At the same time, Callandre Kell speared out from the sidelines with her SM1 leading a charge of two Condors and a second pair of Goblins. She’d even managed to scrounge up a combat engineer squad as well. That would grab some attention.

If he let it.

“Concentrate fire on the eastern ’Hammer,” he ordered, buying Calamity some grace. He pushed his throttle forward, angling away from the Catapult to offer his own support.

“I’m a bit out of position,” Jasek cautioned.

Well, yeah. Strung out over far too many kilometers, torn between an advance and a rear guard strategy that had already failed. Julian had something for him, though. He squinted to read his blurred HUD. “Take down Alaric Wolf. Do not let him regroup.”

“My pleasure.”

For a reason Julian couldn’t quite pin down, he felt like he’d just thrown more meat to the… well… wolves.

A different pair of Destroyers drove back Yori Kurita’s Dragon while Julian worked his own fire team into position against one of the Warhammer s. Calamity Kell did not let tactics get in her way as she charged through a thin Kurita line, forming the second half of a brute-force pincer maneuver. Her Destroyer rocked sideways under a PPC lashing, but powered forward regardless, spitting a fury of hot metal from its autocannon which hacked brutally through one of the Warhammer’s arms, dropping the limb onto a charred piece of ground.

Then Julian’s particle cannon sliced long and deep across the ’ Hammer’s right side and chest. Shrapnel exploded out of the centerline gash as the ’Mech’s gyro tore itself apart, spraying in a storm of high-velocity shards. Callandre’s Condors raced up with lasers flaring gem-bright energy and missiles hammering a lethal tattoo over the BattleMech’s head and shoulders. The cockpit canopy caved inward and the pilot’s space filled with fire.

The Warhammer was “dead” before it ever hit the ground.

But the Kurita team was not finished. Pushing forward, as if sensing the end of the battle, Yori’s Dragon threw bolt after bolt of particle energy Julian’s direction while Kisho concentrated on Callandre’s position. The Nova Cat’s missiles crippled, then hammered into scrap one of the Goblins.

The remaining Warhammer spent more vicious energy on a Condor, which flipped off a small rise and overturned.

And on Juian’s tactical HUD, he saw one blue icon after another go dark as the Lyran force continued to feed Alaric Wolf more victims.

“Dammit, Jasek.” His voice came out as a croak, sucked dry of all moisture as special vents in the cockpit floor dumped hot, stale air into the compartment. Simulating the heat spikes that followed so much cannon fire. “I said take him down, not choke him on your own men.”

“Easier said …done” was the distant, broken reply. “He’s not… your way at least.”

No. Alaric seemed quite content to rest on his laurels, leaving the Draconis Combine’s main thrust on their own while he continued to decimate the entire Lyran front.

Everything was happening at a quicksilver pace found in the most desperate battles. Julian’s JES carriers all ran out of missiles at the same time and became nothing more than blocking dummies. Yori stepped on one as she pushed by, grappling into point-blank range with Julian’s Templar. And Kisho was suddenly knocked down onto his side as Callandre’s Destroyer slid past the downed ’ Hammer to unload her last few hundred rounds into his Catapult.

The remaining Warhammer was under siege as the last Goblin spilled out a line of hoarded Hauberk battle armor and the combat engineers attacked from its blind side with grapple rods and the black boxes they would need to try and take over the BattleMech. If they could clear out the MechWarrior inside.

Everything else on the field was fighting one-on-one skirmishes, already burning, or trying to limp away.

One broken unit after another. On both sides. It would take a damn good computer to rack up the scores and debits, and try to pull a winner out of this charnel hole.

Yori claimed another kill as she blitzed Callandre’s Destroyer from the side, burning through the crew quarters with argent fire. Kisho stayed down as Hauberks jumped from the Warhammer to his Catapult, swarming over the sides and shoulders of his machine, burning and tearing with their mechanical claws.

Julian slammed his PPCs after Yori, arcing the blue-white whips after her in one last effort to take her with him. Surprisingly, he was laughing. Croaking out a hard, barking laugh that seemed incongruous with the “death” of his friend and the carnage being piled up around him. It was all too much. Too many simulated deaths. Too many serious players.

“You and me, Yori Kurita,” he challenged her, toggling to an unsecured circuit. He pushed his heat scale into dangerous territory, flailing with his PPCs in desperation. “The sword and the Dragon!”

She did not have that much more left to give either. The armor on her sixty-ton ’Mech was more memory than materiel, and grayish smoke seeped out of several deep wounds in the ’Mech’s torso. But she rallied gamely to his call, flinging out her own curses in Japanese even as she struck with missiles and particle cannon.

Her final blast of hellish fire washed over the face of his Templar’s cockpit even as his own final pair merged into one raging torrent of crackling energies, coring through her Dragon’s chest and spearing completely through and out the back side. His cockpit slammed back hard and the screens all washed over with blistering red before blinking out.

Darkness crashed in around him, and the simulator pod settled into its cradle with small rocking motions.

Only the lights on his communications board stayed lit.

“This concludes our test,” Julian said, gasping for breath in the stifling hot air. A smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

“We now return you to your regularly scheduled lives.”

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

19 May 3135

Conner Rhys-Monroe shucked his cooling vest inside the Cavalry, dug out a one-piece coverall from the storage locker built in behind the VTOL’s copilot seat, and pulled it on in the final moments before landing at the Darmstadt estates given to him by Senator Derius. He had power-napped for most of the flight, resting uneasily as the rotors thundered overhead, shaking his entire world. His muscles were stiff and sore from too much time spent in the crash seat of his Rifleman. The cordite scent of spent gunpowder trailed along wherever he went.

Seeing him awake, the pilot toggled for his onboard speakers. “We’re going to bounce you down, Senator, and get back to Mannheim, ja? We’ve called for a civilian transport to follow up.”

There was no easy way to conduct a conversation, so Conner simply nodded as the pilot glanced back through the cabin. He caught a stanchion next to the open door, leaning out as the Cavalry swept in low over the rose garden and aimed for the helipad.

The skids had barely kissed ferrocrete when he was down, ducking low, and running out from beneath the rotors as the craft leaped back into the air and thundered south again.

It was a short jog through the rose garden to the rear of the mansion. Double-wide French doors waited open with an infantry guard standing watch just inside. Conner threw a quick salute to the military officers looking at a map rolled out over a twenty-eighth-century breakfast table, and took the plush-carpeted stairs three at a time, heading for the upstairs library.