“Legionnaire spotted,” Erik broadcast, walking in pursuit of the militia machines. “Madison and Ninth, heading south on Ninth. Disregard previous orders. Station guard, protect the HPG. All other units converge on my position.”
A JES tactical and his Condor had already homed in on the light of the burning VTOL. Two other ground units radioed in confirmation while a pair of Swordsworn VTOLs raced up from the south to take spotter positions overhead.
Michael Eus called in with other contacts. “Lord Sandoval, we have heavy infantry contact across the southwest edge of the city and as many as half a dozen vehicles reported. They hit and run. Our forces are being pulled southeast and northwest at this time. My bearing on you, one hundred ninety relative, distance point-eight kilometers.”
Erik felt his upper lip twitch toward a snarl, worked to keep his voice level and authoritative. “They are opening up a hole for the Legionnaire to escape through. Close it!” He pivoted into the corner, ordering his tanks forward and checking that the other two vehicles racing up behind were also his own.
The Purifiers leapt onto the bank roof, skipped over to the shopping mall… and disappeared inside a conflagration of missile impacts and converging lasers.
Forewarned, Erik was not about to walk into an ambush. “Five second delay,” he ordered his armored lance, then slammed down on the jump jet controls with both feet. His Hatchetman leapt skyward on jets of superheated plasma, rocketing in a short arc up and over one corner of the deserted mall while Erik counted, “Five… four…” At three he began the sharp, short fall into the wide parking lot on the building’s other side. Two found him raising back his five-ton hatchet, ready to decapitate the Legionnaire. One.
Landing on bent knees into a ready crouch, Erik stepped forward and delivered a shoulder-level swipe at the nearby Legionnaire. The blade bit in just below the BattleMech’s armored mantle, crushing through protective plating and some myomer musculature but failing to sever anything critical.
His blow staggered the Legionnaire, shoving it forward into a tall lamppost, which could not bear the weight of a fifty-ton ’Mech. Sparks flew as the lamp heads shattered against the street. Erik’s VTOLs dipped down long enough to spray some lasers into the Legionnaire’s face. He would have wanted his armored vehicles to take further bites out of the resilient design, except that as they raced around the corner they fell into a point-blank firefight with the Jousts and one of the Agro conversions.
From down the local boulevard, a hoverbike squad raced up to support Erik’s assault. He left the smaller forces to them, concentrating on the Legionnaire. Thumbing the firing stud on his autocannon, he smashed several hundred rounds of hot metal into the BattleMech’s back. Armor rained down over the parking lot and street in a fury of shards and splinters.
Then the Legionnaire regained its balance, spun back at him and bit into his side armor with lasers and a furious stream of autocannon fire. Erik felt his control slipping—his Hatchetman falling backward under the terrible onslaught. Fighting against gravity, he managed one stumbling step backward, then another. Enough to slam up against the shopping mall’s three-story facing, protecting him from a bone-jarring fall.
Also enough to rob him of several crucial seconds. Erik rocked forward, putting his BattleMech back on stable footing. He traded one last burst of autocannon fire, and that much more armor, with the retreating Legionnaire. Then it squeezed in between a corner building and a burning Condor, and was gone again.
The fire-gutted Condor was Erik’s, as was a crippled but safely landed VTOL. He counted a militia Demon and the smashed ruin which had once been a Joust also among the victims of the short, violent firefight.
Raul Ortega had stung at him again, but not without losing blood of his own. Erik would make it cost him again.
“Legionnaire and Agro—two Agros—heading east on Carrington.” Erik’s remaining VTOL pilot, back on observation. “Count three… four… five vehicles now. They’re spreading out over two streets, on parallel tracks.”
Giving up on their attempt and heading for the spaceport, Erik throttled up to his best walking speed, just over forty kilometers per hour, and struck a parallel course to the fleeing raiders. This street had not been reinforced, not even in the old days, before the Succession Wars, when Achernar IndustrialMechs was one of the region’s largest producers. His feet punched down through brittle-thin ferrocrete, like a man walking over hard-crusted snow, and forced the Hatchetman to slog forward at less than optimum speed. It slowed him down too much. Not that he doubted it would matter.
Erik had only a basic idea of where all his units were, but he had to imagine that three ’Mechs working together would find a hole and crush whatever light resistance he might toss at their feet. City streets were too confining—too favorable for the smaller, mobile force. They had a slight advantage. Until he could pin them in the open, inside the industrial sector which lay in between the San Marino and River’s End proper. That was where he would hit them with everything he could muster.
That was where he would kill them all.
26
The Gemini Gambit
River’s End/San Marino Spaceport
Achernar
18 March 3133
Raul Ortega shook his head furiously as if trying to clear it of the noise. Comm channels bled over each other as reports, orders, and shouted warnings were passed up and down the militia line. Static crackled in between words and sometimes through an entire order. A moment of clear reception was rare, rare. And when it happened, too often it was the lull before a storm of new, concentrated fire savaged the militia and drowned out transmissions with thunderous explosions.
Fire and shrapnel raged constantly in the no-man’s-land that separated the Steel Wolves and Achernar’s determined militia. Bright lances of light speared back and forth, reflecting against ground haze built up from the smoky discharges of missile exhaust and burnt autocannon propellant. As the night gave way to sunrise, the only signs of battle falling off were the vehicles left broken and burning in the firefight’s wake. Raul counted a militia Fox armored car and two hoverbikes among their early casualties, lost back on the southwest side of the spaceport landing field where the firefight had begun. At least four APCs had been crushed and mangled over the tarmac since then in trying to deploy screens of battlesuit infantry, marking each gruesome shift north and east.
Two of the APCs had managed to disgorge their cargo of armored soldiers. Two had not.
Despite the cost in lives and material, Raul knew that the militia so far had staved off heavy casualties. Their advantage, so far, was their combat VTOLs, the low-altitude craft giving the militia air superiority for the first time since the initial Steel Wolf assault against Achernar. A Yellow Jacket, in fact, a flying version of the Marksman or SM1 Destroyer, could worry even Star Colonel Torrent with its nose-mounted gauss rifle. The militia would not keep that advantage much longer now that daybreak was upon them, but it had been enough to help move their ragged line to the spaceport’s northwest border, past the Steel Wolf DropShips and about even with the main tower and various administration buildings.
Nearly at the back of Tassa Kay’s retreating picket force.
It took some effort, mentally untangling the cluttered HUD, but so far everything held more or less in accordance with the militia’s rough planning. Raul’s late positioning was the less. Tassa’s early arrival, the more. Tassa had led most of her people from the capital just as dawn broke, turning back on the pursuing Swordsworn and holding them at the city’s edge, making feints as if trying to regain the industrial sector.