Finally trading it off for the more dangerous man, he let one of the Kelswas move up to threaten the Salvage while he hauled his eightyfive-ton machine around for a full-on broadside against the Gyrfalcon.

An unlucky Elemental tried to jump-scoot between them, maybe angling for a crippled Joust or looking to put some pressure on the Ocelot. Instead, it took one of Jasek’s PPCs. The lightning ripped him apart, smashing in his faceplate and ripping the arms off the suit. Jasek’s remaining PPC, his medium lasers, and his four-pack missile system all dumped their loads into the Gyrfalcon’s chest. The forward-leaning ’Mech pulled up short, staggered, but held to its feet by sheer force of will.

Another full salvo as Jasek continued to trade against the Gyrfalcon’s lasers and autocannon. His Templar staggered backward. Temperatures in the cockpit soared as the fusion reactor spiked under the heavy power draw, straight through the yellow band and into the red.

Sweat stung at Jasek’s eyes, and his vision swam for a moment in the ready-made sauna. Only the chilled coolant passing through the tubes of his cooling vest kept his core temperature down enough. Kept him from heatstroke.

His breath came shallow as Jasek tried to not pull the scorched air deep into his lungs.

Then he adjusted his aim, threw his heat curve to the Fates, and traded full salvos with the Gyrfalcon again.

Something had to give.

Noritomo Helmer had recognized that when taking up his final defensive stand for Longview, and Chaffee by proxy. He had hoped it would be the Steel Wolves, at which he’d thrown some of his strongest forces throughout the day. But Anastasia Kerensky’s reputation seemed well deserved. She’d thrown some of her best back at him.

So had this Jasek Kelswa-Steiner. The Stormhammers had even stood strongly in the face of Lysle’s Elemental blitz, and then shoved it right back down his throat with the aerospace fighters.

Why hadn’t he seen that coming!

At best, he’d achieved a draw so far. Which was still worth a measure of honor considering the shape in which he’d found these cast-off warriors. The truly incompetent were long gone now, tempered from the unit in trial by fire. The best of his warriors remained. But even a finely edged piece of steel could dull if battered against unyielding rock, which was the danger of pushing a bad position.

Something had to give.

Him or the enemy commander, he decided.

Stunned and nearly dropped to the waterfront blacktop by the Templar’s blistering assault, Noritomo wrenched his control stick to lever both arms forward and trade new fusillades with Jasek. His autocannon belted out hundreds of rounds in their extra-long cycles, and lasers cut with ruby efficiency. Jasek’s answering combination of particle cannon and lasers could not match the Gyrfalcon’s impressive damage profile, but the Stormhammer leader had far better armor and a serious advantage with an advanced targeting computer that grouped his shots into deadly clusters.

Both machines staggered back from the blistering trade-off. Jasek with a gimpy knee, limping his Templar counterclockwise to Noritomo’s position. The Star colonel read his damage schematic with a practiced eye, and counted four warning lights on his left arm. Mostly actuators.

He sidestepped, turning more of his right profile toward the other man. He slashed at Jasek with his lasers again. And again.

Jasek pushed forward into point-blank range. His short-range missiles smashed two warheads into the side of Noritomo’s Gyrfalcon.

The battle ground nearly to a halt around the two BattleMechs as both sides recognized the honor match between their commanders. Kerensky’s Ryoken II physically restrained a Kelswa assault tank by holding a foot over its crew quarters. A pair of Steel Wolf Destroyers parked themselves nose to nose with the Stormhammers’ Praetorian mobile HQ.

Noritomo dialed for a common, unsecured frequency. “You will let this be decided by you and me now?” His lasers cut angry wounds into the Templar’s flank.

“Jousting hasn’t quite …gone out of style in the Jade Falcons, eh?”

The man had a polished voice and a speech giver’s cadence, but lazy grammar. He also sounded a bit winded. It had to be an oven inside his cockpit. His return fire came in staggered waves now, alternating between the two particle cannon.

“So be it. You and I.”

“Bargained well and done,” Noritomo formally accepted, and pulled into another savage alpha strike.

His autocannon hammered at a crack in the centerline of Jasek’s armored chest.

A tongue of flame licked out of the wound, and dark gray smoke from burning insulation drifted up into the Templar’s chest.

But Jasek had worked himself into optimum firing range for his entire weapons load-out as well, and by alternating fire between PPCs had lowered his heat curve back to reasonable levels. The barrels on his particle cannon glowed with a nimbus of energy; then new lightning arcs snaked their way between the two machines. One missed wide, but the second smashed away the last of the armor protecting the Gyrfalcon’s right flank.

Lasers and missiles probed for critical components.

Missed.

Not a second time, though. Short-cycling his weapons, damning the Templar’s heat curve and risking an automatic, heat-driven shutdown, Jasek blasted Noritomo with everything he had. The Templar’s targeting computer grouped it all into the Gyrfalcon’s savaged right side. The cascade of energy sliced through myomer and foamed-titanium supports.

It ruptured actuators.

Cut into the physical shielding on the ’Mech’s fusion reactor.

Heat sinks exploded and jets of greenish-gray coolant spurted out of the wounds like arterial blood.

The raw kinetic force of so much damage delivered in such short order threw the Gyrfalcon roughly to the ground like a man struck by lightning (twice!). The machine came down on its left side, crushing the last of its good armor against the blacktop. Noritomo shook against his seat restraints, feeling the harness buckle digging into his abdomen, his teeth clacking together hard enough to chip enamel.

He pulled in one arm and rolled the BattleMech over onto its chest, thinking to push himself back up as quickly as possible. But the Gyrfalcon’s right arm would not support any weight. And there was Jasek Kelswa-Steiner. One foot planted near his shoulder, the other next to his Gyrfalcon’s hip, and a host of deadly weapons pointed at the back of Noritomo’s head.

“Yield.”

It did not even come in the form of a request. Jasek knew he had the Star colonel in bad shape, prepared to decapitate the Gyrfalcon and turn Noritomo’s cockpit into a ready-made crematorium. Still, the Clan warrior almost said no just to throw the harsh demand back into his face.

Fortunately, a few seconds’ pause was not enough to prod Jasek into firing. “Yield, Star Colonel. And I will offer your forces hegira.”

Hegira. That put a new face on things. Completely. A Clan term, hegira offered the disadvantaged side of a conflict the option of honorable withdrawal from the battlefield. Whoever had been instructing Jasek Kelswa-Steiner on Clan traditions had not been wholly deficient, it seemed. Noritomo suspected Anastasia Kerensky and her Steel Wolves.

“I accept,” he said at once, “if your offer allows us to retain possession of all equipment and materiel.” Noritomo had spent too much time building up this force to let any man gut it for war spoils. He would rather let his warriors fight to the death. Jasek had to know that.

There was a slight pause. Then, “Any machine that can move under its own power may be removed to your DropShips. One third of all supplies and materiel not already aboard a DropShip can be taken with you. Chaffee, and the balance of your stockpiles, fall to us.”