By the time they reached it, a small Davion contingent had occupied the station. In a short, sharp firefight, the Widow's knocked out a Valkyrieand a VTOL 'Mech-hunter and drove off the rest of the Feds. Hayes's Griffintook a hit in its already-balky jump jets, forcing him to shut them down till they could be repaired. The rest of the Widows took only minor damage, and moved on.
Twice they spotted VTOLs searching for them. The first must have lacked IR gear, for the heated BattleMechs would have stood out even through the cover they grabbed at the forested edge of the trail. That Fed passed them by. The second was better-equipped, or else the pilot was more observant. His attention was his death warrant, however. A spread of missiles from Sheridan's Crusaderturned the Davion scout into a fireball.
Cursing Sheridan's impetuosity, Kerensky urged her lance forward. She knew the crash would bring Federated Suns troops as surely as a radio report from an observer. With luck, they would be able to cover enough ground to force the Feds to run a wider search pattern and spread their forces out to cover all possible routes that the black 'Mechs might have taken. That would give the Widows a much better chance to slip away.
The path they followed narrowed steadily until it was barely wide enough for a single 'Mech to pass. Kerensky sent Hayes on ahead. His Griffinwas the lightest and most maneuverable of the machines in the lance, and so he could best react if they ran into trouble. Despite his protests, Kerensky sent MacLaren next. The Sergeant wanted to stay near Kerensky to protect her. She convinced him that if Hayes ran into trouble, the awesome firepower of the Maraudermight be enough to blast through and keep the Widows, and thereby Kerensky, from being bottlenecked. Sheridan went next because Kerensky reserved rear guard for herself. If the Feds caught up to them on the narrow track, she wasn't going to have one of her people sacrificing himself or herself to allow the Widow to escape.
For twenty nerve-wracking minutes, the Widows picked their way down the mountainside. At almost every step, the ponderous fighting machines sent showers of pebbles and loose gravel plummeting over the edge to rattle away down the steep slope. MacLaren had the most trouble. The non-humanoid shape of his Maraudermade some of the required balancing acts doubly dangerous. Whenever she checked in with MacLaren, Kerensky could hear his 'Mech's gyros whining in the background.
Davion pursuit failed to materialize. Kerensky was just beginning to think they were going to make a clean getaway when a deep boom came through her external mikes. A growing rumble accompanied the pressure wave that buffeted the Warhammer,nearly toppling the 'Mech. Struggling to keep the Hammerupright Kerensky backed up the machine. When one foot caught the edge of the pathway, seventy tons of BattleMech was too much for the weathered granite. It crumbled.
Kerensky shifted the machine's balance to the right. Though she risked a fall on the path, that was preferable to pitching down the side of the mountain. Her maneuver succeeded, but was ultimately futile.
The rumble had continued throughout her gyrations. Its source hurtled down upon the Warhammeras hundreds of tons of rock came free in an avalanche. The 'Mech was swept from the track.
Lynn Sheridan let out a scream of impotent rage. While she sat helpless in her Crusader,Natasha Kerensky's black Warhammervanished in a billowing cloud of gray rock dust.
Sheridan's cry halted the rest of the Command Lance. Heedless of the danger, MacLaren whirled his 'Mech in an about-face and stormed back up the trail. He reached Sheridan's position to find the Crusaderbent over the edge, directing its sensors downward. The path beyond it was choked with debris.
“I can't read her 'Mech, Sarge,” Sheridan reported. “Keep scanning,” MacLaren ordered. He began to call for the Captain over and over on the taccomm, but there was no response.
32
Gakken County , Benet III
Draconis March, Federated Suns
19 May 3027
Long after the roar of the rockfall had turned to silence, Colin MacLaren was calling. Hayes and Sheridan tried to convince him that the Widow was gone, lost to a freak of nature. Believing that Natasha Kerensky could not be taken from him this way, he refused to stop calling for his Captain. His lancemates began to discuss how they might force him to head for the DropShip.
When a faint crackling became audible on the lance circuit, all three Widows stopped what they were doing and boosted power in the comm circuits. A faint voice came through.
“Calm down, old man. You haven't lost me yet.”
Sheridan and Hayes whooped for joy. For all his earlier concern, MacLaren stayed calm, but he couldn't keep the emotion from his voice. “Is the Captain all right?”
“I'm alive, which is more than I have any right to be. Black Ladyhas seen better days. Lost my aerial in the slide. Took me a while to rig the spare. Sorry about worrying all of you.”
“The Captain needn't apologize,” MacLaren returned. “If the Captain will give us her coordinates, we'll be down to join her.”
“I wish it were that easy, Colin. I'm in some kind of chasm. The walls are too steep to climb, and trying to come down would be suicide without jump jets. The talus slope from the rockfall is very unstable and would probably slide again if a 'Mech were to try to walk on it.
“See if you can link with the Webto use the ship's comp to give us a tacmap. This thing must come out somewhere.”
MacLaren did as he was ordered. When the Widow's Webcomputer fed him the map for the area, he located the chasm and saw that it finally leveled out twenty klicks to the northeast. He relayed the information to Kerensky.
“That's it, then,” she said. “We'll rendezvous at grid seventy-two, reference three-seventeen. Get a move on. You've been exposed up there too long.”
“But the Captain will be alone.”
“No 'buts,' Colin. We haven't any choice. You can't slide down after me. Get going.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Kerensky could picture the Maraudermoving like a sulky child denied its wish, and the thought lightened her mood considerably. Her people would give their lives for her, but it was no less than she would do for them. The Black Widow Company was the best, though once they had been the dregs of Wolf's Dragoons. She had turned that band of gamblers, criminals, and discipline problems into damn good soldiers, and then into the most formidable company in the most formidable mercenary unit in the Inner Sphere. It was an achievement that even one of her ancestry could view with pride.
Now she must deal with the present, however. She faced a twenty-kilometer march in a battered 'Mech. Her cockpit was already hot because several heat sinks had been damaged in the fall. The dysfunction lights indicating the failures in the heat exchangers were almost lost in the crowd of yellow and red lights on her systems board. One of the Donal PPCs was completely out, but all other weapons registered as functional. Assuming that the telltales were themselves reliable, Natasha reminded herself. She hoped she wouldn't have to fight.
The chasm was floored with blocks of granite and mounds of glacial till, much of it taller than her 'Mech and probably weighing five or more times as much. The massive rocks blocked most of her sensors and all of her comm frequencies. Visual range was reduced to handfuls of meters. Yes, she definitely hoped she wouldn't have to fight.
Before she had gone half a klick, the first blip showed on her Mass Anomaly Detector. Opting for avoidance, she altered her course. Twice more, she evaded what read as 'Mech-size masses moving among the rocks. When the fourth appeared directly in her only available path, Kerensky advanced cautiously. When she reached a visual observation point, however, there was nothing to be seen.