“Stone’s blood!” someone swore. “Was that…”

…the spoilsport charges Erik’s people had rigged to the HPG equipment.

Another series of explosions blossomed on the antenna’s upper structure, and lazy swirls of dark gray smoke rose from all around the neighborhood. As easily as that, the entire Swordsworn position had been rendered moot. Erik throttled down to a slow walk, shaking his head at the militia’s stupidity. They hadn’t left things well enough alone, and now what had they wrought? He sat back hard against his command couch and read his future in the black, thickening air.

A future that would no longer include Achernar.

River’s End/San Marino Spaceport

Achernar

Lost!

Star Colonel Torrent stared over the battle scene at the pall of angry smoke hanging over the southeast industrial sector of River’s End. Through the haze a lick of tall flames could be seen, running up a red-orange flag of defeat next to the charred and scarred HPG dish. Everything the Steel Wolves had fought for, all that he personally had challenged to accomplish, ended in just a few short seconds of treachery.

No victory. No honor.

He rounded his Tundra Wolf against the rising Jupiter, white-knuckle hands gripping the control sticks. The Jupiter regained a shaky footing and teetered in place. “Your doing! Like a jackal vomiting over what it cannot eat, you would deny the prize to the victor.”

“It was never about a prize,” Ortega said, his voice shaky but growing in strength. “This was about Achernar. If you didn’t see it that way, it’s no fault of mine.”

With each use of debased language, Torrent’s rage doubled. He felt a flush of crimson warmth on his face, the tremble of anger in his muscles. “So you expect us to simply leave?”

“There’s nothing for you here anymore, Star Colonel.”

Torrent smiled, thin and cruel. If the militia Mech Warrior had seen it, the star colonel felt certain he would have cowered away. Deactivating his targeting system to prevent any warning, Torrent pulled dark crosshairs across the Jupiter, aiming by dead reckoning.

“There is still you,” he said, then toggled on full targeting and pulled into his triggers.

River’s End/San Marino

Achernar

In between his shaky dialog with Star Colonel Torrent, Raul muted his voice-activated mic and coughed, clearing his lungs of acrid smoke. The taste of burnt plastic coated his mouth and his tongue felt thick and swollen from dehydration. A stabbing pain had lanced into his right shoulder with every movement until he managed to pull from it a long ferroglass shard, dagger-shaped and bloody. The wound bled slowly, trickling red paths down his bare arm.

Another minute, Raul asked silently. Keep him talking.

Four hundred meters off of the Tundra Wolf’s left side, one of the lowered DropShip landing pads flashed warning lights as massive machinery warmed to life and raised the platform. For the service-tunnel workers to choose that moment for a test, or to pop their heads outside for a look, would be too much of a coincidence for Torrent. It might warn him that something else was afoot.

Not to worry. The Star Colonel had eyes only for the Jupiter.

Raul couldn’t say for certain what had warned him of the impending attack. A shift in the Tundra Wolf’s stance, or the malice that bred in Torrent’s voice the longer they talked. At the last moment he ducked Jove to the right, protecting the shattered side of his cockpit’s transparent shield, and leaned forward into the brunt of the assault.

Missiles chewed away at his legs, cracking apart welded seams and clawing through for myomer muscles and control circuitry.

The Tundra Wolf’s large laser cut at one arm, splashing armor into a dark, molten mist, and a trio of smaller lasers stabbed into his chest and left shoulder.

Only Jove’s impressive armor had kept Raul alive for so long, allowing him to wade through some of the heaviest fighting of the day, protecting him while he learned both the subtle and not-so-subtle nuances of fighting such a massive war avatar. It protected him again now, although the wire-frame darkened to black in several areas, warning Raul of thinning reserves.

Kicking the Jupiter into an unsteady walk, Raul shied away from the raising platform and drew Torrent after him. His PPCs answered the star colonel’s missiles. Where Torrent relied on lasers, Raul chopped back with his two fifty-mil autocannon.

His heat scale rose steadily as the fusion reactor pumped out joules of energy to drive the BattleMech and power all weapons. As it edged into the red band, a fresh scent of ozone and scorched insulation wafted through the cockpit and Raul breathed with difficulty. Sweat poured off his brow, beaded and ran on his bared legs and arms. On his right, the runnels of sweat mixed with blood, thinned it, and spread the stain further down his arm.

Alternating his PPCs now, Raul blasted more armor away from Torrent’s chest. Deep inside one rent sparked the golden fury of a BattleMech’s fusion fire. Dark, dry smoke roiled out of the wound.

Torrent ignored it, shaving more plating from Jove’s already-weak legs and lower torso.

On the MechWarrior’s HUD, his computer painted several new icons. Over the Tundra Wolf’s shoulder, Raul saw machines rise above the surface of the landing field: WorkMechs, a half-dozen of them, loaders, mostly, and one ConstructionMech. They displayed no targeting emissions or other evidence of military modifications. These were regular machines, gathered up by Customs Officer Palos Montgomery and urged into battle for Achernar.

“Target practice,” Torrent said. “You think I do not see them, Ortega? They will be little else but a nuisance against my Steel Wolves.”

A new flight of tactical missiles slammed a heavy fist into Raul’s gyro housing, cracking through armor and supports to throw a terrible, grinding into the stabilizer gearing. The Jupiter shuddered, swayed. Blinking through the burning haze of sweat-stung eyes, Raul ducked forward and shifted the BattleMech’s feet into a wider stance. If he went over now, it was finished. There would be no getting back up, and Torrent’s Tundra Wolf would tear through the IndustrialMechs without mercy.

This time he kept to his feet.

“You will never have your chance—at—them,” Raul said, gritting his teeth against the heat waves and punctuating each of the last three words with weapons fire. PPC. Autocannon. PPC. One of the Tundra Wolf’s arms fell to the ground, severed by a particle beam mid-humerus.

Left arm. Torrent’s quad of medium-grade lasers.

Throttling into a forward walk, Raul now marched straight into the teeth of the Steel Wolf commander. “You are through on Achernar.” Another particle cannon. This one carved a huge swath of blackened destruction across the other BattleMech’s hip.

Raul gasped for breath in the scorching air.

Tactical missiles and large lasers smashed at the Jupiter. A long branch of pressure-cracked ferroglass squealed across the front face shield. Raul leaned forward again, his face within a meter of the worried shield, forcing Jove onward. Torrent cut loose with LRMs but misjudged his angle for a point-blank assault. Most of the missiles stuttered into the ground at the Jupiter’s feet, geysering up blackened ferrocrete and throwing a veil of smoke over the lower half of the assault ’Mech.

Raul kicked his way through the broken ground, drew flashing crosshairs over the Tundra Wolf’s left shoulder. The heat-addled circuitry could do no better than a partial lock. He clenched back both primary triggers regardless.