Light autocannon rang hollow against the side of the Atlas’ chest. Demon fast tanks used their lasers to work over her lower legs, while a Falcon Uziel probed and pounded at her with its twin PPCs.
Still getting used to the assault ’Mech, a large step up from her poor Hatchetman, Tara pulled crosshairs down over the Uziel, too slowly, and had to shift them over to an M1 Marksman when the fifty-ton machine slipped back out of range. Her lasers burned large, red-tinged wounds into the Marksman’s side armor. The Gauss slug punched in behind, rocking the machine up and then slamming it back down again with incredible force. The turret barrels sagged. More smoke littered the air. On her HUD, its red icon faded from the cluttered battlefield.
Not too bad, she decided, grading her performance.
Then a brace of long-range tactical missiles punched the Atlas in the chin, sending her stumbling back, arms windmilling for balance.
Not too good either.
Fighting against gravity, Tara planted one foot behind her and kept the Atlas on its feet. Her vision was hazy and her ears rang, but already she was searching for the new threat. Too late again.
The Eyrie, which had tagged her so easily with its ATMs, used its jump jets to rocket away from her, dancing through the air with a ballerina’s grace. It landed in a light crouch, as feather softly as thirty-five tons could fall out of the sky.
Far beyond her limited mastery of the assault machine. She half expected to see the Eyrie try a handstand next, maybe a cartwheel. The image garnered a grim smile. Such tricks were the province of circus stunts and monster ’Mech rallies, not intentional battlefield tactics.
She throttled forward, drawing a bead on the distant Eyrie, and put a Gauss slug into its left thigh. At extreme range, it was one hell of a shot. Enough to give the other warrior pause, and send the light ’Mech stumbling back for the safety of the main Falcon lines.
“Highlanders”—she opened a channel to her force—“prepare to swing back and around again on my mark. Anastasia, where away?”
“Pulling… under new… Falcon drive.” The return call came full of crackling distortion. Short-lived. Interference from particle cannon fire, Tara guessed. “If that smoke we see is a good… of your position, call it ten kilometers. Lyrans are much closer.”
Tara nodded to the empty cockpit. It was getting harder to hold a clear picture of the battle in her head. Her Highlanders and elements of the Skye militia spread over two dozen square kilometers, fighting a series of small, desperate battles. Overlapping offensive waves as the Jade Falcons never gave the defenders much time to regroup, rearmor, and rearm. Lyrans mucking things up on her flanks. Stormhammers rallying somewhere to the south, having given up the main route from Norfolk but hoping to rejoin.
With Miliano now under Jade Falcon threat, it fell to her Highlanders and Kerensky’s Steel Wolves to collapse the flanks inward, forming a new defensive line before the Falcons split them for good. The running battle had taken hours to coordinate and pull off, but finally they were within range. It seemed.
She had to trust Hiram Brewster not to fumble the ball as he tied the two flanks together.
She had to trust Anastasia Kerensky to be there.
She hated trusting them. Putting the fate of Skye in hands not sworn to The Republic. Of course, if she had looked more carefully at Jasek’s plan to use Norfolk as a thrust into the belly of the Falcon position, trusted him as everything inside her said she should, they might not be on the verge of losing Miliano and possibly Skye with it.
More laser fire cut at her through the smoke, flashing in bright scarlet and stuttering darts of emerald green. She wrenched her targeting reticle over and slammed lances of energy into an encroaching Scimitar. It backed off, and Tara searched for a new target.
Her ferroglass shield was streaked with sooty grime. It was hard to tell at a glance where her forces ended and the Jade Falcons’ began. Even in places where the smoke cleared, most vehicles were blackened by fire and ash. Emerald green or Highlander blue were both muted into shades of gray. Crests had been scorched off. She recognized a few units by their force composition—the Arbalest and two Jessies blazing a forward trail were hers, and that trio of Condors protecting the MASH trucks—but so many vehicles had changed hands recently she couldn’t say for certain that a Hasek mechanized combat vehicle wasn’t now Jade Falcon property, or that a Skanda light tank wasn’t one of the two her Highlanders had pressed into their own service. Her HUD was a tangle of icons and identification tags, and she had no time to worry them out in her head while trying to fight a battle at the same time.
There was one good way to help sort things out.
“Mark!” she commanded. “Jersey Swing!”
In practiced coordination, every Highlander vehicle turned away from its opponents and raced back to the southeast. The few Stormhammer stragglers attached to her command were slower, taking one last laser shot or throwing out missiles to cover their ass, but followed quick enough. Her Atlas and a Highlander Behemoth II guarded the exercise with weapons blasting into any Jade Falcons who gave thought to chase. Then they too turned and powered into best-speed retreats.
How the maneuver earned its name, Tara wasn’t certain. All she cared about was that it worked. Punch them in the nose and then hook back to the southeast, followed by a turn westward with every unit pushing for all it was worth. It was usually good for a handful of kilometers.
VTOLs spotted for them, picking out the best paths and warning of enemy pathfinder units. They cleared the brush fire, even though the prevailing winds drove it right at their backs. This time her maneuver headed the Highlander main force right into the flank of a Falcon advance, shearing off the tip of the Falcons’ spear like a scythe took the heads off grain.
Tara laid out a lightly armored Stinger with her lasers, and spent one of her few remaining Gauss slugs into the belly of a troublesome Skadi. The VTOL burst into flame before it hit the ground. More fires spread out from the burning wreckage.
It set the Jade Falcons back on their heels, throwing them into disarray. Tara’s instincts told her to push forward and drive them back. Chew several large pieces out of the enemy. But her head warned her that she had too far to go still. Instead, she opened comms again and ordered a second swing right on the heels of the first.
“We’re running.”
Tara’s whisper was low and with barely any strength behind it, but in her own ears the words echoed loudly as she admitted them to herself for the first time.
They were collapsing the flanks, forming a new defensive line. They had pushed across several dozen kilometers in a handful of hours, making the Falcons pay desperately for every meter gained, every machine taken. But they were, in fact, running. Running toward Miliano, where the Stormhammers were putting together a last-ditch effort to stand and hold Skye. Many Highlanders would not see the end of the race. Not with their machines and equipment. Some of them, not with their lives.
And now she was trusting Jasek Kelswa-Steiner to have something worthy of the sacrifice her people—all of the defenders—were making.
A deep bass rumble shook the ground as the Union–class DropShip lowered itself onto the blockaded highway north of Miliano. Tamara Duke felt the trembling underfoot, glanced south. As late afternoon rolled toward twilight, the white-hot flames that pushed out beneath the DropShip flared brighter even than the nearby glow of Miliano’s city lights. An afterglow reflected back against the underside of the spheroidal vessel, lighting up the Highlanders’ banner crest, then darkened as the engines were finally banked to standby mode.