Fool's Gold: Carson Lyle's War - Part One (14 page)

"Noted."

"Hopper jets are at about seventy-five percent. Again, no time to fix it right."

Lyle ran a hand through his hair. "Seems like everything about this is at seventy-five percent."

"Not my fault. They only gave me enough time to make sure everything works."

"Fantastic."

"Anyway, the left shoulder assembly is a bit shaky—"

"Let me guess...seventy-five percent?"

Diego shrugged.

"Alright," Lyle said. "This is the C-variant, you said?"

"Correct?"

"Electronics upgrade?" Lyle said, activating a diagnostic display.

"Yes, actually. Tactical computer and targeting system have fairly current firmware and the system is fully A.I. capable."

Lyle smiled again. "Nice."

"No A.I.'s installed for this duel though," Diego said. "This is a total driver evaluation."

Lyle chuckled. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

"That about covers it. Or at least as well we can without any shakedown time."

Lyle continued bringing up diagnostics, and going through the systems checklist in his mind. "Thanks, Chief. I appreciate it."

Then, out of the corner of his eye to his right, he saw a hand extended down to him.

Lyle looked up at Diego, who was smiling out of the corner of his mouth. He reached up with his left hand and accepted the gesture from Diego.

The chief leaned in and said, quietly, "On this course, she likes using misdirection. When you're watching the right, she'll be on you from the left."

Lyle sat in a stunned silence for a long moment and said, "Why tell me that?"

Diego pointed to the empty Velcro strip, on his uniform shoulder where the rank patches would be. Shook his hand again, and said, "I've got to finish getting this baby ready. See you in a bit."

Lyle was a little bit stunned. What would Vostro think about that?

The exchange reinforced the something Lyle knew deep down and hoped the men and women of the 501st also believed: While they were divided by the lines on a map and separated by an ideology of their superiors, they were all still cut from the same cloth. And maybe even Captain Vostro – The Banshee, as Lyle heard she was called – could have a brief moment of mutual respect for a fellow mech driver.

He hoped so.

Chapter 26

Chief Diego gave Lyle the final run down of his evaluation of the Twelve – he was still out gunned, outpaced, and out matched in nearly every way on paper.

The briefing held no surprises. The mechs were outfitted with training weapons that couldn't penetrate mech armor, but could knock around and hits would register as damage. The data was collected from sensors in the mech armor and sensors in the weapons themselves. An algorithm would calculate damage to affected area which was translated into points. When a mech had registered enough damage to be deemed disabled or destroyed, the duel would be over.

Nothing had really changed from years ago.

Lyle settled back into the cockpit after the briefing, connecting sensors to the various points on his suit that monitored health vital signs, then he slid his arms into the shoulder straps of the harness and clicked the buckles into the center buckle on the waist strap.

He picked up the helmet from the hook on the left wall of the cramped cockpit. It was olive drab, like the Twelve, with 'Wicker-Man' hand scribed on the visor cover. He slipped the helmet over his head and connected the computer line to the port on the back of the helmet. He tested the visor interface with the targeting computer. The amber reticle appeared on the visor. He moved his eyes, left and right in the visor's field of view. The reticle moved with his eyes and settled on what he looked at. He could see the cannons on the mech arms moving in sync with his eye movements, as well. Synchronization with his left retina was completed.

He flicked his eyes to the stall across from him and let the reticle settle long enough for a target lock, then he switched the system off.

He could just imagine the alarms going off in Vostro's cockpit for that brief second and her cursing the ‘civie hauler’ in the mech across the bay. His way of saying 'hello'.
No reason to not try to get in her head just a little bit.

Lyle could see the crew outside racing around, retrieving gear and disconnecting the gantry from the stall. It wouldn't be long before it was time to power up.

He took his hands off the controls, set them in his lap, and closed his eyes. Lyle took a long, deep breath, held it, then exhaled slowly. He wasn't nervous, per se. But there was still about a thousand things that could go wrong with this. Even with training weapons, he couldn't afford to take anything for granted.

He believed in his mech – a mech driver had to believe in his machine no matter what. And he believed Chief Diego had done everything that could be done in the time allotted to him. But there was still some uncertainty in driving a mech that had been in mothballs for who knows how long. Metal gets fatigued. Wire connections fray with age. A single wire could simply come loose, he'd be dead in the water, and Vostro would have her way with him.

There was a crackle in the commlink. "Mech Bravo-twelve, report status."

Lyle flipped a switch to connect to the open channel.

"Bravo-twelve-" He stopped himself for a second, thinking, and said, "Wicker-Man, status green, copy?"

The channel was quiet for a long moment. The controllers were probably deciding whether or not to designate him by that call sign. In a moment, he got his answer.

"Copy...Wicker-man. Status green. Banshee, report status."

Vostro came over the channel. "Banshee, status green." There was no inflection in her voice, Lyle noted. No detectable hostility. Just another day at the office.

Lyle opened the channel again. "Banshee, Wicker-man, copy?"

He wondered if she would answer.

It took a few seconds. "Bravo-twelve, go ahead."

"Be safe out there, and watch your back, over."

"Acknowledged." Then he heard the click of her closing the channel on her side.

No call sign. Wow.

The comm channel came to life again. "Stalls one and six, you are cleared for power up and departure. Proceed to waypoints designated in your nav-computer."

"Banshee, acknowledges."

"Wicker-Man acknowledges."

Showtime.

Chapter 27

Lyle began the startup sequence first flipping a bank of switches on the left, then the right. The Twelve responded with a coughing shake and a roar from the powerplant that took a few seconds to settle into a consistent, even vibration and hum. He saw white smoke flowing in front of the cockpit and wondered if it would going to blow up before he even got outside.

Chief Diego came over the radio. "That's just some residual carbon buildup. It’ll burn away after she gets warm."

"Thanks, Chief. Am I clear?"

"You are clear. Good luck."

Lyle looked up and Vostro was already out of her stall and heading to the airlock.

He checked the dials again. RPMs were steady, power levels were good. Diagnostics were green on all points.

"Here's to hoping I don't fall on my face."

Lyle grabbed the T-shaped throttle level firmly and gave it a gentle push forward. The Twelve creaked, and shuttered, then the right foot took its first step, followed by the left. The X and Y-pitch gauges for the torso stayed level and the mechs footfalls only sent a minor impact vibration up to the cockpit. So far, everything was as it should be.

He settled the Twelve right next to Vostro's Fifty-four. The airlock took several seconds to slide closed behind them with a loud clank of heavy metal. The amber strobes, in each corner started flashing and the alarm buzzer sounded. Vents opened in the ceiling of the lock to vent out air pressure. There was a sharp hiss and dust rose from the floor as air was suddenly sucked upward by the pressure differential. Then the door leading to the outside split and slowly slid open revealing the pale, gray, rocky landscape set against the backdrop of the asteroid field and the space beyond it.

Lyle looked out the right side of his cockpit at the fifty-four and saluted. He wasn't sure if Vostro could see him. She had already polarized her canopy against the glare that reflected off of the rocky surface of the planetoid. He saw a puff of smoke from the mech's rear exhaust and it took off to its left, across his field of view. Lyle judged that she must have given it full throttle. Each step her mech took in the low gravity was more like a jump, covering seventy-five meters with each step at a forward velocity of ninety kilometers per hour.

That much mech was hard to stop and redirect in this gravity. He could use that to his advantage.

Time to get moving.
He brought up the nav-computer display. Waypoint Zulu was ten klicks out, to the east, southeast. There was a countdown displayed on his helmet visor that read: nineteen-minutes-six-seconds, which was the time until start. Ready or not, when the timer reached zero, Vostro would begin hunting him and he'd have to figure out how to overcome the disadvantages of a lesser mech, rusty skills, and a vague memory of the landscape around the base.

Lyle picked a low spot between two hills in an east-southeast direction, turned the mech towards it and shoved the throttle to full. The Twelve leaped forward in response. Each stride was a longer than the last until the mech settled at sixty-eight kilometers per hour.

"Woohoo!"

Carson Lyle was feeling an adrenaline rush from mech driving again. For that brief moment, he was able to put everything out his mind and just enjoy himself. It was absolutely exhilarating.

After he cleared the hills, there was about a kilometer of open space ahead of him so he'd decided to take the opportunity to evaluate the twelve while on route to the waypoint.

He leaned the control stick left and right, slowly. The twelve responded a little quicker going left than it did right. Could be related to the damaged waist linkage. He'd have to be careful. He tested the targeting at full speed on large boulders as he ran by them. Weapons locks were acquired at acceptable speeds. With targeting on, he physically looked way left and right, to test arm mobility. The arms swing out to follow the reticle Lyle was moving across the landscape, on his visor, but, just as Diego said, the left arm was shaky and had difficulty getting a clean lock while in motion.

It was what he had to work with and it would have to do.

Chapter 28

Combat Mech Practice Range

Camp Neptune.

The nav-computer indicated he reached waypoint zulu. He brought the mech to a stop and looked at his surroundings.

"Why am I not surprised?" He said.

Waypoint zulu turned out to be a box canyon with walls that were too high for hoppers to take his mech over, even in this low grav. A few rock formations scattered around the canyon that could be used for cover. The only way out was the same narrow pass that brought him in to the canyon, barely a wide enough for a mech.

He looked at the timer. Just over three minutes to get set.

Someone picked this waypoint on purpose and they definitely didn't want this to go down fairly. Even if it wasn't Vostro that set this up, it was a fair bet someone would tell her right where to find him. But that was something he would have to deal with later.

He checked out the rock formations more closely. Two cast shadows large enough for him to take cover. One was taller, in the wide open area of the canyon floor. The other was against the east wall, it wasn't as tall but had more girth and looked as though it could provide good shielding against mech fire. It also had several other smaller formations around it that could be useful, plus it had a good view of the canyon entrance.

"That'll do."

He steered the mech over to it and settled in shadow. The bright sunlight cast shadows in from the direction of the entrance so he'd have at least some extra cover from that direction. He positioned the mech in small a gap in the rocks that was at cockpit level and lined the right arm laser up pointing at the canyon entrance like a sniper. Then he remembered what Diego had said.

Hmm..new plan.

***

Captain Leeann Vostro sat in her cockpit watching the final thirty seconds tick off the timer and she was fuming. She could not believe the gall of that civie to show up and get placed at her level. She didn't care what he used to be. She didn't care what the Colonel wanted him to do. She just want to get this over with and relegate him to working in the mess hall for the duration of the time he was here.

A captain working chow. Now that would be a sight.

She brought up the tactical display and overlaid the grid for the duel area. The computer displayed four other way-points where the civie could be. She decided she would run the perimeter of the full grid, and work her way in. Her only concern was taking too long to locate him and getting careless.

She suddenly remembered his face, his eyes, staring into hers before he went to his mech. There was no hint of fear there. No trepidation. Maybe he really had been a driver before? Maybe the Colonel knew something she didn't? No! It didn't matter what he was before. He was just a low life civie hauler now and she wasn't going to have that in her unit.