He opened a radio channel. "Mr. Hettig, please coordinate a withdrawal of the 138th from Skupo. Precentor Jernberg is dead or incapacitated. Use their armor to slow the Cluster following them. Remember, most of those troops are green, so pulling them out is going to be close to announcing a rout."
"Roger, Precentor Martial."
Focht again scanned the battlefield and saw the rest of the Wolf Spiders running up the hill at full speed. It had taken them just under two minutes to close the gap between Phelan's Star and the main body of the group. Already some of the fastest 'Mechs in that group had exchanged fire with the 'Mechs of Bandit's Bane. He knew the 138th's losses would be hideous.
Right place, right tactics, but the wrong people. But there was no way I could devote a more seasoned division to fight so small a unit.He stared hard at Phelan's 'Mech. If I have to lose, better it be to warriors I can respect than those I cannot. This is not over, for one battle does not the war make. I know that and, worse yet, I know you know it.
"Mr. Hettig, bring the reconstituted 282nd down from Brzo to take care of the Wolf Spiders."
"It will take them a day or more to get down there. The 138th won't last that long."
"I know, Mr. Hettig. I know." The Precentor Martial nodded grimly. "I don't want them to save the 138th, I just want them to slow the Wolf Spiders. If they can."
35
Teniente
Nova Cat Occupation Zone
6 May 3052 (Day 6 of Operation Scorpion)
Victor Ian Davion looked at the chronometer on the command console of Prometheus,his Daishi. "Kama-ichi,where are they? They are running into our red zone."
Shin's voice crackled through the speakers in his neuro-helmet. "They are coming, Highness, but they match their pace to the slowest of the 'Mechs."
"Shin, I don't know if we have time for that sort of stuff." Victor punched up a tactical map of the area. Behind where his Daishiand lance stood, he saw the triangle of DropShips they'd used to make planetfall. The majority of his troops were arrayed in a crescent along the northwest perimeter of the DropShips' effective gunnery range as that was the direction from which they expected the Clans to arrive. A large square represented the furthest distance they estimated the Clans could have traveled and a smaller one marked their probable last location, given speed and heading.
Both circles were far too close for Victor's ease of mind. "Shin, tell them to abandon the broken 'Mechs. We can send a chopper out from one of the ships to pick them up."
"Highness, many of these 'Mechs have been in their families for decades."
Victor cursed. "I hear you, Shin." The Prince expanded the tactical map's view to handle an area large enough to bring the Combine convoy onto the edge of it. The Clans looked to be closer and were certainly moving faster than the Combine troops. Here we sit in the only LZ sufficient to handle DropShips. The Clans know it and we know it. Feels like having one foot nailed to the floor in a bar fight.
Victor switched his radio over to that of the DropShip Serene Foresight."Captain Coir, do you have enough fuel to take a short hop?"
"Affirmative. I'm good to go for one or two, but we'll light up the sky."
"Stand by. I may need you to recover some of us."
"Aye, sir. Standing by."
The Prince flipped the radio back to his command frequency. "Shin, pull Kama lance back and recon Hohiro's path. I want you to bring them up as fast as you can, and ready to shoot as well. Galen, you Murphy, Hudson, and Cooper form up your lances on me. We'll swing wide and try to draw the Clans off to the west. Macles, you'll take command of the rest of the unit and remain here to catch what we don't scare off. On my orders, or cessation of same, you'll pull back into the Valiant Wisdomand get the hell out of here. Got it?"
"Loud and clear, sir."
Victor took a deep breath. "Good, let's get to it."
The last solid sighting they'd had of the Clan unit heading their way made it a full Cluster. That put it at roughly twice the 'Mechs he was taking out after it. If the cloud had any silver lining, it was that the Clans had not left a line unit on Teniente, but had used only a garrison force. As a result, their equipment was not all OmniMechs.
Something deep down inside Victor screamed at him that he was committing suicide. He recalled at the Nagelring that certain very bad chess players were known as having mastered the "kamikaze" or "Custer" defense. That label became modified to "the Custer plan" when certain cadets proved incapable of thinking in acceptable or successful terms during tactical exercises.
Splitting one's force in the face of a superior enemy definitely had the ring of a Custer plan to it, and Victor dreaded that idea. By the same token, he knew the Clan commander could not be concentrating fully on him because of a possible ComStar offensive. If he's distracted enough, we might be able to draw him off and get back out again.Victor opened a line to Foresight."Captain Coir, head out and pick up the Kurita stragglers."
"Aye, sir."
Back behind him, lighting the landscape with a silvery ion torch the Foresightburned up through the night sky. All of the Revenants' black 'Mechs cast long shadows ahead of themselves. As the DropShip climbed upward, darkness again cloaked the 'Mechs.
Victor glanced at his tactical map. "Let's pick up the pace. They can't be closer than ten kilometers by this tactical map, but I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Ditto," commented Galen. "I don't trust spy reports, especially when we get them from ComStar."
Bringing the Daishiup to its top speed, Victor started it on a course to the west that he intended to have loop back toward the east just before they hit the Clans. At his current pace, with their supposed distance, he had nearly ten minutes until the units should run into each other. Just six minutes out, a line of hills running north and south cut across Victor's line of march.
"Galen, just over that line of hills, we'll head north for a bit, then feint east." He glanced at his tactical map and saw the Clans still three kilometers away. "We'll surprise them."
"Roger. Heads up, boys and girls. We're in the danger zone now."
Galen's words still ringing in his ears. Victor crested the hills, then plunged down the other side. Danger zone? No, this is hell itself.
The relative safety of the ridgeline's western side had suggested itself to the Clan commander as well. As Victor came over the top, he saw two dozen 'Mechs running full-out through the night. His computers tagged each with an ID number and a model. In a second, he realized the Clan commander had sent his smallest and fastest 'Mechs out in a quick march to cut them off from the 'Mechs coming up to reinforce their position. The Clan commander had no way of knowing the reinforcements were a ragged group of Kurita 'Mechs that were in poor shape for any sort of serious battle.
"At them, Revenants!" Victor sent two swarms of Streak SRMs out at a Clan Hornetsprinting by. His Daishi'shard lock on the target brought the dozen missiles in on target. The missiles repeatedly hammered the Hornet,stripping armor from its chest and right leg. The pilot fought against the force of the explosions, but the unbalanced 'Mech tumbled and rolled.