Now, instead, he would hunt down the raiding force and deal with them personally, leaving the rest to Torrent. And when the Steel Wolves tried limping back to their DropShips, bloodied and weak, then Erik would be waiting.

But first, the Legionnaire and its supporting force.

Ortega. No matter that Eus claimed to have intercepted a transmission, placing the militia warrior at the spaceport. Erik bet family money on the Legionnaire being piloted by Raul Ortega, who had made a point to defy the noble at every turn since the two of them met. Even before the customs officer turned MechWarrior, he had shown a penchant for disregarding Erik’s authority. Like a mosquito, biting and biting at him, always just out of reach and believing that he could not be smashed. Well, he would learn.

All of them would learn before this day was finished.

Some faster than others, he decided as his sensors painted a Warrior H9 attack helicopter cruising over a shopping mall and parking itself over the top of a bank. Its missile system reached for a lock on the Hatchetman. Erik pulled his crosshairs over the fragile craft, held the shot for a solid tone, and then pulled into the trigger with a gentle caress. Eighty-millimeter slugs roared out of his left-arm autocannon, tracking in over the VTOL’s thermal silhouette.

The pilot tried to sideslip, banking his craft over the main avenue, but Erik corrected his aim faster and the armor-piercing metal chopped into and through the H8’s light armor. Walking the stream of hot metal up into the rotor blades, he chopped away one, long vane and chipped up another. The unbalanced craft slewed through the air, losing altitude and finally dashing itself into the middle of the wide avenue where it erupted into a ball of orange fire and spreading pool of greasy flames.

Erik watched the fall, the fire. He rocked his throttles forward, kicking up into a walk, before he saw the Legionnaire standing on the far side of the wreckage.

A gout of yellow flash-fire erupted from the Legionnaire’s overhead rotary, and fifty-mil slugs buried themselves in the Hatchetman’s chest and upper right leg. The hammering impacts shoved Erik back, but could not knock him completely off his feet. The young noble brought his left arm up again, drew a bead over the Legionnaire and chased it into a side street with a long pull from his Imperator Class-10 autocannon. He chipped more stone off the bank’s facing than he did armor from the fifty-ton BattleMech. Before he could lower his aim, a pair of militia Jousts burst from the opposite side of the same street, crossed the main avenue, and chased off after the Legionnaire.

“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.