“Jenna?”

“Evan.” Mai answered him. “Ijori-five is down.”

“Confirm!” Evan snapped at his Master, letting his own feelings get in the way. Not now. Not like this.

“It is confirmed.” Mai showed no more warmth. “We’ve lost a lot of good people already. No news on casualties, or survivors.”

The news cost Evan several seconds, wondering if Jenna might still be alive, thinking about the things he had not gotten a chance to say to her yet. The battle did not wait for him. Greasy smoke from a burning APC hid the Ijori irregulars who moved up quickly, rocket launchers across their shoulders. A pair of Triarii Stingrays slashed across the battlefield, catching the Locust in a broadside salvo of lasers, and a lance of Mk II Scimitars scooted in under that cover and slashed at the Armored Cavalry with lasers and missiles.

One of the Po II heavy tanks turned and snap fired, taking the nose off one Scimitar with a well-placed Gauss slug. The hovercraft dipped nose down into a thin gruel of mud, caught in the Suriwong’s grip, end-overed and then splashed down on its side.

It wasn’t Terrence McCarron, but the shot was certainly worthy of the veteran. Evan glanced at his HUD, checking ID tags. “Cav-six. Can we call on your commander?”

Again it was Mai Uhn Wa who answered, overriding from the command vehicle. “Terrence McCarron is holding, barely, on the eastern edge of the Floods.”

So there was just him. Hahn dead. David finished. Mark Lo separated by the press of battle and Jenna left behind. The Dynasty Guard pressed forward, but slowly, slowly. And now, no Cavalry to the rescue.

Artillery tore a spit off his island, pinging and slamming rocks into the Ti Ts’ang’s lower legs. Evan checked his heat curve and spent half of his lasers at a Demon that tried to edge forward around the base of the same rising slope he’d come over only minutes before. A few vehicles crawled up from the Capellan backfield, but there wouldn’t be much else. Except Legate Ruskoff. He would be coming.

If Evan did not move against him first!

“Ijori-one. We have movement on the enemy line. Your orders?”

Evan watched the red icons shifted, Zeus taking up a spearhead position, flanked by a limping Pack Hunter and a scarred Vindicator. Armor crawled alongside or raced forward on cushions of air. Infantry leapt and ran and clung to the sides of vehicles. Ruskoff feathered most of his forces out to the east as well, matching Evan’s line.

“Ijori-one. What are your orders?”

He saw the maneuver in his mind’s eye. Feint into the eastern enemy, and then drive into the middle with whatever he had left. Sweat beaded on Evan’s brow that had nothing to do with his saunalike cockpit. A flush rose from the back of his neck. This is what Hahn had felt, he knew, in those last moments. All or nothing.

“Ijori-three?”

Mai Uhn Wa also sounded concerned. “Evan?”

Evan bumped his throttle forward, walked his Ti Ts’ang to the end of his little island and straddled the artillery crater. He pulled his crosshairs over the Zeus, and adjusted his grip on the sweat-slick control sticks.

“We charge,” he said. “Everything we have left, for House Ijori.”

Daniel Peterson struck with lasers and missiles, flailing about his Tundra Wolf with desperate attacks as a mixture of Dynasty Guard and Ijori warriors sought to rush his position. Infantry scrabbled at his lower legs, trying to gain purchase. Fire wreathed the BattleMech’s upper chest as a new spread of missiles hammered into him, and lasers scourged its back.

No one moved to his aid this time. Lady Kincaid was pinned under heavy fire, and the flanking vehicles turnkeyed to him by Ruskoff had fallen back under Lwellen’s orders. No use throwing good after bad. Wasn’t that what the militia colonel had said in planning?

Daniel had no intention of making it easy.

Kicking aside Fa Shih troopers and a JES tactical carrier, the ex-Paladin cleared his own path toward the relative safety of the allied line. Given a choice, he would have set himself for the western flank where Eve Kincaid wielded two companies of Principes Guards like a surgical tool. For better or worse, he fell in closer to the allied center. There, Colonel Lwellen’s Catapult maneuvered from side to side to avoid the press of Carson Rieves’s assault-weight Yu Huang.

It was a sparring match that only had one conclusion. Nothing stood up under the kind of pounding an assault ’Mech could inflict, except another assault ’Mech. The Dynasty Guard owned every advantage except for the raw determination of Republic forces to hold off a Capellan victory.

“If we had our full numbers massed here, we’d have them.”

But they didn’t. The Republic force had split its strength against “House” Ijori, thinking they had found the Dynasty Guard. How had the Conservatory forces learned of this assault, coordinating their own arrival so well? Daniel could only imagine. An informer? Misinformation leaked through to Legate Ruskoff? Whatever the ruse, it had worked. Now the fall of Ijori was the pivotal point to the entire battle and the very defense of Liao. Break the nascent Warrior House, and The Republic could sweep all forces north against the Dynasty Guard.

Which meant holding the line, here, in the foothills above the Suriwong Floods.

A pair of lasers stabbed into Daniel’s back, bringing him up short of The Republic lines, forcing him to turn and deal with a pair of Demons. His Tactical Missile System automatically selected down to short-range warheads, slamming blossoms of orange fire into the side of one vehicle. His lasers slashed apart one tire and cut through the axle behind it. The fast-attack vehicle slewed over, dug a fender into the soft ground, and rolled into a crashing death.

The other vehicle sped back to the side of an approaching Wasp. Daniel throttled into a slow, backward walk, protecting his thinning rear armor.

Which set him in the no-man’s-land between Republic and Confederation lines, alone, when the warning crackled across communication channels.

“Down! The Legate is down!”

Daniel froze over his controls, earning him a ruined right arm actuator as the Wasp sprinted in, stung at him with lasers and machine guns, and raced away again. He tried to snap fire a return salvo, but the lighter ’Mech’s speed and stealth armor made targeting lock impossible.

At least it got him moving again. He faded back from The Republic line, torn between the battle here and the man who had offered him a hand.

“Zeus is back up,” the report came, but it was no time for breathing easy. “Limping… Ti Ts’ang and infantry swarm attacks.” Evan Kurst! “Taking heavy fire. Tā mā dè! They’re all over us.”

The Wasp continued to strike at Daniel, always moving for his flanks. A Demon and a pair of Condors now trailed in its shadow. Daniel fired again, and again. He turned his Tundra Wolf south, then back north again. He had a fairly clear field to the southwest…

“What are you waiting for, Peterson?” It was Lwellen, still struggling along in the face of the Yu Huang’s deadly assault. “Legate Ruskoff is in trouble. Pull him out, man!”

Lwellen passed other orders as well, detaching VTOL assets and a squad of JES tactical carriers to his command. It wasn’t much, but they would be able to move fast. They came toward him at flank speed, chased by Confederation units split off to prevent any aid from heading south. Sang-shao Rieves did not want reinforcements coming north.

“Go, Daniel.” Lady Kincaid. Her voice sounded strained. She led the Principes Guards forward, driving through a wall of Confederation heavy armor to try and bring some relief to Lwellen. “You won’t make the difference here.”