Damn. Damn Ruskoff for slipping forces through the Chang-an suburbs and Mai Uhn Wa for taking a sudden absence. Whatever the House Master dealt with in the Praetorian, it had better be worth Jenna’s life.
“We don’t,” Evan said on a tight-comms transmission to Hahn. He pivoted his Ti Ts’ang south, ready to push-and-fade once again. He toggled for wideband. “We’re needed here, Wilco. Cannot assist.” He shoved his throttle forward to its stop.
“Copy that.” Jen’s reply was short. “Any advice?”
Evan clenched his teeth hard enough to grind an edge off one molar. Every muscle tense, he nearly wrenched his BattleMech back around. But he did not. He chose this path far too long ago. He either believed in it, or he did not.
He did.
“Stick and fade, Jen. Buy us time.” Not much in the way of advice. “You have your orders.” And Evan had his. For better or worse.
30
Blowing Taps
Paladin Maya Avellar made planetfall on New Aragon today, taking charge of a small group of Knights already supporting Prefect Tao’s defense of Prefecture V. Paladin Avellar’s arrival came one day too late for Knight Jonathan Corrick, who fell in battle on Menkar on the last day of July.
Yiling (Chang-an)
Qinghai Province, Liao
4 August 3134
Viktor Ruskoff powered forward, his eighty-ton Zeus shoving over trees and crushing thick boles underfoot like twigs on a forest carpet. Sweat ran freely, soaking into his cooling vest. His arm muscles ached, and his neck twinged with dull throbs from holding up the bulky neurohelmet for so many hours. Too long sitting at a desk and not enough time at the gym or in the hot seat of a ’Mech.
A light rain pattered down from Liao’s gray skies, streaking his ferroglass canopy with silvered fingers. On the other side of the transparent armor, he watched a new Bellona drive into a tangle of brush and deadwood ahead of him, flushing Fa Shih like a brace of quail.
One of the armored infantrymen rose toward him on jet thrusters, and Ruskoff knocked him from the air with a swipe from the Zeus’s right arm. The broken trooper fell backward and down into a wild thicket. He did not come out again.
“Zeta lead, this is Principes auxiliary.” Captain Danna Shelby, commanding the double-lance loaned to the Legate by Lady Kincaid. “We’re getting stragglers on the Grinder. I hope you aren’t too far behind.”
A Conservatory Thunderbolt slashed across Ruskoff’s path a half kilometer ahead, smashed a light gauss slug into the Zeus’s side before ducking behind a large ’Mech hangar. Ruskoff keyed over to the channel shared between Triarii and Guard. “Two klicks,” he said, gaining one of the damp ferrocrete roadways that crisscrossed the military campus. “You’ll have us on sensors as we strike out from behind these buildings.”
And once Ruskoff’s main task force stormed the campus grounds, leaving the defenders with no more options than to stand, fight and die, he’d have their surrender or he’d have their asses. Then the student uprising would be ended. Everything but the paperwork.
In the last hour, the arrival of Governor Pohl’s forces had finally tipped the balance. The Legate worried at first, when a well-supported Ti Ts’ang moved into the gap he’d planned to push the late arrivals into, but then the Capellans fell back, refusing to exchange fire with Pohl’s “bodyguards.” He mixed Lieutentant Nguyen’s scout lance into their midst, cementing that position.
Now the entire force rolled forward, and showed little mercy when Conservatory defenders staged brief and bloody rearguard actions.
A hard choice. A hard path. The Planetary Legate had not wanted this, but Chang–an had to be secured and local support for McCarron’s Armored Cavalry and the Dynasty Guard disrupted. Without that, Ruskoff faced a divided government as Hidic and Pohl second-guessed his every order and challenged him for more military control.
Without that, he could not hold Liao for The Republic.
“Triarii four and six, on the left,” he commanded, stomping up on the hangar, sending a double set of armored vehicles racing around the western side of the magnificent building. “Two and three on the right.”
The quick pincer would hold anything in place long enough for his arrival. Legate Ruskoff levered his shoulder forward into the massive hangar doors, shattering the tracks that held them, bursting them inward.
Techs scrambled out of his way as the “enemy” machine barged inside, leaving their hasty repairs on a wounded ConstructionMech. Ruskoff spent lasers and PPC on the naked exoskeleton. It was all he had time for, as he crashed through the hangar’s rear wall and into a firefight.
The Thunderbolt had gathered friends in the form of JES tactical carriers. Both hovercraft dumped flights of short-range missiles into one of Ruskoff’s Bellonas, staggering the heavy tank. The T-bolt spent its light Gauss and short, stabbing lasers into his Saxon APC, chewing apart Cavalier infantry who bailed from the thunderstruck vehicle. The BattleMech kicked out, crushing one trooper against the APC, caving in the vehicle’s side.
Ruskoff pulled his crosshairs over the Thunderbolt, and was rewarded with an instant tone of full targeting lock. Too close for Gauss, he sprayed the ’Mech with a few short-range lasers and then smashed in at its left side with his particle cannon.
Armor blew off in a mist and in thick globs of burning composite. The Thunderbolt staggered, and went down hard. Infantry swarmed forward, but Ruskoff waved them off as he used his PPC to hobble the other ’Mech, cutting into the backs of both knees.
“Three-squad, take the prisoner. Everyone else, leave him and forward!”
No time for the niceties. Not now. Legate Ruskoff had to finish this ill-advised resistance once and for all.
Time was running out.
Evan’s small unit was first to break through to the Conservatory Grinder, his sixty-ton ’Mech kicking through the wire-mesh fencing and breaking a hole large enough to drive an armored column through.
From two kilometers out, he’d had good sensor readings on the battle being pressed across the main campus. He watched as Jenna fought for every meter, coordinating her ForestryMech and the wounded Locust, saving the armor for quick, violent counters and saving the infantry from a fiery death. The Principes Firestarter showed no hesitation in using its massive flamers on academy grounds. Gouts of incendiary gel sprayed out of both arms. Tank crews cooked alive inside their armored shells. A few buildings burned where the Mech Warrior had not been cautious enough to prevent collateral damage.
Evan’s arrival threw the balance back into Capellan favor. The firefight was brief and dissatisfying as the fast BattleMech and the assault tanks immediately withdrew. The Ryoken II limped away slowly, all but daring the Conservatory units to follow.
More units broke out onto the parade grounds, some of them chased after by Republic forces. Shiao Mai’s Praetorian command vehicle crawled out onto the rough-paved Grinder with a swarm of Infiltrators clinging to it, tearing into the control cab. Evan spent a few crucial moments scraping the sides of the mobile HQ.
“Breakthrough on the sou’west grounds.”
A militia Catapult and a Triarii Legionnaire led a host of Republic vehicles and APCs out onto the Grinder. The drive stalled as the Capellan line threw them back on their heels with a massive salvo of concentrated fire. The Catapult went down, its cockpit a blackened ruin, but the Legionnaire stepped over the corpse of its brother, rallying JES carriers and a Behemoth to quickly hit back and gut a pair of Regulator II’s.