"Mike Moscoe - BattleTech - MechWarrior - Dark Age 09 - Patriot's Stand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moscoe Mike)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.



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 1
Near Falkirk, Alkalurops

Prefecture IX, The Republic of the Sphere

3 April 3134; local spring

Grace O’Malley loosened the straps on her harness, rested her elbows on the open cockpit of “Pirate,” her
MiningMech, and focused her binoculars. A quick sweep of the Gleann Mor Valley before her showed no
sign of the raiders whose arrival she dreaded.

Lately the chatter on the Net had been scary. Usually, Grace ignored Net gossip, but Allabad, the capital of
Alkalurops, had dropped off-Net a week ago with no explanation. Then hysterical postings and phone calls
started pouring in about BattleMechs stomping through houses, tanks shooting up shops, and off-world
troops hijacking ’Mechs—followed by that town dropping off the Net. Now the Net blackout was about to
overwhelm Grace’s hometown of Falkirk.

The evening before, her friend Gordon Frazier, mayor of Kilkenny, not two hours’ drive south, slapped up a
hasty e-note that BattleMechs and a whole lot of other armor were coming up the south road from Amarillo.
Grace had called Gordon, but by then both voice and data links were dead. It looked as though Falkirk was
on its own and raiders were coming to swipe Pirate.

Last night’s town meeting in Falkirk had been the shortest since Grace had been elected mayor. Some
citizens were for running, but most agreed: “Alkalurops takes care of itself.” The vote was to fight. That
didn’t surprise Grace. For much of the week, Mick’s ’Mech Maintenance Mavens had been adding armor
to the six local ’Mechs and jury-rigging weapons like the Gatling gun made of six hunting rifles that was now
strapped to Pirate’s right arm. John Shepherd, the local gunsmith, had specially loaded them with
high-powered, steel-jacketed shells.

Grace shook her head as if to clear it of a bad dream. Since she was a kid, her mom had told her how
ancient Ireland once trembled at the name of Grace O’Malley, the pirate woman. Grace had even named her
MiningMech Pirate “because he steals metal and hydrocarbons from the ground.” But real pirates! She’d
hoped never to face anything like this in The Republic of the Sphere.

She also hadn’t expected the HPG interstellar com grid to go down two years ago. On an out-of-the-way
planet like Alkalurops, that meant the news talkies spent more time on local chitchat. But even with trade
disrupted and metals and coal fetching below-market prices, it seemed like a small price to pay for being left
alone.

Once again Grace swept her binoculars over the Gleann Mor Valley, this time slowly, almost lovingly. This
was her home. She’d grown up here, like her mother and grandmother before her, going back almost to the
firstlanders. The valley hadn’t changed much in all that time. It showed red and brown where native plants