And it continued drifting north, toward the militia rear!

“Support forces, scatter and evade,” Raul ordered, knowing the confusion he was about to unleash in his own backfield. He selected an all-hands channel, one that the Swordsworn would also be monitoring. “DropShips are not—repeat, not–grounding in support of Steel Wolf advance. ’Ware behind!”

Then a pair of Jagatai aerospace fighters tore over the landing field, cutting down with a mix of autocannon and lasers, and Raul had all he could do to angle out of their strafing line before they yanked the rug out from under his feet again. The Pack Hunters prowled forward, waiting for a single misstep. Their PPCs spat out twin forks of manmade lightning, but they grounded out short of Raul’s Legionnaire.

As more reports of air-based strikes filtered through the command levels, Raul understood that a low-passing Overlord had ravaged Clark Diago’s position before moving down the militia’s back line and into the hesitant Swordsworn. Sweat burned at the corners of Raul’s eyes. He blinked them clear and twisted his Legionnaire about, watching as the two leviathan vessels lowered themselves on massive drive flares, one to either end of the grounded Kuan Ti. The trapped DropShip made the mistake of firing on the Overlord, one final act of defiance, and suddenly the aerial assault dealt over the militia line looked like a casual wave by comparison.

The Overlord pounded down at the nose of the civilian-conversion with gauss rifles and enough laser energy to light up the city of River’s End. Although limited in firepower after its military decommissioning, the Kuan Ti still mustered its assault-class autocannons and a heavy missile barrage. Then the Okinawa bit in from behind, trading lasers and PPCs against the civilian vessel’s aft pulse lasers and missiles.

It was an uneven fight from the beginning, and lasted until the Overlord pounded silent every one of the Kuan Ti’s forward weapon bays.

About sixty seconds.

Wary of being caught between the DropShips’ anvil and the hammer of the Steel Wolf advancing force, Raul herded his two remaining Schmitts and a scattered flock of mixed battlesuit infantry back toward their ravaged rearward lines. M.A.S.H. units and a JI 100 recovery vehicle had rolled up from the southwest, making pickup on broken units and fallen comrades. He stomped past a fire-gutted Joust and the twisted wreckage of two broken hoverbikes. One still had hands clamped onto the steering bar, but was missing the rest of the driver. A technician emergency response team fell hard at work over a captured Demon, getting it battle-worthy again and detailing a new crew out of their auxiliary ranks. Raul gave the working ERT a wide berth, swung around to one side of them, and then slammed his throttles down to a full stop. Being hauled up into the embrace of the JI recovery vehicle was Charal DePriest’s converted LoaderMech.

With Tassa leading a small force in defense of the Brightwater facility, Charal had been called up to help defend the spaceport. Raul had thought to keep her safe, relegated as she was to a support role, even when she followed him into the wedge between the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves. ‘Safe’ was a relative term in a live firefight, though, especially when two DropShips began redefining the battle. Still, there were any number of injuries that even a converted WorkMech could take and the MechWarrior could walk away from. Crippled gyros. Destroyed legs. Ruined engines.

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.