"Good. We're coming in through 2560." Victor knew mat the loss of sector 2550 would cut him off from the Drop-Ships meant to evacuate his people should the tide of battle continue in its current disastrous direction. "Give me some cover and we can help out."
"Request logged, Tornado One."
Victor saw Dennis Pesuti's Victorreel backward, armor steaming off its left flank. 'That's not a request, Regimental. That's an order!"
"Who in hell do you mink you are?" The comtech's voice came back hot. "Clear the frequency, you idiot!"
Victor pounded his fist into the padded arm of the command couch. "I am Prince Victor Ian Davion, dammit! I own this goddamned army and my men are dying out here. Unless you want to explain to my father why I went the same way, you'll lay down a diamond pattern of artillery-deployed mines. Alternate with cluster rounds. Do it now! These coordinates. We'll be gone by the time they get here."
Fear rocketed through the comtech's voice. "Wilco immediately, Tornado One. Downloading coordinates now to Longbomb. Longbomb, mix ADMs with clusters. We've got to save the Prince's ass."
Victor reopened the link to his men. "Storm Company, hurry back on a heading of oh-four-five degrees, repeat oh-four-five degrees. Squall One, you can play rear guard. We're making for sector 2550."
He never heard the various acknowledgements of his order, and refused to look as the secondary monitor toted up the identities of the warriors calling in. At the start of the battle, his battalion had filled three full columns on the screen. Now he could see out the corner of his eye that the list had dropped to less than one column. He didn't know if those left behind were alive or dead, and he'd just called down an artillery strike to obliterate anything left in his sector.
The Clansmen seemed happy to let him and his men flee. Victor fought to present his enemies as poor a target as possible as he retreated, but none took the opportunity to make any potshots. He knew the Clans preferred one on one battling, which Victor admired, but he had no desire to play their game.
Pressed against his flesh, he felt Omi's gift where he'd sewn it inside his cooling vest. He thought of all the samurai tales he'd ever heard, most telling of the hero dying gallantly in defense of a pass or bridge while his lord escaped. God help me, Omi, I don't want to play the Kurita game, either.
He shook his head. That was exactly the way Prince Ian Davion, the uncle for whom he was named, had died more than a third of a century before. Victor hoped that sharing the man's name did not mean he would share his fate. Great heroic traditions I've got all around.
He fingered the jade amulet Kai had given him. This marks a legend I'd much rather relive.
Without warning, the first of the artillery barrages hit home. What had been a mottled green and gray landscape with spindly trees and majestic palms vanished in a sheet of flame. The cluster munitions sowed the area with countless little bomblets that battered and blasted the Clan warriors. As he shut his eyes against the intensity of the explosion, Victor saw one 'Mech reduced to a silhouetted skeleton that immediately collapsed in on itself.
The fire evaporated like an illusion, leaving the killing ground a blackened field pitted with smoking holes. Tattered 'Mechs began to move in the thick mist like zombies rising from their graves. One stumbled forward, and in a bright flash, lost a leg to a mine. The 'Mech toppled onto its side, but its companions kept coming.
Victor worked Prometheuseast toward the coastline. Once there, he knew they would have a chance to link up with the rest of the Tenth Lyran Guards. The thought that the Jade Falcons were herding them toward that area niggled at the back of his mind. It meant the possibility of a trap or that the regiment had stopped the rest of the Falcons before they could trap the first battalion in a pocket.
As his ragged company reached the wooded plateau, Victor began to feel a bit safer. Directly east, only thirty meters from where he stood, the plateau broke off as though a big knife had sliced it away. Twenty meters below, the Mar Negro's dark waters pounded against the shore that marked the edge of the continental shelf.
The palm tree to his left burst into flames as a Jade Falcon's pulse laser laced it with,kilojoules of energy. Victor whipped the crosshairs for both his large lasers onto the blocky outline of the Clan 'Mech. The dot in the center of each pulsed once and he stabbed his thumbs down on the firing button. The coruscating red beams converged on the MadCafsright weapons pod, shearing it off at the wrist.
"Move them back, Galen. We're still being pressed." He used his trio of pulse lasers to lay down hazing fire. The lasers ignited the foliage they hit, creating a screen of fire between Victor and the advancing Clansmen, but that didn't slow the enemy at all. They kept coming and Victor sensed a change in the way they attacked.
Two of the vulture-like Hagetaka'Mechs broke through the blazing barrier and thrust their arms at his Omni. Autocannons with pulse lasers riding sidecar made up their arm-mounted weaponry and it was all concentrated on Victor. The autocannons nibbled tiny chips of armor from the Daishfschest, then the pulse lasers cauterized the wounds by dripping molten armor over them.
Prometheusstumbled backward as Victor fought against the impact of the autocannon shots and the loss of balance caused by losing more than a ton of armor. That didn't keep him from realizing that the Falcons had worked together to hurt him. If they were willing to do that at this point in the battle, Victor reasoned, they were either desperate or the Clanners had been suckering them all along. Given the panic at Regimental HQ, we must be dead!
Galen's Crusaderstepped forward to put itself between Victor and the Clanners. Its leg-mounted SRM launchers sent a dozen missiles corkscrewing in at one Hagetaka.They peppered the Clan 'Mech's jutting torso and right arm with a double handful of detonations that knocked the war machine back into the burning foliage. Its right arm hanging limp and useless, the 'Mech turned to engage them again.
Victor punched up the Regimental frequency again, but this time all he got was buzzing static. Ignoring precautions, he set his radio to broadcast across all the tactical frequencies. "This is Tornado One in sector 2560. We need any help we can get."
He thought he heard a reply, but the thundering detonations of a long-range missile against his Daishi'shead set his cars ringing and drowned out the voice. Spinning to his left,
Victor cut loose with the autocannon. It caught a MadCatdead center and dumped it unceremoniously on its back.
Both he and Galen withdrew as quickly as they could. Already Victor saw on his scanner that the rest of his battalion had made it to the narrows, where they could hold off the Clanners. Heading away as quickly as possible, with Galen close on his heels, he reached a clearing where a granite fang separated a narrow trail from the plateau. The other 'Meelis had already strung themselves out along the path by the time he and Galen broke from the jungle.
Home free!Turning back to lay down cover for Galen, Victor allowed himself a smile. "We made it."
A panicked scream from one of the Mech Warriors was Victor's only warning of the ambush. Shooting up to the level of the plateau, five OmniMechs with auxiliary jump jet packs strapped to their hulls leaped up from the Mar Negro. Water coursed off them and seaweed hung from the arms and legs of the 'Mechs, making them look like monsters from the bottom of the sea.