Текст книги " Lethal Heritage "

"It's normal, Sho-sa.I would guess they're infantry with Inferno missiles meant to slow us down." Even as he spoke the word, Shin experienced a jolt in the stomach. Inferno rockets, fired from a handheld launcher, exploded in a fiery flood of jellied fuel that clung to a 'Mech like burning honey. Besides making a 'Mech an easier target for heatseeking weapons, Inferno hits spiked the internal temperature of a 'Mech high enough to bake the pilot inside his war machine.

"I think you're right." Hohiro's voice remained confident despite the bizarre nature of the raid. "I'll move the rest of the unit south of that position while you and your lance scatter the infantry. Join us as soon as possible, but be wary. Who knows what other surprises these raiders may have for us."

"Hai,"Shin replied smartly, all the while experiencing the same uneasiness he'd felt at the first staff briefing on the raiders coming in toward Turtle Bay. The raiders had popped in at a "pirate point," an arrival point much closer to the planet than most astronavigators felt safe plotting. They had obviously intended the raid to be a surprise, as it would have been except for an emergency oxygen run by a crew mining the rings. They had spotted the incoming DropShips and tight-beamed a warning to the planet.

That warning, however, had preceded the raiders' own radio message to the surface by only minutes. The raiders identified themselves as the "Smoke Jaguars," a name never previously associated with any Periphery pirate band. They wanted to know how many units the planet offered in defense, and took it easily in stride when told they were facing the Fourteenth Legion of Vega. The raiders then reported their targets and said they were only going to attack with two clusters. Shin didn't know what a cluster was, but their 'Mechs had been ripping the hell out of First Battalion.

He keyed the radio frequency open to the rest of his lance. "Arrow Lance, shift to magscan and drift north-northeast.

We're to harry those infantrymen and drive them back. Be careful. They may have Infernos." As his men acknowledged the order, Shin moved his Phoenix Hawkout to the battalion's left flank. Massive jump jets, looking like a folded pair of wings, clung to the back of the eleven-meter tall 'Mech. The war machine carried a pistol-like large laser in its right hand and each arm mounted a medium laser and a 50-caliber machine gun for anti-personnel use.

Using the joysticks on both arms of the command couch, Shin dropped the crosshairs for his weapons onto two of the hidden raiders. I hate to see 'Mechs warring on infantry, but I can't let my people be broiled alive in their machines. Maybe most of those groundpounders will run if a couple get hit.Swallowing hard, Shin tightened his middle fingers on the firing studs and sent the familiar thrumming of machinegun fire echoing up into the cockpit.

Tracer rounds burned white lines from the weapons to their targets hidden in brush. The magscan in the cockpit scored both volleys as direct hits and shifted the target icon from standing to prone, but Shin was sure some of the brilliant tracer rounds had lanced up and away as though ricocheting from their targets. But that's impossible! Must just have hit some rocks behind them or something. A 50-caliber round will go through any body armor a man can wear.

The other targets glowing like fireflies on his tactical display did not move and run as he had hoped. He swung the crosshairs onto two more human icons and pulled the triggers. Bullets burned into the targets, but one of the two targets seemed to jump away from the stream of projectiles. Leaping up, the icon bounded across the computer-generated landscape like a triple-jumper.

Stunned, Shin glanced back at the first two targets he had hit. Both were back up and bouncing across the battlefield like gazelles. With the same foreboding he'd felt earlier, the MechWarrior snapped his sensors over to magnified vislight. May the Dragon have mercy! What the hell are those things?

They looked like men in form, but their mottled gray and black flesh and the abnormal thickness of the armored plates on their bodies marked them as utterly alien. With no necks to speak of, their heads looked like lumps raised from the shoulders and breastplate as an afterthought. A dark V-shaped viewport passed for the mechanical creature's face. Thick cylindrical structures reinforced the forearms, but clearly served more than a strengthening function. The right arm ended in the muzzle of a laser, while the left forearm boasted an underslung machine gun muzzle. The left hand consisted of only a thumb and two abnormally thick fingers, and the feet looked like nothing so much as overlarge, bifurcated hooves melded onto the legs of a smaller creature.

Only when the double-barreled, back-mounted missile launcher lipped flame and sent a missile at his Phoenix Hawkdid Shin realizehe was looking at a suit of infantry armor instead of a living entity. The missile exploded against the Phoenix Hawk'sleft breast and spalled off armor. A tremor ran through the 'Mech on impact, but Shin barely noticed because his mind was running riot.

Without thinking, he impaled the armored figure with crosshairs and hit one of his medium lasers. The ruby beam struck the target and blasted it back as armor vaporized. The figure tumbled over and over again, grasses and bushes along its haphazard line of retreat bursting into flame as it passed. The figure rolled to a stop on its face, with the nowdetached missile launcher continuing to tumble several meters further on.

"Arrow Lance, be careful. These are not normal infantry."

"Roger that, Tai-i,"said Arishige Shimazu from the cockpit of his Firestarter.'The machine guns just seem to make them mad."

Shin spitted another figure with a medium laser. "At least the lasers keep them ..." His mouth went dry. The infantryman he'd hit first with a machine gun burst and then with a laser bolt struggled to his feet. The gray and black jaguarlike spotting had been burned from the front of his armor, revealing shiny metal where some of the armor had melted and run, but the figure moved with no real difficulty. Dropping to one knee, it extended its right arm and sent a laser bolt flying at the Phoenix Hawk,burning away some of the 'Mech's head armor.

Unbelieving, Shin stabbed a large laser toward the little man and mashed his thumb down onto the firing button. The scarlet beam slammed into the humanoid metallic shell, pouring kilojoules of energy into it. The form wavered like an image seen through rippling water, then vanished as the hellish beam totally consumed it.

The smoking hole left where the figure had stood did nothing for Shin's piece of mind. I'm forced to use a heavy laser against that thing, but there's nothing left to show I destroyed it! It could have jumped away. Hell, there's not even any proof it was there in the first place!Shin saw the quartet of glowing impact sites the computer added to the outline of his 'Mech on his status monitor. Nothing but the damage done to me!

More and more of the little infantrymen popped up over the hilltop to surround Shin's embattled lance. As the raiders closed in, their bouncing gait made them tougher to hit. Worse, as he would track one of them to blast it with his energy weapons, two or three others were targeting his 'Mech with impunity. Damage sites dotted Shin's 'Mech like fleabites, while his efforts to hit his attackers were almost as fruitless as swatting at such diminutive insects.

"Yodama, help!"

Shin whirled his Phoenix Hawkat the panicked sound of Harunobu Mori's voice. The infantrymen had swarmed over Mori's Locustlike ants pulling down a grasshopper. One of the Locust'sbird-legs had crumpled beneath withering assaults, and two of the armored figures clung to the other leg, pumping bolt after bolt of laser fire from their right arms into the 'Mech's other hip joint. Three of the infantrymen hammered the 'Mech with their free hands, stripping off sheets of armor as they burrowed into the Locust.

Shin swept machine gun fire over the infantry. The bullets failed to penetrate the armor, but the sheer kinetic force knocked several from their precarious perches. One of the figures hung on somehow to the 'Mech's good leg, but the bullets blasted a hole in the blocky backpack that had once mounted a missile launcher. Lightning geysered out as a detonation shredded the figure's back. The infantryman fell limply to the ground, then Mori crushed it as his 'Mech struggled back to its feet.

Suddenly, a form blocked Shin's viewport. Clinging to the Phoenix Hawk'shead with one hand, the raider pointed his laser at the viewport and triggered it. The red beam slowly began to eat through the polarized glass, while the raider began to beat his armored head against the viewport in anticipation of breaching it.

Shin jammed both feet down on the jump jet pedals of his command couch. Ion jets ignited with a sharp jolt, kicking the forty-five ton 'Mech off the ground. As it rocketed skyward, the figure slipped away, returning Shin's view of the battlefield below, and granting him a look at the conflict being fought beyond the hill. For a moment, Shin almost wished the figure had kept him blind.

Below him, the infantry had reestablished its hold on the Locust,and smoke was beginning to boil from holes torn in the 'Mech's flesh. Malcolm Yesugi's Stingerwas down, with a dozen raiders working furiously to tear it apart. Shimazu had moved in with his Firestarterto help clear the enemy from Yesugi's 'Mech, but a half-dozen of the armored fleas gnawed at it despite repeated baths in ion-flame.

Beyond the hill, the Fourteenth Legion of Vega lay in tatters. As Shin had guessed, the petrochem refinery had, indeed, been put to the torch. Flaming rivers of thick, blue-black liquid gushed from the ruptured sides of storage tanks. The First Battalion had obviously created the rivers in desperation because they knew no 'Mech could wade through a flood of fire without overheating. Their fiery moat should have warded their flank and directed the attack to an area more easily defended, but the trail of mechanical carcasses told a different story.

Somehow the raiders managed to get through the flames to hit the undefended flank!Shin stared at the raider 'Mechs but couldn't identify them. He glanced at his auxiliary monitor and met the disturbing sight of the computer flipping back and forth between several different 'Mech designs in its effort to correctly label the raiders. Looking up again at the horrible tableau, Shin saw one of the raiders emerge from the flames, rivulets of burning oil running off its legs.

The raiders, about two dozen 'Mechs, pressed forward. They chased the remnants of First Battalion back into the ranks of Second Battalion, then engaged the Kurita reinforcements at the extremes of long range. Seeing two 'Mechs go down in the initial barrage, Shin had the sickening feeling that one of them was Hohiro Kurita's Grand Dragon.         '

Once more, the armored figure hauled itself up over his viewplate like a malevolent ghost and resumed working on the glass. Again, Shin punched down on the pedals to boost himself even higher, hoping to shake the man. An explosion at his 'Mech's back accompanied a flashed warning on his status monitor. Something had blown out the left jump jet, letting the right jet send the 'Mech into a lazy pirouette.

Dammit! There must be another one of them working on the jets!Shin gasped involuntarily as the figure on his view plate began to pound his head against the glass with renewed intensity. Two hundred fifty meters up and falling fast! If the drop doesn't kill me, he will!

Shin slammed his fist down on the eject button. Explosive bolts around the faceplate detonated in unison. They blew the faceplate out, wrapping the armored figure in shards of glass. The invader spun up and away, for a heartbeat allowing Shin to believe he was rid of his tormentor.

Hanging on by one hand, the armored raider swung back down, his steel-shod hooves clanging against the lip of the cockpit. The figure bounced up and down, its silhouette resembling nothing so much as an excited ape. It may have been trying to speak, but the warning klaxons blaring in the cockpit drowned out the sounds. The creature raised its right hand and pointed the laser at Shin, making his intent loud and clear.

Fire filled the spherical cockpit as the ejection rockets on the back of Shin's command couch ignited. Inertia jammed Shin back down into the couch's thick padding as the rockets catapulted him free of the doomed Phoenix Hawk.He hurled through the sky, spinning and whirling uncontrollably, which told him he'd struck the raider in the exit from his 'Mech. The wet stickiness running down over his thighs also told him the raider had not missed his dying laser shot.

The couch's gyrostabilizers kicked in and brought an end to the chair's wild ride. Using the foot pedals, Shin turned the chair and directed it down in a small meadow about five hundred meters from where the infantry continued to dismember his lance. He slowed the chair for landing and saw his Phoenix Hawkhit the earth.

His ejection had snapped the 'Mech's head back and imparted a slow backward spin to the humanoid machine. With all the aerodynamics God gave the average mountain, the war machine flipped end over end, then landed on its head. The body crushed the cabin like an empty eggshell, then the 'Mech's broad shoulders hit. Inertia splayed its arms out, grinding clenched fists into the earth and causing the 'Mech's sturdy legs to telescope down into the torso. Fire spurted from all the growing cracks in the Phoenix Hawkas the legs speared the fusion reactor, then the limbs shot up from the doomed 'Mech on jets of ion fire. As the legs spun away, the rest of the 'Mech exploded, sowing the battlefield with mammoth shards of half-melted ceramic armor and jagged slivers of ferro-titanium skeleton.

Arrow Lance's 'Mechs, by dint of their size, weathered the blast easily. Debris from the Phoenix Hawkwashed over them with all the damage of a summer shower. The smaller raiders, however, suffered as armor sheets twice their size sliced through them and bone fragments impaled them. Even those that survived the shrapnel storm fell prey to the explosion's Shockwave. It knocked them flying, freeing their captives.

Shin grounded the command couch and popped the restraints holding him into it. He pulled off his neurohelmet, then looked down to see how much damage the raider had done with his last shot. I don't feel any pain, just blood. That's got to be bad.

He was right. The wound was horrible, unsurvivable. Blood covered him from the lower part of his cooling vest, down his legs, and into the tops of his boots. Already black flies buzzed around him, and in his shocked state, he could barely summon the strength to shoo them away.

Fortunately, the blood was not his.

Weakly, Shin grasped the armor-sheathed left arm and lifted it away from his waist. The smooth metal felt almost warm and fleshlike, and the fingers remained curled around a small piece of weather-stripping from the Phoenix Hawk'sface. A slight dent near the upper arm showed where the command couch's leading edge had hit it during the ejection. Extending up beyond the shoulder, half of the thing's head armor and a broad plate from its chest had been pulled free. Without looking inside at the pieces leaking blood, Shin threw the arm into the long, green summer grasses and climbed out of his chair.

He grabbed the back cushion and yanked it free of the couch. From behind it, compressed into flat packages, he pulled a survival pack, a forest camo jumpsuit, a gun and gunbelt, several clips of ammo, and a cylindrical, diatomic water purification pump. He laid each out on the seat of his couch, then stripped off his cooling vest and bloody shorts. Using several handfuls of grass, he managed to scrape off most of the blood, then pulled on the jumpsuit. After fastening the water pump to it, he shrugged the backpack on and belted the gun around his waist.

Ready to depart, he reached into the command couch's cavity and pulled out his katana.The sword measured a little over a meter, including hilt, and weighed no more than two kilos. The black lacquered wooden sheath showed no decoration, but Shin knew that under ultraviolet light, ghostly purple calligraphy would show up to identify the sword as belonging to a member of the Kuroi Kiri. As he was not a graduate of one of the elite military academies, Shin did not wear a wakizashi sword as well. I am entitled to this one blade, but as myoyabun put it, "Two swords are for show. A blade's work is best done alone."

Holding the sheathed sword in his right hand, Shin started away from his command couch and almost immediately stumbled over the discarded infantryman's arm. He dropped to one knee beside it and turned it over. That's odd. The whole limb has gotten cold! It feels like the armor is chilling itself. And down inside here, a membrane has irised down, and what's this black, sticky stuff leaking all over? It almost looks like a tourniquet to stop the arm from losing blood. It's as though the armor is protecting it so the limb can be reattached .. . that's impossible—but no more so than anything else I've seen today. And it means ...

At the sound of grasses rustling behind him, Shin came up in a whirl. The katanaflashed from its sheath and swung down in a glittering silvery arc. A last-second adjustment to account for the raider's incredible height guided the slash through the side of his neck and splashed crimson over his shoulder. The raider staggered back, and failing to steady himself because of his missing arm, fell awkwardly to his back.

Bile burned Shin's throat. The black, tar-like substance he had seen on the discarded arm coated the raider's exposed flesh with a thin membrane, but leaked a little blood around the cut. New jets of black fluid pumped from the portion of the helmet still in place. It oozed down over the raider's face and head, filling the wound and choking off the flow of blood. Shin heard a hissing and saw clear fluid spurt into the air. The raider moaned in concert with it, then smiled insanely. Eyes and teeth stark white amid a dripping black face, he rolled to his feet.

Shin dropped the sword and pulled his pistol. Unlike most of his compatriots, he preferred a heavy slug-throwing weapon to a lighter needle-shooter. Holding the gun rocksteady in his left hand, he aimed at the raider's exposed left breast and pulled the trigger twice.

Both slugs hit and jerked the raider half around, but did not stop him. Shin shifted his aim up, sighting in on the exposed eye. Seeing the pupil as big as a saucer, he guessed the raider's armor was pumping him full of painkillers. Whatever this guy is, he's not in pain. I hope like hell the body works the same way as ours.

The first shot to the head dropped the raider to his knees, but it took the rest of the clip to kill him dead. Even with such massive trauma, the armor continued to pump the black synthetic flesh out to fill the wounds. Besides sealing the body in a black cocoon, it injected more drugs, then sprayed out some other clear chemical that killed the flies starting to land on the black skin.

Shin stared dumbly at the raider and its armor until the sounds of battle brought him back from his confusion. He knelt and fastened the arm to his pack. I have to take this with me. With its arm torn off, that thing survived a 250-meter drop to the ground and tracked me to this spot where it took eight rounds to kill it—if I have killed it!

He glanced back over his shoulder at the black curtain of smoke that had risen to hide the sun. These are no Periphery bandits, that's for sure. I don't know what they are, but if they decide to take every world in the Inner Sphere, who can stop them?