And worse, Star Colonel Torrent in his Tundra Wolf was left pressing forward right into the weak middle of the militia line. Frustrated with Raul’s evasion of any straight-up match, now the star colonel took it out on a nearby APC. Breaking the Saxon in less than ten seconds, scattering its load of Purifier infantry with well-placed kicks, he then turned his heavy firepower on the militia’s mobile HQ, and Colonel Blaire.

Blaire had organized the enticing weak middle in case Torrent went for it early on in the fight, allowing the militia to encircle and neutralize the Steel Wolf commander once and for all. Up to and including the arrival of Tassa’s force at the city edge, that might have worked in their favor. Now it threatened to unravel their final maneuvers, should Torrent manage to split the militia line.

“Fill that gap,” Raul ordered. “They break though, and we’re done!” They had to hold. Hold and wait, as Tassa lured the Swordsworn out of the city’s edge.

Their modified ForestryMech made an attempt, stalking in between Torrent and the Tribune. Autocannon chipping away some of the Tundra Wolf’s armor, the pilot managed to draw Torrent’s attention long enough for the HQ to fall back a safe distance. Before Torrent could vent his full ire on the Forestry Mod, however, Raul stalked forward of the formation and lined up a long-range shot, carving one of his particle cannons into the Tundra’s flank.

It worked. Torrent shifted his BattleMech’s weight and turned it for the Jupiter. “Raul Ortega. You have deviled me for the last time.”

Raul swallowed dryly. “If you can’t keep up, don’t blame me. Hold on and I’ll call off the dogs.” Switching over to the militia’s all-hands frequency, he ordered, “Lay off the Tundra. Let him come.” Then a dozen missiles cratered his Jupiter’s lower legs, and Raul once again fought to remain standing. Recovering, he back-pedaled, returning to his place in line and drawing the star colonel after.

His fury unleashed, Torrent made his earlier displeasure known by keeping up a sustained rate of heavy fire as he stalked down the militia line. Missiles, laser, missiles again. With the militia units leaving off the Tundra Wolf as a target, the star colonel ignored all but Raul. A distinction of sorts, and one the MechWarrior might have felt better about had not the Tundra’s place at the center of the militia line not been filled almost immediately by the PPC-toting Pack Hunters. The Steel Wolves fielded too many ’Mechs for the militia to keep them contained much longer.

In the meantime, Torrent advanced. And with him, drawn in his wake like filings to a lodestone, came the Steel Wolf line.

Fighting side by side with Tassa now, their BattleMechs facing different directions as each concentrated on a different enemy, Raul checked his head’s up display and saw that the two of them formed the point of a new, thin wedge. Squeezed in between the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves, Tassa sniped at Erik Sandoval while Raul held up under Torrent’s determined assault. Only a slender line of militia forces connected them back to the spaceport’s northwest corner. It was time.

Such orders should be given with dramatic presentation. Some kind of timeless oration that would stand up to history. Or so Raul had once thought. Now it was with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment that he opened up a channel and simply said, “Tassa. Now.”

Like a steeply pitched tent with its supporting prop yanked out from beneath it, the militia wedge folded back in on itself as Raul and Tassa herded scurrying infantry and wounded vehicles before them. Raul opened up his general channel. “Retrograde maneuver,” he ordered. Colonel Blaire seconded the command, and began handing out the secondary assignments, which would pull the entire militia force back into a strong, secure fist.

The idea was to swing the Swordsworn and Steel Wolf line into close proximity. One errant missile, a laser stabbed in at their former enemies: it wouldn’t take much. But first they had to maneuver into close range.

Tassa was the first one to notice. “Raul. It’s not working.”

Raul rocked back three hurried steps as Torrent sliced a small laser beam across the shield protecting the Jupiter’s cockpit. Molten ferroglass streaked down and recrystalized. Raul blinked to clear his vision of the ghost image temporarily burned into his retina. “Give it time.”

As the militia continued to fall back, too often leaving a body or the fire-gutted shell of another vehicle behind, the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves were drawn forward, ever closer to each other. At the base of the collapsing formation, in fact, retreating soldiers reinforced each side, spreading the wings out in a north-south push that shoved the factions into three wedges of an asymmetrical pie.

The Steel Wolves were still the largest, but it was the militia who fought on two fronts. So far.

“Ortega…” Blaire’s warning growled in Raul’s ears.

Someone else not privy to the officer’s worries noticed yet another problem. “The Wolves are getting up aerospace fighters.”

That was true. With the militia finally pushed completely away from the taxiing strip, a squadron of four fightercraft rolled out from beneath the protective wings of the Triumph–class DropShip. Once in the air, with daylight to gauge their strafing runs, the Steel Wolves would heap more misery onto the militia’s plate.

“VTOLs!” Raul knew he was sending good men and women to their deaths, but knew as well that Achernar wasn’t quite done demanding its sacrifice. “Forward and harass the fighters. Buy us time.” Two Yellow Jackets and the one remaining Cyrano thundered forward. The Cyrano never made it over the enemy formation, swatted down by a Catapult’s multiple missile barrages.

Still the Swordsworn and Steel Wolves pressed in, close to fighting side-by-side now and hardly acknowledging each other’s presence. An SM1 nipped in and cut a leg from their ForestryMech, sending it crashing to the tarmac. Diago cut in on the senior officers channel. “Raul, maybe we should think about—”

“It’ll work,” Raul promised, cutting him off. “Give it time.” He dropped crosshairs over the Tundra Wolf’s outline, lashing out with PPCs and running another ton of molten armor over the field ferrocrete. It had to work. Achernar was out of choices, and out of time.

River’s End/San Marino Spaceport

Achernar

Erik Sandoval-Groell had nearly given up on the Legionnaire, counting it and the rest of the raiding party as lost once it cleared the capital’s southeast industrial sector ahead of him.

On a private channel Erik railed at Michael Eus, who had set the entrapment the way he saw fit rather than as Erik had directed. The operations manager had many hidden talents, and even more hidden loyalties, but military planning did not rate highly among them. He had tried to close the net with slower-moving, tracked vehicles, thinking that their heavier armor would mitigate any losses. Even a first-year cadet understood that one used fast-response craft to pin an enemy in place, then rolled in the heavy guns to obliterate them.

Erik’s rage was short-lived, however, the heat draining from his face when he gained the city’s edge and found his forces holding off repeated attempts by the Legionnaire to regain the capital. Adding his own autocannon into the defensive enfilade, the young noble concentrated on the Legionnaire or one of the modified IndustrialMechs whenever possible. After he personally laid out the converted LoaderMech, his crosshairs found no other target than the Legionnaire.

As that BattleMech pulled back from the city, joining the rest of the militia force on the outskirts of the San Marino landing field, Erik cautiously followed rather than be denied his due after the treacherous attempt. Between his Swordsworn’s carefully laid fire patterns and the brute-force cascade of firepower spreading out from the Steel Wolves, slowly they hammered the Republic’s wedge flat and then caved it in. Likely they could have continued on until little was left of the Achernar militia but memories and a ready garrison post for Swordsworn forces to occupy.