“On my advance.” Julian throttled forward, pulling his crosshairs over the center of the Legionnaire. “Faith serve the Prince!”

He pulled into his primary triggers, and twin bolts of man-made lightning streaked across the fairgrounds to slice the Legionnaire from shoulder to shoulder as the Federated Suns had struck their first blow on behalf of The Republic.

The smoke from several forest fires spread thick black smoke into the sky north of Tara Campbell’s position, south, and east. Every direction but west, where Paris waited to see how The Republic fared this day, struggling against the Senate loyalists. Where too many heads of state were pinned in place by diplomatic propriety, and would be heading for deep bunkers built beneath the city if things did not go as planned.

It wasn’t looking good.

Running her Hatchetman back to the safety of her line, Tara dodged in behind Gareth Sinclair’s Clan-designed Black Hawk. He had abandoned a stand of flowering plum trees to cover her retreat. His extended-range lasers slashed with the efficiency of ruby scalpels. Arm-mounted four-packs tossed out a wide spread of fat-bodied, short-range missile loads.

The missiles fell in overlapping waves around a fleeing Condor, hammering it hard across the front. They shoved the nose down into the earth. Momentum jacked up the Condor’s back, sending it in an end-over tumble that rolled and flipped the speeding hovercraft into a stand of burning pine.

It rocked to a halt between two large trees, both aflame. Glowing cinders and ash drifted down over it in a final curtain.

“Thanks for the assist,” Tara offered, panting as she caught her breath.

The air inside her cockpit was dry and acrid and very hot. Laser damage to her centerline had breached the Hatchetman’s engine shielding, causing the ’Mech’s reactor to dump excess waste heat into sensitive control spaces. The taste of scorched insulation burned in her throat like hot coals.

“Feel free to return—”

Gareth’s reply was cut off as his Black Hawk was rocked back by twin gauss hits, taking one silvery streak in the right leg and another dead center in the gut. More than three tons of armor rained down onto the ground in shards and glistening splinters. The BattleMech stumbled back.

Even off-balance, he still managed to spear out twin lances from his right– and left-arm lasers. They streaked back along the path of the gauss slugs, slashing at the thick composite armor of a Kelswa assault tank. Say what you wanted about Gareth Sinclair. Young, certainly. But every measure a paladin.

Kicking the Black Hawk back at its best walking speed, Gareth pulled out of range.

“—the favor,” he finished. Late.

Between them, they commanded two strengthened companies from the tenth Principes Guards with a few units from the green Triarii Protectors thrown in to fill holes in the TO&E. They fielded the second heaviest force to set itself between the Senate loyalists and Paris. But it wasn’t enough.

Not when Sir Cray Stansill had added a pair of Kelswa assault tanks as well as four Kinnol main battle tanks to his support forces—and knew how to fight the heavy armor.

He set them as an anchor, wherever the fighting was heaviest, and wheeled his faster vehicles around them in flanking strikes. Stansill then shored up any weak points with a pair of twenty-ton Stinger s, using his Griffin and his partner’s Catapult to spearhead the major offensives.

For two hours now, the loyalists had consistently pushed Tara and Gareth around, coming one step closer to Paris with nearly every maneuver, or one step closer to linking up with the force commanded by Conner Rhys-Monroe.

Either way, it helped the loyalist position.

“We’re in trouble,” Gareth said.

He turned his Black Hawk upfield, and used his large lasers to worry the loyalist line. One scarred a Stinger over its left arm, but did little more than drip molten armor down into dry brush, which immediately caught flame.

Tara traded long-range autocannon fire with a Kinnol’s PPC. Pushed a pair of Cavalry attack helicopters into place to counter a run by some hoverbikes.

“I’m figuring that out.”

“No, I mean I just received word through channels. Maya Avellar never made it out of the city. Meraj Jorgensson is confirmed dead. His VTOL was destroyed over Louvres.”

Avellar and Jorgensson. The two paladins who should have taken command at Senlis, bridging the gap between the Montataire defenses and Julian’s First Davion Guard at Meaux. No wonder the center had crumbled!

The hoverbikes had broken around the Calvary copters’ strafing runs, and had reformed on the eastern flank. They harried and ran to ground a Shandra scout vehicle painted in the black and gold of the Tenth Hastati. It overturned and roiled greasy smoke into the air.

“How soon until we can expect stronger reinforcements from the border?” She throttled her Hatchetman forward, overrunning a Triarii Marksman and chasing down the hoverbikes herself.

“Excuse me?”

“The border, Gareth. The border. Levin set a long line of field camps.” A pair of the hoverbikes drifted in too close, and Tara blasted one right through the engine cowling with her autocannon. It blew up, tossing the rider into a broken heap. “Where is the closest one?”

“Across the border by now. The moment Conner moved into Belgium, all camps were put on alert and prepped to assault loyalist positions in Mannheim, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Cologne. We’re retaking Germany.”

“At the expense of Paris?” A sinking sensation hollowed her out. Levin had told her…

No, Levin had led her to believe that the line of field camps would collapse back around Paris. Had led everyone to believe. Which meant the senators sitting safely behind their protected lines in Germany may have left themselves vulnerable.

Gareth’s Black Hawk stalked her direction, pulling the balance of their supporting forces behind it as the paladin shifted their entire line again. “They won’t be able to hold Paris. They might throw a sweat into the politicos, but we’ll have them safely hidden away in time.”

And if the Inner Sphere leaders felt threatened by the loyalists, that didn’t hurt Exarch Levin’s entreaty at all, did it? Enemy of mine enemy…

Across the field, stomping through a small farm plot of early cabbages and wax beans, Cray Stansill’s Griffin marched up beside the Catapult and began summoning hard-hitting flankers like the Kinnol MBTs. They readied a new push. Always seeking to break through and open up the drive into Paris. Wanting only to brush aside the force under the joint command of Tara and Gareth.

She’d see about that.

Planting a wide-spade foot in front of her, Tara shifted the weight in her forty-five-ton Hatchetman to suddenly cut straight in at the forming enemy line. Calling her Cavalry VTOLs and a pair of Fulcrum heavy hovertanks in behind her, rallying a trio of VV1 Rangers who raced forward to flank her left side, she threw a fast-moving assault right into the teeth of the loyalists.

“Tara? What are you doing?”

Getting Cray Stansill extremely irritated with her, she hoped.

By luck more than planning, she caught the Kelswa assault tanks shifting position, not covering the forward path and unable to clear the Stingers out of their own field of fire in time. It left the core of the loyalist force exposed to her quick strike.

She hammered out with her heavy autocannon in rapid-fire bursts, joining a storm of hot metal to the scarlet lances spearing out of the Fulcrums. Her weapon chewed more armor away from the Catapult’s centerline, while two lances of burning light fused together near the machine’s elbow to completely sever the lower arm.