The gyroscope screamed a high-pitched protest, but with Jasek’s aid the Templar held to its feet.

All along the fire-struck road his Stormhammers broke free of the forest. Gillickie exploded through a burning thicket like some fire demon come for vengeance. His autocannon pounded hot metal into the Vulture’s side. Kicking in the Storm Raider’s myomer accelerated signal circuitry, Gillickie pounded up the road at 130 kilometers per hour, mace held above his head, ready to smash. The Joust tanks clawed their way through more slowly, with a few Fenrirs clinging to their tops like giant armored fleas.

The Sylph battle armor had arced up too high to stop the Storm Raider. Instead, they fell onto the Joust tanks, trading weapons fire with the Fenrirs and ripping at the tank’s armor and treads.

Jasek ignored the scuffle, staggering forward over the missile-savaged road. His sensors rang new alarms as a Shadow Hawk IIC led another pair of Skandas over the crest of a distant hill, but they were too far away to worry about now.

The Vulture had to be dealt with before it got off another devastating round. Dropping crosshairs over its outline, his PPC smashed armor into shards and spatters. Lasers worried its right side. Two of his four missiles corkscrewed in to smash at the Vulture’s shoulder and head.

The Vulture limped out from behind its cover of boulders, gray smoke seeping out of several joints. Lasers stabbed out again, this time drawing in on the advancing Storm Raider. Large red lances from each arm and smaller daggers from the paired microlasers in its center torso.

Only one of the large lasers hit, slicing away armor from the Storm Raider’s chest, barely slowing it.

A poor second showing. Even against the forest fire, the Vulture’s thermal profile stood out as a desperate blaze. Risking all on the earlier, savage strike, the Clan ’Mech had overheated itself, impairing its ability to move, to return fire.

Gillickie attacked it again with his autocannon, then gave it an overhead smashing blow from his BattleMech’s hand-held mace. The mace staved in one of the Vulture’s missile launchers. His second, cross-body blow drove one of the microlasers back into the torso cavity, and on Jasek’s imaging screen a heat spike carved a blue-white streak over the Vulture’s profile. Damage to the BattleMech’s shielding reactor.

Light autocannon fire and some ineffectual laser shots peppered the back of Jasek’s Templar as a Skanda and two Kite reconnaissance vehicles flashed by, on their way up the road at better than one hundred kilometers per hour.

Jasek checked an auxiliary monitor—his rear-facing camera—and saw Three-lance finishing off two armored tanks. One of his JES carriers was overturned and burning, with infantry giving the missile cruiser a wide berth. His second carrier launched a spread of missiles up and over his position, showering warheads over the fleeing vehicles as they raced between Jasek’s position and that of the crippled Vulture.

One Kite took an unlucky hit, spilling air out of its ruined skirting. It swerved right, dug its forward fender into the road, and then tumbled into a death roll that ended when its fusion engine exploded in a golden ball of fire.

The Vulture followed a moment later with a much quieter death. It staggered and stumbled as Jasek and the two Joust tanks added their firepower to Gillickie’s autocannon.

Another PPC from the Templar and it went down, having lost its right leg at the knee.

The Vulture wrenched itself up on one side, and its canopy blew away as the MechWarrior inside ejected from his stricken machine. The fiery blast under the ejection seat rocketed him above the sequoias, barely; then a large para-foil spread overhead. With a choice of mountainside or road, both in the control of the Stormhammers, or a burning forest, the Clan warrior chose to take his chances. He wheeled over and ran with the wind, into the building forest fire.

“Crash and burn,” Jasek muttered, watching him disappear into a dark curtain of rising smoke.

The Jade Falcons had created the problem. Jasek felt no compunction wishing them the worst of it.

“Hammer, Three-lance. Backfield is secure.” A pause. “One Jess is down. Light damage all around.”

“Two-lance,” Gillickie called out, panting heavily, “The Sylphs have dodged back into the forest and good riddance to weary company.” Even his Storm Raider looked tired, dragging its mace at its side. “I have a crippled Joust and two dead Fenrirs. And a bum knee.” He limped the mace-wielding ’Mech up the road. “Our friends have turned back.”

The Shadow Hawk and the Skanda. After picking up the retreating vehicles, they had turned back over the crest of the hill, heading forward to link up with the main Jade Falcon line.

Jasek laid it all out in his head as he throttled into a fast walk, moving his Templar forward at nearly forty kilometers per hour, heading up the hill. “We’re still twenty klicks short of the Highlanders.” At best guess. The Falcons were jamming transmissions. “We have that Shadow Hawk and whatever else is out here trapped between our location and Tamara Duke’s Anvil Lance.” They were five kilometers away. “And she’s caught between the retreating Falcons and their main line.”

As temperatures fell back to somewhat bearable levels, now that his weapons were cooling, a nervous sweat replaced the heat stress. “Not good,” he said.

The Jade Falcons had obviously not expected him to push so much force through in a single location. He’d forced them to run too early. Tamara wasn’t ready for such a heavy force.

And the Falcon machines were faster. He couldn’t catch them in time.

He blinked over to his private channel to Tamara Duke. “You heard?” he asked the kommandant.

Her voice was faint, nearly lost in a crackle of static, but there. “We just stopgapped a pair of Skadi VTOLs,” she said, “but another got away. Our secret’s out. Get here quick, Jasek. Damn!” She cut away, dealing with whatever problem had cropped up.

“Two-lance.” Jasek switched back to his all-hands. “Gillickie. Best speed forward. Take the Hasek and as many Fenrir battlesuits as we have left.”

The Hasek was slow, plowing its way from the burning forest, but was soon on the road and powering forward. The Storm Raider maintained a good lead on it, managing a kind of limping run that was nowhere near its optimum speed, but it pulled away from Jasek’s Templar regardless.

“We’ll still be late to the party,” Gillickie said.

And minutes made a huge difference in such desperate battles. Jasek slowly throttled up to his best running speed. “Just so long as it’s still going on when you get there,” he answered.

It was. Four minutes spread his forces out in a long, staggered column, and still put him a kilometer shy of Tamara Duke’s position when Leutnant Gillickie spearheaded a relief force into the battle. “Cowabunga!” the young warrior shouted.

Jasek took that to mean, “Have made contact with the enemy.”

The fire had not spread this far yet, and the majestic forest had thinned out considerably as the Stormhammers pushed into the old mining country. From a final hillcrest, staring across a long valley quarry, Jasek saw the bright, brief glow of lasers crisscrossing with brutal savagery. Missiles rained down, indiscriminately it seemed, blossoming fireballs over the rocky terrain and occasionally throwing down one of the larger machines that stalked the battlefield.

Tamara’s Wolfhound was easy to find, streaking back and forth on the far side of the valley, doing her best to prevent the Jade Falcons from opening an easy path through her line. She had three vehicles and a handful of Gnome battle armor left to what had started out as a double lance. One downed ForestryMech. Three stilled tanks—one burning.