Elora hardly listened to him arguing with himself. What difference did it make if Parsons or Kinsolving had given the foolish order for the BattleMech to only defend rather than to attack? The result was the same. The full might of Mirach’s military fell like a sledgehammer on the ’Mech. No matter that it was still functional. They had trapped it, forcing it to play a defensive role while the Legate’s best tank commander drove to remove Sergio Ortega at the Palace of Facets.

Soon it will be his tomb, Elora gloated.

Elora chuckled as she authorized transmission of pictures of the Atlas being hammered by Legate Tortorelli’s forces along with hearty congratulations for the soldiers. Offers of vast rewards to infantry and battle-armored troops if they brought down the BattleMech were made public, giving yet another way of gaining honor.

But no individual would claim the reward. The heavy tanks would eventually blow off enough armor to expose the MechWarrior to the killing blast.

No quarter asked, no quarter given, she thought as she stared at the bank of monitors popped up all over her desktop.

“Yes, yes, definitely. The battle is going well,” Tortorelli said, as if he had won an argument. “I planned carefully. There ought to be another medal in this for me. Yes, there should.”

He began strutting around her office, posturing and practicing his speeches. She wasn’t sure when he had slipped away from reality, and it hardly mattered. She had needed his authority to put the entire military of Mirach into motion against the Lord Governor’s Envoy—and against Governor Ortega.

She partially turned in her chair to face other monitors gleaming atop her desk. She panned around the vast bucolic grounds of Governor’s Park and saw two light tanks moving in ahead of the ground troops, all supported by the heavy Behemoth II. It would be a combined-forces assault on the Palace because Sergio had turned it into a fortress using defenses put into place by the Legate.

Elora’s elation mounted again when she saw how the field commander deployed her force, the main battle tank at point with the lighter Condors in an echelon formation. Sergio might as well have drawn a bull’s-eye on his back. The battle would be over in minutes. No defensive tactic could work against such an onslaught.

“What’s that?” Elora jumped to her feet and leaned forward, supporting herself on the desk with clenched hands. “That’s another BattleMech!”

“Where did it come from? I do say, that Jerome Parsons might be sneakier than I credited him with being. He must have hidden it until this moment,” Tortorelli said.

“No, he didn’t. That’s Sergio Ortega’s old BattleMech.”

“The one with the hideous paint job rusting away in the museum?” Tortorelli frowned as he studied the screen in front of Elora. Angrily, she switched the feed so the entire wall, where Cingulum’s skyline had been a few seconds earlier, came alive with the details of the BattleMech.

“Captain Mugabe,” Elora said, her voice barely controlled, “attack the BattleMech. Don’t let it reach a point where it can defend the Palace!”

“That’s my job, Elora. I should be the one giving orders,” Tortorelli said, almost pouting.

“I gave the orders in your name, Calvy. Sit down; watch what your forces can do against a BattleMech,” she soothed.

She saw the Centurion taking huge strides toward the Palace, intent on safeguarding Sergio Ortega. But the field commander was the head of Tortorelli’s elite force and had practiced in simulators in the event of such a tank-versus-’Mech battle. Captain Mugabe sent her Condors out on either flank and then attacked fiercely with both infantry and Hauberk-battle-armored fighters. When the individual soldiers were driven away, the tanks opened up to good effect.

“That’s the way,” Elora muttered, seeing a particularly devastating Gauss rifle attack rip away part of the Centurion’s chest armor. After sustained attack focusing on the right leg, the BattleMech staggered and fell backward, crashing to the ground so hard it caused her camera to wobble from the shock wave.

“Get him, get him,” she said. Her vengeance would be even sweeter now. “That has to be Austin Ortega in the Centurion. Who else could it be?”

The tanks drove in to deliver the coup de grâce. She silently cheered them on. Austin Ortega brought his autocannon to bear—the cannon jammed. This time she did cheer.

The cheer turned to strangled rage when she saw the new combatants.

Grounds of the Palace of Facets, Cingulum

Mirach

9 May 3133

Austin Ortega struggled to save himself and saw nothing but death staring him in the face. His laser refused to fire. The autocannon had jammed, leaving deadly rounds in the breach where they might explode at any instant. From his position on the ground, he couldn’t get back to his feet and use what power remained in the ancient Centurion to fight back.

The alarms in his cockpit went crazy as the Condor lowered its main autocannon and pointed it directly at him. Austin could not scramble away. Sergeant Death was going to become a metal coffin in seconds.

Austin refused to give up. Working frantically, he got the Centurion flopped over and rising on hands and knees. A myomer bundle snapped, dropping him to one side. In this position he stared directly down the tank barrel.

Then he flinched and tried to shield his eyes from the sudden fountain of sparks that exploded into the air. In disbelief he watched as a diamond-edged cutting wheel rose again and came back down on the tank. The first pass had severed the barrel of the heavy gun. The diamond cutting wheel spun so fast it was only a blur until it hit the top of the tank and cut away half the turret.

“Who’s there?” Austin asked, trying to find a frequency where he could contact his savior. He got no answer and gave up. His comm was faulty. Austin heard the heavy rattle of an autocannon firing, and then an explosion lifted him and rolled him a few meters.

His reactions were superb. Austin used the impetus from the blast to get the Centurion to its knees and then erect. His eyes flashed about the controls. Most were dead but what he saw showed him he had enough power to continue. In spite of the damage to his right leg, he could still move. The Palace would not fall, not while Austin Ortega had trusty old Sergeant Death for a ride.

From his loftier view ten meters above the ground he saw a modified IndustrialMech making short work of another medium tank. The cutting wheel on its left arm that had carved up the tank hung at a crazy angle. Teeth had broken off and the drive unit gushed heavy black, oily smoke. Another cutting wheel mounted on the upper left shoulder still spun in a deadly arc, but the real damage was wrought by the hammering autocannon in its right arm.

Austin started stamping to keep the light infantry away. The heavier battle-armor-clad soldiers worked toward him, only to find themselves at the mercy of the IndustrialMech’s autocannon. The pilot of that ’Mech was a maestro with his weapons. Austin doubted it was true, but it looked as if every single 50-mm round found a target and dispatched one of the attacking soldiers.

A grating sound was quickly followed by a small explosion on Austin’s right shoulder. To his surprise, he found that his autocannon had cleared and he could fire again. He hobbled over and stood with his back to the refitted ’Mech, firing at any target he saw. Austin lifted his autocannon to fire at movement showing on the edge of his radar screen, only to have the weapon jam again.

For a change, he let out a heavy sigh of relief at the weapon’s failure. Austin would have fired reflexively on another of the MBA ’Mechs, this one a modified MiningMech firing salvos of SRMs at infantry and light-armored vehicles as it came. The autocannon mounted on its other side was silent, having jammed like Austin’s.