An image flickered onto the monitor near Shin's head, and he fiddled with the controls to sharpen the contrast. The starlight picture revealed a number of oversized humanoids stalking forward. Standing 2.3 meters high, they wore metallic suits with a laser muzzle where the right hand should have been. On the other arm, a laser was married to the hand. The back of the armored suit carried a boxy missile launcher that, from practical experience, Shin knew would detach after firing its complement of two SRMs.

Beyond these, he saw more similar shadowy forms moving through the night. "Six, seven, eight, nine. I mark nine Elementals."

The Tech at the radar scope cursed softly. 'They have to be jamming us somehow because I only get five or six on the screen."

An explosion rocked the Skulker, bouncing it onto the passenger-side wheels. Shin flew back against the other Tech, cracking the man's head against his magscan monitor. As the Tech flopped limp to the deck, Shin leaped past his overturned chair and dashed to the driving compartment. "Move it! Get us out of here. Gunner, hit anything and everything!"

As the driver cranked the wheel around, the Skulker swung north, its headlights slicing the night. A ruby beam shot from the dome at the tank's center. In the distance, it illuminated the black form of a man and started a small brushfire. Another bolt coursed through the darkness and burned a scar into the landscape, but die tank's quick turn swept the target out of the windscreen's visual arc.

The driver stomped down on the accelerator, launching the Skulker in a sprint across the landscape. Shin glanced back at the conscious Tech, relieved the man had had the presence of mind to radio in their position and the readings for the Elementals. As the Skulker bounced up over one little hill, Shin braced for impact as the tank flew through the air. The landing shivered the whole vehicle like a hammer-struck anvil, driving Shin to his knees.

The driver cursed as the headlights pinpointed an Elemental standing in the middle of the unpaved track along which they raced. He started to shift his foot to the brake, but Shin jammed his own right foot down, crushing the driver's foot to the gas pedal.

"Full speed! Just keep it going! Don't stop for anything!"

The Elemental loosed a rocket from the launcher pod on his back. Shooting straight at the Skulker's nose, it exploded with a hellacious flash and the acrid scent of explosives, but failed to breach the vehicle's armor. The Scout's driver instinctively shied from the flash, but kept his hands locked onto the wheel, keeping it steady. The Skulker burst through the fire and smoke without slowing at all, then bucked and bounced as it rolled the Elemental beneath its entire length.

Through the rearview display, Shin saw the Elemental's body half-buried in the scrubby grasses and a number of his very alive comrades appearing. As those Elementals began to line up, he grabbed the wheel and jerked it to the right. As the tank swerved, heavy SRM fire shot through the air where the recon car should have been.

"Gunner, directly aft. Fire at will." Shin looked back at the radar Tech. "Raise HQ?"

"Help's on the way. We're to make for map coordinate A2536."

"Got it. Gunner, some fire! The Elementals are fast."

A scream and the rushing howl of the wind answered his request. Looking up, Shin saw the gunner's twitching legs disappear up into the turret. The wind gained in volume as the scream dopplered away to nothing. Replacing it was the shriek of metal being bent out of shape and the crackling of ceramic armor breaking.

Shin popped the driver's safety belts and steadied the wheel. "To the back! Blow the aft hatch and go! We've got one on top of us!"

The driver dragged himself out of his seat, and the Skulker slowed precipitously. Shin slipped into the man's seat, tugged the safety straps into place and snapped them together with the buckle over his chest. He heard a muffled whump as the explosive bolts on the aft hatch blew, then watched scraps of debris whirl up through the cab as they were sucked out the back.

The rearview monitor showed that all three men had gotten clear, with at least one up and moving. Alone except for the Elemental burrowing into the Skulker from above, Shin smiled with grim determination. In his first run-in with an Elemental, the damned Clansman had refused to die. "Let's just see if you're as hearty as your ally was!"

The speedometer reported a velocity of 112 kph when the Skulker hit a meter-tall hump in the plains. Shin wrenched the wheel left while the machine was still airborne and clung to it like a drowning man. For a second or two, the only sounds he heard were the wind and the racing of the engine.

The Skulker's nose hit the ground first with a bone-crunching jolt that flicked Shin forward against the safety straps. Instantly, sparks and smoke streaked through the cab and the headlights shorted, blinding Shin to the world outside. The aft end of the car whipped forward from the right, then the rear wheels caught broadside and the Skulker slammed into the ground on its right side.

The equipment explosions from the back were drowned out by the din as the recon tank rolled up into its own roof. The great weight crushed the domed turret, shattering the ring assembly binding it to the Skulker. As the vehicle bounced up into the air, the turret sailed off like a wobbling saucer, then the Skulker pounded down into the ground and continued to tumble.

Shin couldn't count the number of times the Skulker somersaulted. His white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel snapped it off and warped it utterly out of shape. Tooth chips ground between his molars and blood was dripping from his nose. Even so, when the Skulker finally stopped on its right side, Shin knew he'd sustained no serious injuries, and he sent a silent prayer of thanks to his ancestors for keeping death at bay.

Popping the belts loose, he crawled back and got out through the escape hatch in the tank's bottom. Still dizzy and disoriented, he ran away from the Skulker, then sank to his knees on a hilltop twenty-five meters to the west. Behind him, the Skulker exploded as the ruptured gas tank poured fuel onto the sparking equipment in the back.

In the fire's backlight, he thought he saw the tank's other crewmen, but he could not be certain. Armed only with a heavy pistol, he couldn't afford to take the chance that it was an Elemental instead, though the body parts scattered around the turret's flattened disk told him it was not the Elemental.

Daubing at the blood from his nose with his sleeve, Shin estimated his position and figured out where rendezvous point A2536 had to be. Before he could begin to head toward it, however, a mounting roar echoed over the plains. Fearing the sound more by instinct and training than sense, he dropped to one knee and looked toward the sky.

Afterburners lit up with gold cylinders of fire, the First Sword of Light's aerospace wing shot toward the east barely fifty meters above the ground. Pulsed rain of scarlet laserfire strobed through the blackness. Brilliant clouds of yellow and red fire wreathed and defined wing-mounted rocket pods. The LRMs streaked off until they became pinpoints of light that erupted into boiling balls of angry red flame.

Even as the Combine's aerospace forces pounded the Clans, Shin felt the brief taste of victory sour in his mouth. The explosions lit by inferno rockets and cluster bombs silhouetted rank upon rank of enemy 'Mechs, then the night jealously hid them again. Even without trying to guess their number, Shin knew one thing for certain: The Clans meant to take Luthien, no matter what the cost, and they had brought with them more than enough 'Mechs to do the job.