Commander Bec Malthus.
“We must halt,” he said simply. “Quiaff?”
For a moment there came only silence back. The Supreme Commander followed Aleksandr along the country roads at a deliberate pace. His Keshik scoured out the pockets of resistance left behind by the Zeta’s lightning strike.
It was highly necessary. So Malthus’ official report to his Khan would read.
“Very well,” Malthus said in a neutral voice. “Aff. ”
Weston Heights 15 August 3134
“We’re not holding them, your Grace.”
Standing outside watching what seemed a forest of smoke pillars growing off away in the west, it was harder for Tara Campbell to speak those words than to face enemy fire. Will he come back and confirm my deepest fears: that I am perpetually out of my depth, just a pretty actress playing at war?
Instead his voice came rolling back, deep and calm as surf on a pleasant day: “I never expected we actually could keep them from the suburbs, much as I hoped we might. What then, Countess Campbell?”
“We’re getting a bit of a respite. Our units claim Aleks Hazen has bogged down in the built-up fringes west of here. Hit-and-run tactics are hurting them, slowing them down. But I think it’s their own speed that’s really slowed them. All that running up hills and smashing down trees has taken a toll. Our boy badly needs a break to rest his troops, throw some hasty repairs into his ’Mechs and vehicles, stock up on ammo from the transports they’ve got following them.”
A sudden scream of rocket engines made her duck and look rapidly around. An aerospace fighter curved around the seminary, no farther than half a klick away and about the same height above the hilltop, and vanished into the lowering overcast that had taken charge of the sky. One of ours, she realized with relief. The aerial forces had neutralized each other so far: the Jade Falcons had the clear edge in skill, but the defenders had numbers and motivation.
She was painfully aware a single lucky aerospace pilot or even VTOL jock could end her battle before she had a chance to strike a blow on her own account. But then, as a wise old great-aunt had told her once back on Northwind, nobody could promise you’d get through a given day alive in peacetime, much less war. As it was she was already feeling the old agonies that shewas alive, when so many had died already, and so hard.
“Beckett Malthus is coming up the road after Aleks,” she radioed the Duke at his command post two kilometers north. “He seems not to be in any hurry. I suspect he’s holding his Keshik out as a reserve, looking to get in on the kill.”
“What about that damned Hazen woman?”
“I’m afraid I’ve told you all the good news I’ve got, Duke Gregory. We did hurt her Gyrfalcons at the
mine”—And they massacred my poor Forlorn Hope volunteers!—“but the survivors have snapped back and are on the move. We’re hearing it from our forward units—and one report is all we’re getting from most of them. The Delta Galaxy is coming up on Aleks’ left. And coming^st ”
Among those with whom contact had been lost after a single desperate warning was Lieutenant Colonel Linda Hirschbeck, CO of the Republican Guard.
“They won’t race through built-up areas so easily.”
Tara hesitated. They can’t, she assured herself.It’s not physically possible.
She remembered reading of the superstitious dread the Clans had inspired in her forebears, after the first horrid shock of contact almost a century ago. She felt more than a touch of it now.
“No, your Grace,” she said.
“Then we shall stop them in the suburbs. Skye Alpha, out.”
“God willing,” she said softly, to the empty air.
She looked around at her officers, waiting on her at a discreet distance. “Saddle up, everybody. The Falcons are on the way.”
She forced her mouth to grin. “You didn’t really think we’d get the afternoon off, did you?”
Malvina Hazen drew in a deep breath, redolent of the sweat that bathed her body, the smell of diesel fuel and scorched lubricant seeping in through the ’Mech’s seals, the smell of the autumn forest that could not quite be dispelled by the others.
“Gyrfalcons—forward!” she screamed.
Black Rose stood up to its full height, strode from the trees, spread its wings and set off down the brushy fore-slope at a spine-jarring run. Vehicles and ’Mechs erupted from the woods to either side of her. Even over the thunder of the massed charge she heard the whistle as her three remaining JESII launchers, parked in a valley clearing behind her, loosed their overwhelming salvos toward the front rank of buildings.
Charging, the Gyrs withheld their fire. No point expending ergs without good marks to aim at. But neither did any fire greet them.
Two hundred forty long-range missiles crashed down among the buildings. Roofs were holed, walls collapsed in cascades of bricks and dust and smoke. Flames reared up, roaring like awakened beasts.
A long line of vehicles interspersed with BattleMechs and Industrials swept forward across the open space, infantry riding the tanks, Elementals on the ’Mechs. A softball field backstop was crushed by a hundred-ton Mars assault vehicle. The gaily painted bleachers splintered beneath the feet of machines that walked like men.
A rumbling-rushing noise commenced, grew, rolled across the sky above Malvina’s head like a giant cannonball in a wooden chute. She screamed in impotent fury as a heavy artillery barrage smashed down behind the ridge. Huge orange fireballs rolled up the sky, trailing black smoke, as her strategic missile
carriers blew up beneath the expert Republican counterbattery fire.
Then from the gutted apartment blocs—and where they had fallen, from the buildings behind—a hellstorm of fire gushed out and over the charging Gyrs.
A Bellona that had surged disrespectfully out in advance of Malvina leapt into the air on a column of flame as if its forty-five tons were no more than a stone. Secondary explosions plucked it apart in midair as its stored LRMs and flamer fuel blew.
Cursing, Malvina darted aside to avoid the flaming liquid: the last thing she needed now was excess heat.
She caught some anyway as an autocannon blast opened up the battle armor of the Elemental riding on her left shoulder and spilled fluid fire down theShrike ’s back armor. She slowed to keep her temperature levels under control. She restricted herself to firing measured bursts from her dual 10-centimeter autocannon until the fuel burned itself off.
Fifty meters to her left, MechWarrior Tyrus’Cougar staggered as a hypersonic nickel-ferrous slug from a BattleMech Gauss rifle took it just to the left and below its protruding cockpit. It fired back with its LRM launchers and the large pulse lasers in its arms. A PPC bolt struck. The right arm fell away in a shower of sparks.
The Falcon ’Mech seemed to erode in sprays of heavy autocannon fire. Laser flashes sublimated armor from it in puffs of vapor. Its left-shoulder LRM storage exploded. Its upper structure wrapped in yellow flames and streaming smoke from every joint, theCougar fell forward. Tyrus did not eject.
And then the Northwinders charged Malvina.
Out of the rubble, Highlander ’Mechs and vehicles appeared as if materializing and rushed to meet the oncoming Gyrs. From the cover of the ruins, unpowered infantry raked Falcon infantry off the backs of vehicles and shot down their dismounts caught in the open. Elementals sprang to burn them and blast them from their hiding places. VTOLs appeared from the east, skimming the red clay chimney pots of Weston Heights, and clawed the Elementals from the sky with lasers and autocannon.
Falcon helicopters swept in to engage. A furious VTOL dogfight twisted in the sky, slashed across by missile trails and punctuated with gouts of yellow flame.