The thought of home moved him forward. He had a sister and a mother and his fiancee Mirinda all on Marik, loved ones whom he had not seen in three years. Sometimes, the desire to see them was so intense that he could almost taste it. Yet here he was, twenty light years from home, hurled blindly into combat against murderous renegades by an insensibly stupid Colonel who didn't even know Gordon's name.

There were tears coursing down his cheeks as he hefted the subgun in his sweaty, trembling grip and started down the hill toward the still form of his enemy.

"You bastard," he said. "You filthy bastard ..." The mercenary lay unmoving, face down in the grass. Gordon was about to raise the subgun to his shoulder, ready to empty his 40-round magazine into the man, but something made him pause, then walk cautiously forward.

The man's tactical vest had torn across his back, and his tunic was bloodstained and torn. A ragged gash across the man's left shoulder was thick with fresh blood. Gordon reached one arm out, took the man's right arm, and rolled him over. The mercenary's chest rose and fell with his breathing. His face was a mass of caked blood. Bubbles swelled and popped under his nostrils as he breathed.

Gordon did not even note the passing of his anger. It wasn't that the hatred was gone, and it certainly was not that he no longer wanted to kill. Somehow, though, the soldier's blood mask had transformed him from target to human being. Gordon groped at the wounded man's throat for a pulse.

The dark eyes snapped open through the drying blood, and with a speed that Gordon could not quite comprehend, the man's right fist came up, one knuckle extended in what should have been a killing blow to Gordon's throat. The man was weak enough, and just slow enough, that the blow caught the edge of Gordon's combat helmet, knocking him backward.

He kept his feet and his grip on his Rugan. He fumbled, though, as he tried to bring the SMG around to point at the enemy. Moving with a speed Gordon did not think possible for a man so badly wounded, the blood-masked mercenary surged up from the ground, the wicked, black blade of a combat knife materializing almost magically in his hand. The man stepped inside the firing arc of Gordon's weapon and slashed with the knife. Gordon didn't even realize he was wounded until he felt something hot splash across his bare chest. He looked down, startled, and wondered why the whole world was turning red.

Then he was on the ground, on his back looking up at red sky through red trees. "Damn you, Langsdorf," he tried to say, but the words wouldn't come. Then red faded to black and he died.

* * *

Captain Ramage leaned against a tree, holding himself upright as he stropped the blade of his knife on his trousers. He felt sick and weak. The wound in his back throbbed in agony. From the feel of it, his tactical vest had absorbed most of the blow from a piece of shrapnel the size of his fist. The material had torn, but it had reduced the projectile's speed to the point where it had gashed the flesh behind his left shoulder—and not carried away his entire arm. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

His face felt stiff and cracked. The concussion of the SRM explosions had burst a blood vessel in his nose, and he knew that what he felt was dried blood. I must look a fair sight,he thought. It's a wonder that Locust pilot didn't run screaming at the sight of at me.

Consciousness had been returning with a slow, burning pain in head and back when the enemy trooper had rolled him over. Ramage had opened his eyes to see the insect-visaged helmet of the Locustwarrior bent close to his own face, a vicious Rugan submachine gun gripped tightly in his left hand. Ramage had neither hesitated nor favored his own wounds. He had launched himself into combat, ignoring the tearing pain in his shoulder, ignoring all but the need to kill this enemy as quickly and as silently as possible. His first blow had failed to kill; it had been a difficult thrust requiring precision and accuracy. Being flat on his back and scarcely able to see should have made it a nearly impossible thrust. Through blind, dumb luck, the blow had staggered the enemy enough to give Ramage an instant's grace. He had forced himself to his feet. The wound in his back shrieked white agony with every movement, as he pulled out his knife while rushing inside the soldier's fire arc, and then slashed the man's throat.

Waves of sick dizziness lashed furiously at his mind, and Ramage thought he would faint from the pain alone. His movement had torn something open in his back. He could feel the fresh trickle of blood down his spine, could feel fresh damage grating under the blood with each move he made. The stabbing pains in his left side that accompanied each breath suggested that he had cracked at least one rib as well.

To take his mind from the pain and nausea, he looked around in an attempt to assess the tactical situation and his chances for survival. Meanwhile, the battle raged on. His ears told him that much as he'd first begun climbing back to awareness. The whole crest of the ridge above him to the east was a mass of flame and thundering explosions. From the sound of it, Marik 'Mechs had gained the top of the hill and were fighting there with the Gray Death recon lance.

When he caught the deep-throated thunder of a DropShip's autocannon, Ramage knew that the Deimosand the Phoboswere also in the fight. They would be hard-pressed to target in that narrow trap of a valley, but deep trouble awaited any Marik 'Mechs unlucky enough to wander into their field of fire.

His ear caught another sound, the familiar thud of a 120 mm autocannon. The timber of those rounds was the same as the 120s aboard the DropShips, but the rate of fire was slower, more measured. Ramage had heard the sound often enough to identify the gun immediately as the autocannon slung across the dorsal hull of Grayson's Marauder.The volume of explosive thunder from the far side of the hill convinced him that the entire company must be committed to the battle.

Ramage would have cheered had he not been so close to fainting. Everything would be O.K. now. The Colonel had made it in time!

He heard another sound through the cacophony of battle, the grinding of engines from another direction. Clinging to the tree for support, he turned to see a pair of low-slung wheeled vehicles moving slowly along the base of the hillside. He recognized the model. They were modified Packrats, 20-ton, eight-wheeled combat cars mounting complex, omnidirectional broadcast antennae. Those cars carried no weapons, but proper use of the electronic countermeasures gear they packed into those low, squarish bodies could be enough to turn the tide of battle.

Ramage's experienced eye could see that they were not being properly used, however. Those two Packrats should have been set up far from one another at opposite ends of the battlefield. They would have been just as effective sitting on the crest of the next ridge to the west, instead of venturing so close to the battlefield. Where they were now, any stray BattleMech, even some isolated trooper left behind by the flow of battle, could damage the vehides enough to stop their broadcasts and to clear the tactical frequencies again.

More movement and the rustle of thrashing underbrush brought Ramage's head around again. There were the Marik soldiers, hundreds of them! He saw a wheeled APC making its way steadily up the slope, and heard the keening whine of a hovercraft off through the trees and smoke to the south. With the west face of the ridge secured, the Marik infantry was moving up and bringing the ECM vehicles with them. Why? The soldiers he could see were advancing with grim determination up the slope. It couldn't be that they were going to try to tangle with the Colonel's 'Mechs. What then . . . the remnants of Ramage's infantry?