That was where he would kill them all.

River’s End/San Marino Spaceport

Achernar

18 March 3133

Raul Ortega shook his head furiously as if trying to clear it of the noise. Comm channels bled over each other as reports, orders, and shouted warnings were passed up and down the militia line. Static crackled in between words and sometimes through an entire order. A moment of clear reception was rare, rare. And when it happened, too often it was the lull before a storm of new, concentrated fire savaged the militia and drowned out transmissions with thunderous explosions.

Fire and shrapnel raged constantly in the no-man’s-land that separated the Steel Wolves and Achernar’s determined militia. Bright lances of light speared back and forth, reflecting against ground haze built up from the smoky discharges of missile exhaust and burnt autocannon propellant. As the night gave way to sunrise, the only signs of battle falling off were the vehicles left broken and burning in the firefight’s wake. Raul counted a militia Fox armored car and two hoverbikes among their early casualties, lost back on the southwest side of the spaceport landing field where the firefight had begun. At least four APCs had been crushed and mangled over the tarmac since then in trying to deploy screens of battlesuit infantry, marking each gruesome shift north and east.

Two of the APCs had managed to disgorge their cargo of armored soldiers. Two had not.

Despite the cost in lives and material, Raul knew that the militia so far had staved off heavy casualties. Their advantage, so far, was their combat VTOLs, the low-altitude craft giving the militia air superiority for the first time since the initial Steel Wolf assault against Achernar. A Yellow Jacket, in fact, a flying version of the Marksman or SM1 Destroyer, could worry even Star Colonel Torrent with its nose-mounted gauss rifle. The militia would not keep that advantage much longer now that daybreak was upon them, but it had been enough to help move their ragged line to the spaceport’s northwest border, past the Steel Wolf DropShips and about even with the main tower and various administration buildings.

Nearly at the back of Tassa Kay’s retreating picket force.

It took some effort, mentally untangling the cluttered HUD, but so far everything held more or less in accordance with the militia’s rough planning. Raul’s late positioning was the less. Tassa’s early arrival, the more. Tassa had led most of her people from the capital just as dawn broke, turning back on the pursuing Swordsworn and holding them at the city’s edge, making feints as if trying to regain the industrial sector.

“Sandoval is getting edgy, Raul. Make this happen soon.” Tassa fell back a few more paces, limping on a ruined left knee actuator.

Using his twin PPCs and light autocannon to drive back the Steel Wolves’ one remaining M1 Marksman, Raul bracketed it with lances of azure energy and then blasted deep, angry wounds into its armored flank. It pulled back and Raul let it go, wary of the next head-to-head push by Star Colonel Torrent and still fighting toward Tassa’s position.

Torrent’s attention had been diverted again as a Giggins APC successfully delivered a squad of Gnome battle armor into his line. As Steel Wolf Elementals worked to keep those Gnomes clear of the Tundra Wolf, Raul threw two Jessies down the enemy line, strafing the seventy-five-ton BattleMech and the wounded Marksman with flight upon flight of short-range missiles.

It bought him a handful of seconds. A moment, perhaps.

Raul pivoted the Jupiter toward the admin buildings, claiming another two hundred meters in long, five-meter strides. With white-knuckle grips on his control sticks, Raul shied away from one of the open DropShip landing pads, saving himself from a three-story fall to the underground service area. He still felt unsteady at the controls of such a large assault ’Mech, but the natural touch which had originally recommended him to the militia reserves held strong for him now.

Backed by two Schmitts and flanked by VV1 Rangers, Raul reanchored the militia line another dozen steps—two dozen… three…

Where he stepped into a barrage of missiles, drawing fire from a Steel Wolf Behemoth and paired JES strategic carriers.

Weathering the storm of hammer blows, shedding some of the Jupiter’s armor reserves, Raul wrestled with his control sticks and then turned in to back off the Behemoth. “Blocked again!” Two icons on his HUD flashed dangerously close to the militia line. “Shandra scout vehicles at nine-five relative. Pick them up!”

He wasted no time on the fast but lethal scout-runners, trusting the Rangers and some forward Cavalier infantry to handle them, and the Schmitts had already leapt forward to hammer long-range fifty-mils at a Big Jess.

Raul pulled his crosshairs over the Behemoth’s large outline, pounding away double-flights of long-ranged missiles as soon as he struck good tone and chasing them with blue-white arcs of lightning from the Jupiter’s chest-mounted PPCs.

Unfortunately, the one-hundred-ton tank could stand up to that kind of abuse, though after forty minutes of sparring the tank crew had to be worried about their armor. The tank rolled back on its massive treads, ceding a few scant meters. As if they needed further encouragement, a Yellow Jacket VTOL slid over the north side of the field and skipped a gauss slug off the ferrocrete tarmac next to them.

Sensing opportunity, Raul shifted his own aim over to one of the forward JES carriers. Combining PPCs with his two light autocannon this time, he worried through the missile-boat’s armor. The hovering VTOL spent several dangerous seconds following Raul’s directed fire, punched a gauss slug through the carrier’s weakened armor and then spun around to race back south and west.

Both Schmitts pounced, tearing into the carrier’s interior even further, and did not shy away until an ammunition magazine ruptured under their hard-hitting rotaries. The Jess’s sides bulged outward and then burst. Flipping side-over-side, the disintegrating hulk rolled up against the retreating Behemoth and added impetus to their temporary retreat.

For just that moment, Raul found himself with no viable targets and a nearly open run between the militia line and spaceport tower.

“Best chance we’ll ever get, Colonel.” He shoved his throttle forward to its stop, lumbering the Jupiter forward at its best speed of fifty-four kph.

Blaire wasted no time doubting Raul’s word. “All units, swing echelon left.”

VTOLs pressed forward, and a laser-equipped Cyrano fell under the flak-assault from another JES carrier, while most skirmishers dropped back and pulled into their new position. Stealing a quick-march on the Steel Wolves, the militia line swung around in a ragged but effective arc, following Raul’s lead and closing the spaceport off from River’s End. Their line now held back-to-back with Tassa Kay’s smaller force, giving her safe refuge.

Raul toggled his private channel to Tassa Kay, in case she was not already falling back. “All right, Tassa. Lead them out.” A waste of breath, as she first sent her damaged vehicles crawling for the safety of the militia lines and then followed in the borrowed Legionnaire. Raul turned back to the battle in time to count up the cost of their maneuver.

His Rangers had overtaken and overturned one of the Shandra scout-runners, but not without losing one of their own to a salvo of concentrated laserfire. Raul had also traded one of his tactical Jessies for a Steel Wolf Scimitar—hardly equitable—and enemy Pack Hunters had nearly cut Captain Diago out of the militia formation. He escaped back to the safety of their formation, but minus a great deal of armor and losing one of his Legionnaire’s arms—severed at the elbow by a Hunter PPC.