Battletech #30 - Hearts Of Chaos by Victor Milán

Author:Victor Milán [Milán, Victor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780451455239
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1996-06-27T05:00:00+00:00

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The Shilone's, landing gear squealed as it kissed the blacktop of the combined starport and airfield south of the port city. As she kicked in the retro boosters, Tai-i Sharon "Mouse" Omizuki of the Fifth Galedon Aerospace Wing, Tai-sa Terrance Kondracke's Desolation Angels, tried to contain the excitement that seethed in her like bubbles in champagne. Her first kill in years, and it had been one worthy of a company commander: a 100-ton Stuka.

Having tasted blood she was hot for a shot at more. But her group commander had ordered her company to land and stand down, and she was seasoned enough to know the wisdom behind that order. Fusion-driven, armed with one large and two medium lasers, her 65-ton Shilone could fight virtually indefinitely. But aerospace combat was a highly aerobic sport. Far faster than the conflict of the lumbering landbound Battle-Mechs, it imposed physical stresses many times the force of gravity on the system, stresses that could kill an unprotected human, especially one not trained and conditioned to endure them. More to the point, even an aerospace jock tempered and honed like a Muramasa blade and swaddled in a gee-suit could fly herself quite literally death in a fighter. As a practical matter, long before that point was reached, the accumulation of gee-loading and emotional stress would have reduced the pilot's judgment, perceptions, and reflexes to the point where the chances of a fatal mishap soared asymptotically toward certainty.

Even under the enlightened leadership of Theodore Kurita, first as military commander and then as ruler of the whole Combine, the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery demanded much of its warriors. But the DCMS had long since learned the hard way that to keep a pilot in actual combat for more than an hour at a stretch, barring dire necessity, was simply to throw away expensive machinery, not to mention pilots' lives. And though, individually, their lives meant nothing, their training cost the Dragon a JumpShip-load of money.

When the Shilone began to slow, Mouse turned the craft off the runway and taxied to a parking spot on the apron near some hangars under the guidance of a heavily swaddled ground tech wielding light batons and wearing ear protectors. She dropped out the access hatch in the craft's flat belly, waving off the gloved helping hand offered by a tech, and walked bent-over beneath the rapidly cooling craft to where a little van waited. The door slid open as she mounted the non-skid-padded metal steps.

"Welcome to Towne," said the voice of her wing commander.

In the entrance she stopped and bowed. "The Tai-sa does this unworthy one great honor," she said, not bothering to suppress a grin that the faceplate of her helmet didn't hide. Kurita aerospace pilots kept up appearances, but like fighter jocks in any time and any clime, their tendency, especially among those who had shared combat, was toward extreme informality. Respect came due as to how you flew. Everything else was a dog-and-pony show.

"Oh, come the hell inside and take a load off.

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