“It has to end.” Ruskoff sounded tired, but his voice strengthened as he went on. “This time it has to end my way. Your choices are surrender or subjugation.”
“A choice Liao has never recovered from.” Evan tried to put a touch of pleading in his voice, and was surprised that it came so easily. “Can’t you see that? The Republic has to address the problem at its core.”
“End the violence and justify The Republic giving you a damn thing.” Fairly final. Ruskoff sounded angry, though not necessarily with Evan. He also had another channel open for passing orders. En masse, The Republic line pressed forward on two different fronts.
Evan stood in front of the command vehicle, ax raised defiantly. He and Mai formed an island of strength around which a few ’Mechs and a healthy group of armor and infantry gathered. Another tight knot of Conservatory defenders formed around Jenna’s ForestryMech. The Armored Cavalry was their own entity, and their few scattered units did the best they could to make a coordinated effort to stand and deliver.
There wasn’t much room to maneuver, so the cadets and soldiers mingled and mixed and fell back one reluctant pace at a time toward the burning buildings. Evan triggered laser blast after laser blast, cutting at the advancing line and waiting for the final order from Mai Uhn Wa, certain that it would come.
Capellan to the bloody, bitter end, they would go down swinging as a Warrior House—even a nascent Warrior House—should.
Evan chocked open his transmitter, still broadcasting on general frequencies. “You leave us little choice, Legate.” He refused to retreat any further, throttling back until he stood straddle-legged and still. He fired a full bank of lasers—even the ones that could not reach—driving his heat up with a heavy spike from the fusion engine, readying himself for the last stand.
A VTOL spiraled down and crashed on the Grinder, burning, roiling greasy smoke into the sky.
“Legate?”
A Republic Shandra overturned with two wheels sheared off.
The defenders had nothing to cheer about. The wounded Locust that Jenna had partnered up with took a PPC to the head, a stream of hellish energies flooding the cockpit and turning the control space into a crematorium.
“Legate?”
“Yóng yuăn …Liaoooo…”
The battle cry, drawn out into a howl of pride, of determination, cheered the Capellan world as a Scimitar hovercraft speared out from one small cluster of besieged students. Gaining speed, it swerved out from under a missile barrage, and then accelerated right for a tight knot of Republic militia. A Targe managed to move fast enough, sidestepping the suicidal hovercraft. A Behemoth moving slowly up from the backfield was not so fortunate.
The two came together in a shattering impact of metal, blades, missiles and fire. It shoved the Behemoth back a few dozen meters, caving in its right side. The Scimitar was lost, left mangled and burning and spread out over the Conservatory’s parade grounds.
“Liao! Liao!”
Two more vehicles: the Pegasus tank that had escaped death earlier and a wheeled VV1 Ranger. Both sped forward on charging attacks, braving missile fire and a sudden flurry of energy weapons as The Republic line reacted. The Pegasus disappeared under a wreath of smoke and fire, blasted out of its suicide run. The Ranger clipped the leg of a Legionnaire. The vehicle folded up like an accordion, spinning across the Grinder’s wet surface until its wheels caught again to flip it over in a death roll. It carried part of the Legionnaire’s leg with it. The ’Mech toppled in an awkward pirouette.
In singles and pairs, armored vehicles drove out in final charges not once ordered by Shiao-zhang Mai Uhn Wa, but arranged by him just the same. Arranged by him, and put into motion by Evan. Each victory added another martyr to the cause. Each death added more weight to Evan’s soul.
“It’s beautiful, Evan. It’s hùn dàn beautiful.” Hahn’s Destroyer swung out from the pack, autocannon burning off its munitions like it had been newly serviced and stocked. “Liao…!”
“Hahn!”
The Destroyer skimmed over the Grinder fast enough to leave a spray of shattered rain pulsing in its wake. Evan wasn’t going to catch the assault craft with its head start. Still, he raced forward, and the Ti Ts’ang’s charge triggered something primed and ready in the Capellan force. Most of the Conservatory line surged forward after him.
Now Shiao Mai spoke up. Ordering any laggards forward. Calling on true citizens of Liao to make themselves known. To honor the sacrifice of those who had gone before them.
Evan simply wanted to reach Hahn’s side, turn him from a suicide strike into a point-blank assault. But Hahn didn’t answer his call, too busy shouting “Go, go, go!” into his voice-activated mic. The Destroyer hammered out hundreds of rounds as it sprinted across the Grinder toward Legate Ruskoff’s Zeus.
Hahn’s crew might have brought down the Legate’s machine, too, except for the Principes Ryoken II that shoved its way forward and planted itself in the Destroyer’s path.
Trading weapons fire with a seventy-five-ton BattleMech was hardly conducive to a long life. But at one hundred kilometers per hour, the energy wrapped up in the Destroyer’s momentum carried more force than any weapons exchange. Slamming into the Ryoken’s left leg, it careened around and side-slammed the right as well, folding over the awkward ’Mech and dropping it onto the Destroyer’s roof. In a tangle of limbs, cannon barrel, tangled armor and overturned earth the two tumbled together over fifty meters before separating into separate junk piles.
There was hope that Hahn survived. Broken, maybe. Bloodied, certainly. But alive. Evan slackened back on his throttle, not so willing to dive headlong into the enemy line.
He would never forgive himself that moment’s caution.
The Firestarter had followed its larger brethren to Legate Ruskoff’s side. Trailing behind at first, it now planted itself between Evan and Ruskoff, close to the fallen BattleMech and wrecked hovertank. It turned, speared out both arms in the Destroyer’s direction, and out of nothing more than pure malicious intent sprayed out twin columns of fiery death to blanket the Destroyer.
“No!” Slamming down on his pedals, Evan leapt his Ti Ts’ang into the air on plasma jets, thinking to land a crushing blow against the Firestarter. He would be too late again.
A Triarii Phoenix Hawk, several hundred meters to Evan’s right, turned and stabbed its laser into the Firestarter’s back. A Regulator II tank in Governor Lu Pohl’s small force joined it, hammering a gauss slug in behind the ruby lance, shattering the last of the Firestarter’s armor and sending it crashing to the ground with the remains of its gyroscope spinning and spitting out of the gaping wound.
The tide turned that quickly. Where Ruskoff’s force had held the upper hand, it took one malevolent act to swing a number of shocked warriors to the Conservatory’s side. Evan found himself fighting alongside the Phoenix Hawk and Regulator II, Jenna’s limping ForestryMech and some Armored Cavalry Demons. His Ti Ts’ang hacked and slashed and battered its way forward, chasing Ruskoff’s Zeus.
Ruskoff fell back quickly with a guard of heavy armor and retreating infantry. His assault ’Mech became a dark shadow moving farther back into the gray downpour.
Blood boiling, muscles trembling, Evan still knew a bad fight when he saw it. Throwing away lives to chase after Ruskoff would not bring back Hahn. And there were still heavy forces belonging to the Principes Guard on planet. They would have to be dealt with as well, and not by a crippled Ti Ts’ang.
Evan stood at the edge of the Grinder, astride the shattered fence line, and watched as the Republic force fell back in full retreat, but not a rout. Thunder rolled overhead, like an echo of the battle’s earlier rage, and rain pelted down in a deepening cloak of false twilight. It pinged and rang against the Ti Ts’ang’s armored head, streaked the ferroglass shield and puddled on the Grinder’s rough ferrocrete surface.