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  Conner intentionally exposed himself just enough to draw some of their fire and confuse the issue, giving Stuka time to make his move.

  He didn't see Stuka's 'Mech, but a volley of missiles popped up from behind the bridge. They streaked up, exploding below the Longbow, swallowing it in dusty clouds.

  The dust began to clear, and the Longbow's wide upper body and missile canisters appeared. For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the Longbow lurched downwards, falling backwards as the ground gave way beneath its huge feet. A cascade of rocks showered down the mountainside, building speed, the Longbow riding the top of the slide like an out-of-control toboggan. It turned as it fell, ending feet up. so that it crashed headfirst into a vast slag heap at the bottom of the valley, a shower of rocks and gravel from above half burying it.

  Stuka's Ursus appeared, climbing up onto the roadway from behind the bridge, evidently fleeing the landslide.

  He was dangerously exposed, and Conner instinctively throttled up, heading towards him to offer support, but it was too late.

  An attack VTOL suddenly appeared behind Stuka's 'Mech, rotors flashing, lasers blazing as it chewed into his thinner rear armor. The Ursus burst into flame as it dived past and headed downslope toward Conner and his 'Mechs.

  Huntsig fired his lasers and missed.

  Conner put his crosshairs on the fast-moving VTOL. but couldn't keep a lock. Still, he cranked up his auto-cannon, the clattering ringing in his ears as he turned a clean miss into a hit. fire-hosing a streak of slugs across the VTOL. It broke up. rotors still spinning, and sailed just over their cockpits to explode into boiling flames in the low trees just beyond them.

  Stuka's flaming 'Mech managed to stagger off the roadway and down into the gully below before he ejected.

  Huntsig put in a call for an extraction, but given their situation, it was unlikely to come soon, if ever.

  From, the north another Catapult appeared, making its way down the valley at a leisurely pace, carefully picking targets with its missiles and lasers as it advanced.

  Conner growled. They could not take much more of this. "North Garrison, where are you?"

  "Star Colonel, we are bottled up about two klicks north of your position. Heavy fire from the DropShips has us running in circles."

  "North Garrison, hold your position. We are going to fall back and join you. Give us covering fire if you can."

  "Roger that."

  "All units, lateral north and hook up with North Garrison."

  They began to move, trying to use natural cover to avoid the guns from above. There was no avoiding the Catapult, though. Their two Ursus units returned missile fire as they tried to slip around the big 'Mech.

  "City defense units. We need help up here. What is keeping you?"

  "Sir, we were being held back by artillery and long-range missile fire until a few minutes ago. Then a bunch of paramiltary police APCs came out of nowhere and swept past us, drawing fire, dodging bullets and dropping guys in 'Constable' armor. They are taking heavy losses, but we are advancing again. Encountering 'Mech resistance now and—Great Father! RiotMechs! The enemy 'Mechs are chewing them to pieces, but they just keep going! We might just break through!"

  "Keep me posted. We have our own problems here."

  The Catapult turned back towards them.

  "Star Colonel, this is Breck in the North Garrison. We have 'Mechs coming up behind us. Lots of them! I cannot see through the dust—"

  Conner shoved his throttle to the stop. "We are almost there. Split for their flanks. We will come up the middle."

  "Sir. these are IndustrialMechs! I think the Vegans must have taken them from Northgate!"

  Conner frowned. There was a large IndustrialMech plant in Northgate. These were light units with light armor, no ranged weapons. Not the sort of thing one wanted to go into combat in. But in sufficient numbers, with fearless pilots at the controls, and if they could get close enough to use their industrial tools as weapons—

  "I see an insignia. They all have a red V on their front! What does it mean? Whose side are they on?"

  That, Conner thought, was the question that would make or break the battle. There was only one way to know for sure. "All units, hang back and cover me. I'm going in alone to feel them out."

  He could see the line of approaching IndustrialMechs now, marching shoulder to shoulder, some missing arms or hull plating, apparently taken off the assembly lines half-completed. They outnumbered him twenty to one, and if they were insurgents, or just angry Vegans looking to kick the Ghost Bears off their world, then they could cut him to pieces before he could do anything about it.

  He watched them moving closer.

  Closer.

  He raised his 'Mechs' arms, ready for close combat. He was not defenseless, even at this range. The Karhu's right arm was equipped with vicious durasteel claws.

  He would go down fighting.

  A ForestryMech stopped just in front of him, a dripping, bloodred V marking the yellow paint below its cockpit, its huge chain saw only a meter from Conner's 'Mech. But amazingly, the little 'Mech's cockpit swung open. The pilot, risking death every moment he was exposed, held up his hands. Seven fingers. Then six. Then two. Then—

  A radio frequency! The IndustrialMechs must not be equipped for any standard military frequencies. Seeing the pilot talking into his headset, Conner punched the numbers into his broadband transceiver.

  His earphones crackled. "—we're here to help you kick those Draconis bastards off our planet, Clansman. You lead, and we'll follow you to hell and back!"

  "I understand," he answered, considering the situation.

  A volley of missiles from the Catapult began to fall around them, and one of the IndustrialMechs exploded. It was suicide. All they had going for them were their numbers and their ignorance of what they were about to face.

  Deep in his chest he felt something blossom, something a Clan MechWarrior rarely felt for a spheroid: admiration. On with it, then! "Vega 'Mechs, spread out, move fast and zigzag. Give him lots of targets to confuse him and then make yourselves hard to hit. Then follow us! For Vega!"

  More enemy 'Mechs and armor appeared out of the dust behind the Catapult.

  Lasers flashed all around. VTOLs buzzed past. His 'Mech shuddered as a stray volley of cannon fire cut across its chest.

  But still they advanced. An enemy light hovertank exploded as a police APC crashed into it on a suicide run. Though they still suffered from the DropShip fire above, they had a substantial part of the enemy force boxed in. and they were slowly closing the noose!

  "Star Colonel, this is Durant. That second wave of DropShips is coming in fast on your position!"

  Conner looked up and saw a line of glowing fusion exhausts descending out of the sky, headed for the peaks on the west side of the pass. A glance at his radar display would have given him a more exact picture, but it wouldn't have made any difference. With a knot in his stomach, he knew there would be no place to hide from their brutal crossfire.

  He looked over in time to see a streak missile plow into Huntsig's Karhu, the reactor exploding in a blue ball of plasma.

  In his rearview screen, he saw one of the Vegan MiningMechs cut in half by autocannon fire.

  Something exploded in the front of his 'Mech.

  The armor held, but the transferred Shockwave shattered something inside the hull. Fragments of hot metal showered his face, sizzling against his skin. He ignored the pain, brushing grit and sweat from his cheek with the back of his hand. Then he grasped the controls firmly and went back to his grim business.

  The Karhu hesitated, but he urged it forward, strafing his laser across the Catapult's leg, watching as the leg buckled and the 'Mech fell in front of him.

  Then, out of the dust, he saw 'Mechs dropping from the sky, rocket brakes firing, tan camouflage glinting in the sun. One of them, a Black Hawk, landed near him just as an Anubis appeared out of the clouds of dust, training its lasers on him.

&nbs
p; The Black Hawk fired, swarms of missiles spewing from its launchers, lasers flashing.

  Missiles and lasers from the Black Hawk shredded the left arm on the Anubis.

  Conner instinctively triggered his overheated lasers for one last burst, and the Anubis burst into flame, turning to stagger away before its pilot ejected and the flaming 'Mech toppled like a freshly cut tree.

  Conner looked up to see the new DropShips set down to the west and immediately open fire on the DropShips across the pass.

  A woman's voice came across the radio on multiple frequencies. "This is General Delia al-Nahib of the Twelfth Vega Rangers, and we're happy to be here today fighting for the freedom of the old homeworld. Of course, our being mercenaries, there was a slight fee involved, and I've been asked to let you know that today's just-in-time rescue comes courtesy of your friend and mine, Jacob Bannson! That is all. Please resume kicking ass!"

  * * *

  Isis Bekker and Vincent Florala stared at each other as the room burst into cheers all around them.

  Isis shook her head. "I did not make any deal with Bannson. Did you?"

  "Not me. But this is Bannson. He never does anything for nothing."

  "First the mystery transmission, and now this. I do not believe in miracles, and here we have two in one day."

  Isis glanced up, and saw Trenton watching her from the other side of the war room.

  He smiled, snapped off a sloppy salute and climbed up the stairs into the communications gallery.

  Was it her imagination, or did he seem smug?

  * * *

  Conner Hall sat up in his hospital bed and fought a coughing fit.

  His smoke-irritated lungs still had not responded to the antiinflammatory drugs, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He reached up and touched his face, feeling the spots of plastiskin covering his smaller facial burns, and the strips of bandage covering the larger ones.

  He wondered how the mop-up in the pass was going, but he knew that by now the Twelfth Vegan Rangers were doing the heavy lifting, giving his warriors and the countless civilian and military police volunteers a badly needed rest.

  For now, the Draconis Combine DropShips had left the planet, leaving about half their surviving forces behind. More than a dozen 'Mechs and thirty armored units had surrendered or been captured intact, a significant boost to the local forces even after the mercenaries had been cut into the spoils.

  It was timely, considering that the Vega Regulars now had a waiting list of battle-tested pilots eager for their turn to serve.

  That was the part that puzzled him. Why the sudden support from the Vegans? When he'd mentioned it to a nurse, the man had laughed, disappeared and appeared a short while later with a portable tri-vid player that he had tuned to a Vegan news broadcast. "It has been on over and over since the transmission came in from space."

  He'd watched as the video unfolded, presenting the case, showing step by step how the Draconis Combine had infiltrated Vega, supplying and encouraging dissident groups. Finally it showed their leaders in a meeting, coldly planning the murder of the entire Vegan government using a stolen aerospace fighter on autopilot as their weapon. They discussed how they would frame the insurgents, who were all too willing to take the credit.

  He had to give the Vegans their due. When shown their true enemy, they had displayed boundless courage. Perhaps this world really was a worthy place to invest their greatest hopes for the future.

  "Star Colonel, someone here to see you." He looked up to see the older male nurse who had talked to him only a few days earlier, when Conner had been a visitor, not a patient.

  The nurse pushed in a wheelchair, and it took him a moment to recognize who was seated in it. They'd taken some of the bandages off her face, and like him, she was a patchwork of plastiskin. An oxygen hose was still clipped to her nose, and her body was still supported by a framework of metal braces.

  Clan medicine could seemingly work miracles, but even so, it took time.

  He looked at her face hopefully, but she did not make eye contact. She seemed only dimly aware of her surroundings. Her left eyelid sagged slightly, and she mainly looked straight ahead at nothing.

  The nurse looked apologetic. "We've started the tissue-regeneration treatments, but it will take time to see results. The doctor tells me that she needs as much stimulation and exposure to the familiar as we can arrange as her brain tries to rewire itself. I suppose it was too much to hope she would respond to you."

  Conner smiled sadly. "You are probably right." He closed his eyes for a moment, then said, "I have come to accept that the Karen I knew is probably gone. I just wish there was something I could do to help her."

  He looked back at Karen, and was suddenly aware that her gaze had slowly shifted over to him.

  Her left eye opened a little wider.

  Her lips parted slightly, and she studied him.

  Then, ever so slowly, the corners of her mouth lifted in a lopsided smile.

  It was the most beautiful thing Conner Hall had ever seen.

  * * *

  The door to the bedroom opened, and Taylor Bane instinctively reached for his gun before he remembered that his hand didn't work.

  He relaxed a bit when he saw Bruno's ugly, bandaged face appear in the doorway. "You up for company, boss?"

  He immediately recognized the tall man standing behind Bruno. "Hey, Trenton, come on in."

  The man frowned as he stepped in and slid into a chair at the foot of the bed. "It's Dr. Tuskegee."

  Bane shrugged. "Whatever you say. Unless you'd rather be called uKhan."

  Tuskegee smiled slightly. "I prefer to keep that between myself and my followers for the time being. By the time I'm ready to go public with the term, I hope it will already be obsolete." He looked down. "How is your hand?"

  Bane held up the cast on his right hand, the fingers and thumb poking through holes in the end. "Your Clan doctors do good work. Watch this."

  He stared intently at his fingers, his attention focused entirely on his hand. The fingers flexed almost imperceptibly.

  Bane leaned back on his pillows and exhaled loudly.

  "They say it will get easier. I hope so. I want to find the guys who did this to me, and what I've got planned for them is going to take both hands!"

  "I think there's a good chance they'll be in custody soon. Our surviving paramilitary police are already overwhelmed with tips and reports from the Vegan citizenry."

  Bane grinned. "You find them, you put them aside somewhere safe for me, okay? I'm going to go report to Mr. Bannson as soon as my hand is a little better, but I will be back."

  "Which is why I came to talk to you. I need one more favor. Is it possible that some employees of Mr. Bannson are skilled in areas of forgery?"

  Bane considered carefully before answering. "It's possible."

  Trenton held up a document, the paper browned and curled with age, the edges scorched. "I need a forgery of this, written to my specifications. It must be untraceable and indistinguishable from a genuine document."

  Bane nodded. "That Final Codex thing you're always talking about, right?"

  "Correct."

  "Why do you need a fake, when you've already got one? That one not good enough?"

  Tuskegee grinned. "You misunderstand. As far as I know, this one is genuine."

  "Genuine? Then why ... ?"

  "I did say 'to my specifications.' There will be some editing in the interest of enlightenment and harmony among my people."

  Bane laughed. "You're going to edit your own Bible. That's rich! So what does it say that's so bad?"

  Tuskegee frowned slightly. "I prefer not to discuss its shortcomings."

  "Yeah, well. I'll need paper samples, handwriting scans, stuff like that."

  "Of course."

  "So, the original. What are you going to do with it?"

  "The best thing I could do would be to destroy it. Yet I really can't bring myself to do that."

  "You want my ad
vice. Doc? Always keep something in reserve." He held up his cast. "You never know when it might come in handy."

  * * *

  Within hours of the conclusion of the battle of Lincoln Pass, stories of the bravery and honor of the warriors who fought there, both Clan and Vegan, began to circulate among those Clansmen waiting at the spaceport passenger terminal.

  Many expressed shame that their place of honor had been taken by paramilitary police and untrained freeborn personnel.

  Shortly thereafter, a few warriors were seen to leave the spaceport terminal, apparently to return to their units.

  Throughout the night, small groups of warriors continued to leave.

  This attrition continued for several weeks. When a DropShip finally arrived two months later, less than a quarter of the original number remained, most of them elementals.

  * * *

  One hundred and nine hours after entering Vegan space, the exact time required for the solar sails to recharge their JumpShip drives, the Draconis Combine fleet jumped away. Their remaining DropShips were never deployed.

  18

  Letter from Galaxy Commander Isis Bekker-Florala to the Clan Council of the Ghost Bears, dated 27 December 3136:

  My fellow Ghost Bears,

  By the time you read this, you will probably be aware of the extraordinary events that have taken place on Vega. This great world, birthplace of our beloved Star League, is once again free, stable and independent. It has successfully repelled a vicious and dishonorable attempt on its sovereignty by the Draconis Combine, who remain a grave concern to our future security.

  There are still many problems to be solved on Vega—political, economic and social—but its people act with a new unity against a shared enemy. For that at least, we can thank the Draconis Combine.

  But for now, everything we came to Vega to accomplish has been achieved. We are a world united, building a new future.

  Yes, we. It became clear to me, as I struggled with our seemingly insolvable problems here, that the only way we could save Vega from itself was from within. We of the Omega Galaxy who remain here have asked for, and have been granted, citizenship on Vega. It is our intention to remain here indefinitely, building new lives for ourselves among the Vegan people.