The brutal assault shoved Julian forward and kicked one leg out from beneath him at the same time. The Templar’s gyro screamed in protest, and Julian abandoned himself to a rough landing.

Which threw the second of only two major hitches into his off-the-cuff plan. His Templar sprawled in the very wrong direction. Crashing down on its right side, shoulder digging into the ground and head laid right under the Kelswa’s rail guns.

No time to wrestle the assault-class monster back to his feet. Julian got the ’Mech’s arms beneath him and managed to prop himself into a half-prone position. His left-arm PPC flayed armor from the Kelswa, blasting away protection and leaving a half-melted scar down its front side. Not enough.

Which was when Calamity Kell burst back onto the scene.

“No you do not!” was all she had time for as she barreled her Destroyer in at its top speed of 120 kilometers per hour, autocannon blazing, and ramming it into the right side of the stationary assault tank.

Julian had a front row seat. Saw the autocannon hammer hard into the Kelswa’s side, and hoped, even though he knew—somewhere back inside his mind—that she couldn’t possibly burn through before the assault tank’s gauss rifles took out the Templar’s cockpit. At that point, he hadn’t considered the wreckage about to pile up in front of him.

But then the SM1’s forward-thrust barrel speared into the assault tank’s side, ruining the weapon but giving the Kelswa just that start of a nudge. Rocking it up, off its right-side treads, as the hovercraft slammed in behind its weapon to cave in the tank’s side. The impact shoved the Kelswa over and ramped the Destroyer into the air. It flew, gracefully, for about three seconds.

Then crashed to the ground in a belly flop that beat the Stinger’s earlier performance hands down.

“Callandre!” Julian stumbled his Templar back to its feet, lying about on both sides with PPCs, keeping enemy vehicles back from his friend’s wrecked Destroyer. “Calamity Kell!”

“Ow.”

It wasn’t much of a response. But it was enough.

Julian turned with a vengeance into the nearest line of loyalist ’Mechs, relieved for his friend and ready to put an end to the march on Paris. The Guard lost its Enforcer in the next few minutes, but wrecked incredible havoc amongst the shattered loyalist line as well. Julian burned down a Hastati Regulator, and a Condor so new out of the factory it had only a base-primer paint job.

Then Tara Campbell finally stumbled close enough to Stansill’s Griffin to rip out the ex-knight’s heart with her autocannon. The BattleMech died on its feet, fusion reactor bursting free in a golden blaze, shattering limbs and armor, casting pieces in all directions.

The force of the blast knocked Tara Campbell back, but the stubborn Hatchetman flailed about, trying to rise again.

Loyalists broke from their line, fleeing for the safety of Conner Rhys-Monroe’s direct command. Already Julian’s Guards were sparring at range with the stronger force. Surprisingly, enough to slow Monroe, set him back a step. Julian threw forward a pair of Jousts. A Kinnol main battle tank, captured by Dawkin’s engineering squad and pressed back into the battle, rolled in as well.

It bought them seconds.

“Artillery?” Julian toggled for a direct line. “What do you have left?”

“Another few hundred pounds. Then we’re down to throwing rocks.”

“Use it! Retard distance minus two hundred.”

He didn’t even try to put the fire into Conner’s line, which might have prompted them to speed their attack. He simply filled up the ground in between them with a line of fire and shrapnel that no one would willingly cross. Four… perhaps five hundred meters separated the two lines now. Julian wanted to keep that as long as possible.

Longer, it turned out, than he’d ever imagined.

As the debris cleared in a rain of blackened earth and gravel, and the smoke drifted into fading wisps, the loyalist line stood there. Centered on the Rifleman. Unmoving.

Then the entire line began a slow but certain retreat.

Allied units converged on Julian’s position, rallying. Two strengthened companies… three… Julian took a head count, started weighing out what he had left against the knight-senator. Even odds. Or pretty close to it. Even with Tara Campbell’s Hatchetman staggering up along with Gareth Sinclair and his Black Hawk, Julian gave an edge to the loyalists. Fewer BattleMech units at this point, but heavier ground forces and better support with their recovery vehicles and mobile gantries.

“You won’t get a better shot at them in an hour,” Calamity broadcast on a general channel.

“Or them at us,” Tara responded. She sounded about how Julian felt. Battered and utterly spent. “Are they thinking to take and hold Chateau-Thierry?”

Julian frowned, and waited, and watched. The loyalists began forming up in company-strength units, then dividing down, it seemed, into lances as organized by an outside force. Conner Rhys-Monroe, then? Getting his people readied for…?

“Check your high-gain sensors,” Maya Avellar broke in on the chatter. “That’s not ours.”

Julian didn’t bother. He’d figured it out already. Turning toward the distant city, he gazed through a mud-streaked cockpit canopy into the sky. At first, it was just a darker mass moving against an overcast sky piled up with heavy thunderheads. Then a shadow that moved down through the light curtains of rain, falling over the far side of Chateau-Thierry.

Finally a DropShip. Excalibur–class.

Two elements of fighters streaked down behind it, taking high-speed turns over the city and the surrounding woodland and flats. Transgressors. Julian was just as happy to leave them alone. At least for now.

But he knew, felt it, that it wouldn’t be for good.

This wasn’t over.

“It’s not, is it?” Callandre Kell asked, as if reading Julian’s mind. She had crawled out of her ruined tank, and now perched atop it with a bloody compress held to the side of her head.

Julian sat back in his command chair, breathing easier now that his cooling system had made headway against the stifling heat of combat. Now it was merely a sauna. And he was through with it. Until the next time.

“It is,” he said, “for now.”

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

1 June 3135

Asomber pall smothered the Chamber of Paladins, draining the energy of the room—which Tara thought could have been more upbeat, if still severe.

As twilight rolled up on Geneva, the day spent, all but six paladins had returned to the chamber and their stations. Always in motion, they conversed with each other, or with handfuls of the twenty or so knights milling about awaiting missions or a request for data. Occasionally, one would be called away, but never for long. It had all the trappings of a war room, and the war was going well. Better than could have been expected, all things considered.

But then, Meraj Jorgensson was dead. Another name lost to the rolls of the vaunted paladin corps.