...And I Feel Fine

[Liam's Ghost]

Author: Almost four years later I raise the dead! So as I mentioned over in book III, I'd never actually finished the chapter covering the first part of the Coventry Campaign. Well now I've rectified that. I'll just repost the entire chapter here, so those who come over to read it don't have to go back through the thread to find the first part. And for further context, the couple of non-canon battlemechs the chapter mentions are posted here

Bravo Star, Binary Striker, Fourth Falcon Dragoons
Advancing on Whitting
Coventry, Lyran Commonwealth

Their invasion thus far had been routine, practically uneventful. The Zenith point and its recharge station had fallen with minimal resistance. No Lyran fighters or dropships rose up to meet them as the breeched Coventry's atmosphere. Neither were they met on landing by any Lyran troops. Their recon overflights had shown the Lyrans had concentrated their forces for a close defense of the Coventry Metal Works factory complexes and Port St. William, and seemed content to wait for the clan onslaught. An almost refreshingly set piece battle.

Almost. One anomaly remained. On approach they had tracked a pair of dropships several hours ahead of them, inbound from the nadir point. Military vessels, ones that had not been seen in centuries in the Inner Sphere. Lee class. The Inner Sphere was constantly digging up old relics and putting them back into production, but these craft had been running silent since detection. No Lyran IFF, no identifiers at all. And they'd grounded at the small town of Whitting, well outside of the Lyrans' main line of resistance. A point of Vandals sent to overfly them failed to report anything before contact was lost, though the battlecruiser White Aerie in orbit was able to detect the unique signatures of subcapital cannon fire over Whitting.

Galaxy Commander Thastus was said to have briefly considered moving the White Aerie into position to destroy this second force from orbit. The town they held had no strategic value to the Clan, and it was far enough away from their primary targets to minimize collateral damage, but apparently the mystery of this second force had piqued her curiosity. Instead, she ordered the Fourth Dragoons to investigate and engage this mystery enemy, while her own Gamma Galaxy pushed forward to engage the main Lyran Force.

As Star Commander Egan led his star through the rolling hills on approach to the town of Whitting, he tried not to dwell on yet another missed opportunity for glory. Sure, Galaxy Commander Buhallin had tried to sell it as an effort to reclaim honor lost to the clan long ago in another time and another war, but Egan and the rest of the Dragoons knew the truth well enough. The Dragoons were part of Delta Galaxy, and had already been left behind once as their parent Galaxy set out to invade Gibbs. Attached to Gamma for this operation, they were meant to bolster the weakened Galaxy, but rivalries ran deep. Thastus's pride wouldn't let her share any of the greater glory with another Galaxy, especially one she had fought against in the Rending.

And so, Gamma Galaxy rode to war, and the Dragoons rode to satisfy Galaxy Commander Thastus' curiosity.

Egan's Black Lanner led the way, two Eyries watching the flanks while a third and a Gyrfalcon brought up the rear. His star had been assigned one of the two roads leading into Whitting from the east with orders to clear them out. So far, they'd seen nothing, but the road would soon take them into a shallow, but narrow pass through some of the foothills along the Cross-Divide mountains. Those mountains were said to be riddled with tunnels and chambers from centuries of mining operations. An idea place to stage an ambush.

"Point three, point four, high ground," he ordered. Behind his mech the two Eyries rocketed into the air, seeking the elevated ground above the road. Lower castes built their roads with an eye of convenience, with little regard for strategy. He wasn't about to leave such an obvious blind spot as the surrounding hills uncovered.

The star continued its advance for several more uneventful minutes. They were almost at the pass, and yet had seen no sight of the enemy until...

"Four contacts on my scope," Point Four reported. "Fast moving. Possibly VTOLs... within two klicks..."

"I see it too," Point three reported. "Two points, one bearing 17, second 293, speed... stravag. They keep dropping in and out of sight."

"Hugging the hills for cover," Point Four said... "POINT THREE, EVADE!"

Before Star Commander Egan could demand additional information, Point Four was already spraying the area around Point Three with fire. As Point Three lifted into the air again, two streaks shot through the sky and slammed into it. It was a burning wreck that came crashing down.

"Star, pull back!" Egan ordered as he threw his machine into a lurching reverse. Two contacts suddenly appeared on his scope, low altitude, but accelerating to supersonic speed. Aerofighters. How could they have gotten aerofighters so close without being spotted?

As the two strange craft came into view, he didn't waste time wondering. His mech's PPC was already up and firing. He thought he hit, but he couldn't be sure as the world exploded around him.

-----

Team Valkyrie, 78th Royal Infantry Division
Danger Close

General Robert Lee felt the concussion from the detonating chain of thermobaric weapons in the road below even through the armor of his Intruder Battlesuit, maybe a little too well. For a moment he wondered if personally leading this operation was as ill advised as his subordinates liked to insist.

Fifty years of experience as one of the Hegemony's most highly regarded senior officers. One of the few normal...ish humans trusted with command of a Galatea Division. Practically worshipped by the troops under his command (who had proudly adopted the nickname Lee's Angels). He tended to get to do what he wanted. Even if his junior officers might gently advise him otherwise. Heh, sometimes especially if his junior officers thought otherwise.

"Gabby, cover our withdrawal," he ordered while his squadmates broke down the portable TAG. The second Eyrie was still hunting, and he didn't want to wait to see might crawl out of the inferno below them. "Squad, switch to ghosting, let's get out of here and head to the CP."

A quartet of Belphegor Omnimechs, their armored skin shifiting in colors to mostly match the surrounding terrain, passed them by as the squad started heading down the hill. General Lee didn't think they'd wipe the Falcon star out, but they'd already bloodied them a bit. That would suffice for now.

"And somebody remind me when we get back to ask the Lyrans if we can please bring down the rest of the division now," he said as he marched his troops down the hill.

-----

Bravo Star

Star Commander Egan had only just started to regain his senses when the unknown battlemechs came running down the hill. Even as he began to swing his battlemech around, two of them already had him under fire, picking away at his machine with laser fire. Struggling against the damage, he tried to bring his weapons in line, barely noting the minimal sensor signature they presented, or the way their outlines seemed to shift and morph at will. At this range that wouldn't matter as he tightened his fingers on the triggers. The computer groaned a fault warning for his particle cannon, but his pulse lasers stitched fire into one of the offending machines.

In response, the mech practically skidded to a stop and delivered a savage kick to his machine. A tortured scream seemed to fill the cockpit as he felt his mech's leg start to give way, and he felt the sickening spin and shock of his machine crashing to the ground. His console told the story of serious damage to the hip and upper leg, and he knew he'd never be able to get his mech back to its feet before a final blow was delivered.

However, no blow came. Though the enemy mechs barely registered at all on his primary monitors, he could still see the seismic readings telling him they were breaking contact and heading east at a high rate of speed.

"They are withdrawing, Star Commander," Point Two reported as his Gyrfalcon released some parting shots. "One battlemech has also recovered a point of infantry and was last seen withdrawing north. Myself and Point Four remain reasonably intact. Do we pursue?"

"Neg," Star Commander Egan said as he struggled his Black Lanner back to its feet. The mechs were moving too fast to pursue, and soon whatever stealth systems they were using would place them beyond any ability to track. "The aerofighters?"

"I believe they were LAMs," Point Two said. "They dropped altitude and off the scope almost immediately after the bombing run."

LAMs. Egan tried to recall barely remembered lessons from his time in the sibko. Some sort of hybrid fighter-mech. A dead end failure, of no value and long extinct. He swung his mech around to examine the burning wreckage of Points Three and Five. Apparently someone found some use for them.

"This was a..." he thought for a moment to find the right word. A Dark Caste concept. "A mugging. They hurt us then fled. There will be no honor in these foes."  He slowly rotated his mech around to scan the surrounding area. "I will inform the Star Colonel. This road cannot be considered secured without additional forces, and the enemy's mobility makes it unlikely they will remain dug in at Whitting. They will not offer us battle, we must hunt them."

-----

[Liam's Ghost]

Seventeenth Arcturan Guards Command Post
Outside Port St. William

"The Left Flank is being pushed back."

Leutnant General Francine Ross nodded her acknowledgment as she watched the battle developing on the holotable that dominated the center of the room. "Combat Command Gamma, push forward in sector 17, take some stress off of Beta," she ordered.

The Falcons, identified as elements of Gamma Galaxy, weren't showing any signs of letting up. They hammered all along their front, trying to overwhelm the Lyran Defenses, or possibly assuming the defenders would break and run. Heh. Her troops had made their thoughts clear on that. Never Again.

The Seventeenth already wore enough shame. Their previous commander had ordered their retreat from the Port Moseby Salient at the start of the Falcon offensive, fleeing without so much as firing a shot. That decision had gotten him Court Martialed and cast a shadow over the entire regiment. It was probably only the desperate need for troops on the front that kept the RCT from being exiled to the periphery border. When Ross had assumed command, she'd found a unit with broken moral, bled dry by constant Jade Falcon raids... but with a burning desire to redeem themselves. She did her best to harness that, to reforge the RCT into an effective weapon... But the process was nowhere near complete.

On the holotable, her forces, broken up into four combat commands roughly analogous to small LCTs, had mostly held a stable battle line against the Jade Falcons, but the enemy had shifted its forces, concentrating roughly a reinforced cluster against Combat Command Beta on the left flank. Mostly Provincial militia troops stiffened by a few battalions of armor and infantry, they were slowly crumbling under the Jade Falcon onslaught. In response, Combat Command Gamma was pushing forward, towards a narrow gap that had opened in the Jade Falcon Line. Hopefully it would force the Falcons to pull back and take some of the pressure off of Beta. If not, the whole line might crumble.

"General Lee is on the line," the communication officer reported. "He says its urgent."

General Ross didn't lift her eyes from the holotable. She'd almost let herself forget about that particular... headache, nightmare, impossible mystery? General Lee and a fleet of warships had turned up at the Nadir Point barely a few hours before the Falcons had shown up at the Zenith. He'd announced himself as a general of the Terran Hegemony and commander of the 78th Royal Infantry Division, and requested permission to land his troops so that he could explain how that made any sense at all face to face. At the time, General Ross had figured the only prudent response would be to order the bulk of his forces to remain at the jump point, authorizing only General Lee himself and a light battalion strength honor guard to land. Even after the Falcons had arrived insystem, she'd rebuffed Lee's offer of assistance and ordered him to land at Whitting, well away from their own defensive lines, making sure he couldn't interfere. The timing was far too coincidental, General Lee's claims too impossible, to easily trust him.

On the holotable, Gamma seemed to be doing well, probing well into the Falcon lines... Maybe too well. Their advance was a little too fast, maybe reckless. "Combat Command Gamma, slow your advance. Secure your flanks." Even through the incomplete data from the front lines, she could still see Falcon trinaries breaking free from the fighting on the left and wheeling around to engage.

"Major airstrikes inbound on multiple fronts," the comm officer reported. "Total Raid Count is sixty craft. Our aerospace is moving to engage." Not great odds. Between her own RCT and the local militia, they could only put up about forty aerofighters of their own, plus a small mess of conventional craft. With the technology gap, the best they could hope to do was deny the Falcons complete air superiority, but for how long?

"Put Lee through," Ross said. The Comm officer acknowledged.

"General Ross," the Hegemony officer said through the faint crackle of static, "My scouts are telling me you're hard pressed."

In spite of herself, she felt some anger boil up. "I don't recall telling you to send out scouts."

"Knock it off!" Lee snapped. "If my ladies weren't playing hide and seek with a Falcon cluster around the Cross Divides, they'd be pushing straight through you. I've got a division sitting on their asses at the Jump point who could be planetside in seventeen hours. You don't have time to be stubborn!"

She didn't want to admit it, but what he said had at least some merit. The Falcons had peeled off a cluster sized unit to take Whitting, and by all reports seemed to be spreading out to conduct small search and destroy operations in the region. That was a force large enough that it could probably push them over the edge, but... Before she could respond, General Ross' attention was drawn back to developments on the holotable. Gamma hadn't slowed, instead Falcon troops had pulled back before them, which only made them push harder and faster. General Ross felt a growing fear as she saw a gap open up in her own lines, as Gamma's battlemechs and quicker vehicles outpaced their slower conventional support.

"Gamma, cease advance and pull back!" she ordered. On the holotable, the first green icons began appearing in the gap. Falcon units were pushing through, threatening to cut Gamma off from the rest of her forces.

"General Ross," General Lee called from the still open communication link. "I'm ordering my division down. Hold for as long as you can!" What followed was static from a disconnected comlink.

She didn't waste words on recrimination or complaints. Gamma was finally halting, turning to engage the new threat, but not fast enough. Jade Falcons, almost a full cluster, were pouring into the gap, while those units that had been withdrawing before the Lyran advance turned to re-engage.

She began to hear explosions as overhead bombs began falling. "They've zeroed in on us," she said. Their command post wasn't much of a structure, a basement under a suburban schoolhouse. It wouldn't stand up to much pounding, but decades of battling Falcons had taught the Commonwealth to never get too attached to a stationary command post. "Time to pack it up," Ross ordered. She'd hoped she could enjoy the advantages of a stationary command post longer, but even though the bombing was already passing as quickly as it had begun, she couldn't risk her command staff being eliminated. "Leave orders for Gamma to pull back to the main line of resistance. Command is on the move."

She gestured to the guards at the stairs to follow her up. Hopefully her battlemech, stashed in a parking lot across the street, hadn't been crippled by the bombing.

They were met at the top of the stairs by additional forces. She had half a platoon of Grey Death Infiltrators monitoring the area around the School. From what she could see, damage looked to be minor, broken windows mostly.

"Nothing landed on the building," one of the troopers reported. "They flattened a city block across the street to take out a broadcast relay. Probably hoped to cut off communications and guessed wrong."

Ross nodded. "The command unit?" Most of her command lance was already buttoned up in their mechs and active, but the transport and support vehicles, not to mention her own Battlemaster, would take time to get loaded and running, assuming they weren't crippled or destroyed by the bombing.

"Last report was everything was intact. Bombs didn't hit the lot."

Small favors. "Let's go then."

-----

Command Lance

"Something stinks here," Hauptman Liesel Scheer said as he slowly maneuvered his mech around the schoolhouse. He was essentially the tactical commander of General Ross's command company, such as it was. With the entire RCT understrength, General Ross refused to hold valuable combat units back from the front line. Her bodyguard force was made up of Scheer's modified Gotterdammerung and Mechwarrior Davies' cranky old Alliance, which they'd found rusting away in a salvage yard only a couple weeks ago, plus whatever conventional units weren't desperately needed elsewhere.

"Everything stinks," Davies said. "We're losing."

"Besides that," Scheer said. "We're all kinds of a juicy target here. Everything they could have hit and all they care about is a broadcast relay. Not even bother to scrap with something that can put up a fight. That ain't clan." Of course, after three years of war, he wasn't really sure what was clan anymore, but with so many real people to hurt, that the Falcons didn't bother seemed like a red flag.

"Actual is on her way out," Davies said. General Ross had emerged from the Schoolhouse followed by two squads of armored infantry and was sprinting across the road to the lot where her Battlemaster waited. The sooner she was secured the better. "Headhunters trying to draw the boss out?".

Scheer thought about it for a moment. Bombing the communications array would force the boss out. It was SOP, learned from a long history of dead Lyran Generals who thought they'd known better. If the Command Post was identified, get the hell out. "Still doesn't track. Why not just kill the boss directly if there's headhunters about?"

General Ross was most of the way up the ladder before Davies responded. "Because they are clan," he said as he set his Alliance running in the direction of the lot. "They don't just want to kill her, they want to defeat her."

Scheer didn't have time to think about Davies' words before he heard the General's battlesuited escorts open fire. As he swung around he saw the intermittent contacts on his scope. Battlesuits moving among the buildings, already returning fire against their lyran counterparts.

A lot of them.

-----

Provisional Binary Elemental, Gamma Galaxy

Star Captain Gillian heard the hypersonic slugs striking the wall above her as the enemy's GD-Infiltrator suits continued laying down fire. It was a pointless exercise on their part, meant to keep the Falcons pinned while their commander boarded her machine. If they only knew...

Gillian blamed her Khan for it, though never out loud. Her and her Mongols. They would have come in like assassins and killed this General Ross without a thought. In her bed if they could manage. Gillian didn't consider herself that far gone. General Ross had been at Tharkad, standing and fighting even as her command died around her, she'd accepted a Warrior's fate, even when her survival denied her that. Even now, leading a force composed of cowards and solahma, she led tenaciously. One such as that deserved no less than a warrior's death. Galaxy Commander Thastus had agreed, and put together a composite binary of battle armor for the task, drawing points from every cluster, with Gillian winning the command in unarmed combat. With airstrikes all along the Lyrans rear areas, slipping in by air had been easy once their target had been pinpointed.

They had been spotted slightly earlier than she'd hoped, but they could make do.

On her scope, she saw a power surge in the Battlemaster as its fusion engine went to full power. General Ross was ready for a fight now. Excellent.

"Point Alpha, on me. All points, break cover and attack!"

-----

General Ross

As her Battlemaster's sensor and targeting systems came fully online, General Ross could see the battlesuits swarming into the lot, weapons blazing. Even without the warning from her subordinates it was apparent that they'd been waiting for her. As the targeting reticles appeared on her hud, she swung her mech around and endeavored to make them regret the courtesy, delivering volleys of laser fire into a tight knot of bounding suits.

They were coming from practically all sides. Faster suits, Afreets and... some sort of winged Salamanders... had circled around to hit the command lance from the flanks, engaging Scheer and Davies even as their mechs entered the lot, while Elementals and a handful of Ironholds pressed her and her battle armor support.

She felt her mech's B-pods kick off as a point of elementals tried to swarm her. As they fell off, she did her best to chase the survivors away with another volley of laser fire. Behind her, Davies' Alliance stumbled as modded Salamanders ripped chunks of armor off with their bare claws. They were too hemmed in in this lot. No room to maneuver. No room to break contact...

"All infantry, support personnel, break contact and take cover! Mail's coming!" she ordered, then switched the frequency. "Fire support group, fire mission, binary strength infantry at my coordinates. Load high explosive and fire for effect!"

-----

Star Commander Gillian

Gillian felt the Infiltrator suit go limp as the claws of her Horus armor tore through its armored shell. She hadn't been sure of this new "totem" armor she'd been issued at first, but the visceral experience of fighting in it was a pleasure she hadn't quite experienced before. Ripping a gore covered manipulator free, she let the enemy fall and turned her attention to the greater battle. The Gotterdamerung fought like a demon, flinging an afreet suit into a wall even while incinerating a damaged Ironhold with its head mounted PPC and peppering another point with laser fire. The other mech, Some sort of enlarged Battlemaster analogue, struggled against the Horus point tearing into it, doing its best to shake them off. And the General's Battlemaster stood defiantly, weathering fire from two seperate points and returning it with all she had.

Gillian felt a smile grow across her face. "Alpha point, on me," she said. The two other suits that still survived from her point responded in affirmative. "It is time we claim our prize."

Without another word, she triggered her jump jets and sent herself soaring towards the Battlemaster.

-----

Hauptman Scheer

Scheer almost imagined that he heard a crunch as he brought the foot of his mech down on an Afreet suit. The damned insects wouldn't stop! Fault icons blinked on his monitors to indicate the damage they'd already done, a frozen knee on the other leg, light damage all over. Nothing terribly severe, but it was accumulating fast. Much more of this, and Scheer wondered if the incoming mail might do him in. Calling fire on yourself was unheard of for a lot of folks, but old hat for some. Having a battery sighted in on your own HQ was an unsettling twist (story was that the General had picked up the idea from an old 'loonie, or maybe a crazy hobo), and there was no way to make it a fun ride.

He kept his mind on the fight, turning his attention to the suits leaping towards his boss's mech. His shots missed the lead suit, but the second one was reduced to blackened fragments by his Heavy PPC. He hoped the General could handle the rest, at least for a few more seconds.

His mech shuddered as a flight of short range missiles found his back. Another point, Bog standard elementals this time, coming up behind him. Even as he brought his machine around to face them, though, autocannon and laser fire ripped into them as Davies took them under fire with his Alliance. The old relic was smoking from a few holes in the armor and was limping a little, but Scheer was happy to see him still in the fight.

An alarm began ringing, warning of inbound artillery missiles. "Here we go"

-----

Star Commander Gillian

Gillian wasn't certain if any of her point mates were still alive. She'd heard point three's scream mid jump, and she had no contact with any other point members. It was no matter, though, she thought as her claws bit into the Battlemaster's hide. She'd still claim her kill. She'd managed to land just below the mech's prominent cockpit, close enough that she could see her enemy on the other side of the ferroglass. The mech's violent movements forced her to concentrate on keeping her grip, threw off her aim as she tried to scour the canopy with blasts from one of her firedrakes, but she knew it was only a matter of time. Looking through the ferroglass at her enemy, she imagined her enemy knew the same. It was only a matter of time.

Then the first artillery missile exploded scant meters away from her, and as the shock wave wrenched her free from the Battlemaster and sent her hurtling through the collapsing rubble of a nearby wall, she screamed with impotent rage, until the rubble came down and buried her in darkness. 

[Liam's Ghost]

Jade Falcon Jumpship Kite's Nest
Nadir Point

Coherent reality snapped back into focus for Star Captain Grieg as his Comitatus class jumpship emerged from a successful jump. With it, his crew snapped into action. Calling for status reports, beginning a sensor scan. He had just opened his mouth to issue an order when he heard the sensor technician.

"That can't be..."

None of them heard or said anything after that, as the combined fire of four WarShips tore the the vessel to pieces from stem to stern.

-----

Jade Falcon WarShip White Aerie
Above Coventry

"Still no word from the Kite's Nest."

Galaxy Commander Jane Thastus strode across the fields of Coventry like a giant while tiny armies battled at her feet. The holotanks holographic representation of the field of battle was constructed from dozens of sensor feeds from both her forces on the ground and observation satellites in orbit, and it provided an incredibly detailed picture of her Galaxy's impending victory.

"It is of little concern," she said. She'd ordered the Kite's Nest to the Nadir point to secure it and any vessels that might lie in wait there. It was possible that the vessel had encountered resistance, but if it was beyond their capabilities to handle, they would have certainly sent a distress signal. Certainly, given the quality of defenders her Clan had faced, the Lyrans would have nothing that could destroy a jumpship so quickly that it failed to get off a distress call!

Though as she watched the holographic ground battle play out, she mused that the Lyrans had managed some minor surprises. She hadn't expected much resistance from their foes. The Arcturan Guards had fled in a panic from the initial waves of the invasion, and the Coventry militia's solahma warriors would have little to offer. She'd been so confident in this assessment that she kept herself out of the main battle, remaining aboard their escorting warship to observe her galaxy in action.

And she almost regretted the decision. The Lyrans had held up much better than she had expected, long enough for her to think she could have gotten an excellent fight in, but now that opportunity had passed. The Lyran's left was collapsing, their millitia forces standing and dying while their front line troops were fleeing east to avoid total destruction. With a few more troops, this battle would be done already.

That thought turned her attention to the Fourth Dragoons, currently in the process of scattering themselves across all creation chasing partisans. A few pinprick strikes and novelty units had Star Colonel Sender in a fit, turning a simple mission into a tangled mess. It was almost amusing enough for Thastus to allow it to continue, almost.

"We are nearly in position," the ship's commander informed her through the headset communicator. With a hand motion Thastus called up a smaller geographic map of the region before her, then tapped the glowing point on the map indicating the town of Whitting. The holographic ground beneath her feet shifted to an image of the town, two massive dropships dominating the field with their bulk. There were no units in the immediate area to provide clearer details, so whatever defenses this second force... mercenaries Thastus suspected... were well hidden, but it was no matter. Their games were clearly meant to keep the battle away from their dropships, even if Sender couldn't see it. The solution was equally obvious.

"Open fire as soon as we are in range," she ordered. A sustained barrage from the White Aerie's aft batteries would settle things simply enough. Unless... Flashes of light appeared beneath the dropships as they began lifting in the air. "Check fire," she ordered. "If they wish to come to us to die, so be it." She tapped on the imaginary controls to change the focus of the holoimage to include the White Aerie as well as the climbing dropships.

The Lee class ships were using every bit of their considerable thrust to climb out of the atmosphere quickly. From their trajectories, it was clear that each craft would be passing on opposite sides of the White Aerie. An obvious enough tactic. Their acceleration capabilities were such that it forced the battlecruiser to choose which to engage, and thus allow the other to escape.

"Detail our fighter screen to engage contact 2," she ordered. Most of her fighters were already in the heavily contested airspace over the battlefield on planet, leaving a bare fighter screen of a single star of mediumweight second line craft. It probably wouldn't be enough to bring the contact down... Lees were built tough specifically to force their way past such attacking forces, but the ship wouldn't leave unscathed. "Move to engage contact 1."

The choice wasn't completely random. Contact 2's flight trajectory would take it over the battle raging on the planetary surface. Any missed shots from the WarShips guns were at serious risk of landing among her own ground forces. The thought brought on a bit of contempt. She'd respect these spacers a bit more if she thought they'd chosen that positioning intentionally. But if they had, both dropships would be following the same path.

"We will not be able to stay in range for long," the ship's commander reported.

"I am aware," Thastus responded. "If your gun crews need more than a few shots, they would perhaps serve better as Solahma infantry."

"Understood," the commander responded. "Twenty seconds until... aspect change on the target."

She watched the drive of the craft suddenly cut out and stay there. It made no sense. The only thing protecting the dropship was raw velocity, which it wasn't building up now. At their current heading the White Aeire would actually pull ahead of them, leaving the ship directly under their guns with no chance of escape. It made no sense, unless...

Small icons popped into the holoimage. Too small to render. Aerofighters kicking to full thrust, half a star's worth bearing down on their aft quarter.

She found herself laughing. "More clever than I thought," she said. "You baited us in." She could hear the commander ordering radical maneuvering, but this close to weapon range at this velocity it didn't matter. The fighters had a clear shot at their aft, with the dropship lighting off its drive again and following them in.

"Missiles inbound!"

Thastus made her way through the shifting acceleration gravity to an acceleration chair at the edge of the tank, the holoprojection following her, ensuring she wouldn't miss anything. With so many weapons on her warship able to throw apocalyptic firepower in every direction, this run was still a futile gesture on the enemy's part, unless, of course, they were to do exactly what Thastus knew they were about to do.

The first missiles to hit did not produce so much as a shudder through the ship's massive hull, but they had a temporarily catastrophic effect regardless, as Thastus could tell as the entire holoimage in front of her briefly flashed into electronic noise. Even as it came back into focus, she could see everything in the ship's aft sensor cone had vanished. ASEW missiles... They'd virtually blinded the aft sensors, weapons, everything... She knew local fire control would keep the guns firing, but the chance of hitting anything had been greatly curtailed, at least briefly, until the core systems could restore themselves.

Those thoughts were interrupted by a long chain of impacts well below her. She could hear alarms blaring outside the holotank, then felt her heart jump into her throat as she realized she was feeling substantially lighter.

"Emergency thrust!" the commander was ordering. "Get us to a stable orbit!"

"What happened?" she demanded as she felt a little weight returning. Maybe a full gravity?

"The savrashri rammed everything they had down our aft under the cover of that EW strike," the commander reported. "Antiship missiles, subcapital cannons on the dropship... the main drives are either dead or sketchy. We have to get to a stable orbit before we Emerald Talon into the planet."

She felt like she should be angry, but instead, as the dropship popped back into the holoimage, cruising away under an almost casual two gravites, she felt herself smiling. What an opponent that ship's crew could be with a proper platform under them...

The mirth would die quickly, though. "IR Flash! Near pirate point! Four large warships!

-----

Gunboat THS Snoqualmie Falls

The entire ship shook as a brace of white shark missiles found their port quarter. The status icons hovering over the left side of the holotable flashed demands for attention.

"So much for a clean getaway," Major Jennifer Fox grumbled. The point defense had handled the battlecruisers parting missile shots for the most part, but their luck couldn't last forever.

"Port quarter laser battery's out," Haylie, her executive officer, pointed out. Haylie was a sixth generation, and like many of them had taken to the style of not taking a surname, which made addressing her a little weird for some. Commander Haylie sounded infantile. Commander 6LN9832 was a bit creepy.

"That's the only bite they get," Major Fox said. They were well out of standard weapon range, and their velocity was shooting past the peak performance of a capital missile. No more chasers. She cocked her head as reports came in through her implants. "We've got floaters blown free, get a boat out." Personel sucked into space when the hull was hit. No chance for them to get survival equipment, which meant the boat had ten minutes to get to them. Gunboat variant Lees were some of the newest elements of the fleet, developed as a counter to the pocket warship craze of the Inner Sphere, and were staffed entirely with Galatea personel, little perks like vacuum resitance were part of the package.

Major Fox got the next report over her implants a split second before the data appeared on the table. Enemy fighters, twenty of them, rising up from the atmosphere.

"Light, quick stuff," Haylie mused. "Batus, Chaeronas, Baskirs." Interceptors pulled out of the air battle to cut them off.

"Emergency thrust." Major Fox ordered. "Lets see how much fuel we can get them to burn." If they were lucky the clanners were already low on fuel from fighting the Lyrans. Chasing down an already fast moving dropship would just make their job that much more of a mess. "Brenna," she said after mentally switching her comm implant to the channel used by their fighter squadron, "Drop down and thin them out."

"Understood," the squadron leader responded in her head. General Lee hadn't been stingy with his bodyguards. The squadron flying escort was composed of the finest pilots in the division flying the most advanced fighters the Hegemony could produce. The Traitor Spawn wouldn't know what hit them.

-----

White Aerie

"Impressive craft," Galaxy Commander Thastus mused as she watched the dropship's fighter escort slash through their own interceptors. The accuracy of their weapons fire was astounding, and the grace with which they maneuvered haunting. Each of the mystery fighters claimed a kill with their first pass, clearly focusing on the more heavily armed Batus over the lighter fighters. "With extraordinary pilots. With our weapons they would be the equal to the best of us."

"Perhaps," Star Commodore Chance Grimaldi said. With the ship safely maneuvered into a stable orbit and the immediate battle now well away from them, the Commander of the White Aerie had joined the Galaxy Commander in the Holotank. "But tactically sloppy. They split their forces." In the projection before them, the mystery fighters were burning at maximum thrust now to put themselves back on course to link up with their parent vessel, while the surviving Falcon Interceptors zoomed past undisturbed. "However agile they might be, those fighters are too big to keep up with our light craft. If they'd lingered with their dropship, they would have had more than one shot at our fighters."

Galaxy Commander Thastus smiled at the analysis. "Maybe they expected our interceptors to concentrate on their fighters," she said. "They sent their fighters as an informal batchall, expecting us to react like fresh spawned sibbies and let the true prize escape. I am insulted." She watched as their fighters ate up the distance. The dropship was actually still moving faster than they were. It'd built up considerable velocity already and was burning at four gravities to keep that advantage as long as possible. She didn't imagine their crew was enjoying the ride. Regardless, she sighed. "Regretfully I fear we will not be able to redress that grievance. The interceptors don't have the fuel to linger over the target." They'd pulled the fighters straight out of the ongoing air battle in the atmosphere without time to refuel, and this chase would burn still more, leaving them with enough to comfortably make a pass and return. With the losses they'd already taken, and with enemy reinforcements...

She tapped out some commands on her virtual controls and the image swung to a field of icons, still too far away for easy visual recognition. Over sixty drive flares, the vast majority dropships. Enough for two full regimental combat teams with additional support, at least so the computer projected. At first glance they seemed to be Lyran reinforcements, and yet... Four contacts dominated this fleet. Two remaining at the pirate point where the fleet had materialized, two at the forefront of the inbound swarm. The two at the jump point were most likely potemkins, given the unholy number of dropships they had released. The two leading the charge? Unknown. Large battleships at least, close to the size of a Mckenna, and doubtless more than a match for the White Aerie.

They'd come in at probably the closest jump point available to them, but they were still over twelve hours out from the planet.  That gave the Falcons time. Time to deal with the Lyrans and prepare for this second wave.

"Transmission from planetside" the Comm officer called out.

[Liam's Ghost]

Somewhere under the Cross Divide Mountains

General Robert Lee heard the holotank hum to life as two figures materialized before him. Male and female, each short with big heads and expressively large eyes. Just out of proportion enough to wander into the uncanny valley. Aerospace phenotype if his briefing material was accurate. He supposed it made sense.

"I assume you are my oposite number," he said, concentrating on the female. She matched the image in the briefing packet, the insignia matched. His Deep Thinkers had told him to expect her in the air fighting, though. Not directing things from the bridge of a WarShip. Another thing for the list. "Galaxy Commander Jane Thastus of Gamma Galaxy, Jade Falcon Clan?"

The female eyed him warily, her image flickering with occasional interference. "You have me at a disadvantage."

General Lee nodded. "General Robert Lee, commander of the 78th Royal Infantry Division, Terran Hegemony Armed Forces. I suspect that doesn't help."

The male with her seemed deeply offended, while the Galaxy Commander maintained her warry look. "An interesting claim to make. Perhaps we will discuss it another time. But I suspect you have more immediate concerns."

General Lee smiled. There'd been a lot of speculation of how the Clans would react to facing Hegemony troops. Nobody had expected casual dismissal. "To business then. I like that. The Terran Hegemony has placed this world under our protection, so your unconditional surrender would be my immediate priority."

Galaxy Commander Thastus laughed. "You are a brazen one, but you assume much. The Lyrans are all but beaten. And you, my commtechs tell me this signal is bouncing all over the planet to hide your location."

"And off the moon, I think," General Lee confirmed.

"You are gone to ground, hunted, your allies are routed, and your reinforcements are twelve hours away."

"We're gone to ground, hunting," General Lee corrected her. "You haven't yet finished off the Lyrans, and won't bring them to heel in time, and my reinforcements, an entire infantry division, are only twelve hours away." He flashed his best predatory smile. "Even if you secure the planet, which you won't, you'll have no time to enjoy it before your escape route is cut off, your flagship crashes into the sea a burning wreck, and my troops begin the process of hunting you to extinction. You can't hold Coventry and you know it."

"That is true," Thastus confirmed. "But our orders are to deny the Commonwealth access to this world's resources. Taking it for the clan is one way of achieving this, but simply destroying the factories would achieve the same goal."

Ooh, another twist. Another thing they'd not been told to expect. Their analysts had been insistent. The Clans don't seek the war, they seek the battle. Their emphasis on personal glory and honorable combat meant they didn't really have a mature strategic outlook. They took worlds, rushed in the direction of the greatest glory. They didn't think about long term victory. At least according to the analysts. General Lee knew any assessment built around that much contempt had to have its flaws. "Even if you can finish dislodging the Lyrans, your ground forces can't do enough damage to the industrial infrastructure to render it irrepairable. You should know that."

Galaxy Commander Thastus nodded, but it was the other officer that answered. "The White Aerie can, rather comfortably."

"At that range?" General Lee asked. "We're well aware how badly your ship is hurt. If you move it out of orbit and into range, it will shortly become the bombardment projectile."

"A not unprecedented maneuver," Galaxy Commander Thastus replied. "Though unnecessary at the moment. We don't need to be in range to bombard the planet. We only need to be in range to do so accurately. The White Aerie has more than enough firepower to make up the difference."

An ugly thought. Laymen tended to treat range as an absolute, but a volley of shells moving at escape velocity was still a volley of shells moving at escape velocity regardless of how far it travelled through space, and a planet made for a big target. "You'd be walking fire all over the continent failing to hit your target," General Lee said.

"That," Galaxy Commander Thastus replied, "would be your problem."

-----

The White Aerie

The surprise was clear on the face of the stocky man calling himself a General of the Terran Hegemony. "Holding the planet hostage, that's dirty pool." His smile returned. "I'm impressed."

Galaxy Commander Thastus kept her expression impassive. If her adversary felt any fear at the prospect, he didn't show it. "Surrender is no option," she said to the apparition. "If you are intent on trapping us here, you leave us only one means of completing our mission."

"Is this how you always bargain?" General Lee asked. "What are you hoping for?" He seemed honestly receptive, a good sign. Whatever these troops truly were, mercenaries, bandits, maybe RoTS troops flying a new banner, they took their commitment to this world seriously.

"We bid away our naval forces," Galaxy Commander Thastus said. "My warship and its fighters retire to our jump point. Your naval forces pledge to non-agression unless attacked. Your division is free to land without spaceborn interference, and the matter of Coventry is resolved on the ground." A landing uncontested by their most powerful asset annoyed some of her sensibilities, but the bargain would leave the door open for an honorable withdrawal, should this force be as formidable as it claimed.

"I take it this bid doesn't extend to your forces already on the ground?" General Lee said.

"It does not," Galaxy Commander Thastus replied. "My Galaxy will very eagerly contest your landing."

Their enemy seemed to be considering it for a moment. "And I can't convince you to withdraw, I assume."

"You may claim great strength," Thastus replied, "but you must prove it before you make demands of the Falcon." Somehow she figured her opponent had always known that would be the answer.

"Well," General Lee said, "If we are going to play nice, let's go all the way. No contested landing. Safcon I believe you call it. Further, you pull off the Lyrans, back to your dropzone. We all assemble at a nice, isolated corner of Dunnigan and have it out. Winner claims the world."

He was dangling the prize of honorable combat before them. Something to play to their traditionalism. Almost... old fashioned. A set piece to preserve resources for all involved. That told Thastus something. Ten years ago, twenty, it would have been extremely alluring. But that was before the rise of Malvina Hazen and the Golden Ordun. Now it would be inexcusable to give up a chance to destroy a great part of the enemy before the bulk of their forces arrived. Someone truly familiar with the clans would know that. "I see no reason to give you this concession," she said.

"Really?" General Lee replied. "I figured you'd be all for that sort of thing." He flashed another predatory grin. "Okay, how about this inducement. I actually have six warships in my fleet. If you agree, I'll call the last two off your jumpship fleet, while you still have jumpships left to save."

[Liam's Ghost]

Assault Boat Gamma 4
Zenith Jump Point

Though they'd been briefed in as much detail as the general alert had allowed, the sound of debries bouncing off the hull of their assault craft was Point Commander Anej's first real indication of the battle raging outside. Bounced into the Solahmas nearly ten years ago and assigned as security for a transport jumpship, he'd never expected to see real action again. Certainly not in this fleet, with so many "real" warriors protecting them. A battlecruiser, two Comitatus carrier jumpships, and a full star of pocket warships. Even with the Battlecruiser insystem and one Comitatus sent to investigate the nadir point, he knew that they had little to fear from the Lyrans. Did they even have a fleet anymore?

So the emergency scramble order was a surprise. Even so his point took it like a drill, suiting up without question while the briefing information was streamed directly to their armor. Two destroyers, Riga II class, numerous fighters inbound... If there was a moment of fear for any of his soldiers as the reports came in, none of them showed it. 

The Star Commodore's orders were simple. They were outgunned, their fighters outnumbered, but they had nearly a full cluster of marines in the fleet. While whatever ships that could would jump away, the Falcon would go for the throat.

"That was Gamma 5" the pilot offered helpfully. "Fire's thick, count on a rough ride. Half a minute to contact."

Anej paid no attention to the contraction. He did his best not to fixate on being trapped in a box with someone else responsible for his life or death. Or that his mothership had jumped out as soon as they were clear. He felt the ship begin to shudder as the pilot opened up with his onboard weaponry. Then the entire craft lurched violently to the left, threatening to rip Anej and half his point from their restraints into the other half.

"We have connection," the pilot announced. Magnetic grappling lines simplified the docking proceedure, at least for as long as they held. Moving quickly was essential. "Hauling in the catch."

"Point, detach restraints," Anej ordered. "Prepare to breach."

-----

THS Tranh Truk Ngo

"Annoying little son of a bitch," Captain Poliver pointed out as on the holotable a Jade Falcon Isengrim began another attack run, despite the atmosphere pouring out from the ragged gashes along its starboard hull. Two others, as well as an Aesir, had already fallen to their guns and those of their sister ship, the David Grieg, but the remainder continued to push, supported by a dwindling force of fighters.

"Damn effective though," Commander Rashid, his executive officer, mused. "Forces us to split our fire."

The falcons hadn't mounted what you might call a standard defense. Those jumpships able to had jumped away, probably scattering to other points along the proximity limit, but their defensive forces hadn't taken up station to protect the rest, they'd charged, followed by a cloud of assault boats and shuttles, enough for maybe two or three battalions of armored marines, a game changer if they got close enough. It put the Hegemony on the defensive, even given their superior firepower and numbers. Falcons were dying, dear god how they were dying, but they held initiative, and they were making the Hegemony forces bleed. Those pocket warships had already claimed three of their Pentagons as they'd tried to push past to the assault boats, and far too many of their pilots wouldn't be coming home.

He watched most of a squadron of his fighters drop in among a group of assault boats closing in on the Grieg. They claimed two craft in short order, but almost imediately after were set upon by a handful of falcon fighters. The Falcon were using lighter, second line craft, but they were much more maneuverable than the Hegemony's own Rusalkas and Dybbuks. It allowed them to dictate the engagement, and quickly respond to any Hegemony push against their charges. Not cheeply though. Poliver watched two Falcon icons blink out in the brief exchange of fire. Every time they traded shots, it went against the falcons, and even despite their best efforts, very few assault boats were getting past the Hegemony fighter screen, fewer still were making it past the fire from the Ngo and Grieg.

But not none. "Boarders on the starboard hull," the communication officer reported with incongruous calm. "Deck Seventeen, compartment four."

That just would not do. Captain Poliver toggled his comms. "All marines, you heard the man. Let's show the Falcons what Ole Spike does to unwanted guests."

-----

Point Commander Anej

Anej was first through the breach, once the cooridor's atmosphere finished venting. He swept left, scanning the pitch blackness with his IR sensors, looking for hostiles, as the rest of his armored point filed in with practiced precision.

In the dead silence, the first thing he heard was a brief click of the comm system, before he felt point two fall against the back of his suit.

"Hostile!" point three called out. Anej swung his suit around and was horrified by what he saw.

Point two was down, a vibro-axe, still glowing white, embedded in his view port. Point three was already firing on the attacker, spraying her with a hail of flechetts from his autorifle. It was the attacker that was horrifying however. Small framed, blond, probably pretty before Point three turned her features into hamburger. And without an environment suit. All she wore was a skintight bodysuit, without so much as a helmet or respirator despite being in hard vacuum. And she was still moving, using the momentum of Point three's fire to help push her towards a bend in the cooridor, even as she left a floating trail of blood and tissue in her wake.

"By Turkina," Point four uttered. "What IS she?"

"Dead," Anej responded. "She just doesn't know it yet." Implants, he figured, settling his mind down. Rare, but not unprecedented. He'd never heard of suitless vacuum resistance, but that was something for the scientists to ponder. "Three, Four, pursue. Five, what is the status on Two?"

"Alive, but unconscious. Likely crippled." Point Five reported as Three and Four sent themselves down the cooridor after their attacker.

Anej nodded, a useless guesture in elemental armor. "As good as dead unless we succeed in taking this ship." Prospects on that weren't good. Anej didn't know how many other points had made it aboard, but he suspected not very many. If capture was unfeasible, the backup plan was to cause as much damage as possible before dying. For that, they'd brought a particularly energetic scuttling charge, but it'd have to placed carefully to take out a ship of this size.

Anej glanced at an icon to call up an overlay of the ship's expected deck plan. Their ride hadn't placed them particularly well for capture. Well away to any vital points of control. But it wasn't bad for demolition. They weren't terribly far from the magazines for the starboard batteries.

"Gamma 4, are you still there?" Anej called out. "Did anybody else make it?" He got no response.

"Battlesuits!" Point Three called out from around the corner. "Point strength!" This was followed by Point Four's agonizing death scream.

That did it. "Fall back," Anej ordered. "We're switching to secondary objectives." He turned his attention back to the deckplan and began thinking out a route to the magazines.

-----

Marine Squad 1

The surviving elemental was spraying pulse laser fire as it pulled back around the corner, barely evading Lieutenant Kate 6HL3671's fire as it bathed the corridor in raw plasma. Tech crews were going to have a fit after this was over. She motioned for the rest of her Tengu squad to follow as she set off after the fleeing suit. "How's Julie?" she called out over the marine comm channel.

"Back in air and getting trached," came the response from the medics stationed a compartment back. "Gonna need new eyes and a face, and a jaw, and most of her throat, but between the skinsuit and everything they stuck in you ladies, she'll be fine."

"Acknowledged," Kate replied. She'd save the lecture about not engaging a full squad of suits virtually naked with an axe for later. The ship's security system showed the fleeing elemental meeting up with two more suits at their entry point. The three suits weren't carrying their traditional missile packs, not really a surprise in such close quarters. In their place was what looked like an external zero-g maneuver pack. Not an integrated system, an add on. Went with the intel that these wouldn't be front line troops. One suit, which judging by the gestures it was making was probably the squad leader, carried a second object, bulky, heavy looking. "Pronto," Kate called out, "'zat what I think it is?"

It took a moment for Gina "Pronto" Prontucci, the Ngo's resident demolition expert, to respond as she tapped into the security feed. "Sure looks like it," the trooper responded from her station with Squad 4. "Probably a five dec, based on the case and size. Cripple a jumpship, not much of a threat to us unless they put it somewhere vital."

"Like the starboard magazine," Kate concluded. Most laymen didn't realize just how safe the munitions used by a naval class autocannon were. The Neocordite propellant, despite the name, was essentially inert outside the intense energy and pressure of the reaction chamber at the breach of each gun, and the shells themselves relied on an extremely stable form of explosive able to sustain the stupendous energies of being fired without blowing up in the barrel. And they didn't even use that much of it, relying primarily on pure kinetic energy for much of their killing power. What that all meant was that you needed a lot of energy to get a shell to cook off, and you needed a lot of shells cooking off for six hundred thousand tons of warship to care.

A five decaton nuclear demolition charge stuffed in the magazine solved both problems.

"All right," Kate said. "Assume that's their target. Squad Two, you get in front of them. Three, support two. Four, pick a good point to flank. We'll roll them up from behind. Don't get cocky. Don't get fancy. Don't give a centimeter.

"Now let's go kill some people."

-----

Point Commander Anej

Their first obstacle they came across following their brief encounter was a security bulkhead that blocked the corridor, sealed by a thick emergency door. Other passages to their side and rear held similar bulkheads meant to seal the compartment in the event of a breach, though these had been left enticingly and obviously open, leaving Anej to wonder just how stupid their opponents thought they were.

Breaching the door would be tricky. The pulse lasers their suits were equipped with lacked the raw power of the standard lasers used on other suits. They were supposed to make up for that with rate of fire, but against a barrier this thick, they'd spend a lot of time and precious weapon power cutting through. Time enough to get boxed in.

"Point commander," Point Five called out. "If I may?" The Elemental stepped forward. He'd stripped the lower left arm and manipulator off his suit, trusting the harjel to seal the rest against the vacuum of the vented compartment. In his almost bare hand he held the vibroaxe that had been used to dispatch Point Two and began hammering at the door. It would be faster than using their lasers, but it would still take time.

"Three," Anej ordered. "Keep watch on our rear." Anej himself moved to cover the side corridor.

There was a sudden thud behind him, and Anej felt himself get struck by a wall of air as the emergency door suddenly snapped open. As Anej fought to stay standing against the brief onslaught of the atmosphere rushing out of the neighboring corridor, Point Three screamed in agony as he was bisected by a tight group of four heavy laser beams.

Anej turned around to see Point Four on the deck, his bare arm apparently smashed by the door when it had swung open, but his weapon still up and sending a steady stream of pulses back through the door at their attackers. Just beyond it, Anej could see what only seemed like indistinct masses melded with the very walls of the ship.

On pure instinct he ducked down the side corridor as another volley of laser fire scoured the bulkheads around him and ended his last comrade's cries. There was no time for recrimination or remorse, instead he concentrated on putting some distance between himself and the enemy, buying himself some time, another chance to do at least some damage. 

As he ran he fumbled with the demolition charge fastened to his back. The thing was supposed to have been designed to interface easily with the suit, even when dealing with the ungainly claw it had for a manipulator, but on the move like this, getting a grip was impossible.

And he wouldn't get another chance as he rounded the corner and found himself face to face with more hostile armor. His reflexes were quick, his weapon was coming up to fire even before he realized he was doing it, but they were somehow faster, bathing his suit with raw plasma and filling the tiny remainder of his life with agony. In his last moments he felt his claw finally grasp the detonation control and hit the trigger, but nothing happened.

----

Marine Squad 1

"One three, one four, good shots," Kate said as they moved in to examine the burned out husk of their opponent. Squad four had caught him running right towards them and had already covered him with a decidedly lethal amount of plasma fire by the time Kate's own squad had come in from behind. But still, he'd been reaching for something on his back. Lances from her squadmates  plasma cannons had turned the demolition charge he carried into nothing but slag, just to be sure.

"Command deck, this is Marine lead," she reported. "All boarders eliminated. You are free to seal and repressurize the compartment."

"Understood," the command deck replied. "Damage control teams are inbound. Be advised that we have received orders to stand down and cease combat operations, and so have the budgies."

"Acknowleged," Kate said. "Was that order received before or after we killed them all?"

"The captain's exact words are, and I quote: Don't sweat the details."

[Liam's Ghost]

Seventeenth Arcturan Command Lance
Planetside, Outside Port St. William

General Ross and the battered members of her command lance hadn't lingered long at the old command post once the dust had settled. Just long enough for the support personnel to get packed up and moving. It had been slow going, Davies' Alliance had a frozen hip actuator that slowed the column to a painful crawl, and she knew she should have ordered him to abandon the mech, but somehow she knew she'd need the extra firepower.

She also knew that even ditching the Alliance wouldn't get them out of this mess. Their lines were broken, their forces split in two, and while the Jade Falcons drove the bulk of her troops east, she was caught with the militia in a rapidly tightening noose on the outskirts of the capital.

"Charlie Company, we have you in sight," she called out as her lance approached the position of a shot up company of militia armor. Schildkrötes were dug in, hull down in a drainage canal bisecting Route 19, a field of demolished houses and a few piles of burning wreckage before them. Artillery whistled by overhead with regularity, shelling Jade Falcon positions to the south.

"Happy to see you, lead," an officer with a haggard voice replied. "Last push was rough. Mostly Armor, Oros. Didn't even know the Falcons used those. Some toads, one mech. Weird, some kinda Loki."

"Davies, keep to the rear," Ross ordered. The crippled mech wouldn't be able to maneuver effectively in a fight, and its armor was more wishful thinking at this point. Hopefully, from the back Davies could still offer support fire while not drawing too much attention. "Where do you need us, Charlie?"

"I've got defensive positions for your infantry and the Gottie," the officer said. "For you, General, I'm thinking somewhere well out of the line of fire so you can concentrate on figuring a way out of this."

"If that option was available, I'd take it," Ross said. "The plan is we hold until our troops break through to us or reinforcements arrive. Me sitting in a corner shouting at people is not going to make either of those things happen faster."

"So, do you have a place for me?"

----

Composite Trinary, 1st Falcon Velites

"The enemy force is receiving reinforcements," his scouts, half a point of light infantry, reported via radio. "We count three battlemechs, two Battlemasters of varying makes, one Gotterdamerung, with battle armor support numbering possibly four points. The lead battlemaster appears to wear the markings of General Francine Ross of the Arcturan Guard. Sending still images."

The images materialized into Star Captain Gunther's field of view and he began mentally paging through them. His scouts seemed to be exactly right, even through the battering the machine had clearly taken, the identifiers were unmistakable.

It seemed Star Captain Gillian had failed her task, how fortunate for him. He'd had little expectation for true glory on this campaign. He'd earned his rank, but for a command all the Clan had to offer was a binary of vehicles, mostly freeborns, spheroid abtakha, and other gutter scrapping thrown together to augment the cluster's strength. To that they'd attached his mech and a few points of elementals. The force was "provisional" but Gunther could not help but see it as a calculated insult, barely more than a solahma formation.

Gunther banished the images with a thought and turned his attention to his unit. His trinary had already tried to push the militia in front of them out of their positions once, but they'd been repulsed with light losses. Now the task would be even harder. As he brought his Pale Horse into a slow walk and began charging the auxiliary capacitors of his particle cannons, he found himself feeling a building excitement.

"All units, form up," he ordered. "We advance!"

-----

Charlie Company

"Here they come!" the commander of one of the Schildkrötes announced. "Hostiles inbound, short battalion strength."

General Ross could see them herself, nearly twenty heavy tanks brazenly rolling across an open plain without a care, led by a single battlemech that, well... weird looking Loki sounded about right.

"Fire support group," she called into her communicator. "We have enemy armor in the open south of sector 339. Do you have guns to spare?"

"That you General?" came the response. "I can free up a lance of Avatars for you, but they're at maximum range and we are getting pushed away from your position. They can only get a few shots off before we're forced out of reach."

"Do it!" Ross ordered. "Load cluster and give me every shot you can five hundred meters south of my position, wide pattern, rolling up to two hundred." Four launchers with maybe only a few shots each wouldn't cover much ground, but it was better than nothing.

"Acknowleged General, Your package is on the way."

"Charlie," she contacted next. "You concentrate on the vehicles, we take the mech?"

"Confirmed, General," the commander of Charlie company acknowledged. "That thing just ignores our cluster rounds anyway. We'll try to keep the Oros from getting into oh shit range."

"Scheer, you heard him. Davies, support the tanks where you can."

"I don't like the look of that thing, boss" Scheer replied. "It doesn't move natural."

At a distance of just over six hundred meters from their line, the enemy mech slid to a casual stop and loosed two ropes of lighting into one of their tanks, blasting straight through the turret with unnerving ease and accuracy.

"No," she said as she moved a few steps forward and fired her own PPC back at the enemy. "He moves too natural."

-----

Star Captain Gunther

"Ah," Gunther said as he felt the PPC strike caress his mech's armored skin. "I have your attention, do I General? Good."

He advanced at the upper end of his mech's walking speed, content to take his time while his PPC capacitors recharged. There had always been joy in combat, and more tacticle pleasure came after he had accepted his enhanced imaging implants, but this Pale Horse, a prototype gifted to the Clan by their Hells Horse allies, was uniquely exhilerating. The pure interface he felt between man and machine was like nothing he'd experienced before, only made more pronounced by the thrill of being able to use it to crush a worthy opponent.

His superiors did not share his enthusiasm for the Horses' gift. They found the mech unsettling, something close to a giant protomech that blurred the lines of acceptable practices. That (and the fact that Gunther had the necessary implants) was one of the few reasons they'd let him trial for the right to pilot it.

General Ross did not advance beyond her own line, which had begun opening up on his supporting tank units with cluster munitions and light PPC fire. Pulse lasers from his own vehicles flashed in response, but if he was being honest with himself, he didn't really care. He had the opponent he wanted right in front of him.

Another PPC bolt slashed into his mech as his own cannons cycled back to green. He returned the favor with two fully charged blasts which coincidentally met to sever the Battlemaster's left arm and almost sent the whole mech toppling over.

"It is unsportsmanlike to continue to spar at this range," he said to himself, bringing his mech up to a dead run. As he rushed forward he felt the concussion of artillery missiles landing among the vehicles behind him. A much larger secondary explosion suggested one of those vehicles had just been destroyed. No matter.

-----

Charlie Company

"That is definitely a man who knows what he wants, boss" Scheer said as his own Gotterdamerung spat lighting at the fast approaching mech. Contrary to order, Davies' Alliance had likewise limped up to the line, sending missiles and streams of autocannon shells towards the enemy.

"At least he's stupid about it," General Ross acknowledged as she fired her PPC as fast as it could recycle. If the clanner had simply held the range, he could have probably taken them out one by one with those damn accurate PPCs of his. "Davies!" she shouted. "What did I tell you?"

"He's gunning for you, boss," Davies said. "Natha... whatever, that unswerving sword nonsense. He hasn't even noticed us."

"That is not what that means!" Ross protested as another PPC beam crashed into her mech, smashing through her already weakened leg armor. Still, what Davies said seemed to have merit. He hadn't taken a shot at anybody else since the first exchange.

She tried to hobble her wounded battlemech to a better position as she triggered her medium lasers. They were only at the very edge of effective range, so it didn't accomplish much yet except drive up her heat debt even more. Scheer was moving further down the line while firing his own weapons, clearly hoping to set up a crossfire. Davies' Alliance stood unmoving behind the burning wreck of one of their own tanks to maximise his accuracy.

The rest of their line was holding at least. There were four Oros disabled on the field (though still firing), two others definite kills. Only two of their own tanks had been lost.

General Ross was actually thinking they could win this when another PPC blast struck her mech in its side and found the missile magazine. While the neural feedback from the explosion was agonizing, it was the force of her mech spinning around and slamming into the ground that finally pushed her senses past their breaking point. She was unconscious before mech had completely come to rest.

----

Star Captain Gunther

Gunther felt something like ecstacy at seeing the explosion and fall of General Ross' mech. Victory was his, and his alone! Now he need only finish securing it.

"Star Captain Gunther!" a voice called out to him in anger just as he was lining up his weapons on another of the enemy's battlemechs. Gunther suddenly realized the message icon blinking at the edge of his field of view.

"Galaxy Commander," he acknowleged, only a little shamed, and still focused on the enemy in front of him. "I apologize, as I am in the midst of battle."

"And you will withdraw from that battle," Galaxy Commander Thastus ordered. "I have ordered all units to cease offensive operations and pull back to our landing zones. Yours is the only force that has failed to acknowlege." 

Gunther could not believe it. How could she? Did she even understand what she was saying? "OvKhan, the enemy commander is right before me, her battlemech is down. You cannot..."

"You will obey my orders, Star Captain," Galaxy Commander Thastus said with undeniable finality. "Or I will leave you for the Lyrans to kill and throw your giftake into the sea."

He wanted to scream. He had to scream.

"Understood."

-----

Charlie Company

General Ross opened her eyes to the sight of a suit of power armor knocking on her cockpit glass, trying to get her attention. Her first thought was to panic, but she quickly realised it was one of her own troopers.

As she shook the cobwebs from her mind, the indistinct noise in the background likewise resolved into frantic calls over the radio set.

It took her a moment to find the communications toggle in her fuzzy state. "I'm here," she said. "Where do we stand?" She wasn't hearing any gunfire around her, which she hoped was a good sign.

"They backed off," It was the commander of Charlie company speaking. "Word from on high is that they're pulling back on all fronts. Colonel Morales has been trying to get ahold of you, says someone named General Lee has worked out a temporary cease fire."

Lee? She had no idea how he could have pulled that off, or what leverage he could have used. "******," Ross said, "That means I'm going to have to thank him."

[Liam's Ghost]

And that's chapter 11. Thank you for your time.

[worktroll]

They were coming from practically all sides. Faster suits, Afreets and... some sort of winged Salamanders...