“Alpha, start drawing them nor’ nor’west. If you can’t scratch their paint, at least leave your trail of bodies to lead them toward Reggat’s Canyon.”

Reggat’s Canyon might let Alpha eventually circle back toward the convoy. If not—if McCarron’s forces proved too bullheaded to let them run—he could save lives as his men worked their way into the Reggat’s Canyon caves. By the position of their VTOLs, dipping and hovering over trees to the far north, they had at least ten rough minutes ahead of them.

Bravo had lost both of its attack choppers, but there was no mistaking the swarming attacks of McCarron’s VTOL formation just a few kilometers to the east. The other side of Terrence McCarron’s position.

“Bravo, I want you to hold. You’ll see armored infantry and maybe some assault tanks pushing back your way, but stand fast.”

They could do it. They still had antiaircraft Partisans to worry the VTOLs.

One unit in flight, one to hold fast as a wall against which he pushed the enemy. That was never an easy call, deciding who lived and who risked death. The difference this time was that he was in a position to work with only one of the demi-companies, and if he had to leave one unsupported, he’d at least give them the chance to extend and escape.

Military talk for run like hell.

McCarron wasn’t through throwing little twists into the Legate’s plans, though. Threat alarms wailed for his attention as Infiltrators and Achileus battle armor took turns popping up above the trees on their small jets to snipe at the assault ’Mech. The Zeus did not have great antiinfantry weapons, but Viktor managed to swat one Infiltrator from the sky with a pulse laser. Then a JES II tactical carrier broke cover, slalomed between trees and traded flight after flight of short-range missiles for nothing worse than a few red-tinged scars from Viktor’s laser.

He wished again for his particle projector cannon, lost with his left arm in earlier exchanges of firepower. Standing a full story higher than the trees around him, the Legate had a commanding view. If he’d wanted, he could have pointed out each heavy encounter, places where oily smoke seeped up above the canopy, or where fires burned in the local orchards.

Ten kilometers back, for example, when the Armored Cavalry had struck with such numbing force that his small vanguard had shattered.

Five klicks: a full-fledged forest fire marked where Sergeant Ho gave his life for two infantry carriers and a Regulator. A Confederation head-hunter team broke the seal on his cockpit and smeared him over the inside of the cockpit shield. Hardly equitable, trading away an experienced veteran and his Phoenix Hawk. The Zeus was too heavily armored. Too slow. Ruskoff had been unable to rendezvous in time.

Three klicks, then one: Places where units lay dead or crippled or where the Zeus had been delayed by McCarron’s wheel-and-flank tactics.

“Contact!” Bravo’s commander, Sergeant Jason Lee, let worry tell in his volume. “Four… five! Five armored vehicles closing. Battle armor everywhere.”

Ahead Viktor saw an explosion in the tree canopy where a Gauss rifle punched through from below. Enemy VTOLs swarmed down toward the break, searching for prey. Spot fires began to show in the branches, and smoke rose in a haze as ground support vehicles battled unseen.

“We’re in thick soup here, Commander.”

The Jessie swerved into a new row, tracked by his sensors, but lost from his immediate sight as it tempted him into chasing. Not this time. Viktor pushed ahead, slowed by the orchard’s grasp, but always with one eye on his HUD for distance against the hovering VTOLs. Sixty seconds, he guessed.

He got only six before a new problem opened up.

“Vanguard, vanguard. Convoy has hit a minefield on the Paragon Thruway. We’re seeing Fa Shih infantry. ’Mechs! Two of them! Forestry… Ti Ts’ang! Tanks. Two… four, five…” The count disappeared in a wave of static as local jamming overrode the transmission.

“Convoy.” Ruskoff toggled for his secure line. “Major Demmens!” A few nonsensical syllables crackled through. Nothing the Legate’s communications gear could latch onto. A quick mental tabulation—the convoy was protected by two more BattleMechs and a small collection of support vehicles. They had a slim chance, if Demmens held up.

The Legate glanced out over the orchard’s canopy, knowing the destructive firepower already lurking below. Where was McCarron drawing up extra forces now?

At extreme range, he levered his right arm forward, gained a partial lock on one of the VTOLs and spent two missile flights against the darting craft. His first salvo fell short, hammering down into the branches, starting a new fire. His second swarm arced in on one of McCarron’s Balac Strike VTOLs, pummeling the fragile craft with blossoms of orange fire. Smoke belched out of a crippled engine. The helicopter attempted to bank away, but it was too low and falling fast. Landing skids snagged the top of one naranji tree, tipping the craft over until its rotors caught into the branches as well.

It disappeared in a shatter of tree limbs and finely balanced blades. To Ruskoff, it looked as if the orchard’s stark limbs had reached out to swallow the wounded craft, belching up a small burst of fire and smoke afterward.

The other VTOLs spun around and broke for three different points on the compass. Ruskoff’s laser slashed a ruby lance at one of them, scoring the body. Another dozen paces, the Zeus powered its way forward into a haze of smoke and burning trees and a close-quarter battle between heavy armor and infantry.

Partisan antiaircraft tanks and a double handful of Cavalier battlesuit infantry would not normally be a good match against Regulators and Jessies and a trio of Demons, especially those supported by superior battle armor assets. Sergeant Lee had set his line well. Overlapping the Partisans’ fields of fire, he had created a killing zone that shaved armor from the tanks as easily as the multiple autocannon shredded bark and leaves from orchard trees. Any battlesuit infantry braving the storm of flechettes now lay dead or dying on the soft ground. Jason Lee had held his own infantry back to harass the tanks, pin them in place, and hold them for Ruskoff’s arrival.

He was a bear suddenly loosed among savage dogs. Missiles fell in a hard rain of destructive power as the Legate dumped flight after flight over the killing ground, hammering into McCarron’s armor. His laser stabbed out in short, powerful lances, slashing away armor and boring into the crew compartment of one Demon, which ran full force into the thick bole of a large tree. He stove in the side of a Regulator with a hard-swinging kick, and then chased after it with emerald darts from his pulse laser. All the while he searched in vain for McCarron’s tank.

Infantry tried twice to swarm his legs, but Bravo’s sergeant sent Cavalier troopers forward to grapple hand-to-hand against the lighter-armored Achileus infantry. Viktor heard metallic scratching outside of his access hatch, ignored it as he finished off the Regulator with a flurry of missiles. They erupted inside the lift fans. The hovercraft flipped over onto its side, coming to a tilting halt against a nearby tree. Still alive and in control of his BattleMech a moment later, he assumed that some of his own infantry had dealt with the problem.

“They’re through our line,” Lee called out a few seconds later. “They’re running.”

Not all of them. A wounded Demon parked itself between a Cavalier squad and the fleeing Confederation force. The remaining Regulator II led the Capellan retreat, with Achileus and Infiltrators attempting to pile onto the JES tactical carriers or simply fleeing deeper into the orchard. The Demon lasted only as long as it took a Cavalier infantryman to rip open one of the hatches and shove a laser into the crew compartment. Then it fell deadly still as well.