Dark Age - Patriot's Stand Part 2

Grace mulled over the day as she let others' words wash over her, holding on to few of them. Still, some broke into her thoughts. "d.a.m.n, I don't want to do that again." "We should have been able to do better." And "What was it about those BattleMechs?"

"Where was the Legate's BattleMech?" came often, but no one knew the answer to that.

When Grace began to feel her patience growing thin, she rose and shouted into the racket of a five-sided argument. "I don't know about anyone else's bladder, but mine says it's time for a break."

There was a stampede for the facilities. Despite her claimed need, Grace stayed in her place. As Wilson, Ho, Laird, Chato, and Jobe gathered around her table, Mick joined them.

"You got that tank into your shop?" Grace asked.

"Yep. Chato's boy has juice flowing to its innards."

"Is it as dangerous as it looks?" she asked.

"Worse, if you ask me. That thing can d.a.m.n near see you coming before you think of going. MagScan to beat the band. Infrared to tell your temperature. Real bad stuff."

"Not if it servesyou, " Chato said simply.

"But it served us up like fish on a platter," Wilson said. "A bunch of optimists who never fought anything worse than a cranky engine or a bad headwind."

Folks around Grace looked at one another and nodded.

"Gracie," Wilson said, "I never want to go through that again. Leastwise not as dumb as I was today. I know how to raise cows. I'm d.a.m.n good at farming this red dirt around here. I don't know c.r.a.p about fighting 'Mechs."

"Me neither," echoed around the circle.

Grace took a deep breath and tried to pull from deep inside her what had been taking shape. "I'm not much in favor of running every time the Net says boo. Running for the hills and hoping there's something to come back to is no way for real people to live," she said, eyeing the group. Only frowns met that.

"Now, if I don't know how to do something, I usually put out a call for someone who does. Pay them either to do it for me or teach me how. Seems to me that we need someone who can teach us a thing or two about fighting."

That brought a long pause, which Grace took to mean that the men were seriously considering her suggestion. She was glad of the help; the future of Falkirk hung on the handful around her.

"When I need something we don't make here," Ho said slowly, "I buy the best I can afford from where it is available."

"I don't like strangers showing up and pushing me around," Wilson said. "My family was here during the old wars. People from off-planet tried to take us on, and we bloodied their noses. If I have a vote, I say we do the same. And if we don't know how, I say hire folks to show us the way."

"That's the way I see it, too," Grace said. "The raiders came. We did what we could, and that was d.a.m.n poor. I say we go to the Legate and demand that he train us to do what the people of Alkalurops have always done-defend ourselves. And if the Legate is as dead as I think he is, we find someone who can," Grace said.

"That could cost money," Ho pointed out.

"Would you rather pay for a defense or try to bribe the raiders, 'cause next time I wouldn't bet on Auntie Maydell talking them down. The next raiders'll demand our money or our 'Mechs," Grace finished. Her listeners frowned but nodded.

"Better to fight than give up, and if we fight, I mean to fight a d.a.m.n sight better next time," Wilson said.

"I'll put up ten percent of my profits from last year to pay someone to teach me how to knock the next raiders on their a.s.ses."

"Me, too," came from the rest in the circle. Grace sighed. Now all she had to do was get the rest of Falkirk to go along.

Outside Kilkenny, Alkalurops 13 April 3134 A nudge brought Grace awake. "You'll want to see this," Chato said. Reluctantly, Grace opened her eyes. Chato had volunteered to drive the jeep Jim Wilson had donated to take the local reps to the capital, at Allabad. Something to deal with the situation had to be in the works at the capital, and Falkirk was d.a.m.ned if those fancy pants in the big city would ignore the working stiffs who paid the taxes. Or that the large mining corporations would ignore the small mining groups that made up the other half of the planet's gross production. So Grace went straight from a gut-wrenching town hall meeting that had adopted her plan for defense to a night ride down gravel roads that might end in a raider roadblock.

Blinking sleep away, her eyes met rosy dawn. The morning sky was all that looked good. In the field beside the road, three burned-out jeeps still sent up smoke and made the morning stink. A half-burned body manned a machine gun on one of them. At the side of the road, bodies were lined up in a careful row, a single blanket covering the faces. "I guess you were luckier than you realized," Jobe said from the backseat.

"Looks that way," Grace agreed.

"Should I stop?" Chato asked. Ahead, a young man was waving his arm slowly, struggling with the effort. A red bandage was wrapped around the light armor on his other arm.

"Stop," Grace ordered. She leaned out of the rig and asked, "What happened here? Who's in charge?"

"The raiders sidestepped the North Constabulary when they came through Kilkenny headed north, so we figured to catch 'em on their way back south, ma'am," the young man said, leaning heavily on the hood of their jeep. "I guess you'd say I'm in charge. Lieutenant Hicks, ma'am. I hate to do this, but I got wounded to transport. I have to commandeer your rig."

"Hicks, I'm the mayor of Falkirk, and these two men represent the Donga and White River Valleys.

We're on our way to Allabad, but we'll be glad to carry as many of your wounded as we can."

The young man nodded his agreement. "We'll do it your way, ma'am. Sergeant," he said to a man standing nearby, "get the two stretchers laid across the back. You mind if my walking wounded ride your fender?"

"How many survivors do you have?" Grace asked.

"Too few," the weary officer answered. "I'll walk the rest back in. You take the six that are shot up into Kilkenny. There's a clinic this side of town." Grace counted four soldiers aside from the lieutenant and his sergeant.

"I know it," Grace said. "We'll take good care of your people. Chato, let's go."

"I'll get us there as fast as I can, War Chief," Chato said.

Grace eyed the wreckage as they pulled away. No one had stripped the dead or wounded of their body armor. What type of raid was this?

Dropping the wounded off at Kilkenny still allowed Grace and the others to reach Amarillo before noon.

The largest town in the Gleann Mor Valley gave them the best of news. The raiders' JumpShip had blasted off from south of there that morning loaded with the last of them. Grace and her group saw how selective the raiders had been: Only 'Mechs ten years old or younger had been hijacked and walked aboard the JumpShip. Old 'Mechs still went about their business.

As the three hurried south, the land changed. Once they came off the caprock, fields were greener and broken with more streams. Only occasionally did they see a farmhouse shot up; rarely did a town show bullet holes. Dublin Town was a similar case. Like so many of the large towns on Alkalurops, it was sheltered in a deep canyon from the seasonal high winds. Grace was driving as they took the road down.

No surprise, the IndustrialMech dealerships on the outskirts had old 'Mechs in for repairs but no new rigs. But the communication towers were still standing, as were the power lines.

The next morning, as they drove out of Dublin Town, Grace found the local Net had come back to life.

The news was full of wild stories: Government House had been burned to the ground, and the Governor and Legate were dead. Grace made a quick call to her mother to tell her the trip was going fine, then turned the phone over to Jobe and Chato so they could call their wives.

As the men talked, Grace mused on what her pirate namesake would have taken in a raid. Her list included a lot of gear that was still up and working on Alkalurops. When Grace voiced her thoughts, Jobe offered, "Maybe their DropShip couldn't carry it all."

"Why go raiding with only a small boat for the loot?" she asked. Neither man had an answer.

Late that afternoon they drove off the plains and into the long canyon that protected Allabad from the high winds of the flat country above. The large transmission tower by the road was undisturbed. The largest city on Alkalurops didn't look that bad, either: Allabad now filled most of the canyon with wide rows of thick adobe homes and businesses. The long, shallow lake that had first drawn people to the city had been narrowed and deepened so that new buildings could be built on the old flood plain.

Except for that, nothing much had changed since Grace's parents had brought her here some twenty years back so Pop could get his first MiningMech-the first MiningMech in the Gleann Mor Valley. And Pop had pointed out buildings that had been pointed out to him by his own grandpa. Grace spotted the old market, its low walls stretching for several blocks north of the central plaza this side of the Alhambra River. There was the clock tower of the Guild Hall, though the hall had grown several new wings. This was what Grace loved about life on Alkalurops: It had been, was, and would be the same.

Except now raiders dropped in. They were a new experience-one she did not want to repeat.

Grace called the hostel she stayed at whenever business brought her to Allabad. She reserved a room for herself and one for Jobe and Chato to share. Then she called Angus Throckmorton, a family connection at the Miners' Guild who went back to her grandpa's time. She wondered if he'd remember her, but his voice was warm when he took her call. He was actually eager to meet her and her friends.

"You know the inn I took your father to the last time he was here? Could you meet me there in half an hour?" Grace promised she would and he rang off.

"Where are we meeting him?" Chato asked.

"The Red Erin Inn," she said. "I've been there before."

"Sure you can find it again?" Jobe asked.

"It would be a shame if we got lost," Chato deadpanned.

"I remember the place," Grace shot back, then spotted the looks the two men were exchanging and realized they'd been teasing her. She settled back into the pa.s.senger seat. "We have half an hour before he can see us. We may as well take the scenic route."

After a couple of wrong turns, the three arrived at the inn to find that Angus was there before them.

Grace had hardly given his name to the tall, ponytailed barkeep before he led her across a wood-beamed great room to a dark corner where Angus waited. A big friendly bear of a man now gone to gray, he made to rise, but she quickly introduced Jobe and Chato, then settled beside him and gave him a hug.

"La.s.s, you're looking more beautiful every day."

She tried to return the compliment, but Angus had aged noticeably in the five years since she'd seen him.

Up close she realized his plaid coat hung on him. His knuckles were red and swollen, his eyes sunken into dark bags. "Y-you're-" she stammered, then caught herself. "How bad was it here?"

"A good dark one for the lady, here," Angus called to the barkeep. Grace was happy to let Angus order for her-he knew the local brews. Jobe ordered a lighter ale, while Chato asked for coffee.

Only after the barkeep retreated did Grace repeat her question. "It's been bad?"

"Strange it's been, la.s.s. Very strange."

"The raiders. .h.i.t Falkirk," Grace told him. "Didn't take much. The militia got knocked around some."

"You lose anyone close to you?" Angus asked.

"A few wounded. None too bad to brag. How was it here?"

"Strange and then some," he said, then fell silent again as their drinks came. Grace wondered if she'd have to start the conversation all over again, but Angus went on as she took her first pull on her pint. A good brew.

"The raiders came in claiming to be a regular commercial DropShip. My friends at the port tell me that ships to Alkalurops never keep to a schedule. Anyway, they set down around midnight a week ago.

They tore through the place, but not so fast that the alarm wasn't raised."

"Where was the Legate? And the Governor?" Jobe put in.

"You tell me and we'll both be knowing it," Angus said, shaking his head and taking another long pull on his drink. "I've heard that the raiders blew them away without so much as a by-your-leave. There's also a story that the two rushed out to the port in a car and got stomped flat. I also heard from the la.s.s who's the Legate's housekeeper. She found him in bed, throat slit. I can tell you which one I'm believing-the maid, it is."

"The raiders got to him before the alarm?" Grace said, then shook her head. "That's not possible."

"The poor man's throat was slit before the raiders' ship ever touched down, I'm thinking," Angus said, looking around as if someone with a knife might be looking to slit his throat, too.

"What happened to the Central Constabulary?" Grace asked.

"They got smashed by the raiders as if they weren't even there. Not much of a fight at all, at all."

"We saw the North Cons on our way here. Not much left."

"That would be no surprise."

"So the raiders went through here pretty thoroughly," Chato said. "Strange, not much sign of looting."

" 'Cause there was none of that, or very little." Angus shook his head. "The raiders emptied the Legate's quarters of hisRyoken II and any spare gear that was handy. They hit the 'Mech dealerships and hijacked the new equipment and such that was nearly new. Gun dealers, too. They set up a base camp at the port and warned us not to come near it. Then those raiding parties took off like the thieves they were.

We'd see 'Mechs stomping back under guard of a few gun bikes and stuff.

"Some of the men hereabouts tried a night raid, turnabout being only fair. It didn't work." That required another pull on the pint. "Ugly thing. Lad just wounded a mite said the raiders were on them before they were halfway to the port. d.a.m.n machines landed on them, scared them witless, and shot them up as they ran. 'Mechs that fly. My grandda told me what it was like during the old wars, but he didn't say anything about flying 'Mechs."

"We faced a pair of those. If Jobe here hadn't shown up, they might have jumped all over me," Grace said, trying to make sense of what she was hearing and what she'd seen. "So they left things pretty much as they are."

"Except for burning down Government House, you could say we got off lightly, now, couldn't you?"

Angus said to his beer as if trying to persuade himself. "Yes, I guess we did."

"But what were the raiders trying to do?" Chato said, swirling his coffee slowly in its mug.

"Banshee take me if I can guess that," Angus exploded. "It's not knowing what's going on across The Republic that can drive a man to walk out thirsty on a hot dry day."

"Your Mick did a pretty good job of turning some of your MiningMechs into more heavily armored 'Mechs," Jobe pointed out to Grace.

"Right, so maybe someone else is turning worker 'Mechs into fighting 'Mechs?" Grace said, then took a long pull on her beer.

"Things have been peaceful for a long time. Not a lot of BattleMechs around," Chato said, as if he'd mined the sentences one word at a time.

"And if you wanted to grow an army in a hurry and cheap . . ." Grace let the words hang there.

"Steal 'Mechs from an out-of-the-way planet," Jobe said.

"But don't do too much damage. Let folks get back on their feet quickly, maybe even order new 'Mechs," Angus added, emptying his beer. "I need another drink on that thought. Liam, me boy, where are you hiding, and me with a throat all dusty."

The barkeep, no more a boy than Grace was a la.s.s, hustled over. "You drinking your dinner again, Angus, or do you want something to put in that thin gut of yours?"

"Refills for all, and now that you remind me, some of that delicious lamb stew for us that you sometimes have hereabouts."

"Only every night," the barkeep muttered as he turned away.

"So you don't think this raid was a onetime thing?" Grace said, getting them back to the thoughts pounding in her brain.

"Even if this hard bunch doesn't come back, with us deaf and dumb as a post, other hard men will be looking around for things to grab," Angus said. "And even if we don't get back on our feet, if the whole Sphere goes to h.e.l.l, what are leavings now will be a prince's ransom next year. The year after that, they may be stealing food out of our mouths. Ah, the bad old days are nothing to remember, la.s.s. Not a life to live again, not at all, at all."

"And us with no Legate or Knights to call upon," Grace said, letting Angus' brogue slip off her own tongue.

"Aye, la.s.sie, and us with only our own hands." A br.i.m.m.i.n.g pint clanked onto the table, so Angus naturally took a long swig to wash those thoughts away.