Jasek hoped that the others were salvageable. Skye was going to need his people in top form.

But just now Tamara and Leutnant Gillickie needed him.

He found the mace-wielding Storm Raider protecting the damaged Hasek on the nearer side of the valley. The Falcons had split their strength, at least for the moment. The Shadow Hawk IIC and two VTOLs pressed forward against Tamara Duke’s position. An Ocelot and a very dangerous Lyran-designed Uziel led armor and infantry forces back in a delaying action against Gillickie.

“Any… time”—rapid panting filled Jasek’s ear—“sir.”

With the acrobatic moves he was being forced to make just to keep from being pinned and killed, no doubt the young leutnant was exhausted. His Storm Raider crouched, leaped, ran around behind a young stand of alders, then raced forward to snipe at the Uziel while trying to dodge its PPCs.

Jasek had left his JES behind with a light guard of Cavalier battlesuit infantry, but one of the Joust tanks had managed to keep up. Together, the ’Mech and tank rolled down the shallow slope. Jasek ordered his man to fade back slowly, drawing the Uziel after him, letting it get within range of the stranded Hasek. It was a gamble, tempting the Clanner with a possible kill.

At the last moment, the Uziel hesitated. But the Ocelot took the bait, thinking it could slip in and out again with its superior speed before the Templar made it into range. Jasek surprised it by goosing just a touch more speed out of his machine and relying on his targeting computer to make corrections to his wild, long-range snapshot.

His PPC’s lightning strike twisted and snaked in an eye-blinding arc, slashing downrange to blast into the Ocelot’s right leg. The light ’Mech stumbled, sprawling over the quarry floor with a baseball slide that struck flinty sparks from the ground.

“Hammer that Ocelot,” Jasek ordered. “Burn it!”

But the Clan ’Mech still had serious teeth. Dragging itself back to a standing crouch, the Ocelot used its heavy laser to slash dark orange energy at the advancing Storm Raider. Gillickie broke away quickly, his left torso exposed right down through to his gyro housing. Jasek’s next PPC shot missed wide to the right.

“There they go!” the young leutnant warned Tamara.

The Uziel’s Mech Warrior had recognized in time that the Stormhammer reinforcements would be only the first of several arrivals, eventually swinging the battle against the Falcons. Rallying what was left of his armor contingent, he led a quick feint-and-flee maneuver that pushed right in behind the Shadow Hawk. The Falcons’ Ocelot wasn’t far behind, and with its leg damage still moved faster than Jasek’s Templar.

“Let them pass, Tamara.” His call went out quick and commanding. “We’ll pick up their trail further along. Get out of their way!”

She did, for a moment, falling back and to the side. Her beloved Eisenfaust looked beaten and scarred, but still moved with a kind of lupine grace not often seen in a mechanical battle machine.

It was with that same grace that she charged back into the Falcons’ line of march, bounding forward with a determined stride and her laser flaring ruby bright. It brought the Shadow Hawk up short. The Falcon pilot had not expected this, his machine outmassing the Wolfhound by twenty tons, backed by a solid line of ’Mechs and armor.

A trio of lasers flashed out, burning new wounds into the Wolfhound’s side.

Tamara’s bite was less savage but still painful as her arm-mounted laser drilled directly into the Shadow Hawk’s centerline. Jasek doubted the Clan machine could stand up to another coring hit like that.

But then neither could his warrior. “Tamara, what the hell do you think you’re doing? I said get out of their way.”

Static crackled in his ear. Then, “That would be …a poor host,” she said, just as the first Highlander tank—a Bellona—bulled its way into the valley from the far pass.

Followed by a Condor, a second Bellona, and then a limping Pack Hunter.

A modified MiningMech and a pair of M1 Marksmen protected the flanks of a Legionnaire. A line of ten… twelve Gray Death battlesuit infantry and a MASH truck brought up a staggered rear.

Jasek would have been surprised if the Highlanders had five tons of armor to spread among their entire line. These machines looked like hell, limping, slapping broken treads against the ground, trailing smoke from too many engines. But they formed a battle line with disciplined precision behind Tamara Duke. The Pack Hunter sprint-wobbled forward to add its PPC to her large laser, throwing a scathing assault against the Shadow Hawk.

The Falcons had had enough. The Shadow Hawk and Uziel took to the air on jets of golden plasma, leaping far afield and then racing up the side of the nearby valley wall, where they could lose themselves in the foothills. The armor broke and ran in half a dozen different directions, most of them bending around to the west and the subjective safety of the forest fire and its blanket of smoke.

The Ocelot never stood a chance. Sensing its weakness, Tamara pounced forward, driving it back into the weapons of Gillickie’s Storm Raider. Lasers flashed, cutting deep and certain. Another severed leg. Another Mech Warrior punching out on his ejection seat.

Another salvageable ’Mech.

Jasek slapped his armrest in celebration, then throttled back to an easy walk. His throat parched from fluid loss, he swallowed dryly and toggled in a free-security channel. “We didn’t expect to see you this far down the mountainside,” he said.

The Legionnaire saluted, raising its hand in the general direction of its low-slung head. “Falcon chatter told us that a relief force had landed. It cost us, but we regrouped and punched through for your landing beacon.”

Landing beacon? The landgrave looked up into the sky, saw the curls of black smoke rolling heavenward from the forest fire. His mood took a darker turn. “Ah, that. Not quite what we had in mind, of course.”

The Highlander’s voice sounded dog-tired and bruised. “Just so long as there’s a DropShip or two on the other end of that smoke.”

“And a JumpShip,” Jasek promised. “Twenty-eight light-years to Skye, all the medical attention your people need, and, if reports are still accurate, your Countess Tara Cambell.”

He smiled. “Compliments of the Stormhammers.”

9

The Acropolis

Tairngoth, Glengarry

26 September 3134

The Acropolis was a testament to Clan engineering. Sitting in the passenger seat of a VV1 Ranger, ignoring the cold silence radiating from the driver, Noritomo Helmer recognized the dome-and-towers configuration from its silhouette while five kilometers away. Though it was no doubt constructed in a matter of days from prefabricated pieces brought by the Falcons to Glengarry, an instant stronghold, there was a permanence about it now in the way it crouched at the edge of the deep canyon overlooking Loch Tay.

The twisting, switchback road they traveled wound down toward the canyon’s edge, past new guard towers and old rockslides clumped with purple-blooming heather and dwarf Scotch pines. A Shrike stood solitary sentinel at the final checkpoint, the ninety-five-ton monster tracking the Ranger with heavy-class autocannon and a disdainful air in the way the pilot never turned completely toward the open-air vehicle.