Conner saw a few loyalists making for relative safety in the nearby stretch of the Schwarzwald–Germany’s landmark Black Forest. Sir Cray Stansill limped his battered Griffin after a JI-100 recovery vehicle. A Hasek APC guarded his flank, surrounded by half a dozen Infiltrator armored infantry. Two Po heavy tanks trailed behind, one slapping at the ground with a stretch of broken tread.
The forces Conner had rescued at the request of Senator Derius. Safe enough.
Battered and busted up, the Legionnaire that had fallen earlier struggled up from the river’s deeper waters near the northern bank. Its autocannon broke the surface first, looking like the deadly snout of some dark river beast, then the cockpit and shoulders of the tall BattleMech.
It waded up onto the bank, climbing for safety, protected by a pair of Schrek PPC carriers that kept up blazing salvos against the river-born targets. The armored vehicles on both sides of the shooting engagement bore the Roman profile crest of the Tenth Principes Guards, and Conner’s HUD was a tangle of gold icons with the IFF transponders all reporting “friendly” units.
It was as surreal as it was likely to get for the ex-knight.
Conner had armored troopers scattered over the rocky banks as well, these from the First and Tenth Triarii Protectors. They bounded from one large boulder to another, or hunkered down inside small stands of willow and alder, waiting for their shots. Four squads with their APCs crouched behind some riverside warehouses. The Schrek PPC carriers. It was all he had this far south.
He would need a great deal more down here very, very soon.
Toggling comms for his small team, Conner brought the Schreks right down to the edge of the riprap in order to cover the Legionnaire’s slow climb up the treacherous bank.
“Full force and damn your heat,” he ordered when one PPC carrier started alternating between weapons, firing the two outboard cannon and then the inside PPC in a two-one-two arrangement.
It had to be hellishly hot inside those vehicles. But he’d push men to heatstroke before he saw even one more of his soldiers dead beneath Republic weapons fire.
The bridge trembled and buckled again, taking a severe list toward the western edge. Conner had no time to wait, sending his remaining hoverbike flying forward and edging his Rifleman into a faster walk. Another artillery strike would finish off the bridge. And him.
Fortunately, he’d called up a squadron of Stingray aerospace fighters to reinforce Stansill’s wounded VTOL support. The battle for air superiority had been fast and brutal, with two Hellcats down on the “Republic side” of the Rhein.
Two quick strafing runs had silenced the artillery positions barely a moment later.
Not that he was out of the woods (or into them, actually) yet. Hell, even a good nudge by one of the Fulcrums would have done the trick, sending Connor plummeting into the dark waters of the Rhein. At best, he’d have flooded actuators or a cockpit leak to deal with. At worst…
At worst he’d never return home. At worst he’d suffer the same fate as his second Schrek carrier, which took a pair of gauss slugs directly through the crew cabin even as he watched.
Gauss slugs accelerated to near hypersonic speeds tore through the PPC carrier with devastating power, both Regulators out on the river getting lucky at the same time. Raw kinetic force rocked the eighty-ton tank up on its hindquarters, as if it were sitting up to beg for a treat. The turret spun off its track, torn away and flipping end over end against the riverbank. Then the tank slammed back down on both wide-spaced tracks, rocked back and forth a few times, and finally settled.
No fires. No huge explosion. Just silent oblivion for the men Conner had called out from their barracks this morning.
Swinging his Rifleman at the waist, Conner drew a quick line of sight on the retreating Regulators and pulled into his rotary autocannons. Both RACs ate deep from his ammunition bins, the hot metal tipped with depleted uranium for vehicle-stopping power.
Water geysered up in twin lines, drawing straight up to and across one of the Regulators. The shots crisscrossed its flat body, tearing into the armor and blowing a few holes into the hovercraft’s lift skirt. Not enough to bring it down.
“Infantry teams, fall back over the bank. Someone check that carrier for survivors.”
He knew there wouldn’t be any. The concussive force alone would have snapped necks and pulped bodies against bulkheads.
“We’ve paid a high price. Let’s get out of here.”
But The Republic’s military force wasn’t finished. The Fulcrums drifted across the river below with an almost casual disregard for the hot fire zone. The same kind of disregard the exarch’s attack dogs had shown in hounding Gerald Monroe to his death. The same that Levin himself had proven in trying to disband the Senate. As if his word was enough to strip the nobles of their birthright and end centuries of enlightened rule.
To end the responsibility carried by generations of men and women.
One Fulcrum drove up very near the northern bank, angling in at the back of the struggling Legionnaire. The remaining PPC carrier torched it with a trio of particle cannon. Armor runneled off the tank’s sides in fiery streams, feeding the Rhein’s dark waters. Where molten composite splashed into the river, the water hissed and steamed grayish wisps.
But it kept up its hammering attack, drifting slowly down the river’s course as it sent flight after flight of LRMs at the retreating BattleMech, slashing with the red-hot fury of its single large laser.
Drifting down to the bridge.
No time to attack the side of fresh armor facing him, to take the chance that he might—might–drive it away under the threat of his rotaries, Conner acted more out of instinct than any concerted plan. Using the long barrels that made up his Rifleman’s arms to batter aside a few suspension cables, snapping the overstressed wires with gunshot echoes, he gauged the drifting Fulcrum’s progress completely by eye and then stepped off the high bridge at the moment it was about to pass beneath.
For a nonjumping ’Mech, the Rifleman had extremely strong and well-armored legs. As its double-bladed feet slammed into the top of the Fulcrum, crushing the missile launcher and one of the tank’s pontoonlike skirts, Connor worked his controls to maintain some order of balance—to stay on top of the hovertank as he shoved it down into the river’s grip.
High-speed vanes chopped against the water, pieces shattering at flaws and hairline cracks in the long blades. The struggling fans growled and snarled in an attempt to lift the Fulcrum’s body clear of the river, but it was impossible with an extra sixty tons sitting atop the craft.
After one hitching gasp, the Fulcrum completely disappeared beneath the Rhein’s surface, driven down into the muck and mud at the bottom of the river.
Conner stumbled his Rifleman forward, stepping off onto the bank of the river without getting much more than one leg wet up to the hip and the other to the knee.
Between his rotary autocannon and the Schrek PPCs, they drove off the remaining Fulcrum. The Regulators slid back, supporting the tactical retreat, but their comrades’ quick, watery deaths made them think twice about another reckless charge.
“That’s it. Everyone back into the Schwarzwald. Infantry, clog up the rear lines in case one of those hovercraft tries to follow too close.”
It wouldn’t happen. The fight had gone out of The Republic’s attempt to contain the loyalist forces. The hovercraft skated back to their side of the river, patrolling for stragglers or simply setting themselves on guard against any attempt by Conner’s team to return. But he was done with Switzerland, just as he was done with The Republic.