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He was, Diana had decided, just nervous. Yet nervousness was rare among
Clan warriors, which made his fidgety ways all the more irksome to his
compatriots.
"MechWarrior Diana?"
"Yes, Faulk?"
"I thought I spotted something. Over there. To the left."
Aidan had moved the Falcon Guards to the right flank of the Jade Falcon
advance on the Prezno River. Joanna's
Star, by her choice, had taken an extreme right-flank position and sent die
Elementals back to the main body. Joanna
had told Diana that she wanted her own warriors there to counter any ambushes.
"We have whipped the other Stars into shape, but I still prefer to cover at
least one flank myself."
Diana saw only grid lines of geographical topography in her primary-screen
scans. The only movement was among a clump of trees, an orchard near the main
road they were now following.
"Might Com Guard unite be hiding in that orchard?" Faulk said, his voice so
tense that Diana imagined his thin body squirming with apprehension in the
command couch. She knew Faulk had accumulated a first-rate codex in his years
as a warrior and that his fears would not affect bis skill, but the idea of
him fidgeting in his seat was not comforting.
"The scan shows only an empty orchard, Faulk. Unless the Com Guards are
disguised as some kind of native fruit and are hanging from branches ready to
spring at us, I do not think we face any special danger there."
Later she would remember her sarcasm, cursing herself for not taking Faulk
more seriously.
As they approached the orchard, Diana turned her attention to the area beyond
it, seeking other potential threats.
"Does it not seem strange to you, MechWarrior Diana, that we have been on the
march for fully an hour and yet have still had no response from the Com
Guards?»'
The man's apprehension made his voice tremble on every word of more than one
syllable.
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"Take it easy, Faulk. And, for the sake of Kerensky, we do not need formal
address in the field. MecnWarrior is a mouthful of a word, quiqffl"
"You have not noticed. I always use formal address, MechWarrior Diana."
"And why in the name of all the Clans do you do mat, Faulk?"
"Because "
Diana never learned Faulk's answer, for the peaceful orchard suddenly erupted
into quite another scene. Fruit trees seemed to open up and splay
outward, and holes in the ground suddenly disgorged a lance of Com
Guard
BattleMechs. And when they came out, they came out shooting.
From the Jade Falcon command group Aidan got the news of several minor attacks
all around the route of march.
The command group derived its information from the surveillance provided by
high-flying aerofighters, which spotted
'Mechs emerging from the ground in four areas. In each case the Com Guard
units had disguised their biding place via some manufactured but realistic
topographical construction. Besides the lance of 'Mechs coming from
the fake orchard, others appeared from an apparent silo, a small
hillock mat was completely fake, a pile of rocks. With the advantage
of surprise, the enemy 'Mechs did considerable damage before retreating just
as quickly into the night.
Aidan radioed Joanna for a report on the sneak attack involving her Star. "Any
BattleMech damage?
"A few hits," she said. "One BattleMech severely damaged, needs to be taken
back for repair. One pilot down."
Faulk's Gargoyle took die first major hit when forty LRMs blazed
from a Bombardier's torso and destroyed the
Gargoyle's left arm, amputating it messily just as Faulk fired a
cluster of SRMs. The missiles landed harmlessly, gouging holes in the
ground and exploding in front of the Bombardier. Meanwhile, the Com
Guard 'Mech rushed onward toward Faulk's 'Mech, burning away large chunks of
the Gargoyle's ferro-fibrous armor as it went.
Diana tried to cut off the Bombardier, but a Centurion blocked her path.
Looking like someone wielding a thick pipe in one hand, the Centurion fired
the pipe, an LB-10X, at her. Much of the fragmented submunitions fell
harmlessly around her, die hits only minimal. Diana returned fire
with a blast from her extended-range PPC, knocking out the
Centurion's center-torso medium laser.
Joanna rushed her Mad Dog into the fray, wanting to go after the Centurion
personally. Firing from a distance were the other two Mech Warriors of Alpha
Striker, Khastis and Leema. When Khastis' Hellbringer hit an Enforcer with a
cluster of SRMs, die enemy pilot immediately engaged his 'Mech's jump jets and
leaped away from the action.
The Bombardier was meanwhile raining more damage down on Faulk's Gargoyle.
With torso bent forward, the Com
Guard 'Mech ran swiftly at the Gargoyle, its short-range missiles joining the
pillars of fire laid by their larger cousins.
The Gargoyle, disconcerted by the speed of its foe, could not effectively
return fire, especially with its left arm gone.
Faulk ejected, but he chose the wrong moment. His trajectory took him through
a stream of laser fire not even aimed at him. It sliced away part of the seat
and severed Faulk's right leg along with it. Even from where they sat
in their cockpits, the other pilots in his Star heard his sudden,
earsplitting scream.
The Com Guard 'Mechs, apparently satisfied with the outcome of their
ambush, abruptly ceased their attack and withdrew into the darkness.
Diana started to pursue, but Joanna ordered her back.
"I want at them," Diana protested angrily.
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"It would be a waste of effort," Joanna said. "Those 'Mechs are faster than
yours, and none were damaged enough to be picked off as a stray lagging
behind. It was one of their hit-and-run operations. The cowards. Filthy
freebirth cowards!"
To Diana the freebirth epithet seemed empty when applied to this enemy, who,
after all, came from a culture where none of the births were genetically
engineered. As she spent more time among the trueboras, Diana had
begun to resent their casual rejection of everything freeborn. Freeborn
or not, she was a good warrior. Indeed, many of the trueborns in the
new Falcon Guards could not claim to have distinguished themselves in past
combat.
Horse had told her many horror stories from his life as a
freeborn, and she realized she was fortunate. Perhaps because of the
invasion or because of her considerable skill as a warrior, Diana was not
treated much different than if she were a trueborn.
She could not resolve her feelings about her dual role in mis Jade Falcon
unit. On one hand, she wanted to show that a freeborn was equal to any
trueborn; on the other, she wanted to forget she was a freeborn and just do
her job.
When she expressed these feelings to Horse, he pondered a moment, then
said, "Seems to me you get your armor chipped off either way.
Either way you admit shame at being freeborn. Who says trueborn is
better just because someone picks out their genes and stirs them up in some
vat? Then again, who am I to talk? I'm just one of those lousy freebirths, you
know." Diana heard the sarcasm, -but the two never found time to finish the
conversation.
Dismounting from her 'Mech, Diana searched the nearby field for Faulk. By the
time she found him, a medic unit was already ministering to him. His face
twisted in grimaces of pain, and she saw that the laser had sheared
off his leg neatly just below the hip. This battle was over for Faulk almost
before it had begun. He would be fitted for a prosthetic leg, however, and
there would be other battles, other wars. Just not Tukayyid.
Joanna came up beside her.
"A clean hit," she said. Faulk, seeing his formidable commanding officer,
managed to choke back his moans.
"Yes," Diana said. "I pity him."
"Oh? An odd reaction from a warrior. Are we not supposed to be pitiless?"
"Perhaps you are, Star Captain Joanna. I am free born. We are ... peculiar." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]