first day in camp,” Danny drawled, “that no man jack of us is irreplaceable. I say if the crazy Cat dreamer wants to go, we let him. I sure don’t want him organizing a battle I’m in based on one of his wet dreams.”

Ben’s growl showed teeth, but Danny kept smiling.

“Well, if that’s all settled,” Syn said, standing in a way that backlit what she was wearing and showed all she wasn’t, “I have places to go and things to do tonight.”

“Me, too,” Jobe said.

“I will pick both of you up in the morning,” Angus said to Grace and Ben.

 

The drive to Allabad was both faster and slower than the trip up. Two weeks ago, they had driven straight through, but the heavily loaded trucks had kept them to a slow pace. Now they drove as fast as Wilson’s new 4x4 could go on the gravel or heavily potholed roads, but called a halt at dark to spend the night at a small hostel.

Grace figured this was a good time to get to know Ben better, but she found him as strange a person as she’d ever met. For someone who had ten fingers and ten toes, the man was totally alien. Raised as part of a battle group from his earliest memories, she could not relate to his youth any more than he could understand her fond memories of learning her trade at her father’s side. Her feelings surrounding the loss of her father left him silent.

In the end, they spent the trip studying the terrain they drove through, and ways to defend or attack across it.

Garry McGuire called Grace as they drove into Allabad; he wanted to talk to her. Angus offered his home to Grace, but slipped out to meet with friends before Garry showed up at five.

“The raiders are landing tomorrow, you know, at ten. Lots to do,” Garry huffed.

“I hear you were elected Governor Pro Tem,” Grace said.

“Yes, yes, unanimously,” he said proudly. By the last twenty-seven members present, Grace had heard. “Now here is how I want things to go. We’ll all line up in the terminal, all fifty of us. Strange—none of those who were so fast to show up at the Guild Hall are fighting to get into this meeting. Anyway, we line up, I tell our visitors they are welcome and the Constabulary has been dissolved and no one will shoot at them. You understand? No one will provoke them in the slightest.”

Grace wanted to ask Garry what he’d do when the first merc grabbed his daughter, but she knew he had only boys. Another one of those great plans thought up by guys who didn’t think about how the other half of the species lived. But Grace only nodded nicely. Now was no time to fight Garry.

If she was going to fight, he was way down her list.

Angus returned late and more than three sheets to the wind. As she helped him to bed, the old man mumbled what he thought was important. “They don’t have any idea what to do, Gracie. They don’t have any idea. The men are scared. Wives are terrified. Everyone who can is getting their families out—out anywhere. I told them about what you’d done at Falkirk. I told them to take three months’ supplies. Some said they’d go. Others just don’t know.” He was mumbling, “Don’t know,” as he drifted off to sleep.

Done, Grace went to her room, wondering if she would die tomorrow. If Jobe was right, the raiders would machine-gun them to . . . what? Impress the locals. Get rid of opposition. From the sound of Garry, there wasn’t any opposition. She could almost hear him going from door to door, telling everyone to just be quiet, to not cause trouble.

What would he say to the raped widow, if it came to that? On that thought, Grace changed into her nightdress and got in bed. Thirty minutes later she was no closer to sleep, then there was an annoying rattling at her window. She got up, unlatched it, and was about to slam it down solidly when a hand reached in.

“Took you long enough. You asleep?” Betsy Ross whispered as she slipped in. Tight black pants, sweater, boots and hood made her nearly invisible.

A soft scratching on Grace’s door was followed by Ben slipping in, also all in black, but unable to hide the whiteness of his hands, face, and feet.

“What have you found out, Betsy?” he asked the woman.

“Who killed the Governor and the Legate, for starters,” Betsy whispered, as Grace struggled to catch every word. “Headmen got offed by a couple of ex-Constabulary boys. You know the type—dirty cops thrown off the force instead of being sent to do hard time. But the trail led off-planet. Don’t know where, but I got a job as a maid at the townhouse Lenzo Computing Industries has kept for off-world salespeople the last couple of years. Lately it’s been full of meetings. I’ve got a pretty solid org chart. Most are Industrial Trade Group. I know the players. What I don’t know is what they’re playing at. I’m not sure they do,” she said, frowning.

Ben nodded. “You have done a good job, Betsy, at a hard task. Tomorrow we will find out which merc organization has the contract and what they intend to do. Unless you know already?”

“Nope. The off-planet crew is playing it very close. No one here knows what’s coming; they’re just getting ready for anything.”

“Santorini works for Lenzo Computing,” Grace pointed out.

“Yes,” Betsy agreed. “He’s a loose cannon there, full of talk about his contacts with Landgrave Jasek and the Stormhammers. Strange, you don’t hear much about him from Jasek.” Betsy smiled. “For what it’s worth, I’m betting Santorini is deep into this—but what I’m willing to bet on and what I know are not the same.”

Grace nodded at the ambiguity. She also noted the quality of information Betsy had just given, far more than she would have expected of an out-of-work merc-infantry type. Who would know what was going on across three, four planets? Interesting. Back to what mattered now. “Will you be at the port tomorrow?”

Betsy shrugged. “Never know where I’ll be until I get there.”

“Have you heard anything about what’s going to happen at the port? Uh, some of us are—”

“Wondering if you need to bother buying a round-trip ticket?” Betsy finished for Grace. “No guarantee on this, but I’d buy the extra ticket. Worse comes to worst, your kids can inherit it.”

“I don’t have kids,” Grace said.

“Don’t blame me for your poor planning, honey. Now I’ve got to go. My break is sure to be over, and I’ve got floors to clean.”

Grace turned to say something to Ben, but he was gone as silently as he had come. She closed the window, locked it, and went to bed. Tossing, Grace tried to assess what Betsy had let spill. She wondered if more than the people on Alkalurops were concerned with what happened on this planet. No answers came to any of her questions, but she fell asleep trying to make some up.

 

The port parking lot was mostly empty when Grace drove into it. She’d skipped breakfast. Even with Betsy’s erstwhile promise, Grace’s stomach was little interested in food. Others got out of cars and walked toward the terminal. No one hailed anyone. Alone, they walked in silence. In the terminal hall, no one worked the ticket booths. No one was visible at all. Grace took her place in a group of people growing in disorder around Garry. She found a metal trash can next to a pillar; it should provide cover.

The building shook with the sonic boom of a DropShip entering atmosphere. Several mayors made a hasty retreat to the rest rooms. All came back sheepishly by the time the weight of the DropShip settling into its berth made the terminal groan.

For five long minutes they waited. Then sounds began to come from the concourse that led to Drop Bay One. Grace could not make out the words, but she didn’t need to. She’d heard orders being shouted at the merc camps. She’d heard feet moving in unison. Troops were disembarking, forming up. An engine gunned to life, and hoverbikes moved unseen. Deeper down, on the heavy-equipment level, she heard the unmistakable tread of BattleMechs. The building trembled as if a tornado was loose inside it.

The next order she did understand. “Forward, march.”

The tread of a hundred fighters marching in step came up the concourse. Two hoverbikes came out first, their drivers eyeing the group as they circled them. The gunners kept their weapons pointed at the roof, but it was clear that the machine guns rode free on their pintles. A quick bend of the elbow, a twitch of the fingers was all it would take for them to turn deadly.

Running feet added to the noise level as several mayors broke for the rest rooms, some for the second time.

Now marching feet filled the terminal. Two platoons, two companies—Grace had no idea, but there were plenty of hard men and women in khaki with guns held at the ready. They moved as one as they marched into the hall. Behind them marched a small group. Grace didn’t need to be told this was the command group—the Sergeant Major was there, towering like a rock.

Grace spotted him before she recognized the commander. “God damn you, you mercenary bastard,” she breathed, and meant every word of it with a flaming anger that fit her red hair and would get her a long penance from the padre next time she was in town. “God damn you to hell,” she said, “Major Loren J. Hanson.”