The Fulcrums’ missiles arced and fell, arced and fell. Raining heavy fire over some APCs and exposed Purifier infantry, casting aside scraps of armor and scraps of personnel.

“Back to our lines,” she called out, slamming her ’Mech’s throttle from full-out run to a backward walk.

Momentum nearly threw the Hatchetman down on its face, but a hastily planted leg levered the walking machine backward. The tanks veered one way or another. The Cavalry copters pounced on a stray Kinnol, blowing the treads off one side to ground the tank.

Return fire was hastily organized and haphazard at best. Lasers and a few flights of LRMs struck at Tara’s small force. Nothing too damaging. A pair of Condors flung themselves after her, but her trio of Rangers pinned down one of the hovercraft from either side and nearly ground it down to a halt, while a few daring Infiltrators bounded forward into the no-man’s-land.

No prize to be won in this scrape. The trapped Condor reversed its drive fans, powering down into a dead stop while still under the protective umbrella of loyalist guns. The Rangers did not dare follow suit, and raced back for their line.

Tara, though, was left with an easy broadside. Pulling crosshairs over the slowed Condor, she hammered out once, twice, and again to finally open up the Condor’s lift skirt. The tank limped back to the pack before she could finish it off.

“Was it good for you?” Gareth asked as she regained her place next to him.

“I hate being ignored. Do you think I got Stansill’s attention?”

A deadly rain of missiles fell against their positions, geysering dirt and gravel into the air on columns of fire. Two warheads smashed into the Hatchetman’s arm. A gauss slug blurred by her cockpit, plowing into the earth some sixty meters behind her, spraying soil and rock out from a lopsided impact crater.

“Yes,” Gareth said. “I’d say so.”

Both MechWarriors fell back, but slowly. Taking their turns at trading weapons fire with the advancing loyalists.

“Their line is erratic. He didn’t set himself well.” Gareth sounded excited. “We can’t stop them, but we can make it hurt.”

Tara had seen the same thing. Stansill’s failing to drive the Kelswa assault tanks to the front was a mistake. She gasped for air as her heavy use of the Hatchetman’s laser drove her cockpit temperature up another tick. “We stick it to them, then. Concentrated fire against weaker targets. We get him good and angry.” She raced her ’Mech back a few dozen meters. “We make it personal.”

It was already becoming personal. The loyalists powered forward in pursuit of the Republic line. Lasers and particle cannon spread out devastating lines of destruction. The barrage of missile and autocannon fire created a sound like rolling, continuous thunder.

“And then what?” Gareth asked, his Black Hawk stumbling under the initial onslaught.

Tara tightened her grip on the Hatchetman’s control sticks.

“Then we get ready to run.”

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

1 June 3135

Particle cannon discharges slammed back and forth across the no-man’s-land like Zeus’ lightning, indiscriminate and deadly. With dark skies piling up overhead, threatening more rain, it was as if the storm had started early, on the ground.

True thunder beat across the woodlands and river salient, all but impossible to distinguish from the echoes of missile barrages, autocannon, and sporadic artillery fire.

Fires burned out of control all along the Marne.

The Templar’s cockpit stank of ash and cordite. The air was filtered by the BattleMech’s life-support systems, but still tainted. Julian fought for breath. He licked sweat from his blistered lips and wrenched his control stick over to twist his machine around at the waist.

Not… quite… far enough.

Stutter-stepping, he leaned the Templar into the turn and snap-fired one PPC at an encroaching Scimitar. The stream of hellish energy slammed into and through its ferroglass canopy. For a heartbeat, every gunnery position and observation port glowed with an azure backlight. Then all went dark, and the hovercraft grounded in an awkward skid that tore up more earth and finally piled it up against a snag of tree stumps and boulders.

A temporary victory only.

“Guard-one, Guard-one, break off. We have a Schmitt leading into your blind spot!”

Too late. Gem-bright laserfire scorched his left leg, and missiles fell in a firestorm all around his position. The Schmitt registered on his HUD as it cleared a light stand of poplar, the tracked tank carving up soft ground and spinning a small rooster tail of mud behind it. Flanked by Regulators that swiveled their turrets over and slammed a pair of gauss slugs in his direction.

One missed wide, blasting a large crater into a nearby tower that had likely stood for hundreds of years. The other skipped off the Templar’s forward knee and slammed up into his right side in a hard-angle ricochet.

That kind of coordinated firepower threatened even a BattleMech, but Julian’s Guard responded with swift fury. A Fox armored car swung around the back side of the tower, Infiltrator infantry clinging to its top, leading one of the Guard’s two Centurions to Julian’s support. A lone SM1 Destroyer—not Callandre’s—raced up from the other side.

The Schmitt threw itself into reverse so hard that its tracks slipped for several seconds, trying to gain purchase. The Regulators crossed in front of it, hammering away with their gauss rifles, putting some hurt on the Destroyer which jumped and skewed sideways but rode out the hard hits.

Return fire chased the loyalists back to the trees, but there would be no pursuit. Again. A line of destruction suddenly walked a hard line between Julian’s strike force and the retreating vehicles, throwing earth and rock and great large columns of fire into the air and nearly into the face of the Centurion. The artillery barrage shook the ground, and the fifty-ton ’Mech dropped to one knee, shielding its cockpit with a thick, metal-clad arm.

“We have got to get some of those,” Julian whispered, but too loud.

“Sir?” Leftenant Dawkins, back in the Guard’s mobile HQ. The man coordinated all reports coming from every part of the wide-spread battle, and he never missed his cue. Not once.

Julian twisted back to a neutral profile, cut the Templar away from that line of death and faded back behind the tower, the great wall it anchored, and some tall willow trees.

“Those mobile defense systems. Paladin artillery vehicles.” His voice broke, and he swallowed dryly. “Their destructive line is impressive.”

The First Guard had heavy guns at their command as well, of course. Standard Long Tom artillery pieces. Julian could move them faster than a Paladin Defense System, but by using a fusion reactor a PDS supported two heavy artillery guns per vehicle.

“Noted, sire.”

And it would be. Jotted down in an electronic file, and forwarded back to the prince’s champion at the end of the battle.

If he were still alive.

Which, if Conner Rhys-Monroe had anything to say about it, wouldn’t be the case.

“If we’re not interrupting your planning session…” Callandre’s voice was strong and cutting in his ear. “We could use some help along grids four-five through four-seven.”