Jonathan’s nose crinkled. Death could be so messy. He’d debated: wire or knife? Both had their advantages, but strangulation was quiet, less likely to draw attention. Besides, the Thugee of Terra’s ancient India had been correct: Strangulation really was the most intimate way to kill, so sensual. Later, maybe, he’d mentally replay this and properly enjoy it, maybe with a recording of one of those young ladies from Luthien as background, yes, that young black woman with tawny legs and breasts that…
He was so lost in this reverie that he was mildly surprised to look down and find the pilot gawping, wide-eyed. Evans’ eyes were pocked with hemorrhage. He’d bitten down so hard that the last third of his tongue was held on to the rest by a shred of tissue. And his head was, well, unseated. Jonathan blinked, saw that the wire had cut through muscle and trachea, leaving the head tethered by the spinal column and little else. He relaxed, and the pilot’s head flopped, then slid right on the bloody stump of his neck.
Jonathan silenced the still-shrilling alarm with a slap of the hand. The alarm had been earsplitting, but he’d pulled the cockpit hatch closed; no one around anyway, and he’d also had the foresight to send the lift back down. Stooping, Jonathan twitched the tarp over the pilot’s body in a makeshift shroud. Then he reached left, unhooked a nylon mesh net designed to secure an emergency tool kit with room for a duffel. Jonathan knew from his weeks of listening to the MechTechs filing through the galley which MechWarriors carried an extra cooling vest. Evans was closest to Jonathan in build and weight. Bad luck for Evans; good for Jonathan. Yanking open the duffel, Jonathan extracted the extra vest, then cinched the bag, dragged out the tool kit, rolled Evans’ body into its place. Then he replaced the kit, draped the duffel over the blood-stained tarp, and rehooked the net. Tight fit, but it’d do. No time to dump the body but later, when he had time and, more importantly, space …
Stripping down to boots, skivvies and skin, Jonathan shrugged into the cooling vest. The cockpit’s air would stink awhile, but the ’Mech’s air purification system would help clear it eventually. Most of the blood had missed the canopy, instead puddling along the left deck. Using the jumpsuit, Jonathan swabbed up blood before wedging the suit under the command couch.
In thirty minutes he’d wiped the neurocircuits, then reconfigured them to recognize his brain wave patterns and voice. What a bit of providence that he’d had so much practice bypassing computer security codes! Brothers, especially older, crippled brothers, could be quite fetishistic about security, but Jonathan was nothing if not an avid, quick study. All Marcus’ secured accounts, chockful of little secrets, and lots and lots of cash. Lots. Jonathan’d had fun moving assets, setting up interesting dummy corporations, shadow beneficiaries: a paperless trail that would erase Marcus from the equation. If needed.
The pièce de résistance? Crawford. Why, the fool had practically begged him. “I want him dead.” Crawford had been crying; Jonathan could tell from his voice. “I want the son of a bitch dead.”
The fool had made the whole enterprise so easy. Killing was, after all, what Bounty Hunters did best. So, did Crawford want Fusilli dead because Fusilli might be a traitor? Or did he want Sakamoto dead because… well, just because? Who cared?
What a stroke of good luck little Toni Chinn had stepped into the role of doomed heroine. It had given Jonathan a chance to be oh-so-heroic; had made Crawford trust him. The hits he’d taken weren’t as bad as he’d made them seem; he’d just wanted to block Crawford’s line of sight so he could take Chinn down. And I would have, simply for the pleasure of killing Katana’s lover so she’d have only me… but that accursed fighter beat me to it.
After he’d clambered into a wrecked fighter’s cockpit—scooping out the body in clumps; talk about mess–it was pretty easy to infiltrate Sakamoto’s lines. Wounded, of course: That had really hurt, using one of his knives to slash his leg and scar his face, but appearances, appearances. The fool medic had swathed him in bandages, and once aboard a medical ship, Jonathan had switched identities. No one caught on: not the medic, not Dr. Montgomery, not the master sergeant for whom he’d fabricated an expedient fiction about his prowess as a chef (helpful that he really did know his way around a kitchen). And not a soul thought twice about the name, a dead giveaway: Shujin Nanashi. Sergeant No-Name.
His one regret? Dumping that green armor. C’est la vie ; he’d buy a new set. For the time being, his ’Mech was safe and sound. Crawford was painfully gallant that way. Someone might hack the ’Mech’s computers, but he thought not. He’d rigged several trapdoors and then a fail-safe that would fry the system if tripped, and then, c’est la guerre. But, in the meantime, Crawford would get his wish.
And then? On to his wonderful, lovely Katana Tormark.
36
Dovejin Ice Cap, Saffel
Prefecture II, Republic of the Sphere
5 September 3135
The glacier calved with a thunderous roar, a hundred meters of solid, ancient ice slewing off its moorings to crash into the sea. And it was like something subterranean opened up, as if some nightmare emerged from an age when giants roamed, because the BattleMaster came, rising from the east: huge, awful, terrible. At the sight, Corporal Jason Whistler felt his gut clench. The temperature outside his battlearmor was a balmy minus twenty C, the tail end of summer and the iceberg season on the Dovejin Ice Cap, but beads of sweat filmed his upper lip, and fear flooded his mouth with a bitter metallic taste, as if he’d chewed aspirin. The day was cloudless, the sky a clear, lapis blue hemmed by the deeper, almost cobalt ribbon of the Dovejin Sea, studded with jagged, white, ice mountains of bergs cleaved from the remorseless advance of continental glaciers. The sun-glare was so bright the ice pack glittered like a field of diamonds, and the reflection bouncing off the BattleMaster was so intense Whistler would’ve been sun-dazzled and blind if his polarized faceplate hadn’t snapped to full. As their sled hurtled on its cushion of silent, compressed air, Whistler felt as if there was nothing at all beneath his feet or gripped in his armored hands: nothing but ice below and sea spread along the horizon—and Death straight on.
“Aw, Jesus.” McClintock, on Whistler’s left. “That thing is huge.”
“Okay, stow it, fellas.” A lieutenant—Whistler couldn’t remember his name—snapped. “Not like you ain’t never seen a ’Mech before.”
McClintock was sweating so much he looked basted. “Nothing like that mother.”
The lieutenant apparently decided not to debate the point. They were twelve in all, counting the lieutenant and driver: two to a charge, six charges. Their escort, four Bellona tanks and three SM1 Destroyers, was strung across the ice pack a good fifty meters ahead. The tanks were the best they had; hell, they were all they could spare. Whistler glanced over his shoulder. The base was two klicks away, off the glacier and on wind-scoured rock eroded by katabatic gusts from further inland. Beneath a shroud of black smoke, he saw sporadic seams of red laser fire, the crackling bright blue of PPC fire, the ’Mechs—a Drac Hatchetman duking it out with two MiningMechs, one retrofitted with a Gauss rifle, the other with autocannon and a rack of LRMs that were useless in close-up fighting. The refitted ’Mechs weren’t doing well and, even at this distance, Whistler saw a glint of naked titanium flashing along a MiningMech’s left knee. Raider infantry in battlearmor were in on the fight, milling around the legs of the enemy ’Mech like termites on a rotten, chewed-up log. Their pencil-thin streams of laser fire needled the ’Mech with about as much effectiveness as peashooters against a herd of rhinos and, in response, the Hatchetman reared back then slammed down one huge, armored foot—hard. Whistler swung his head back toward the BattleMaster, not because it was a better view. He just couldn’t watch his buddies getting squashed to blood-jelly.