Ardan watched another amber light—a Liao Thrush—flash white and die, and dreaded failure.

Deceleration complete, the fleet entered low orbit over Stein's Folly. In the entire passage, only three enemy fighters had broken through the Davion Stukasand Corsairsand made high-speed runs through the DropShip fleet. One DropShip, the aging UnionClass Alphecca,suffered minor damage to her fire control systems, but with no casualties among the MechWarriors of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Crucis Lancers, sweating out the attack aboard her.

Davion forces commanded the space approaches by the time the DropShips entered orbit. Battlegroups of Stukasrefueled aboard their base DropShips, rearmed with bombs and air-to-ground missiles, then plunged into the goldtipped clouds of the Folly's atmosphere. Reports continued to be relayed from the Stukaflights to the fleet: enemy 'Mechs observed in Stein's Folly and at the Highland port; Liao heavy 'Mechs observed and bombed on the coast road west of Travis; no fighters observed on any of the spaceport fields; ground anti-air defensive fire seemed light...

The Exeter 'scaptain appeared on the steel latticework deck of the 'Mech bay, where Ardan was making a final systems check of the towering, eighty-ton Victorin its outboard launch niche. The 'Mech itself was almost lost in the forest of tubing, cables, wire, and ablative plate that cocooned the machine.

"I came down to wish you luck, Ardan" Danelle said.

"Thank you, Harve. Any change?"

The older man shook his head. "Maybe...just maybe, we've got them cold."

"Uh-unh. Not Maximilian Liao. He's got something up his sleeve." Ardan smiled, a tug against one corner of his mouth. "A dagger, perhaps."

The Exeter 'scaptain looked at him closely. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, sure. Nervous. Scared to death...How should I feel?"

"Before being booted into space in one of those junk piles? Nervous and scared widess, I should think."

"Harve...what if I've guessed wrong?"

"Then you live with it...or die with it, whatever comes. Your course is set now. Fretting won't change it...except maybe to work the odds against you when you need to be at your best."

Ardan looked up at the Victor.A grey-coveralled technician waved to him from the cockpit, signalling that the instrumentation checked out and the 'Mech was ready for launch.

"Twenty minutes to drop," the Captain said. "You'd better snug in."

"Right And...thanks. Thanks for everything."

"All part of your better Davion Travel Service," Danelle said, but he wasn't smiling.

Harvey Danelle stared up at Ardan as he climbed a slender ladder to the Victor'shatch and squeezed himself in. Young Sortek's moodiness concerned him. He'd seen too many 'MechWarriors overcome by depression or black or thoughtful moods—and more often than not, those were the ones who failed to return. Silendy, he said a kind of prayer for Ardan's safety.

The landing plan called for an atmospheric drop rather than a drop from space. With the Drop Zone so perilously close to sea, jungle, and rugged mountain, absolute precision was necessary. One by one, the main drives of each DropShip flared, killing velocity, dropping the ships into the upper fringes of the Folly's atmosphere.

Sealed into his cockpit, listening to the babble of voices coming across his comchannels, Ardan could feel the gradually increasing thrum of air against outer hull, the occasional lurch and bump of high-altitude turbulence, or the jar of a maneuvering thruster burn. He fought down his seething emotions, and attended to the nearly automatic tasks of preparing for drop. He had already stripped off all clothing except for his boots and shorts—his Victor'scockpit was going to be a sauna in very short order—and donned a light cooling vest, taking care with the connections between the shoulder pumps and the coolant reserve in the small of his back. A Kelvin Triple-0 Lancer 3 mm laser pistol went into a holster, and he tightened the web belt it hung from around his waist. The new combat knife was strapped by its scabbard to his calf just above his low-cut boot top. The canister of survival gear went into a flat pouch hanging from the belt.

The Victor'sneural helmet was already tuned to his brain patterns, of course. He brought the helmet down from its storage mount suspended above the back of his seat, eased it across his shoulders, and clamped it shut. Gradually, the Victorwoke up. Feedback through the helmet gave Ardan a sense of the machine's balance and position through the nerves of his inner ear. He felt...power.

Fear melted, and his uncertainty with it. Rumor had it that MechWarriors controlled their massive charges by thought alone, as if the 'Mech became their body through some sorcery in the neuralink. Human technology had never been capable of that, of course, though there were speculations that such control might one day be possible. Donning a BattleMech neural helmet was far less taking on a new body than it was taking on a new outlook on the world. A man's viewpoint changed somewhat, from eight meters up, with eighty tons of juggernaut combat machine responding to the touch of his fingers.

His eyes flicked to the chronometer set above his faceplate. Four minutes to drop. The ride became rougher, more violent He could feel sudden shifts of upand downthrough his neuralink as Captain Danelle maneuvered his ship.

"There they are!" The voice was Danelle's, sharp through his helmet commlink. "Bogies, dozens of them, coming up out of the clouds!"

Ardan could not see them and had to rely on the running commentary from the Exeter 'sbridge. Sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip, and it wasn't even hot yet.

"We've spotted 112 of the bastards so far," Danelle continued. "They must have been bunkered underground, masked or camouflaged from our scouts. They rose from a dozen points all across North Continent...strange, though. I think they vectored wrong. They're rising to meet us, but they're having to burn a lot of mass to shift from their original course." There was a pause. "Combat Intelligence believes they were vectored on a course to intercept us if we were on an approach path toward Steindown. We're well north of that course, and they're having to scramble to adjust"

That was the trap, Ardan thought, exultant They were waiting for us at Steindown! I was right!

"Our fighter cover is engaging them. Ha! Got that one! Oops...that one broke through, but the old Denebburned him down. Look at him burn! Here come our reserves..."

There was a long pause, then Ardan heard, "We're coming up on the drop site. Nav fix is positive. DZ in sight! Twelve seconds, people." Another pause, an eternity. Every MechWarrior reserved a special dread for death striking in the last seconds before a drop, while men and machines were still cradled helplessly aboard their DropShips. Then Danelle yelled, "Good luck! Give 'em hell!"

12

The world exploded in Ardan's ears, as the Exeter launched him from its 'Mech bay. In a blast of metal chaff and fragments of ablative plating, the Victorbegan its plunge planetward.

Ardan fired a burst from his thrusters, stopping a vicious tumble before it could properly begin and orienting himself into a spread-eagle, face-down position. He was now a ten-meter tall, eighty-ton skydiver, accelerating to terminal velocity. After instructing his computer to disregard the metallic debris all around him, he clicked on his proximity radar and got his bearings.