“I will hold the bridge,” she promised, looking to be doing it by herself. “No one enters this city.”

Dawkins had followed the firefight and the arrival of the paladin. His Praetorian mobile HQ vehicle crawled down the riverbank, flanked by a bare-bones protective detail of Infiltrator and two Fox armored cars. “If she can do that, sir, we have a chance to withdraw. Set a new line once Tara Campbell and Sinclair link up.”

“Whatever you are going to do, Jules, figure it out soon. Conner’s pressing hard, and we’re hardly stopping to reset our line now.”

Julian waded his Templar out of the river’s grasp. He paused, shuffling the Templar in a tight circle, surveying the area. If Maya could hold the far bank—somehow—and if he could stop the two loyalists lines from collapsing against him in a classic pincer—some way…

It reminded him, actually, of the situation in which the Federated Suns found itself. Static position. An open back (against the Periphery). Two potential enemies looming up on different fronts. And without the resources to hold them both off. One fight or the other. Wasn’t that the choice?

And if it was, could he turn this battle in the same direction?

Only one way to find out.

Julian throttled into a walk that pushed his ’Mech upriver, the same direction as Maya Avellar. “Calamity, blunt the nose on Conner’s push. Chew it off if you can, but I want that line held.”

“It’s gonna cost,” she warned. The same words she had used in the simulation battle against Yori Kurita.

And he remembered his cavalier answer. Only this time, there were real lives on the line. There was no forgetting that now.

“Pay it,” he said. “We draw a line in the earth, here. This far. No further.

“And may fortune favor the foolish.”

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

1 June 3135

Tara Campbell nearly died within sight of Chateau-Thierry.

A slow patter of rain fell, dotting her ferroglass canopy with splashes of silver-gray. The droplets mixed with grit and soot, running muddy fingers down the outside surface, smearing her distant view of the city’s white brick buildings and the older gray stone walls that stood from centuries past, wars past.

The Republic force pushed in from the northwest, running upriver alongside the Marne. For the first time in an hour, she and Gareth pulled Cray Stansill away from Paris, teasing a rabid dog with fresh meat. Certain to be a short-lived chase as the MechWarriors trailed at the back of the widespread column, pulling rear-guard duty as they shepherded some of the slower vehicles. Two Jousts. A crippled M1 Marksman.

Both remaining Cavalry VTOLs flew high cover, crisscrossing overhead as they spotted for advance elements of the pursuing Senate loyalists.

They missed.

Two Stingers charged out of Belleau Wood from the north, one taking to the air on a high, arcing jump while the second ran beneath the VTOL coverage. A pair of Demon wheeled striker tanks chased after them. And from the direction of the river, a pair of Condors broke cover as well, coordinating a quick pincer.

The jumping Stinger swatted at the Cavalry attack copters with its rocket launchers, sending the fire-and-forget warheads on quick beelines. Two warheads missed. Two more slammed into the side of one of the fragile craft, blossoming bright and angry red, and nearly knocked it from the air. The stricken Cavalry cut around in tight circles, fighting for control, while the second VTOL ditched to one side.

The second Stinger rushed in behind the retreating line and slashed at Tara’s back with its large lasers.

A ruby-bright lance speared the Hatchetman, coring through the thinner, rear armor, slicing away at support struts and engine shielding. More waste heat bled into the chest cavity of Tara’s ’Mech, jumping the temperatures already pushing redline.

Worse, supports shifted beneath the weight of her gyro. The forty-five-ton machine shook with a mechanical palsy as the massive stabilizer trembled and rocked out of balance.

Before she could do much more than bring her laser in line with the Condor charging in at her front, the Hatchetman pitched forward, sprawling out in a facedown slide through a field of wildflowers. Shaken so badly that her teeth clacked together hard enough to chip a molar, Tara kept a firm grip on her controls and waited for the nightmare to end.

“Tango-one! She’s down.”

“…lost the Countess!”

Comms chatter filtered in through a dark haze. She thought she heard Julian Davion, asking if they needed assistance, urging them forward where the First Davion Guards continued to hold a hard line. Sounded like him. Might have been him. Might have been the actor who played him on trivid.

Which was when she truly realized how close to the cusp of darkness she walked.

Tara shook herself. “Go, go!” Suspended from her harness, hanging above her control console, she urged Gareth and the others forward. “Don’t wait for me!”

All she had time to say as the loyalists drove in at her like wolves sensing blood. Missiles hammered around her, tearing bites out of the ground and out of the Hatchetman’s armor. Lasers slashed. Machine guns picked at the edges of her open wounds, drilling deeper, looking for meat.

Her cockpit was all high-pitched alarms and red warning lights. The BattleMech’s wireframe schematic showed heavy armor loss across her back and down the left side. She’d also scraped a good swath from her machine’s head. Ruptured heat sinks. A damaged laser in her right chest.

The ringing in her ears that had nothing to do with warning alarms.

Blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.

Working the ’Mech’s arms beneath her, Tara shoved with the strength of myomer muscles and picked her machine up from the ground. A Demon raced in at her right side. Bad choice. Propping herself on the war machine’s left arm, she chopped at the vehicle with her titanium hatchet.

Her first blow caved in the forward left side of the tank and broke the nearby wheel right off the axle. The front corner of the Demon chewed down into the ground as the back wheels continued to dig and spray back a long tail of mud in a desperate fan. Raising her hatchet again, this time Tara brought it down through the crew cockpit, leaving it a tangle of steel, ferroglass and flesh. The Demon stopped trying to power forward.

One of the Condors actually tried to sideswipe her arm, thinking to knock her back flat. It bounced off as if striking a reinforced post—which in a way it had—and then all but disintegrated ten seconds later as nearly a score of short-range missiles hammered down over it like Thor’s own hammer.

Gareth Sinclair had come back.

So, in fact, had the Jousts and M1, and about half of their armored column. VV1 Rangers ran off the remaining Demon while their two Cavalry attack VTOLs harried the Condor. Both Jousts opened up against one of the Stinger s, ten-packs spreading out flight after flight of LRMs. Lasers slashed through the air. And the M1 Marksman added its own guns into the desperate barrage.

It was enough. The crippled Stinger managed one dying gasp, slicing deep into the Marksman’s side with its own laser, burning through armor and the crew compartment. Then it stumbled and fell. And did not rise again, as Gareth’s Black Hawk did a high-speed run-by with large lasers slicing across the backs of the Stinger’s legs, severing both below the knee.