34

Miliano Basin
Skye
22 December 3134

The brush fire spread over several kilometers, dancing bright licks of flame along the ground as it jumped from brambles to bush, skated among the dry grasses. Sooty wisps of smoke gathered into patchy clouds. Dark streamers of ash spiraled into the overcast sky.

Vehicles charged from one dark island to another. Sometimes they rolled over flaming debris, sending up bright swarms of sparks that immediately drew attention. Other times, they skirted around such obstacles in an effort to keep their course from being seen.

Armored infantry also used the darker sworls of ash and smoke to hide behind, covering their advances, their retreats, always ready to leap out in ambush.

BattleMechs, though, could not hide.

Tara Campbell certainly could not, at the controls of McKinnon’s Atlas, drawing the attention of every Jade Falcon in range. Her Gauss rifle and pair of extended-range lasers were a threat to man, vehicle, and ’Mech. Heavy armor protecting the one-hundred-ton assault ’Mech gave her a presence of invulnerability that she did not feel, but that most enemy warriors assumed and so tried to chip away at every chance they found.

Light autocannon rang hollow against the side of the Atlas’ chest. Demon fast tanks used their lasers to work over her lower legs, while a Falcon Uziel probed and pounded at her with its twin PPCs.

Still getting used to the assault ’Mech, a large step up from her poor Hatchetman, Tara pulled crosshairs down over the Uziel, too slowly, and had to shift them over to an M1 Marksman when the fifty-ton machine slipped back out of range. Her lasers burned large, red-tinged wounds into the Marksman’s side armor. The Gauss slug punched in behind, rocking the machine up and then slamming it back down again with incredible force. The turret barrels sagged. More smoke littered the air. On her HUD, its red icon faded from the cluttered battlefield.

Not too bad, she decided, grading her performance.

Then a brace of long-range tactical missiles punched the Atlas in the chin, sending her stumbling back, arms windmilling for balance.

Not too good either.

Fighting against gravity, Tara planted one foot behind her and kept the Atlas on its feet. Her vision was hazy and her ears rang, but already she was searching for the new threat. Too late again.

The Eyrie, which had tagged her so easily with its ATMs, used its jump jets to rocket away from her, dancing through the air with a ballerina’s grace. It landed in a light crouch, as feather softly as thirty-five tons could fall out of the sky.

Far beyond her limited mastery of the assault machine. She half expected to see the Eyrie try a handstand next, maybe a cartwheel. The image garnered a grim smile. Such tricks were the province of circus stunts and monster ’Mech rallies, not intentional battlefield tactics.

She throttled forward, drawing a bead on the distant Eyrie, and put a Gauss slug into its left thigh. At extreme range, it was one hell of a shot. Enough to give the other warrior pause, and send the light ’Mech stumbling back for the safety of the main Falcon lines.

“Highlanders”—she opened a channel to her force—“prepare to swing back and around again on my mark. Anastasia, where away?”

“Pulling . . . under new . . . Falcon drive.” The return call came full of crackling distortion. Short-lived. Interference from particle cannon fire, Tara guessed. “If that smoke we see is a good . . . of your position, call it ten kilometers. Lyrans are much closer.”

Tara nodded to the empty cockpit. It was getting harder to hold a clear picture of the battle in her head. Her Highlanders and elements of the Skye militia spread over two dozen square kilometers, fighting a series of small, desperate battles. Overlapping offensive waves as the Jade Falcons never gave the defenders much time to regroup, rearmor, and rearm. Lyrans mucking things up on her flanks. Stormhammers rallying somewhere to the south, having given up the main route from Norfolk but hoping to rejoin.

With Miliano now under Jade Falcon threat, it fell to her Highlanders and Kerensky’s Steel Wolves to collapse the flanks inward, forming a new defensive line before the Falcons split them for good. The running battle had taken hours to coordinate and pull off, but finally they were within range. It seemed.

She had to trust Hiram Brewster not to fumble the ball as he tied the two flanks together.

She had to trust Anastasia Kerensky to be there.

She hated trusting them. Putting the fate of Skye in hands not sworn to The Republic. Of course, if she had looked more carefully at Jasek’s plan to use Norfolk as a thrust into the belly of the Falcon position, trusted him as everything inside her said she should, they might not be on the verge of losing Miliano and possibly Skye with it.

More laser fire cut at her through the smoke, flashing in bright scarlet and stuttering darts of emerald green. She wrenched her targeting reticle over and slammed lances of energy into an encroaching Scimitar. It backed off, and Tara searched for a new target.

Her ferroglass shield was streaked with sooty grime. It was hard to tell at a glance where her forces ended and the Jade Falcons’ began. Even in places where the smoke cleared, most vehicles were blackened by fire and ash. Emerald green or Highlander blue were both muted into shades of gray. Crests had been scorched off. She recognized a few units by their force composition—the Arbalest and two Jessies blazing a forward trail were hers, and that trio of Condors protecting the MASH trucks—but so many vehicles had changed hands recently she couldn’t say for certain that a Hasek mechanized combat vehicle wasn’t now Jade Falcon property, or that a Skanda light tank wasn’t one of the two her Highlanders had pressed into their own service. Her HUD was a tangle of icons and identification tags, and she had no time to worry them out in her head while trying to fight a battle at the same time.

There was one good way to help sort things out.

“Mark!” she commanded. “Jersey Swing!”

In practiced coordination, every Highlander vehicle turned away from its opponents and raced back to the southeast. The few Stormhammer stragglers attached to her command were slower, taking one last laser shot or throwing out missiles to cover their ass, but followed quick enough. Her Atlas and a Highlander Behemoth II guarded the exercise with weapons blasting into any Jade Falcons who gave thought to chase. Then they too turned and powered into best-speed retreats.

How the maneuver earned its name, Tara wasn’t certain. All she cared about was that it worked. Punch them in the nose and then hook back to the southeast, followed by a turn westward with every unit pushing for all it was worth. It was usually good for a handful of kilometers.

VTOLs spotted for them, picking out the best paths and warning of enemy pathfinder units. They cleared the brush fire, even though the prevailing winds drove it right at their backs. This time her maneuver headed the Highlander main force right into the flank of a Falcon advance, shearing off the tip of the Falcons’ spear like a scythe took the heads off grain.

Tara laid out a lightly armored Stinger with her lasers, and spent one of her few remaining Gauss slugs into the belly of a troublesome Skadi. The VTOL burst into flame before it hit the ground. More fires spread out from the burning wreckage.

It set the Jade Falcons back on their heels, throwing them into disarray. Tara’s instincts told her to push forward and drive them back. Chew several large pieces out of the enemy. But her head warned her that she had too far to go still. Instead, she opened comms again and ordered a second swing right on the heels of the first.

“We’re running.”

Tara’s whisper was low and with barely any strength behind it, but in her own ears the words echoed loudly as she admitted them to herself for the first time.

They were collapsing the flanks, forming a new defensive line. They had pushed across several dozen kilometers in a handful of hours, making the Falcons pay desperately for every meter gained, every machine taken. But they were, in fact, running. Running toward Miliano, where the Stormhammers were putting together a last-ditch effort to stand and hold Skye. Many Highlanders would not see the end of the race. Not with their machines and equipment. Some of them, not with their lives.

And now she was trusting Jasek Kelswa-Steiner to have something worthy of the sacrifice her people—all of the defenders—were making.

 

A deep bass rumble shook the ground as the Union-class DropShip lowered itself onto the blockaded highway north of Miliano. Tamara Duke felt the trembling underfoot, glanced south. As late afternoon rolled toward twilight, the white-hot flames that pushed out beneath the DropShip flared brighter even than the nearby glow of Miliano’s city lights. An afterglow reflected back against the underside of the spheroidal vessel, lighting up the Highlanders’ banner crest, then darkened as the engines were finally banked to standby mode.

“Third landing in an hour,” she said to Jasek, who had caught her on the way back to her Eisenfaust. Farther south, along the highway, the Himmelstor and an Overlord rose up like majestic mountains dropped by a giant’s hand.

“The highway makes for a good ad hoc landing field. Cleared land. No fires started by the drive flares.”

But there would be crushed and fusion-slagged ferrocrete, making a major thoroughfare impassable for days. The defenders had been pushed beyond caring about such minor infrastructure concerns. Tamara nodded, noting that he hadn’t answered her question.

Then again, it hadn’t really been a question.

“You’re thinking we may need to relocate. Fast.”

“We are relocating,” Jasek said. He stared north, where the glow of wildfires could be seen against the dark cloud cover, and the battle still raged between the Jade Falcons and Skye’s defenders. He seemed about to say something more, then shook his head.

Tamara had done little else but watch Jasek after he came limping in with maybe a ton of armored protection left to his battle-ravaged Templar and the two vehicles he had escorted out of the kill zone being formed by the Jade Falcons. A Hasek MCV and a Maxim heavy hover transport, each with half their loads of infantry.

Amazing that any of them had gotten out of there alive, but especially Jasek, who had been the last man to run. The Falcons had ripped through Vandel’s unit, and then split the Stormhammer lines between the Archon’s Shield and the Lyran Rangers. Split it right next to her unit, actually. The Clanners had pressed forward strong advances, then cut in from each side to form a box. The containment had held long enough to inflict serious casualties.

Fortunately, the Landgrave had not been one of them. Tamara had no idea what she’d do if Jasek was lost to the Stormhammers.

To her.

“Look,” he said, regaining a measure of command posture. “You’ll be on my right flank as we head north. Petrucci is sidelined, so it’s your unit. And I want you to hold what I told you right up front.”

“Secure the Highlander position,” Tamara recited. “Protect Tara Campbell. Do not let our forces get split apart again.”

It could have been much worse. She could have been sent to safeguard that she-wolf. If Alexia Wolf wanted to spend her people in aid of Anastasia Kerensky, that was on her head. Tamara wasn’t going to spend good Lyran lives pulling the Strikers out of the fire.

She had to be a mess. Twenty hours in combat togs. Sweaty and sore. Hair matted down by her neurohelmet, and a nick in her shoulder where shrapnel had burst through her cockpit’s ferroglass shield. Blood stained her arm and the side of her coolant vest. A quick meal of field rations, some new armor for her ’Mech, and now it was right back into the fray.

None of that mattered to Jasek. Or, perhaps more certainly, it all mattered to him. He placed a hand against the side of Tamara’s face. She could feel his heat burning her cheek.

“I depend on you. You know this.”

“I do,” she said. On her more than anyone.

He left her with that parting gesture, ever the gallant commander. So close, and still held apart. But maybe not for much longer. Tamara had plans. Long-range plans. They certainly included Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.

Staring past Jasek’s retreating form, she caught Vic Parkins, her company’s exec. Parkins was talking to Niccolò GioAvanti near the Kelswa assault tank he’d crew into battle. Gone was his Behemoth II, lost in the last Falcon offensive. He hadn’t the good graces to die in his command chair, though. No, he was still there, one step behind her, still chumming up with the brass—or at least the brass’s best friend.

Some of her plans included him as well. It didn’t matter that Parkins had performed his duty fairly solidly since his aborted court-martial. She knew, if no one else but maybe Jasek did, that the man had something on his own agenda.

Parkins did not look exceptionally happy talking with GioAvanti. His shoulders slumped heavily and he shook his head quite often. But when GioAvanti offered his hand, the two shook on whatever they’d been discussing. Then Vic shrugged into padded togs and joined the Kelswa’s crew at the side of the tank. He saw her staring, and tossed her a hesitant wave.

Tamara turned her back on him, and broke into a trot toward her Wolfhound. Parkins would keep until later. She wouldn’t turn her back on him, certainly, but she had larger concerns than any deal he’d struck with GioAvanti.

Right now, she had to live up to Jasek’s expectations.

And her own.