"Loud and clear, sir."

Victor took a deep breath. "Good, let's get to it."

The last solid sighting they'd had of the Clan unit heading their way made it a full Cluster. That put it at roughly twice the 'Mechs he was taking out after it. If the cloud had any silver lining, it was that the Clans had not left a line unit on Teniente, but had used only a garrison force. As a result, their equipment was not all OmniMechs.

Something deep down inside Victor screamed at him that he was committing suicide. He recalled at the Nagelring that certain very bad chess players were known as having mastered the "kamikaze" or "Custer" defense. That label became modified to "the Custer plan" when certain cadets proved incapable of thinking in acceptable or successful terms during tactical exercises.

Splitting one's force in the face of a superior enemy definitely had the ring of a Custer plan to it, and Victor dreaded that idea. By the same token, he knew the Clan commander could not be concentrating fully on him because of a possible ComStar offensive. If he's distracted enough, we might be able to draw him off and get back out again.Victor opened a line to Foresight."Captain Coir, head out and pick up the Kurita stragglers."

"Aye, sir."

Back behind him, lighting the landscape with a silvery ion torch the Foresightburned up through the night sky. All of the Revenants' black 'Mechs cast long shadows ahead of themselves. As the DropShip climbed upward, darkness again cloaked the 'Mechs.

Victor glanced at his tactical map. "Let's pick up the pace. They can't be closer than ten kilometers by this tactical map, but I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Ditto," commented Galen. "I don't trust spy reports, especially when we get them from ComStar."

Bringing the Daishiup to its top speed, Victor started it on a course to the west that he intended to have loop back toward the east just before they hit the Clans. At his current pace, with their supposed distance, he had nearly ten minutes until the units should run into each other. Just six minutes out, a line of hills running north and south cut across Victor's line of march.

"Galen, just over that line of hills, we'll head north for a bit, then feint east." He glanced at his tactical map and saw the Clans still three kilometers away. "We'll surprise them."

"Roger. Heads up, boys and girls. We're in the danger zone now."

Galen's words still ringing in his ears. Victor crested the hills, then plunged down the other side. Danger zone? No, this is hell itself.

The relative safety of the ridgeline's western side had suggested itself to the Clan commander as well. As Victor came over the top, he saw two dozen 'Mechs running full-out through the night. His computers tagged each with an ID number and a model. In a second, he realized the Clan commander had sent his smallest and fastest 'Mechs out in a quick march to cut them off from the 'Mechs coming up to reinforce their position. The Clan commander had no way of knowing the reinforcements were a ragged group of Kurita 'Mechs that were in poor shape for any sort of serious battle.

"At them, Revenants!" Victor sent two swarms of Streak SRMs out at a Clan Hornetsprinting by. His Daishi'shard lock on the target brought the dozen missiles in on target. The missiles repeatedly hammered the Hornet,stripping armor from its chest and right leg. The pilot fought against the force of the explosions, but the unbalanced 'Mech tumbled and rolled.

Victor saw a Clan Centurionlaunch a flight of LRMs at him from the center of its chest. Before he could even think about putting Prometheusthrough evasive maneuvers, he heard a piercing whine from the right breast of his Daishi.Of the ten missiles heading toward him, only six got a target-lock. Those missiles disappeared as the anti-missile system built into the Daishispit out a hail of slugs and shredded the missiles in mid-flight.

The Prince dropped his crosshairs onto the Centurion'soutline. His thumb punched down, sending a silvery Gauss rifle projectile arcing out from the rifle mounted in the left arm. Victor lost sight of the ball, then saw the Centurionjerk as the ball all but took its left arm off. The Gauss rifle's sidecar large laser boiled away armor on the Clan 'Mech's chest, but his other two large laser beams missed the target entirely.

Held aloft by the silver jump jet spears at the back of his 'Mech, Galen's Crusadersoared over the battlefield. He loosed flights of LRMs from the shoulder launchers to strike at distant targets, while the Streak SRMs from the Crusader'slegs slashed out at anyone who got too close. When he grounded himself again, a double-flight of LRMs struck down a fleeing Clan Firestarter.

"Victor, break left!"

Without thinking, the Prince spun his OmniMech away to the left. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Clan Vulcanshoot a large and medium pulse laser through the space he had just left. In the confusion, he almost could have sworn the voice that warned him was Kai's. Not possible. Kai is dead. Who then?

A barrel-chested Hunchbackplanted its feet and turned to face off with the Vulcan.The boxy Kali-Yama Autocannon mounted on its shoulder spit fire and thunder. The stream of depleted-uranium shells hit the Vulcanjust to the right of its centerline, then sawed back through its torso as if the Clan 'Mech were made of soft cheese. Shards of armor mixed with fragments of endo-steel skeleton littered the ground while the Vulcanlisted badly as if to protect its shattered side. It took one half-step forward, then the upper torso twisted and sheered off at the line the Hunchbackhad scored on it.

"Thanks for the help," Victor beamed at his savior. Renny Sanderlin laughed easily, "Thanks for your faith, Victor."

All along the line, the Revenants poured fire and missiles into the Clan 'Mechs. Part of Victor hated watching the Clan's small 'Mechs get battered and pulverized by his own grossly superior forces. That hatred died quickly, however, when Victor remembered how the Twelfth Donegal Guards had been chopped to pieces by superior Clan forces. They overmatched us even on Alynia when we knew what to expect. This is payback.

The Revenants swept forward as the Clans slowed and started to turn back. As his troops pressed the Clans more, they concentrated their fire and took down 'Mech after 'Mech. Individual war machines looked, in the darkness, like the focus of a hundred lasers and missiles. Explosions would illuminate them and trip them while energy beams washed their armor away into clouds of ferro-fibrous vapor. Flayed alive, the 'Mechs kept running until more lasers and more missiles tore myomer muscles apart and crushed metallic bones.

"Revenants, pull back." Victor shook himself as he saw their line begin to drift back along the Clans' line of retreat.

"Begging your pardon, sir, but we have them on the run."

Galen's voice cut into the line. "Can it, Murphy. The Clan commander is likely to be waiting to welcome us if we get too close."

"We can take him."

In Murphy's voice, Victor heard the hopes and desires of the rest of the Revenants. He understood their desire to go after the Clans. Free of the fear of their tormentors, free of the terror that had haunted them since the first time the Clans struck into the Inner Sphere, his people wanted to make the Clans fear them.

He understood that idea because he shared it.

"Pull back. We're not retaking this rock, we're just stripping it of its valuable resources." He glanced at his tactical map, and even though he could not see the Clan's main body, he knew it had to be moving closer to the DropShips. I had not expected Clan 'Mechs this far now. How much further along than my main body would I let scout Stars go?