Near Falkirk, Alkalurops

Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

3 April 3134; local spring

Grace O’Malley loosened the straps on her harness, rested her elbows on the open cockpit of “Pirate,” her MiningMech, and focused her binoculars. A quick sweep of the Gleann Mor Valley before her showed no sign of the raiders whose arrival she dreaded.

Lately the chatter on the Net had been scary. Usually, Grace ignored Net gossip, but Allabad, the capital of Alkalurops, had dropped off-Net a week ago with no explanation. Then hysterical postings and phone calls started pouring in about BattleMechs stomping through houses, tanks shooting up shops, and off-world troops hijacking ’Mechs—followed by that town dropping off the Net. Now the Net blackout was about to overwhelm Grace’s hometown of Falkirk.

The evening before, her friend Gordon Frazier, mayor of Kilkenny, not two hours’ drive south, slapped up a hasty e-note that BattleMechs and a whole lot of other armor were coming up the south road from Amarillo. Grace had called Gordon, but by then both voice and data links were dead. It looked as though Falkirk was on its own and raiders were coming to swipe Pirate.

Last night’s town meeting in Falkirk had been the shortest since Grace had been elected mayor. Some citizens were for running, but most agreed: “Alkalurops takes care of itself.” The vote was to fight. That didn’t surprise Grace. For much of the week, Mick’s ’Mech Maintenance Mavens had been adding armor to the six local ’Mechs and jury-rigging weapons like the Gatling gun made of six hunting rifles that was now strapped to Pirate’s right arm. John Shepherd, the local gunsmith, had specially loaded them with high-powered, steel-jacketed shells.

Grace shook her head as if to clear it of a bad dream. Since she was a kid, her mom had told her how ancient Ireland once trembled at the name of Grace O’Malley, the pirate woman. Grace had even named her MiningMech Pirate “because he steals metal and hydrocarbons from the ground.” But real pirates! She’d hoped never to face anything like this in The Republic of the Sphere.

She also hadn’t expected the HPG interstellar com grid to go down two years ago. On an out-of-the-way planet like Alkalurops, that meant the news talkies spent more time on local chitchat. But even with trade disrupted and metals and coal fetching below-market prices, it seemed like a small price to pay for being left alone.

Once again Grace swept her binoculars over the Gleann Mor Valley, this time slowly, almost lovingly. This was her home. She’d grown up here, like her mother and grandmother before her, going back almost to the firstlanders. The valley hadn’t changed much in all that time. It showed red and brown where native plants still held on, and green where Terran plants were slowly replacing them. In the spring air, the yellow of Scotch broom outlined the road from the south and sprang up in patches elsewhere. The mountains of the Cragnorm Range, only ten or fifteen klicks away, showed Scotch broom as well as the purple of heather. Behind Grace, the foothills of the Galty Range would show the same hues if she twisted in her cockpit to look. Instead she glanced north, up the valley to where the gray of Falkirk’s stone buildings stood in the lee of Wilson Crag. Around the cliff were the large green circles of irrigated land, growing the Terran wheat, corn, barley, and oats that were sold outside the valley. Small gardens adjoining the houses provided all the vegetables the inhabitants needed. Falkirk was comfortably independent—or had been last week.

Now Falkirk needed help, so two days ago Grace sent out a call to all the small holdings in the mountains and towns beyond. She was more than grateful for the signs of digging beside the road in front of where she stood. Yesterday Chato Bluewater had led in two dozen Navajos from the White River Valley, on the other side of the still snow-capped Hebrides Range. Now they were working on a defense strategy that Chato had assured Grace would work, although she wasn’t sure what it was.

Yesterday, while Pirate was in the shop having the Gatling rigged, the Navajo, aided by anyone willing to pitch in, had dug, strung line, and done other strange things. Grace watched and scratched her head. “How do you stop a ’Mech with a rope?” she called out.

Chato smiled softly at the question. “You fight the white man’s way. We’ll follow the warpath with the spirit of Coyote. Let’s see whose path the MechWarriors wish they hadn’t crossed.”

Grace had never heard him use words like “white man” before. Then again, she’d never been on the “warpath” with him. A bit uncomfortable, she answered with “They’re not warriors, just raiders. And I’m not a white man, I’m a Scotch-Irish woman.”

“You are the mayor of Falkirk. That’s enough to make you a white man to me,” Chato said.

He laughed as Grace shot back, “Only on Thursday evenings during the town meetings.”

But Chato quickly grew serious. “You are the one these hardheaded miners accept as their war leader. Put on war paint, Chief, and let’s see how good your braves are.”

Grace made grumbling noises at him—she’d never worn makeup in her life. With her creamy complexion set off by flaming red hair, she didn’t really need it.

“Dust on the horizon.” The voice of Dan McLeod snapped her back to attention. He was in his AgroMech, to her left, his machine listing a bit with the weight of the field burner now hanging from its left arm. Normally, the burner was used to clear native vegetation to prepare a field for Terran crops. Now the burner was equipped with a high-speed pump, and the hump of a two-kiloliter feed tank towered over Dan’s open cockpit. Grace had heard that BattleMechs tended to heat up in combat. Dan’s burner would help that along, big time.

Grace turned her binoculars south and leaned far forward. In the cockpit, Pirate’s gyros protested her off-balance weight adding to the new front armor. Grace dropped her right hand back into the cockpit and used the joystick to edge the drill bit on Pirate’s right arm out to balance her against the fifteen-meter-tall granite pinnacle she was hiding behind.

She returned her attention to the main road. Yep, she could see a dust cloud out there now. The road was straight, generally five klicks or more from the mountains, but below Grace a dry ravine forced it closer to the foothills. A spring gully-washer would have put the road under three meters of raging water, but there hadn’t been a thunderstorm for more than a week. At least the dust gave warning even if the dry ground made it easier for the raiders to bounce around off-road.

Grace pulled a mirror from around her neck and aimed it at the valley to give Chato a warning flash. Someone emerged from among the brush and cheat-grass and waved a shirt back.

Now Grace cinched her harness. A quick check showed her neurohelmet was in place and none of her cooling lines were kinked. She brought Pirate’s engine up from a fuel-saving idle to ready power. Working the pedals with care, she spun him around on his left heel to face the other ’Mechs and fifty men and women with rifles and the improvised rocket-firing tubes Mick called bazookas.

Projecting her voice as her father had taught her years ago, to carry to the crew two stories below and the ’Mech pilots with idling engines, Grace shouted, “What do you say we spread out some?” Even shouting, she made sure her words came across as a suggestion. Chato might call her Falkirk’s war chief, but this bunch were not soldiers. That they followed her suggestions more often than not made her their leader. If she shot her mouth off too much, they’d pick a new mayor.