BattleTech: Vengeance, page 11
“I don’t care what you say,” his gunner said quietly, from inside the fighting compartment. “I am not going over there.”
Canne didn’t speak. He nodded.
But he didn’t look away.
Galen blinked.
He blinked again, and wondered why he was hanging half-over his command couch’s arm. One of the five restraint belts that held him into his seat had actually broken, letting him hang out. He reached for it, barely noticing the pain in his arm, but it swung away from him. The Crusader was moving.
Galen blinked again, and tried to swallow.
The Crusader was lying on its side, and it was moving.
“They’re running!” a tinny voice shouted. His neurohelmet was loose. He reached up and pushed it back down.
“Let ’em go,” the gruff voice of Sergeant Major Hiram said. “Get clear.”
“Sar—uh-oh.” Galen stopped and swallowed, trying not to throw up. He tried again. “Sergeant Major.”
“Sir?”
“Sarn’t Major… what’s happening?”
“You took a hard hit, sir.”
“A hit?” Galen blinked. He realized his arm was hurting. He frowned, looking around his cockpit, trying to find out what had knocked him over—a hit? A hit! The battle—
“Shit!” he shouted. He thrashed in his restraints, then screamed as his shoulder twisted and the muscles in his arm pinched, and then he threw up. Thankfully, the faceplate of his neurohelmet swung open.
“Just hang on, sir,” Hiram said.
Galen spat and tried to wipe his mouth, but he couldn’t reach. “What’s happening?”
“The Snakes are running,” the sergeant major said.
Galen twisted, trying to see his HUD. All he could see was gray and red damage lights, and the distorted shape of a Zeus filling his vision. “We need to…”
“To get clear, yes sir,” Hiram finished. “The DropShip’s already lit its drives.”
Galen swallowed another bout of nausea. “Oh.”
“Just hang on, sir,” Hiram said. The Crusader lurched again.
Galen put it together. He’s dragging me—’Mech and all, he’s dragging me.
He started to speak again, to tell the sergeant major to drop him, to get clear, but bright, white-orange light suddenly glared at him through the Crusader’s canopy. An instant later a wave of sound, a roaring that crackled and went on and on, shook him and all sixty-five tons of his ’Mech.
Galen shouted, or tried to, but shaking was too much. He felt a burst of pain as his helmet connected with the side of his seat, and then he felt nothing.
EPILOGUE
Twelfth Donegal Guards Cantonment
Heaven’s Gate
Ryde
Skye March, Federated Commonwealth
9 October 3046
The air in the military hospital was disturbingly clean. It was filtered, to keep the environment as sterile as possible while soldiers were healing. Galen Cox was thankful for it at the moment, as it meant there was little danger of sneezing on Leftenant General Jeremy Hawksworth or any of the colonels or kommandants standing behind him.
Hawksworth leaned back from where he’d leaned close. “That should do it,” he said.
Galen couldn’t see the pin, on the pillow beside him, but he’d seen it when the general had held it up. “Thank you, sir.”
“You earned it, Hauptmann Cox,” Hawksworth said. “Heal up. We’re going to need you on Trellwan.”
“It’ll take more than a few Snakes to keep me down, sir,” Galen promised, despite feeling as though a fourteen-year-old candy striper could hold him down with her pinky.
The general said a few more words and then left, taking his entourage with him. After a moment the only person left was Sergeant Major Hiram, standing at rest near the door in an undress jumpsuit.
“Congratulations, Hauptmann,” Hiram said.
“Sarn’t Major,” Galen said, trying and failing to shift in his bed.
Hiram frowned, glanced around, and then sighed. “I should get back to the company, sir,” he said. “Battalion tells me we’ll have replacements waiting for us on Trellwan to bring us up to strength, but there’s plenty needs doing here.”
Galen nodded. It felt wrong, to be leaving Ryde so soon after the battle, but orders were orders. Rhinestag and the other survivors would have to take care of their own world until the Lyran State Command got another regiment—or, God willing, a whole regimental combat team—out here to watch the border.
Hiram cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing, sir. The ops office has asked me…”
“Yes?”
“It’s the hauptmann’s—Hauptmann Rychert, I mean—’Mech. The Banshee. The ops people want to know if you intend to keep it, as company commander, or pass it along. Your Crusader’s already been repaired, but you know how these Elsies are, sir…” Hiram stopped, eyes bulging. “I mean—”
Galen would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much. “No, you said it right, Sarn’t Major.” He thought for a moment. “Let them take it. I like that Crusader.”
Hiram grinned. “That’s what I told them you’d say, Hauptmann.” He ducked his head and slipped out, leaving Galen alone and staring at the fluorescent lights and the acoustic ceiling tile. With no more distractions, his mind went back several days.
He saw again the light of the Combine DropShip lifting off, carrying barely two lances of the original nine it had landed with. The salvage from the battle would be enough to replace most of the Caimans’ losses, if they’d wanted such light machines. Instead, it would either be spread across the AFFC as replacement ’Mechs or granted to the Ryde Militia to form a ’Mech corps.
He also saw the six shattered and broken Caiman ’Mechs, from Sergeant Rodrigo’s decapitated Victor to Sergeant MacArthur’s fire-blackened Hatchetman. The Snakes had fought hard, but they’d lost. He’d beaten them. A horrific cost had been paid, but no civilians had been killed.
No little boys had lost their parents.
Even as he thought it, he saw Bets Matheson’s little girl again, and wondered if it was really any different for her because her mother had been a soldier. He wondered if she would build a small spot in her heart to hide the pain, as he had.
He wondered if it would still feel as full as his did, if she ever found revenge.
It’s not enough, he told himself. Not enough to beat them. I need to find a new purpose, a new goal to chase. It was nothing the counselors and therapists hadn’t told him all through his teens, but he hadn’t understood it until now.
The Snakes were gone, beaten.
His parents were still dead, and the empty hole their deaths had torn in his heart was still empty, still raw.
Bets Matheson’s daughter was still missing her mother.
He sniffed and exhaled.
Maybe he would find something on Trellwan.
After all, he thought, imagining the hautpmann’s diamonds pinned to his pillow, I have a company now. He wondered if it would feel better to spend more time with them, learning how to keep them alive, than it had to waste so much time on revenge.
A soldier protects the people, he remembered.
For the first time in a long time, Galen Cox found himself looking forward to tomorrow.
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Table of Contents
Vengeance
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Legal
Jason Schmetzer, BattleTech: Vengeance
