Charal’s WorkMech was missing its cockpit. All that remained was a melted stump of support structure.
Standing there, his Legionnaire grounded to a dangerous halt while Steel Wolf forces continued to stalk up from the south, Raul became a lodestone to stragglers. Scattered reserves and retreating forward units gathered in around his position, inadvertently creating a strongpoint that worried the advancing Wolves. Sensing a possible counter-thrust, they also slowed, drew together in concentrated ranks. A converted ConstructionMech joined the Pack Hunters, forming the spearpoint on a thrust that would not be long in coming.
The Swordsworn pressed forward now as well, goaded back into the fight as enemy DropShips landed behind their position. On one of the auxiliary channels, Erik Sandoval recommended—ordered—a full retaliatory strike against the advancing Steel Wolf line. “Bloody them now, and they’ll pull back. DropShips and all.”
His mobile command vehicle lumbered up from the far rear, protected by a pair of JES carriers. A pair of Jagatai fightercraft turned in his direction, laying down a long line of fire that swept up and over the Praetorian. Both Jessies belched out thick clouds of proximity-fused missiles, filling the air with heavy flak. The lead Jagatai pulled up so sharply Raul could almost believe the pilot had defied all laws of momentum.
The second craft was not so skilled, or lucky. It drove through the thickest part of the antiaircraft barrage, bulldozing through the far side with streamers of fire and smoke, a stunted right-side wing, and a lethal roll that pitched him up, over, and into the tarmac.
“Where was that support five minutes ago?” Raul asked aloud, not caring who heard him over the comm channels. But he knew, he knew.
Like those Swordsworn “reserve forces” held back within the capital, the JES carriers were being denied to the militia so that the standing guard bore the brunt of the fighting. The perfect Sandoval partnership. So long as Erik’s people held the HPG station and could force fighting in the streets before being removed from River’s End, the militia operated with its hands tied. The only choice was to cooperate—collaborate…
Or give Erik Sandoval exactly what he was asking for: complete responsibility for Achernar.
A trio of missiles slammed into the side of the Legionnaire, cracking into more armor, while the azure lightning-whip of a particle projector cannon snaked past Raul’s left knee and cut into a stalled Fox. The armored car swung around on lift fans and scurried back, like its scampering namesake.
Swinging around, Raul pegged one of the encroaching Pack Hunters dead center with his crosshairs. A pounding stream of autocannon slugs chipped away at the Hunter’s gyroscope housing, shoving the BattleMech back by several meters and threatening to topple it. It fell back among the building Steel Wolf forces.
Raul turned back to the waiting militia units, and Charal’s decapitated WorkMech. Do gold… good… by Achernar. From all their difficult conversations in the last week—difficult only because of her speech impediment—those were the words he remembered. The same ones echoed by Janella Lakewood. But what happened when serving the Republic and serving Achernar conflicted? Was that what the Sphere Knight had meant, telling him to then serve himself?
Tie goes to the MechWarrior.
“Captain Ortega?” Diago. According to the HUD, he too had fallen back, stretching the militia line into something more of an abbreviated arc than any serious encirclement. The Steel Wolf forces were knotted up into a thick wedge, with the tip pointed straight at Raul’s position. “Raul? You’ve got about ten seconds to get turned around and ready to meet a full charge.”
Raul shook his head, feeling more than his neurohelmet weighing down on his shoulders. “Not happening,” he said, voice pitched low. Then, with gathering strength, “No, Clark. Wrap ’em up and back to base. Carry or drag along our wounded equipment as we can. Ruin it rather than leave it for Torrent.”
He passed the same order down through several channels, making certain that the support forces rallying around his position had a clear idea of the order of retreat. The M.A.S.H. trucks and salvage vehicles led, protected by hovercraft flankers. Raul’s Legionnaire and their heaviest tanks would guard the militia rear. If the Steel Wolves wanted to force a longer battle today, he would make them pay a butcher’s price.
“Disregard that order.” The plans had finally worked their way over to Erik Sandoval. “Achernar militia, hold your line and prepare for a joint offensive.”
Long past caring for Erik Sandoval’s tactics, Raul keyed open a channel to answer for himself. “We’ve seen your brand of joint offensives, Sandoval. And it’s the last time we walk into one without reading the fine print.” He rocked forward on his foot throttles, stepping out into a crisp march to the west, out from under the Steel Wolf sword, exposing the Swordsworn line.
“Captain Ortega, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m ceding Star Colonel Torrent the San Marino spaceport. I would suggest you do the same.” There would be hell to pay with Colonel Blaire. At least Clark Diago was willing to follow his lead, for now. The militia’s western flank had drawn itself into a skirmish line to protect the retreating middle. “The militia is withdrawing,” Raul said.
“And leaving you to the Wolves.”
21
The Hardest Lessons
Brightwater River Control Facility
Achernar
12 March 3133
Strapped into one of many passenger seats inside the older Trooper-class VTOL, Raul Ortega labored to breathe shallow. The wide passenger compartment smelled its twenty years as an infantry carrier, tainted with rancid sweat and aviation fuel fumes. His seat had lost most of its thin padding years before, with only a few remaining strips held together with duct tape or stapled into the rigid plastic seat. Trying to ignore the knots pressing into his legs and lower back, Raul twisted around to stare out through a copper-tinted window as the infantry carrier thundered up the Rio Sangria.
The reddish, mud-colored waters still ran high as mountain rainfall continued to pour down into the lowlands, but was hardly in danger of flooding so long as the Brightwater River Control Facility remained in Republic hands. A system of locks and sluice gates, the Brightwater facility could, for brief periods, dam up the river completely or channel excess water into one of many old dry washes. From above the facility, he could see that water was indeed being diverted into two older arroyos. The VTOL followed the larger of the two runoff channels, banking southwest and leaving the river course a moment later to run out over yesterday’s battlefield.
From five hundred feet, the area did not look so bad. Some scorched desert grasses and a few charred husks that had once been vehicles or a military-modified IndustrialMech. As the ’copter settled, however, more of the personal cost became clear. He saw the pieces and parts of other machines, scattered leavings after salvage crews had worked the field over for whatever useful equipment they could find. Raul also counted better than two dozen armored battlesuits littering the area like the molted cicada husks, each one a potential fatality.
Three M.A.S.H. tents covered makeshift triage, surgery, and hospital care areas. Corpsmen loaded two stretchers onto a small chopper, which rushed them airborne even as the Trooper hit the ground and an infantryman rolled back two large doors so that Raul could jump down.