The Dracs’ strategy was showy and pretty good. Anticipating defensive enemy fire, the Hatchetman had screamed from the sky, its lasers snap-firing before it even touched down just outside their base’s defensive perimeter. But the BattleMaster had chosen to land five klicks away at the very edge of the ice shelf, believing—rightly—that the Raiders would have to spare precious men and materiel to head it off.

If they stayed true to form, the Dracs—the ones here and the others Whistler believed had to be headed their way—would level the base. The base wasn’t big; maintaining it was outrageously expensive. But a base was a base, and when Bannson’s Raiders stormed Saffel, this particular base had revealed a hidden advantage that Whistler would bet his bottom stone note the Dracs didn’t know about.

Suddenly there were spurts of orange, like rapid-fire muzzle flash, and white puffs billowed on the BattleMaster’s left shoulder. There was a rush of white, something humming to his left, there and gone in an instant, the scream of six missiles catching up a second behind. One of the Destroyers swerved as geysers of ice and black smoke roared into the sky, exploding from the ice pack as if a series of long-dormant ice volcanoes had blown their stacks. The SM1 sped on, unharmed, and at first Whistler thought the BattleMaster’s aim had to be for shit; why the hell hadn’t it cut loose with lasers, sliced through the tanks’ skirts instead? Then Whistler thought, naw, the guy’s waiting for his buddies, probably. Just having fun.

But their tanks didn’t wait. At once, the air reverberated with the booms of autocannons and the clatter of machine guns. In response, their ice-sled skewed right, dropping back as the tanks shot forward, converging on the BattleMaster. Then, a tooth-rattling jolt, a bang, and Whistler felt the sled stutter, cant, then wobble; and then the driver shouted on broadband: “I’m losing it, I’m losing it!”

The lieutenant screamed, “Hang on, hang…!”

A blinding flash, and then compressed air spilled from beneath the skirt. The sled whirled, tilted, pulling Whistler from his feet before slamming him down hard, and then they were spinning, the horizon a mad, dizzying whirl, and the sled was tipping; they were flipping over, out of control…

“Everybody off now!” the lieutenant screamed, but what the centrifugal force of the spin hadn’t done, the men did now, letting go, leaping free of the spinning sled. Whistler saw ice rushing toward his face, tucked, and whammed against the ice. His battlearmor absorbed the worst of it, and in another second he pulled up in a crouch; saw the sled bounce twice, three times before coming to a rest, upside down. Whistler was gulping air, and for another instant there was nothing but the harsh rattle of his breath. That, and the ice quivering: vibrations from the BattleMaster that shimmied up his legs and into his skull, and made the ice pack wobble like a block of gelatin.

“Everyone okay?” the lieutenant barked. Nods all around. “Okay, let’s go, let’s move, move, move!”

They fanned out over the ice.

DropShip Black Wind

Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel

5 September 3135

The night was bad and got worse as ship’s dawn approached. He’d ordered the first drop—a BattleMaster and Hatchetman–ahead without him. Sakamoto gave no reasons; no one asked questions, and the only instruction the MechWarriors were given was to save the coup de grâce for Sakamoto. So, while Worridge led advance troops over Iwanji, and the BattleMaster and Hatchetman battled for the Raiders’ base, Warlord Sakamoto puked his guts out.

After, he shivered uncontrollably, gooseflesh stippling his flesh, the room spinning whenever he moved his head a millimeter left or right. Mystified, his doctor suggested Sakamoto sit this one out. Then Sakamoto threatened to cut off his ears, and his doctor gave Sakamoto a shot to help with the nausea, wished him luck and beat a hasty retreat.

Every step was an effort. Sakamoto’s legs were rubbery, and his head felt hollow, as if his brain had been sucked out through his feet. But he made it to the ’Mech bay where the others—Kyle in his Locust, and Evans in a bloodred Panther–waited. Once inside his No-Dachi’s cockpit, Sakamoto flopped back into his command couch and lay there, sucking air. His vision was getting fuzzy now, smearing at the edges like runny chalk on wet pavement. He toggled his ignition switch with a finger attached to an arm that was heavy as a lead weight. It took him a long time to attach all the medical monitors to his thighs and shoulders, and he fumbled with his coolant cable, working hard to jam the cable into the port on his command couch.

Somehow he prepped his No-Dachi : fitted the bulky neurohelmet over his head, brought his DI to life, toggled his weapons online, performed the mandatory sensor checks. But he was only half aware of what was happening; his brain was sludgy, and he felt as if he was skimming the surface of reality, making contact for brief intervals before bouncing away again.

Just as he finished the last systems’ check and the bay cleared, a voice scratched in his ear: “Estimate optimal penetration in thirty-point-nine seconds, Tai-shu.”

Sakamoto’s throat worked in a dry swallow. “Very well,” he said, though things were far from well. When this was over, he would sleep for a very long time. In the meantime—he shook himself, smelled vomit and sour sweat—there were Blues to kill.

“Commence battle drop,” Sakamoto said, and watched as Black Wind’s hangar bay doors scrolled apart. The ice cap appeared: a glaze of white glittering against a background of cobalt blue sea stretching left to right as far as the eye could see. The docking clamps holding his No-Dachi in place opened. A jolt as the umbilicals connecting his ’Mech dropped away, and in the next second, the hangar bay passed before his eyes in a blur as Sakamoto fell to earth.

Carillan Sector, Iwanji, Saffel

5 September 3135

Wesley Parks was sweating blood and bullets. Their infantry was dead, slaughtered, and there wasn’t really anything left between Parks and death; certainly no cavalry to come sweeping down the plain. And that last spread of SRMs had come too damn close. To Parks’ right, a stand of Saffel sycamores had exploded in a hail of splinters and black chunks of charred, smoking wood, like the leftovers of a bonfire.

At that moment, Parks decided, frac this. This brothers-under-the-skin stuff was for the birds. He shot a quick glance out his canopy at the clearing just beyond the trees, but the view was the same: a swarm of Kuritan troopers, some in ivory battlearmor and others without. Some had SRM launchers and others were equipped with launchers for armor-piercing rockets. Too damn many; like ants boiling out of a kicked mound down there, and he couldn’t slow them down fast enough. Worse, some had reflective armor; so, yeah, he could fry ’em, sure. He just couldn’t vaporize them, and damn if he didn’t hanker for one good roast. On top of that, he was nearly out of autocannon ammo. He had some missiles—fifteen, left rack—and they were great for distance, but lousy up close. And if one of those troopers lobbed a rocket into his missile rack… Parks didn’t want to think about it.

And what about Sterling? Glancing out of his canopy, he caught the twinkle of laser fire spiking the unmistakable outline of a Kuritan Shadow Cat on a small rise about a half kilometer distance. No help there; J. Sterling and her Ocelot had plenty to keep them occupied.

Only one choice. Slamming his throttle, Parks urged his Jupiter into a backpedal. If he could get into the trees, there’d be obstacles in his way, sure, but the troopers couldn’t get a clear shot either. His ’Mech responded with all the alacrity of a drunk—not surprising since he’d taken damage to his left upper-leg actuator. He heard the protesting squall of metal, and the temp skyrocketed as his DI chittered an alarm. Frac that, he saw it! Sweat-slicked, Parks pushed his hobbled Jupiter, throwing his weight back against his couch as if that would help propel him back even faster. “Come on, come on, you bastard,” Parks grated through clenched teeth. “Come on!”