Which left a lumbering SalvageMech and the Kelswa.

Jasek let the SalvageMech go, concentrating his fire on the assault tank as he waded free of the river. But the SalvageMech pilot was not about to be ignored. In a display of battlefield triage, the awkward IndustrialMech plodded forward into Jasek’s line of fire, protecting the more valuable assault tank. Jasek’s particle cannon ripped it up one side and down the other.

The Manticore II had all but disappeared beneath the water as it crossed, but came plowing out like some submarine monster looking for victims. It missed again as the SalvageMech stumbled out from beneath its sights. Jasek made up for it with double strikes from his energy cannon. Temperatures soared as the fusion reactor spiked to meet the power draw. The cockpit began to smell like a sauna.

The SalvageMech toppled over onto its side, the left leg severed just below the knee. Fenrir infantry swarmed over it while the Pegasus craft formed a defensive line, ready to bloody any attempt by the Falcons to rescue their man or salvage the ’Mech.

There would be no attempt. As Lyran ground forces broke cover along the river’s edge to bolster the Archon’s Shield battalion, the Clanners gave up the eastern bank as lost and fell back toward Norfolk.

The Stormhammers and Lyran forces paused only briefly to pull together inside the forest, and then they chased after.

“Why are we seeing such light defenses?” Vandel asked over his private channel to Jasek. His crew tucked the command crawler in behind Jasek’s Templar. “Norfolk is supposed to be the center of their operations locally.”

True. Tara Campbell had transmitted the intel to them as they made planetfall. But it was also clear that the central line of communications between the disparate elements of Skye’s defenders was haphazard. At best.

“If their forces aren’t here, it’s because they were needed elsewhere.” Jasek blinked sweat back from the corners of his eyes, cycled his weapons back to standby to let them cool. Temperatures inside his cockpit dropped slowly.

“Take the gifts where they come, Joss. It doesn’t happen this way too often.”

And it wasn’t going to be so easy on the other side of the forest. They broke out of heavy cover to find themselves rolling into several square kilometers of planted saplings. A fairly young tree farm that Jasek had seen before. Now there were leaves budding on the slender branches, and new grass, but he could see the damage left from the previous fighting in the scarred ground and burned swaths. The Shipil Company dockyards waited directly in Jasek’s line of march. Norfolk spread away from the tree farm south and east.

Here the Jade Falcons had found time to mass up in front of their DropShip. An Overlord, painted green, standing thirty-plus stories tall and dwarfing the Shipil dockyards with its empty “nest,” it straddled the tree farm and a portion of the dockyard parking area. With its heavy array of weaponry, equal to any combined-arms company, a DropShip was no small advantage in battle. Provided you were willing to risk such a valuable piece of technology.

Jasek would make certain they did.

Long barrels flashed with high-output energy as lasers and particle cannon speared out from the sloped sides of the vessel, drawing lines of destruction down toward the tree line where the Stormhammers and their Lyran allies began to emerge. Missiles dropped on falling arcs, and fireballs blossomed among the saplings as well as over the top of a Stormhammer VV1 Ranger. The vehicle erupted into flames, turned instantly into a charred husk. The soldiers inside never knew what hit them.

“Stormhammers, press the ground forces back. Always concentrate fire on the forwardmost units. Lyran command, work over that DropShip.”

Fortunately, with its weapons bays distributed equally around its massive bulk, the Overlord could bring only five or six of its primary weapons to bear. It evened the odds, but was not necessarily tipping the battle in favor of the Jade Falcons.

The Clan warriors had formed up in a double line fronting their DropShip as service trucks and salvage vehicles formed a steady caravan carrying personnel and salvage from the Shipil Company facilities to the waiting Overlord. The Falcons were not conceding the battle, but they were preparing for the worst-case scenario.

The Kelswa assault tank Jasek had chased from the river crawled up to the Jade Falcon fore, taking a place alongside the Shadow Hawk IIC he had seen earlier and an eighty-ton Warhammer IIC, which he hadn’t. Nacon armored scouts and Skanda light tanks formed the bulk of the Falcon armor command, wheeling about in short, sharp circles, waiting for Skye’s defenders to press forward, but Jasek also counted strategic missile carriers and a Schmitt among their numbers. Skadi swift attack VTOLs, a limping MiningMech outfitted with a missile system, APCs with Elementals clinging to the sides.

Still not enough.

Jasek pressed forward in a slow walk, his PPCs ramming out one bolt of man-made lightning after another. Vandel’s mobile HQ hung out just inside the tree line, but by rank and column the Stormhammers’ Archon’s Shield unit pushed with him, adding to his firepower, savaging the Falcon line with autocannon, missile barrages, and the red spears of laser fire.

A Gauss slug spang ed off Jasek’s shoulder, close enough that he saw the silver blur through his ferroglass shield. He swallowed tightly and continued on, establishing a beachhead for his emerging forces. Two Storm Raider s leading their own fast-armor contingent. A Behemoth II, which was the equivalent of most any BattleMech. Demon medium tanks. Maxim hover transports. Then came the Lyrans with a trio of Manticore II heavies and their MHI transports, Pegasus scouts… and finally the Zeus.

It was the Lyrans’ ace in the hole, which he had kept hidden from the Jade Falcons on the entire drive forward. An eighty-ton assault ’Mech, also produced on Hesperus II. And also fresh into battle.

The first Manticore let fly with missiles and energy cannon, striking far wide of the massive Overlord. Jasek merely nodded, having a very good guess which team crewed that tank. It actually did miss an Overlord at five hundred meters. Its brethren made up for it, though, slicing PPCs into the DropShip’s armor-plated side. Missiles pockmarked and cracked into the hull as well. When the Zeus added its own PPC and lasers into the attack, the Lyrans were giving back nearly as good as the DropShip could dish out. What they lacked in skill they certainly made up for in heavy firepower.

Evened odds. Jasek had lost both of his aerospace fighters to an assault-class DropShip on the insertion run, so he had no way to counter the Jade Falcon VTOLs that came springing forward, their nose cannon blazing long streams of fire, but he was not totally without aerial support.

“Sergeant Maxwell, give them the silver hammer,” he ordered over a combat frequency.

Jasek had left his Long Tom artillery piece back at the bridge. A good stable platform under open sky. He couldn’t see Jergen Maxwell worrying over the elevation and angle as the artillery team levered the large barrel into place, but he could well imagine the man’s beefy hand grabbing on to the hammer of polished silver that the sergeant had custom-installed on the firing mechanism. Rock it forward, disengage safeties. And pull.

Three seconds later, a large fireball erupted next to an enemy Skanda, flipping it into an aerial roll that eventually dropped it onto its side.

Another blast tore the back end off a missile carrier. Missile loads exploded in sympathetic detonations, creating a fireball that dwarfed even the massive artillery round. Jasek felt the tremor through the ground and his Templar’s thick legs.