“Fifteen minutes,” Demos told her.

Nice. This battle would be over in five.

Not that her small crew hadn’t given a good accounting of themselves. Her ground forces had corralled the dignitaries’ vehicles beneath a wide overpass and taken up station on either side to challenge any enemy approach. A second Condor and two VV1 Rangers rolled dark, oily smoke into the sky, all three burning on the highway, which was now completely devoid of any civilian vehicles. In a furious display of defensive driving techniques, the light morning traffic had hit off-ramps, soft shoulders and ditches to clear the battlefield. Two tractor-trailer rigs that had tried bluffing their way through were now overturned half a kilometer back, forming a roadblock from the Annemasse side at least.

But Cray Stansill still had two ’Mechs under his command, and those damned VTOLs Tara could not counter. He’d also pulled a couple of Anat APCs out of his hat when she wasn’t looking. Her HUD painted their icons against a dark band, showing them as they sped down from the direction of Geneva.

Tara was willing to bet she’d spoiled a trap laid out further ahead by hunkering down rather than sending the sedans racing forward.

“Last chance, Countess.” Stansill made her title a curse. By his way of thinking, no doubt, the nobles were either pro-Senate or traitors to their birthrights. “Give the Dracs up. We’ll have them one way or another.”

They could do it. Stansill’s Griffin was barely hurting, and the Catapult marching around behind his position lent serious weight to his argument. They could engage her small crew and keep them tied up while the Anat APCs rolled in to seize prisoners.

The rogue nobles had thought through their choice very carefully. With the coordinator of the Draconis Combine in their grasp, they could control two, three Prefectures easily. And there was always Katana Tormark to consider. How the ex-prefect would jump was anyone’s guess, either in support, or simply to get her own hands on Vincent Kurita.

“Demos?” Tara asked, toggled for private comms only.

“Twelve minutes,” the wiry little Greek told her. He slipped his Destroyer back around, pinning it at her side as the Hatchetman finally returned to the four-lane highway.

So be it. She cut away from the Senate loyalists, racing back for her besieged crew. “One way or another” was exactly what they’d get.

“Spoilsport,” Tara said, throttling up to a flat-out run as long-range fire sniped at her back. “I’ve got the high road.”

“Copy,” Demos said, racing ahead of her. “I’ve got the low.”

Stomping along the highway’s shoulder, the forty-five-ton Hatchetman pounded footprints into the soft edge. Where Tara steered too close to the pavement, the hard footfalls cracked ferrocrete in long, radiating webs. Nearer the overpass, Tara veered aside and took the quick dogleg up onto the raised off-ramp.

Standing astride the overpass.

Ready for Cray Stansill’s charge.

Demos’ Destroyer rallied a trio of hoverbikes and a single Demon wheeled tank, the dedicated escort standing its line as the Griffin and Catapult bore straight down at them along the highway. The Anats swept wide and the pair of Cavalry attack VTOLs raced up from further back afield to take leading positions.

Tara Campbell adjusted her grip on sweat-slick control sticks, holding her fire as the Griffin sniped from long range and the Catapult dumped a score of missiles into the air, which arced overhead on gray contrails and fell around her in a scattering of red fireballs and a hail of broken ferrocrete.

Two warheads slammed into the side of her Hatchetman’s head, shaking her hard against the restraint harness. A muscle in her neck twinged. Sparks blew out of a short-circuited power conduit, stinging her right arm and choking her with the acrid scent of burned insulation.

“So much for that new ’Mech smell.”

Having rode it out long enough, Tara pulled crosshairs over the boxlike shoulder launcher on the Catapult, blasting away armor. A second, carefully aimed shot hammered deep into its flank. Gray smoke rolled out of this new wound. Enough to make the other MechWarrior think twice.

“Now!” Tara called as the assault force closed.

She slammed down on her pedals, lighting off the Hatchetman’s jump jets, which lifted the forty-five-ton machine on streams of bright white plasma. Leaning into the forward thrust, hatchet raised, she flew into the teeth of Stansill’s attack with her ground support running hot right after her, weapons blazing again, and again.

But while the SM1 and the faster attack vehicles concentrated on Stansill’s Griffin, Tara had a “higher purpose.” Getting on top of the overpass had added ten, maybe fifteen meters to the top of her arc. She was now high enough to threaten the VTOLs that had raced on ahead of the ’Mechs, usually so unconcerned for ground-bound machines.

Tara’s hatchet swatted sideways at the lead Cavalry. Rotor vanes sheared off against the titanium head, and the tail of the craft broke completely free as the VTOL fell away in two large pieces and a storm of high-velocity metal shards.

She landed in a crouch among the wreckage, right between the Griffin and Catapult.

It all happened so fast after that, Tara wouldn’t be one hundred percent on the events until later review of her battlerom footage.

Both enemy ’Mechs turned their weapons on her at the same time, though the Catapult was too close to successfully arm its long-range missile warheads and so only added in a pair of medium lasers to the Griffin’s savage assault. Ruby-bright energy flared between Tara and Cray Stansill, connecting the machines in a blistering salvo of lances and sharp, stabbing knives of light.

Spiritos Demos, at roughly the same time, charged his makeshift lance along the left side of the firestorm. Every vehicle targeted the wounded Catapult, which staggered back under the Destroyer’s assault autocannon and then went down as the Demon and hoverbikes added in lasers and heavy machine guns. It collapsed heavily onto its left side, driving its shoulder down into the chest cavity and crushing the reactor’s physical shielding.

Smoke roiled out thick and black, but the MechWarrior brought down his dampening fields in time to smother the fusion reaction before it unleashed its full fury, saving his life and his machine.

And then Tara was through the worst of it, staggering out the far side with molten composite bleeding from every limb and several deep rents in her right side. She chopped once at Stansill’s Griffin as she passed, wedging the blade into the ’Mech’s knee joint, caving it inward.

Staggering the fifty-five tonner just as the black sedans blew apart beneath the overpass, right in the face of the Anat APCs.

Two of the luxury sedans erupted in bright fury a full second before the third, sending the mangled vehicle rolling out from beneath the overpass to detonate alongside the lead APC. The explosion tore through the side of the Anat, ripping through the infantry carrier compartment even as it flipped the APC into a violent roll. It tumbled side-over, flinging the broken bodies of armored infantry out on wild trajectories.

The following Anat swerved violently aside, escaping serious injury though it plowed headfirst into a deep drainage ditch alongside the highway.

Chasing after her fleeing support crew, Tara gained several long strides along the highway before Stansill even thought to pursue. No doubt thinking to collect the surviving Anat and his MechWarrior from the fallen Catapult. Already planning their escape route to Senate-friendly territory.

He’d be back.

Meanwhile, Tara and Demos pointed their wounded unit toward Annemasse and relief. She watched the scene on a rear-channeled monitor. Fires burned beneath the partially collapsed overpass and greasy clouds of smoke blew out from either side. But no more lives had been lost today. Demos’ Destroyer and her remaining Demon had already collected the drivers of the decoy sedans.