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

been a thunderstorm for more than a week. At least the dust gave warning even if the dry ground made it
easier for the raiders to bounce around off-road.

Grace pulled a mirror from around her neck and aimed it at the valley to give Chato a warning flash.
Someone emerged from among the brush and cheat-grass and waved a shirt back.

Now Grace cinched her harness. A quick check showed her neurohelmet was in place and none of her
cooling lines were kinked. She brought Pirate’s engine up from a fuel-saving idle to ready power. Working
the pedals with care, she spun him around on his left heel to face the other ’Mechs and fifty men and women
with rifles and the improvised rocket-firing tubes Mick called bazookas.

Projecting her voice as her father had taught her years ago, to carry to the crew two stories below and the
’Mech pilots with idling engines, Grace shouted, “What do you say we spread out some?” Even shouting,
she made sure her words came across as a suggestion. Chato might call her Falkirk’s war chief, but this
bunch were not soldiers. That they followed her suggestions more often than not made her their leader. If she
shot her mouth off too much, they’d pick a new mayor.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Jim Wilson, owner of about half the irrigation circles around Falkirk. He closed up
the newest AgroMech in town, its paint now marred from the additional armor welded to its front. As Wilson
led the way to a pile of rocks a klick south, his son followed, piloting a similarly up-armored AgroMech that
wasn’t all that much older than Pirate. The Wilsons’ rifle cabinet had been emptied to provide the barrels for
the Gatling guns that both ’Mech MODs carried. A dozen tenant farmers with gopher guns and two rocket
launchers trailed them.

Owen McCallester, who had never forgiven Grace for beating him out of the mayor’s job when his old man
died, nodded to Dennis Brady, and the two troublemakers plodded a klick north with most of their own mine
workers. Their ’Mechs’ engines struggled even as they waddled; both men had insisted Mick weld armor to
the frontand back of their century-old machines.

That left Grace with Dan’s AgroMech and its flamethrower, along with a score of town craftspeople and
merchants, armed with whatever was handy. Most rifles had hardly been used except for plunking at rabbits
and gophers during the annual sharpshooting competition at the Highland Games. The shooting was never
much to brag about. The competition was always late in the day, after the racing and tossing the caber and
way too much drinking. Grace didn’t consider mixing drinks and loaded guns all that safe, but the schedule
was sacred, unchanged for hundreds of years.

Everyone was sober today, even Greg McDougall, who’d never met a glass he didn’t love more than his
poor wife.

“Keep down!” Grace shouted. “They’re coming up the road. We’ll take them where it curves right into us.”

“And won’t that be a surprise for them,” Dan said, grinning through the faceplate of his bulky helmet. The
others laughed. Grace closed Pirate’s cockpit and spun the ’Mech into position.

We’d better surprise ’em. Otherwise, we’re toast,she thought.



The concrete road supported Captain Loren J. Hanson’sKoshi comfortably. The advance had gone well
this morning. He’d set an easy pace because after a week he didn’t want to break anything on the last day.