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Jubilee DropPort
Marantha
Magistracy of Canopus
14 March 3071
The sentry died with barely a sound.
Vincent crept up behind him, cat-quiet on the soft soles of his boots,
and slid his assault rifle around on its sling behind him. The Blakist
guard was looking the other way, watching one of the DropShips
squatting on the tarmac as a BattleMech walked sentry-go across
the field. Vincent allowed himself a grin as he came out of his
crouch, arms reaching, hands open and tensed.
In a smooth motion he slid forward, one hand around the
Blakist’s head to cup his chin and the other on the back of his
helmet. “Peace of Blake,” he whispered, and twisted. There
was a moment’s resistance—forty kilograms of pressure, his
mind filled in—and then a slight pop, like a green stick breaking,
and then he was holding the sentry’s entire weight. The
body sighed as the zealot’s last breath slithered out of it, but
Vincent laid him down before the man’s bowels could release.
“Clear,” he whispered.
Three black shadows detached themselves from the base of
the retaining wall behind him and sprinted forward, covering
the twenty meters in seconds. They were garbed identically to
him, each in a black sneaksuit with web-harnesses festooned with
silent pouches. Each of them held an assault rifle toward the port.
“A knife would have worked,” the leftmost one said. Sheila was
always a distance killer, Vincent knew. He smiled—it was an old argument—
and reached down to tap the dead man’s body armor.
Sheila shrugged, nearly invisible in the dark. “I would have gotten him in the
neck,” she said.
“Vehicle,” Franks whispered, twisting slightly to bring his Ebony assault rifle
to bear.
Vincent crouched over the sentry and brought his own Ebony around from
where he’d slung it behind him. He didn’t look toward his hands, instead judging
the distance between the team and the approaching truck. Four hundred meters,
he thought. A flick of his thumb dialed the power selector on the Ebony’s receiver
to high.
“We need transport,” he said. “Dalton.” He beckoned toward the body, then reslung
his rifle to grasp the dead man’s feet. The third Magistrate operator took the
Blakist’s forearms and together they carried the man the ten meters to the roadway.
Two swings for momentum and then they tossed the body into the center of
the road.
“It stops, we take it,” he said, bringing his rifle around again.
“It’s a Pit Bull,” Sheila whispered.
“Watch the cargo bed for troops,” he ordered. The lights of the truck were starting
to cast a shadow behind the body. They’d be spotting it any minute now. He
looked to Sheila. “Would have been kind of hard to hide the
knife wound to his neck, don’t you think?”
Vincent watched the truck slow suddenly as the driver saw the
body, and tried to keep his mind on the mission. The truck itself
was a symbol of the troubles, he knew. Pit Bulls were inexpensive,
all-terrain cargo trucks built primarily in the Taurian Concordat.
He’d ridden in any number of identical vehicles during his stint
in the Magistracy Armed Forces, but he’d never been comfortable
with them. They came from the Concordat, after all.
Can’t we even make a decent enough truck that we don’t have
to buy other people’s?
That he got to shoot at this one, and kill the Blakist ********
driving it, was a welcome bonus. He’d spent ten years in the MIM,
the last year leading this cell of the Ebon Magistrate. The Blakists
had come to the Magistracy to bring their Jihad to Vincent’s
home. He didn’t need to wait for orders from his control; he
knew what the Magestrix would say. Kill them. Kill them all, and
make certain they know the Magistracy is not their playground.
The Pit Bull stopped, groaning on its oversized axles. Two
men jumped out, one from each side of the cab. The cargo bed
was stacked high with containers but the light was too low for
Vincent to read the icons on the side. They left the truck running
as they jogged toward the sentry’s body. Vincent, from his
position on the rightmost edge of the team, took the nearest
Blakist. Sheila and Franks would target the left, and
knew to do it without being ordered to. The Ebons spent
enough time training for these situations that they didn’t
need to be told what to do.
“Blake’s blood,” Vincent heard, as one of the new arrivals
knelt by the body. “You okay, pal?” The other man
remained standing, looking around. His hand dipped
toward his belt. Vincent fired. The others fired.
The Ebony laser assault rifle was a silent
weapon, designed from the start for
Ebon operations. Along with the
shock-resistant polymer frame
and the variable power function,
it also had an all-but-invisible
pulse. The four lasers fired within
a second of each other and the only sound was the
muted click of the firing mechanism engaging. There were
no showy flashes of neon light or earth-shattering screeches
of power. The two men near the body both had heads; four
rifles fired at two targets, and then their heads were gone.
Vincent was on his feet before his target had finished
falling to the ground. He didn’t bother going to check the
bodies; without heads they weren’t a threat to anyone, and
he already knew the sentry was dead. Instead he moved to
the Pit Bull and mounted the cargo bed. Up close he read
the icons on the containers, and a tight, feral smile broke
out on his face.
“Boom,” he whispered.
Sheila climbed into the bed with him while Dalton
and Franks climbed into the cab. The Pit Bull lurched
into motion, continuing on the way it had been going
when they stopped it. They had an appearance to make
on the opposite side of the Port, but turning off the
road and going across the fields would only attract
attention.
“Primary target,” Vincent said, trusting the whisper-
mike on his throat to transmit his words to
the Ebon driving. Franks nodded his head once
and turned at the next intersection, pointing
the Pit Bull toward the squat shape of the Mule-class DropShip in
the distance. Vincent slung his rifle, pushing it around behind him
and letting the friction sling draw it tightly against the small of his
back. He reached into the left thigh pocket of his sneaksuit.
Sheila looked at him. “The DropShip?”
Vincent grinned and slapped the container beside him. “Boom.”
“’Mech.”
Vincent looked up from the third container he was working on.
A white-painted Word of Blake BattleMech was coming toward
them. It was a light ’Mech, a Commando, but it was still more powerful
than anything the Ebons had at their command. “Rifles off,”
he said, reaching behind him to pull the power pack from the
Ebony’s butt. With no power, the sophisticated laser assault rifle
became a quiescent mass of plaster and polymer.
“We’re still a klick away,” Sheila said.
“And then we’ve got to get aboard,” Vincent said, not taking his
eyes off the Commando. “So let’s worry about what’s in front of us
right now, shall we?”
The Commando wasn’t moving with any more purpose than its
already established patrol pattern. Vincent could well imagine
the tedium of walking a ’Mech across the same ground again and
again, waiting for something to happen. Either the MechWarrior
would be ultra-sensitive, checking every sensor contact out of
sheer boredom, or he’d simply be bored out of his mind and just
keep walking until the end of his shift. Vincent knew which type
of pilot he’d be, but he was hoping for the other.
“If it shoots?” Sheila asked.
“Then we die,” Vincent said.
The Commando came abreast of them and passed, without so
much as a pause.
“Half a klick,” Franks reported. “Two minutes.”
Vincent looked forward, toward the mass of DropShip that was
rapidly blotting out everything else on the landscape. This close
he could see the landing ramps still closed, as if the ship was buttoned
up for launch. For a moment he was afraid they were too
late, but the landscape around the massive vessel still crawled
with vehicles and personnel. He smiled after a moment. It would
take the massive ground tug a while to re-hitch trailers and get
clear of the blast radius of the Mule’s drive.
“Warehouse,” he ordered.
The Commando continued along its patrol route, its pilot safely
ignoring any danger around him in his single-minded pursuit of
the end of his shift. The Pit Bull turned away from the DropShip
and toward the low line of warehouses in the distance.
“We’re not going to the DropShip?” Sheila asked, as she reinserted
her power pack in the Ebony’s butt.
“Not just yet,” Vincent said, returning to his wiring. “And not in
this truck.”
Vincent pounded on the cab of the truck and pointed. “That one,
over there.” The warehouse he indicated was virtually deserted,
but he saw the telltale scuffs on the tarmac out front that told
him what he sought was inside. Franks dipped his head once and
guided the Pit Bull toward it. He swung the front end of the vehicle
around and then switched to reverse, backing into the doorway
so that the cargo bed was the first part of the truck through, as if
they were expecting to load more cargo.
“Hey!” a laborer shouted. Vincent looked across the containers at
him, eyes narrowed. If it was a Canopian citizen he’d simply incapacitate
him. There was no need to harm those who were just
trying to earn an honest living. Wars came and went but cargoes
always needed handling. “You can’t bring that crap in here, friend.
This is a restricted warehouse.”
“Orders,” Sheila shouted back, as Franks gunned the engine
one last time before he shut the big diesel down. A surreptitious
swipe unclipped her rifle from its harness; Vincent caught it as she
stepped around him. “The Adept out there told us to bring it here.”
Vincent smiled, impressed by her tactic.
“Adept Kline?” the man asked.
“That’s the one,” Sheila said. Her hand moved too quickly for
him to see and there was a pop. The laborer collapsed and Sheila
turned away, revealing the suppressed pistol she’d drawn from the
holster low on her thigh. Franks and Dalton piled out of the truck’s
cab and came around the back, looking to Vincent.
“Exos.” He pointed to a rack against the side of the wall, where
a brace of bulky Gorilla exoskeletons were waiting. “Get these
drums unloaded.” He turned and waved a hand at Franks to hold
up. “Go back out and get us one of those baggage jitneys,” he said.
“Three cars at least, empty if you can find it quickly.”
The slender man nodded once and trotted out the warehouse
door. Vincent followed Sheila and Dalton toward the racked exoskeletons.
They were simple muscle-amplification suits, used by laborers
across the Human Sphere to make moving bulk items easier. While
nowhere near as sophisticated as the powered combat armor the
MIM had access to, the Gorillas were simple, reliable technology.
And they’d move the bombs like they were weightless.
Each drum was a 50-kilo container of concentrated fertilizer,
intended for the reforestation project at Indian Island. There were
six in the back of the Pit Bull, and Vincent had spent the drive
across the DropPort dousing each in diesel fuel, then wiring them
together with the initiator charges from his thigh pouch. The trick
now would be getting them close enough to the DropShip to actually
do any damage. Which was where the jitney came in, if they
could get back across the tarmac without anyone catching on.
“Boom,” Vincent whispered.
Franks reappeared at the door just as they were getting the
body of the laborer back into the now-empty Pit Bull. He jumped
in the cab of the truck and fired the diesel up before pulling the
truck out. The warehouse was filled with the sickly-pungent tang
of diesel exhaust by the time the truck was gone, but Vincent
barely noticed. He stomped his exo to the doorway and looked
out, being patient and waiting for his eyes to adjust.
The Commando he found almost immediately, still stalking its
way around the tarmac. Vincent smiled at that, thinking of what
his commander would have said about such a predictable patrol
routine when he’d been on tour with the MAF. It made him feel
better about this mission, knowing that even the high and mighty
Word of Blake carried idiots on its rolls.
There was still traffic around the Mule, and more and more cargo
carriers and baggage jitneys going toward it still. His eyes rolled
across the mélange of hovercraft, tracked crawlers, and wheeled
cargo vehicles until he saw the one he wanted. He looked behind
him, saw the others ready with the bombs. He brought his Ebony
around, thumbing the selector from high-power to extendedrange,
shouldered it.
“Vincent,” Sheila said. He fired.
The fuel truck he’d targeted, almost a full kilometer distant,
exploded as the laser pulse stabbed into the thin metal shell. The
explosion cast light for a square kilometer. Vincent watched the
rolling shadows as Franks pulled the jitney up in front of the warehouse.
“You sure that was smart?” he asked.
Vincent smiled. “Not at all… but it should keep their attention
over there.”
The others loaded the containers into the three-trailer jitney
while Vincent shed his Gorilla suit. He beckoned the others back
into the warehouse and pointed toward an access stair. “I want
you three to get up there and cover me,” he said.
“You’re kidding,” Dalton said.
“It doesn’t take four people to drive that thing,” Vincent said, reslinging
his Ebony now that he was out of the exoskeleton. “I’ll
take it out to the DropShip and leave it. Then one of you can tag
the containers from here and we’ll all get out in the confusion.”
“And when something goes wrong?” Sheila asked.
Not if, when, Vincent thought. Good girl. “Then you kill it,” he said,
and walked out.
The jitney’s controls were simple to the point of imbecility.
Two foot pedals, one marked “Go” and the other “Stop” and a
steering bar. He climbed into the driver’s couch and pushed the
“Go” pedal, turning the bar toward the Mule. There weren’t any
obstacles on the road, so Vincent took the opportunity to look
around. It’s always a good idea to see how the bad guys react to bad
news, he thought.
Emergency vehicles were already emerging from the hardened
shelters they hunkered in when not needed. He looked toward
the military reservation on the western edge of the port but saw
little response; evidently the Word figured that Magistracy crews
could handle Magistracy problems. That was good news for him.
The big Mule with the broadsword painted on it looked open and
inviting. Vincent grinned and looked the other way.
The Commando was running toward the explosion. Vincent
shook his head and started to turn away, but then jerked his head
back as the twenty-five ton BattleMech sprinted past the flaming
wreck and kept coming, directly toward the Mule. “****,” he
breathed, and smashed his foot down on the “Go” pedal. The
jitney lurched and gained another five kph, but that was it.
“Vincent,” his earbud whispered.
“I see it,” he growled.
“We can’t kill that thing,” Franks said.
“I know,” Vincent said.
The Commando jerked and angled toward the warehouse.
Vincent looked at it, confused. The radios should have been so
low-powered as to be undetectable, especially through the
sure-to-be-cluttered RF frequencies of the port. Then a whitehot
bloom of light flared on the ’Mech’s faceplate canopy, and
Vincent understood.
“Sheila,” he whispered.
“Get to the ship,” she said. The warehouse was still a kilometer
distant. The Ebons’ assault rifles could make that
stretch. Two more spots of luminescence flared to life on the
Commando’s head before the ’Mech pounded past. Franks
and Dalton.
“Displace!” he shouted, twisting in his seat to follow the
’Mech.
“The target, Vincent! The mission!”
Telltale puffs of scintillating light showed where the
Ebons were hitting the Commando’s tough armor, but
the damage their rifles could do to even the lightest
BattleMech was infinitesimal. The Commando, sprinting
forward in multi-meter strides, was already raising its armmounted
weapons to bear on the warehouse. It fired.
The building exploded.
Vincent turned forward again. The DropShip filled the jitney’s
windscreen as he approached. There were marines out now, grayclad
Word of Blake infantrymen with rifles directing the vehicles
away from the DropShip. Vincent kept the jitney on course, ignoring
the wave-offs from soldiers and directors alike. The Mule’s
squat stern clutched above the tarmac, with just enough space
for the fusion torch’s mighty exhaust to clear to lift the ship free
of a planet’s gravity. The massive legs that supported the vessel
were splayed, stressed with the weight of the 11,200 ton DropShip.
Vincent steered for the small space between the nearest leg and
the DropShip’s hull.
A bullet ricocheted off the tarmac in front of him. He looked
to the side, saw the infantryman adjusting his aim to the jitney’s
driver’s carriage. Vincent snarled at the man, bringing his Ebony
around one-handed and stabbing a laser pulse at him. The soldier
dodged to the side, safe.
For the moment.
Vincent let the sling take the rifle and grabbed the steering bar
with both hands, jerking the jitney to the side around the curve
of the Mule’s stern. He leaned out of the cab, pulling the rifle free,
and looked back, watching the trailers curl around behind him. He
saw the canvas flaps swing open, saw the barrels secured together.
He looked the other way.
The Commando was running toward him, arms raised. Vincent
saw the focusing lens of the medium laser in the ’Mech’s right forearm
begin to glow as the MechWarrior preheated the laser. He
looked away, back at the trailers, and raised the Ebony.
“For the Magestrix,” he muttered, and fired.
Marantha
Magistracy of Canopus
14 March 3071
The sentry died with barely a sound.
Vincent crept up behind him, cat-quiet on the soft soles of his boots,
and slid his assault rifle around on its sling behind him. The Blakist
guard was looking the other way, watching one of the DropShips
squatting on the tarmac as a BattleMech walked sentry-go across
the field. Vincent allowed himself a grin as he came out of his
crouch, arms reaching, hands open and tensed.
In a smooth motion he slid forward, one hand around the
Blakist’s head to cup his chin and the other on the back of his
helmet. “Peace of Blake,” he whispered, and twisted. There
was a moment’s resistance—forty kilograms of pressure, his
mind filled in—and then a slight pop, like a green stick breaking,
and then he was holding the sentry’s entire weight. The
body sighed as the zealot’s last breath slithered out of it, but
Vincent laid him down before the man’s bowels could release.
“Clear,” he whispered.
Three black shadows detached themselves from the base of
the retaining wall behind him and sprinted forward, covering
the twenty meters in seconds. They were garbed identically to
him, each in a black sneaksuit with web-harnesses festooned with
silent pouches. Each of them held an assault rifle toward the port.
“A knife would have worked,” the leftmost one said. Sheila was
always a distance killer, Vincent knew. He smiled—it was an old argument—
and reached down to tap the dead man’s body armor.
Sheila shrugged, nearly invisible in the dark. “I would have gotten him in the
neck,” she said.
“Vehicle,” Franks whispered, twisting slightly to bring his Ebony assault rifle
to bear.
Vincent crouched over the sentry and brought his own Ebony around from
where he’d slung it behind him. He didn’t look toward his hands, instead judging
the distance between the team and the approaching truck. Four hundred meters,
he thought. A flick of his thumb dialed the power selector on the Ebony’s receiver
to high.
“We need transport,” he said. “Dalton.” He beckoned toward the body, then reslung
his rifle to grasp the dead man’s feet. The third Magistrate operator took the
Blakist’s forearms and together they carried the man the ten meters to the roadway.
Two swings for momentum and then they tossed the body into the center of
the road.
“It stops, we take it,” he said, bringing his rifle around again.
“It’s a Pit Bull,” Sheila whispered.
“Watch the cargo bed for troops,” he ordered. The lights of the truck were starting
to cast a shadow behind the body. They’d be spotting it any minute now. He
looked to Sheila. “Would have been kind of hard to hide the
knife wound to his neck, don’t you think?”
Vincent watched the truck slow suddenly as the driver saw the
body, and tried to keep his mind on the mission. The truck itself
was a symbol of the troubles, he knew. Pit Bulls were inexpensive,
all-terrain cargo trucks built primarily in the Taurian Concordat.
He’d ridden in any number of identical vehicles during his stint
in the Magistracy Armed Forces, but he’d never been comfortable
with them. They came from the Concordat, after all.
Can’t we even make a decent enough truck that we don’t have
to buy other people’s?
That he got to shoot at this one, and kill the Blakist ********
driving it, was a welcome bonus. He’d spent ten years in the MIM,
the last year leading this cell of the Ebon Magistrate. The Blakists
had come to the Magistracy to bring their Jihad to Vincent’s
home. He didn’t need to wait for orders from his control; he
knew what the Magestrix would say. Kill them. Kill them all, and
make certain they know the Magistracy is not their playground.
The Pit Bull stopped, groaning on its oversized axles. Two
men jumped out, one from each side of the cab. The cargo bed
was stacked high with containers but the light was too low for
Vincent to read the icons on the side. They left the truck running
as they jogged toward the sentry’s body. Vincent, from his
position on the rightmost edge of the team, took the nearest
Blakist. Sheila and Franks would target the left, and
knew to do it without being ordered to. The Ebons spent
enough time training for these situations that they didn’t
need to be told what to do.
“Blake’s blood,” Vincent heard, as one of the new arrivals
knelt by the body. “You okay, pal?” The other man
remained standing, looking around. His hand dipped
toward his belt. Vincent fired. The others fired.
The Ebony laser assault rifle was a silent
weapon, designed from the start for
Ebon operations. Along with the
shock-resistant polymer frame
and the variable power function,
it also had an all-but-invisible
pulse. The four lasers fired within
a second of each other and the only sound was the
muted click of the firing mechanism engaging. There were
no showy flashes of neon light or earth-shattering screeches
of power. The two men near the body both had heads; four
rifles fired at two targets, and then their heads were gone.
Vincent was on his feet before his target had finished
falling to the ground. He didn’t bother going to check the
bodies; without heads they weren’t a threat to anyone, and
he already knew the sentry was dead. Instead he moved to
the Pit Bull and mounted the cargo bed. Up close he read
the icons on the containers, and a tight, feral smile broke
out on his face.
“Boom,” he whispered.
Sheila climbed into the bed with him while Dalton
and Franks climbed into the cab. The Pit Bull lurched
into motion, continuing on the way it had been going
when they stopped it. They had an appearance to make
on the opposite side of the Port, but turning off the
road and going across the fields would only attract
attention.
“Primary target,” Vincent said, trusting the whisper-
mike on his throat to transmit his words to
the Ebon driving. Franks nodded his head once
and turned at the next intersection, pointing
the Pit Bull toward the squat shape of the Mule-class DropShip in
the distance. Vincent slung his rifle, pushing it around behind him
and letting the friction sling draw it tightly against the small of his
back. He reached into the left thigh pocket of his sneaksuit.
Sheila looked at him. “The DropShip?”
Vincent grinned and slapped the container beside him. “Boom.”
“’Mech.”
Vincent looked up from the third container he was working on.
A white-painted Word of Blake BattleMech was coming toward
them. It was a light ’Mech, a Commando, but it was still more powerful
than anything the Ebons had at their command. “Rifles off,”
he said, reaching behind him to pull the power pack from the
Ebony’s butt. With no power, the sophisticated laser assault rifle
became a quiescent mass of plaster and polymer.
“We’re still a klick away,” Sheila said.
“And then we’ve got to get aboard,” Vincent said, not taking his
eyes off the Commando. “So let’s worry about what’s in front of us
right now, shall we?”
The Commando wasn’t moving with any more purpose than its
already established patrol pattern. Vincent could well imagine
the tedium of walking a ’Mech across the same ground again and
again, waiting for something to happen. Either the MechWarrior
would be ultra-sensitive, checking every sensor contact out of
sheer boredom, or he’d simply be bored out of his mind and just
keep walking until the end of his shift. Vincent knew which type
of pilot he’d be, but he was hoping for the other.
“If it shoots?” Sheila asked.
“Then we die,” Vincent said.
The Commando came abreast of them and passed, without so
much as a pause.
“Half a klick,” Franks reported. “Two minutes.”
Vincent looked forward, toward the mass of DropShip that was
rapidly blotting out everything else on the landscape. This close
he could see the landing ramps still closed, as if the ship was buttoned
up for launch. For a moment he was afraid they were too
late, but the landscape around the massive vessel still crawled
with vehicles and personnel. He smiled after a moment. It would
take the massive ground tug a while to re-hitch trailers and get
clear of the blast radius of the Mule’s drive.
“Warehouse,” he ordered.
The Commando continued along its patrol route, its pilot safely
ignoring any danger around him in his single-minded pursuit of
the end of his shift. The Pit Bull turned away from the DropShip
and toward the low line of warehouses in the distance.
“We’re not going to the DropShip?” Sheila asked, as she reinserted
her power pack in the Ebony’s butt.
“Not just yet,” Vincent said, returning to his wiring. “And not in
this truck.”
Vincent pounded on the cab of the truck and pointed. “That one,
over there.” The warehouse he indicated was virtually deserted,
but he saw the telltale scuffs on the tarmac out front that told
him what he sought was inside. Franks dipped his head once and
guided the Pit Bull toward it. He swung the front end of the vehicle
around and then switched to reverse, backing into the doorway
so that the cargo bed was the first part of the truck through, as if
they were expecting to load more cargo.
“Hey!” a laborer shouted. Vincent looked across the containers at
him, eyes narrowed. If it was a Canopian citizen he’d simply incapacitate
him. There was no need to harm those who were just
trying to earn an honest living. Wars came and went but cargoes
always needed handling. “You can’t bring that crap in here, friend.
This is a restricted warehouse.”
“Orders,” Sheila shouted back, as Franks gunned the engine
one last time before he shut the big diesel down. A surreptitious
swipe unclipped her rifle from its harness; Vincent caught it as she
stepped around him. “The Adept out there told us to bring it here.”
Vincent smiled, impressed by her tactic.
“Adept Kline?” the man asked.
“That’s the one,” Sheila said. Her hand moved too quickly for
him to see and there was a pop. The laborer collapsed and Sheila
turned away, revealing the suppressed pistol she’d drawn from the
holster low on her thigh. Franks and Dalton piled out of the truck’s
cab and came around the back, looking to Vincent.
“Exos.” He pointed to a rack against the side of the wall, where
a brace of bulky Gorilla exoskeletons were waiting. “Get these
drums unloaded.” He turned and waved a hand at Franks to hold
up. “Go back out and get us one of those baggage jitneys,” he said.
“Three cars at least, empty if you can find it quickly.”
The slender man nodded once and trotted out the warehouse
door. Vincent followed Sheila and Dalton toward the racked exoskeletons.
They were simple muscle-amplification suits, used by laborers
across the Human Sphere to make moving bulk items easier. While
nowhere near as sophisticated as the powered combat armor the
MIM had access to, the Gorillas were simple, reliable technology.
And they’d move the bombs like they were weightless.
Each drum was a 50-kilo container of concentrated fertilizer,
intended for the reforestation project at Indian Island. There were
six in the back of the Pit Bull, and Vincent had spent the drive
across the DropPort dousing each in diesel fuel, then wiring them
together with the initiator charges from his thigh pouch. The trick
now would be getting them close enough to the DropShip to actually
do any damage. Which was where the jitney came in, if they
could get back across the tarmac without anyone catching on.
“Boom,” Vincent whispered.
Franks reappeared at the door just as they were getting the
body of the laborer back into the now-empty Pit Bull. He jumped
in the cab of the truck and fired the diesel up before pulling the
truck out. The warehouse was filled with the sickly-pungent tang
of diesel exhaust by the time the truck was gone, but Vincent
barely noticed. He stomped his exo to the doorway and looked
out, being patient and waiting for his eyes to adjust.
The Commando he found almost immediately, still stalking its
way around the tarmac. Vincent smiled at that, thinking of what
his commander would have said about such a predictable patrol
routine when he’d been on tour with the MAF. It made him feel
better about this mission, knowing that even the high and mighty
Word of Blake carried idiots on its rolls.
There was still traffic around the Mule, and more and more cargo
carriers and baggage jitneys going toward it still. His eyes rolled
across the mélange of hovercraft, tracked crawlers, and wheeled
cargo vehicles until he saw the one he wanted. He looked behind
him, saw the others ready with the bombs. He brought his Ebony
around, thumbing the selector from high-power to extendedrange,
shouldered it.
“Vincent,” Sheila said. He fired.
The fuel truck he’d targeted, almost a full kilometer distant,
exploded as the laser pulse stabbed into the thin metal shell. The
explosion cast light for a square kilometer. Vincent watched the
rolling shadows as Franks pulled the jitney up in front of the warehouse.
“You sure that was smart?” he asked.
Vincent smiled. “Not at all… but it should keep their attention
over there.”
The others loaded the containers into the three-trailer jitney
while Vincent shed his Gorilla suit. He beckoned the others back
into the warehouse and pointed toward an access stair. “I want
you three to get up there and cover me,” he said.
“You’re kidding,” Dalton said.
“It doesn’t take four people to drive that thing,” Vincent said, reslinging
his Ebony now that he was out of the exoskeleton. “I’ll
take it out to the DropShip and leave it. Then one of you can tag
the containers from here and we’ll all get out in the confusion.”
“And when something goes wrong?” Sheila asked.
Not if, when, Vincent thought. Good girl. “Then you kill it,” he said,
and walked out.
The jitney’s controls were simple to the point of imbecility.
Two foot pedals, one marked “Go” and the other “Stop” and a
steering bar. He climbed into the driver’s couch and pushed the
“Go” pedal, turning the bar toward the Mule. There weren’t any
obstacles on the road, so Vincent took the opportunity to look
around. It’s always a good idea to see how the bad guys react to bad
news, he thought.
Emergency vehicles were already emerging from the hardened
shelters they hunkered in when not needed. He looked toward
the military reservation on the western edge of the port but saw
little response; evidently the Word figured that Magistracy crews
could handle Magistracy problems. That was good news for him.
The big Mule with the broadsword painted on it looked open and
inviting. Vincent grinned and looked the other way.
The Commando was running toward the explosion. Vincent
shook his head and started to turn away, but then jerked his head
back as the twenty-five ton BattleMech sprinted past the flaming
wreck and kept coming, directly toward the Mule. “****,” he
breathed, and smashed his foot down on the “Go” pedal. The
jitney lurched and gained another five kph, but that was it.
“Vincent,” his earbud whispered.
“I see it,” he growled.
“We can’t kill that thing,” Franks said.
“I know,” Vincent said.
The Commando jerked and angled toward the warehouse.
Vincent looked at it, confused. The radios should have been so
low-powered as to be undetectable, especially through the
sure-to-be-cluttered RF frequencies of the port. Then a whitehot
bloom of light flared on the ’Mech’s faceplate canopy, and
Vincent understood.
“Sheila,” he whispered.
“Get to the ship,” she said. The warehouse was still a kilometer
distant. The Ebons’ assault rifles could make that
stretch. Two more spots of luminescence flared to life on the
Commando’s head before the ’Mech pounded past. Franks
and Dalton.
“Displace!” he shouted, twisting in his seat to follow the
’Mech.
“The target, Vincent! The mission!”
Telltale puffs of scintillating light showed where the
Ebons were hitting the Commando’s tough armor, but
the damage their rifles could do to even the lightest
BattleMech was infinitesimal. The Commando, sprinting
forward in multi-meter strides, was already raising its armmounted
weapons to bear on the warehouse. It fired.
The building exploded.
Vincent turned forward again. The DropShip filled the jitney’s
windscreen as he approached. There were marines out now, grayclad
Word of Blake infantrymen with rifles directing the vehicles
away from the DropShip. Vincent kept the jitney on course, ignoring
the wave-offs from soldiers and directors alike. The Mule’s
squat stern clutched above the tarmac, with just enough space
for the fusion torch’s mighty exhaust to clear to lift the ship free
of a planet’s gravity. The massive legs that supported the vessel
were splayed, stressed with the weight of the 11,200 ton DropShip.
Vincent steered for the small space between the nearest leg and
the DropShip’s hull.
A bullet ricocheted off the tarmac in front of him. He looked
to the side, saw the infantryman adjusting his aim to the jitney’s
driver’s carriage. Vincent snarled at the man, bringing his Ebony
around one-handed and stabbing a laser pulse at him. The soldier
dodged to the side, safe.
For the moment.
Vincent let the sling take the rifle and grabbed the steering bar
with both hands, jerking the jitney to the side around the curve
of the Mule’s stern. He leaned out of the cab, pulling the rifle free,
and looked back, watching the trailers curl around behind him. He
saw the canvas flaps swing open, saw the barrels secured together.
He looked the other way.
The Commando was running toward him, arms raised. Vincent
saw the focusing lens of the medium laser in the ’Mech’s right forearm
begin to glow as the MechWarrior preheated the laser. He
looked away, back at the trailers, and raised the Ebony.
“For the Magestrix,” he muttered, and fired.
