“Sir,” he said over the hailer. “First and Third squads report combined arms assault, infantry backed by hovers. Holding their own. Request ammo resupply.”

“Lead me to them,” Jonah replied over the exterior mike.

“Sir.”

The trooper remounted his vehicle and turned it in place. Jonah followed.

He could pick up the noise of small-arms fire as they moved ahead, the telltale sound of men using their weapons carefully: a single shot, a group of three, another single shot, no one going full auto and burning up a full box of ammunition in a second or two. Such a deliberate rhythm meant that the troopers doing the shooting were seriously low on ammo; and if Jonah could tell as much just by listening, that meant the House Ma-Tzu Kai troopers knew it too.

Jonah spoke to the scout on his vehicle. “Radio HQ,” he ordered. “Message: ‘Ammunition resupply and reinforcement urgently required.’”

“Sir,” the scout said, and turned away, throttling up as his vehicle sped uphill.

Jonah heard more small-arms fire coming from the edge of a gully ahead. He flipped on his cockpit screen’s visual enhancement in order to pull in IR-spectrum light. With its aid, he could see the House Ma-Tzu Kai hovercraft screened by brush on the far side, bringing its missiles to bear on his own dug-in troops.

He sent a beam from the Stinger’s medium laser downrange at the hovercraft. The vehicle dipped and slewed sideways as the beam hit; then it withdrew, pulling back out of sight behind a rise.

The hover’s retreat didn’t give the Kyrkbacken Militia any time to catch their breaths. The Ma-Tzu Kai troopers continued to press the attack, and a tank thrashed forward through the trees to the left of the retreating hover.

Jonah swiveled his joystick to raise his right arm in a sweeping motion, hosing down the advancing line of Ma-Tzu Kai troops with the Stinger’s medium laser. The troopers went to ground, taking cover in the tall grass and underbrush wherever they could. The tank ground to a halt, its progress blocked by a larger tree. It jerked back, turned to pass the obstacle, just as a Kyrkbacken Militia missile salvo slammed into its thin side armor. The vehicle froze in place, a large smoke ring puffing upward from the open hatch on its top.

A voice from the ground shouted, “They’re falling back!” It was the squad’s sergeant, back from his earlier errand.

“Let them go,” Jonah said.

He looked at his ammo readouts. One single-shot missile pack—the Stinger should have carried two, but the second pack had turned out, upon inspection, to be empty, and none of the militia’s repeated requests for replacement ammo had borne fruit—with fifteen missiles onboard. After that, he’d be down to nothing but the medium laser, plus whatever morale effect twenty tons of steel could provide.

A signals team arrived with a field connection. Finally, he thought. The team plugged into the jack at the left heel of Jonah’s ’Mech, and a signal reappeared on the position plotting indicator.

The news it gave him wasn’t good. Only about a third of the troopers that he’d started with this morning were still on the line. The rest were lost, passed beyond the limits of his effective command. Or dead.

“All units,” he said over the external link. “Report!”

One by one the remnants of his company came up.

“First squad, fifty percent effective, down to personal ammo packs.”

“Second squad, no heavy weapons left. Ten percent casualties.”

“Third squad. In place, on line, and ready.”

Then a silence.

Into the quiet, Jonah said, “Fourth squad?”

No reply.

“Fifth squad?”

“Fifth squad, in place, antivehicle minefield… here they come again!”

The signals crew unplugged the field connection from the foot of Jonah’s ’Mech, setting him free to take the Stinger off toward Fifth squad’s location at an ungainly lope. The Fifth, with Sergeant Turk in charge, was Jonah’s rock. They held down the farthest-left position on the flank, the absolute end of The Republic’s extended battle line, and the Ma-Tzu Kai forces would be concentrating on them.

An antitank mine exploded from the open ground to Jonah’s front, letting him know that he’d arrived at the Fifth’s location. He brought his ’Mech to a halt and let a trooper plug him into the Militia’s makeshift field phone net.

“Fifth squad, report.”

“We got hit by an SM1 with a couple of squads of infantry for support,” came Sergeant Turk’s reply. The field phones had a peculiar echoing sound, and the sergeant’s voice was whispering and distant in Jonah’s ears. “An AT mine screwed up the Smiley’s hoverjets, but the gun turret is still in play. We can stop the infantry if we can suppress the turret, or we can suppress the turret if we can stop the infantry. But we can’t do both at once with what we’ve got left.”

“Mortars, grid posit 132082,” Jonah said. “Anti-infantry.”

“We have two salvos left, nothing more,” the mortar section commander said.

“Then fire two salvos.” To Sergeant Turk, Jonah said, “I’ll suppress the infantry. You take out the tank. I’m almost out of ammunition.”

The first of the mortar bombs arrived, landing in a flash and a flurry of earth mixed with broken trees. Jonah brought the Stinger striding forward, breaking the field phone connection again, and brought his ’Mech’s lone remaining missile pack to bear on the target.

Enhanced visual, he thought. There they are.

He launched the missiles.

One missile pack, fifteen missiles—that was all that he had, but he’d made the Ma-Tzu Kai infantry keep their heads down for long enough. Now the SM1 was on fire, its main gun pointing crookedly skyward, and the troopers who had been guarding it were scattered and running back, away from the Republic lines.

“Good job, sir,” Sergeant Turk said, plugging Jonah back into the field phone net. The jury-rigged comms were better than nothing, but just barely.

“Better job if we could do it again,” Jonah said. “Stick with me. I want you to be my eyes and ears.”

“On you.”

The scout he’d sent off earlier to main HQ returned. “Sir. HQ responds: Ammo resupply impossible. Hold the line.”

Jonah clicked off the exterior communications link, isolating himself for a moment in the ’Mech’s cockpit.

“We’re dead,” he observed to the unresponsive silence, and switched the link back on. “All units. Report!”

“First squad, running on empty, sir. Request permission to fall back.”

“Denied. Hold fast.”

“Understand hold fast. First squad out.”

“Second squad. We took it in the shorts, sir. What can you give us?”

“Encouraging words, sergeant.”

“Roger, understand encouragement. Second squad out.”

The report from Third squad was just as bleak, Fourth still hadn’t reappeared, and Jonah could see for himself how badly Fifth squad was faring. Everywhere in his field of view were medics working on the wounded, sergeants checking fighting positions, supplies being doled out, boxes turning up empty, men scrambling among the fallen to find unused energy packs.

“One more assault and we’re going to be overrun,” Sergeant Turk said.

“Then we won’t give them time to regroup,” Jonah replied. The idea had come to him as he watched the Fifth through the cockpit window—not a plan, really, so much as an acknowledgment of the only thing left that could be done. He felt as if he were holding the entire Republic on his line, and he’d be dead or damned if it would break.

Over the field phone net, he said: “All squads, listen up. On my command, on your feet and charge forward. The Ma-Tzu Kai have a supply dump just behind their lines at the foot of this hill. We’re going to go get it. Take man-portable weapons only. Go bare-handed if you have to. Acknowledge.”

“First squad. Aye.”

“Second squad. Aye.”