“Rotten ground for a fight,” Jack’s segundo said over the private command net.

“Sloppy underfoot,” Jack acknowledged. “Not too bad, otherwise. Good lines of sight. Our ranged stuff will pull us through today if anything will.”

“Right, boss. But I sure wish we had us some eyes in the air.”

“Maybe I can arrange some intel from that side,” Jack said. “Depends on how happy our friends from Northwind are to see us once we show up. Meanwhile, look sharp. The good guys and the bad guys are using the same sorts of gear. Be really sure of your targets before you fire.”

“You got it.”

The mercenaries walked north, dead slow.

Up the road, the hills were brown. Smoke rolled across the sky. The road itself was little more than a pair of ruts that had once had gravel on it. It marked the path across endless rolling steppes.

Farrell’s mercenaries guided on the road. They spread out to either side. Individual men and women in battle armor jumped and skittered ahead of the main column, looking for targets and checking for ambushes. So far the fighting had consisted of a patrol of Steel Wolves running into far more firepower than they’d counted on. Jack Farrell expected the Wolves’ return hammer blow to come down at any time.

“I’m seeing magnetic anomalies heading south,” a sensor operator reported across the tactical net.

“So they see us heading north,” Farrell said. “Identify them, if you please.”

“Two ForestryMods, a pair of SM1s, maybe some smaller stuff.”

“Which team are they playing for?”

“We’re checking that out.”

A man sped forward on a hoverbike—a light, fast vehicle with a satellite uplink.

“Give me some cover,” Jack said. “All self-propelled artillery, load long. Close on me, best speed.”

He continued to stride up the road. A Jupiter was too big to hide and too slow to run, but when it kept on coming forward most things eventually got out of its way.

The road was where the ground was most solid, but nevertheless Jack was splashed with mud up to the waist of his ’Mech. “Hovers,” he ordered. “Form up, hunter-killer groups. Swing west, get around by the Wolves’ DropShips. Force them to fall back to defend their line of retreat.”

“Suppose that Kerensky doesn’t plan to retreat?” his segundo asked over the private circuit. “Then what?”

“Then we’ve got some DropShips to sell next time we go to market.”

“Commander,” the voice of the scout said. “Positive ID on inbound units. Three. Two ’Mechs plus one Smiley. Forestries have autocannons plus forestry saws. Smiley has one autocannon plus MGs. No supply or support. Traveling south, speed two-five. Steel Wolf markings. No unusual equipment.”

“Very well,” Jack said. “The ’Mechs are mine. Can we get some long-range missiles onto that tank destroyer?”

“Got a section of Jousts in range.”

“Take care of it,” Jack said, and marked the bearing and range of the two ’Mechs.

He picked up his pace, even if it felt like strolling through wet cement. Combined speed put their closing velocity at about fifty. He didn’t want to waste his autocannon or his long-range missiles on low-value targets like these, not this early in the fight. So he’d take them hand-to-hand with a bit of particle projector fire to soften them up on the way in. It was a risky tactic, especially against close-in brawlers like ForestryMods, with their massive armor-chewing chain saws, but he had some ideas about how to deal with that.

The heat buildup would just have to take care of itself. He set his heat-sensor alarms to warn him when he was one minute from redline and concentrated on understanding the shape of the battle to come.

“The Steel Wolves are trying to destroy the Highlanders utterly. The Highlanders are planning to bloody the Wolves enough to make them want to retreat. And I’m here to make sure that the Highlanders win. Highlanders to the east, Wolves to the west and… here we go.”

Belgorod

Terra

Prefecture X

April 3134; local spring

Amoment later, the tank destroyers vanished amid the smoke and flying earth of a barrage of missile hits. The two ’Mechs were still visible.

Jack left his armored forces to handle the SM1s. He had lock on. He fired. The particle projectors in his right and left torso pressed against him; he could feel their recoil in the feedback from his ’Mech’s controls.

He linked the projectors’ fire to his visuals, so that the beams would strike where he was looking. Then he glanced from one ForestryMech to the other as they split up in an attempt to jump him from either side. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said, and halted so as to ruin their predictions concerning where he would be at a certain time.

He felt a hammering in his right leg and knee, and looked to his right. At least one of the SM1s had escaped from the missile barrage and was targeting his mobility.

There was a time to be frugal, and there was a time to expend ammo. Jack raised and pointed with his ’Mech’s right arm, allowing the twin DL Ultra-5 autocannons to do their work and chew into the SM1 tank destroyer’s superstructure. The hovertank broke off the engagement, circling out and away from him.

Jack ignored the Smiley. The Jousts could handle it, or the Jupiter’s armor could take the punishment if it returned.

Here were the ForestryMods. Jack lit them up with particle beams, and was pleased to see their IR signatures flare up. Overloaded and shut down, they’d be easy prey for his infantry.

All he had to do was keep their saws off of him. Close-up in hand-to-hand fighting, those saws—designed to tear through the thickest forest on any world—could damage even his armor.

He turned both his particle beams onto the closest of the two ForestryMods. It and its partner responded with their own autocannons, the rounds spattering off his torso and trunk—annoying, but not immediately damaging.

“More Steel Wolves, incoming.”

The hovers were out to the west, circling wide. That left wheeled and tracked vehicles plus infantry to deal with the newly arriving forces.

“Screw this,” Jack said, and charged the nearest ForestryMech. He pressed against the ’Mech, put one of his Jupiter’s legs behind its leg, and used a hundred tons’ worth of hip throw to flip the ’Mech onto its back. Then, standing with one foot planted firmly on the overturned Forestry-Mod so that it couldn’t get its saw back into action, he raised both arms and hosed down the second ’Mod with autocannon fire at close range.

It staggered, turned, and in the next moment an infantry squad with flamers showed up to put the ’Mod into heat overload shutdown. The ’Mech burned inside a coating of jellied gasoline, frozen in its last position.

“Pull the MechWarrior out of there as soon as that thing cools down,” Jack said. “Stand by flamers on this unit if he gives you any funny business.”

He turned on his universal ’Mech-to-’Mech circuit.

“Forester under my foot,” he said. “This is the Jupiter that’s standing on top of you. Surrender or die. Your call.”

“Free passage?” came the reply.

“Don’t know about that. Safe haven’s the best I can offer.”

“I’ll take it.”

“We’ve got one coming out here,” Jack said to his people over the Jupiter’s external circuits. “Take the Warrior to the rear. Don’t flame him.”

The leader of the infantry squad looked up at Jack’s pilot compartment and gave him a big thumbs-up.

“That’s a Ryoken II up there,” the forward scout reported. “Inbound from the northwest, moving fast.”

“Ah. I think I know who that is. So let’s go play.”

Jack left the two ForestryMechs to the infantry, and turned his steps toward the Ryoken over the quaking plain.