HECTOR

CHAPTER ONE

Alpha Regiment Landing Zone

Harkspur Mountains, Hesperus II

Lyran Commonwealth

6 June 3019

The Harkspurs were magnificent mountains. Lucas Kenner stood near the foot of his BattleMech and looked out at the horizon, both near and far, while the rest of his company finished debarking. Chieftain had blasted the landscape bare of what little vegetation grew nearby with its mighty fusion drive. Kenner kicked absently at a loose stone with his boot, his attention on the sharp jags and spurs of the mountain range. Directly in front of him was a sharp face, broken by the ravine pass south of them that the regiment’s scouts had gone out through. The face rose at least a full kilometer, towering over him. It went on as far as he could see, a seeming shield wall against the invaders. The wall’s sheer presence awed him in a way that no BattleMech or DropShip ever had.

A scrape of boot on stone focused his attention closer at hand. A breeze was blowing from behind him, gentle winds busy liberating the heat Chieftain’s drive had baked into the ground. Hesperus was not a cool world, but the DropShip’s motors channeled the heat of a star. Local weather in the canyon would be a bit unpredictable for a few more hours.

The breeze also carried the scorched-earth scent of burnt dirt and the telltales of ’Mech lubricant and DropShip exhaust. Kenner clenched his jaw as the wind wrapped a separate tendril around his face and caressed his nose with her. Roses and lavender, with the sweet undercurrent of clean sweat. He drew in a shuddering breath, held it, and blew it out as he turned.

“Kaley,” he said. “You already said it.”

Kaley Cross stood with her arms crossed in front of her, looking alternately at his eyes and his feet. Her body language said scared but resolute. Kenner was an expert in body language. He’d used its hints all his life, ever since he learned its secrets in the crèche. He saw the way she squeezed her fingers against each other without knowing she was doing it and heard tension. Her eye contact was spotty, which was submissive… but he knew she wasn’t a submissive woman—he knew it well—and so he saw it for what it was: pity. His jaw tightened anew at the realization, testosterone pounding his blood against his veins, fueling the fight and flight response that Kenner almost always answered with fight. His whole body tensed, and he looked at her posture again. He looked, and saw the determined set of her back and shoulders.

I did it again, he thought, and felt a familiar piece of himself die anew.

“I’m sorry, Luke,” Kaley said.

“Don’t be,” Kenner said. His voice was stiff. So were his arms and his shoulders and his back. “All good things, right?”

“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t treat this like something casual.”

“What else was it, if it’s over?”

Kaley’s eyes flashed and her chin snapped up. “You son of a—”

A rumble rolled out of the ravine exit to the lakebed, a deep, tremulous rumble that Kenner knew well and felt in his diaphragm. He turned his head and looked, but of course there was nothing to see, just the long shield wall of the mountain. No smoke, no flash of fire, no clouds in the sky. A civilian would have thought it was thunder and commented on the lack of noticeable weather.

Kenner was a MechWarrior. He knew the sound.

“The Colonel—” Kaley started, but Kenner cut her off.

“The Colonel gave me a company,” Kenner said. “Able First.”

“Gamble’s Company?”

“Gamble’s dead,” Kenner said. “He bought his farm on Lamon.”

Kaley stared at him. He was surprised she hadn’t heard, but then realized that she’d probably been busy on the transit from Lamon. The Widows and the Zetas had taken a decent enough pounding, he knew, and technicians of Kaley’s class were always in demand after a good fight. They’d spent their off-duty time on Chieftain doing other things than talking about duty assignments, and then no talking at all for the last week.

“So now it’s Kenner’s Company?” she finally asked.

“It’s Able First,” he said shortly. “I’m not Gamble.”

“It’s your company, Luke,” she said. “Don’t let your stupid pride ruin this too.”

Kenner felt the spark light in his chest again, the reflex—the fight. Part of his mind raged at him for letting it out, screamed and railed and pointed at it and damned him for letting the very thing that drove Kaley and all the others away have its say again. He opened his mouth, but the horn high on Chieftain’s hull spun up and howled and pounded sound off the shield wall, and all he could do was smile coldly at Kaley. He didn’t move.

A moment passed, and then two, where she held his eyes, and he watched the emotions play across her face. She nibbled on her lower lip for half an instant, and Kenner felt his heart tremble, but then that lower lip disappeared beneath the hard tension of a frown, and he knew she was gone from his world.

And then she turned and was.

He watched her walk away for perhaps ten steps, his eyes tracing the familiar curves of her body beneath the blue jumpsuit, seeing the ponytail sway with her shoulders as she walked, catching the first sob trembling at her shoulders. He watched all that, feeling like less than the cracked earth beneath his boots. And then duty took hold. He spun and started climbing.

The Harkspur Mountains were great and imposing, and made Kenner feel small in his little packet of reality called Lucas Kenner. He looked to the side and saw the familiar sleek bulk of Chieftain. Her turrets were unmasking and pivoting on their tracks, the ’Mech bay doors scrolling closed. Chieftain had always made him feel both small and proud, small because of its sheer mass, and proud that he was part of a race that could design and build and fly something so massive and complex as an Overlord-class DropShip.

He paused just above his BattleMech’s knee and looked down at the insignia painted there, a black wolf’s head on a red circle. The howling wolf the Colonel had brought to the insignia, the comforting lethality of Wolf’s Dragoons. That mark, and the machine that bore it, made Lucas Kenner feel less small, but no less proud.

It made him feel alive.

By the time he made it into the Marauder II’s cockpit and got himself strapped in and his neurohelmet settled on its shoulder supports, the rest of his company had gathered around him. His two lances, Angel Dumphries’ Heavy Lance and Austin Lee Jennings’ Attack Lance, had the patrol around Chieftain. Foster and the other members of his Command Lance had been racked on Chieftain, waiting their turn in the rotation.

“Able First,” Kenner reported, as soon as his ’Mech was ready.

“Able First, Able Actual,” a strong voice replied. Kenner sat a little straighter in his command console. If Major Yukinov himself was doing the talking, things had to be more complicated than he expected. The Dragoons had only been down for ten hours. The sound of the battalion commander doing combat controlling was not comforting.

“Go ahead, Major,” Kenner said.

“The scouts have found the Lyrans, Captain,” Yukinov said. “We didn’t get anything beyond a contact report before they stopped broadcasting, so all we know if they hit something heavy enough to take them down fast.” The major paused. “With Lyrans, that’s probably heavies and assaults.”

Kenner nodded. The Lyran Commonwealth was well-known for its predilection for the heaviest BattleMechs and vehicles available, and many of its regiments were comprised almost entirely of heavy and assault class ’Mechs. Many of those machines were manufactured here on Hesperus inside the Dragoons’ target, the famous factories of Defiance Industries. There had been briefing after briefing during the transit about the history and impregnability of the factories nestled inside the Myoo Mountains.

“Orders?” Kenner asked. The history lesson could wait. Dragoons were dying.

“Move to contact, Captain,” Yukinov said.

“And when contact is established?”

“This isn’t a social call, Captain,” Yukinov said. “You’ve got an assault company. Assault.” The transmission squeaked an instant’s background noise and then cut off, closed down by Yukinov.

“Simple enough,” Kenner muttered. He started his Marauder into motion and pointed its nose at the ravine. “Form on me,” he called on the company frequency, and then dialed for the lance commander’s channel.

“What’s the word, sir?” Lieutenant Austin Lee Jennings asked. The Attack Lance commander had been coldly formal ever since Kenner had taken command, two days before landing. Kenner hadn’t figured out yet if the man was jealous—he’d seen Jennings’ service jacket; the man was far too junior for a line company—or if he just resented a new CO so close to a major operation.

“Scouts are down,” Kenner said. “We’re going to see what happened.”

“What happened is this is the Lyrans’ backyard,” Lieutenant Angel Dumphries snapped. “Of course they know the terrain and the routes through the mountains.” Dumphries drove an Atlas, 100 tons of fearsome assault ’Mech, despite the fact that she barely stood a meter and a half and probably weight fifty kilos wet. She was angry—always—and being passed over for Gamble’s slot hadn’t helped her any. Kenner couldn’t help her with her anger over the decision to place him in command of Able First.

He didn’t understand it himself.

“We move forward until we find the scouts coming back,” Kenner said, “or else we move forward until we find the Lyrans. Angel, I want you to lead. Austin, you follow in the center of the column. I’ll keep my lance in the rear.”

“Unity!” Dumphries snorted.

“I want our heaviest armor on the ends of the column,” Kenner said. In a rank-conscious outfit he could have her up on charges. In the Dragoons, he wasn’t going to say a word. Dragoon officers led and the rest followed, or else they didn’t. “If we’re in contact with the Lyran line regiments already, it’ll be in ambush. So Angel and her boys can take the front, and I’ll keep mine in the back.”

“Florence isn’t a boy,” Dumphries said.

“I meant the ’Mechs,” Kenner said. “Now move.”

“And when we trip this ambush?” Jennings said. “What then?”

“Then we stick it in and break it off,” Kenner said coldly. “We’re Dragoons. It’s time these money-grubbers learned what it means to face Dragoons.” He was parroting a mess-hall speech he’d heard the Zeta colonel, big Sim Pollock, give six days earlier at the jump point, but he didn’t care.

The company moved into formation, each lance in a ninety-meter diamond, with Dumphries in the lead and Jennings following. Kenner moved his Marauder II into the lead position of his lance’s diamond and the dialed his Command Lance frequency.

“Ariana,” he said, “take the rear, please.”

Foster’s big Atlas slowed and let Barrows’ Awesome pass her by. “Big ’Mech in the back to scare off the camp followers?” she asked.

“Something like that,” Kenner said. “Keep your eyes open.”

“How’d the L-T’s take it?” she asked. A nugget of information scrolled past Kenner’s eyes on his heads-up display. She’d switched to a discrete channel, just the two of them.

“They’re good officers,” Kenner said.

“So they hate you.”

“You hate me,” he snapped.

“Yeah, but you’re my lance leader. You’re their company commander. They must really hate you.” The joking in her voice as clear despite sixty meters of distance and the heavy encryption of Dragoon battle frequencies. Ariana Foster had been his lance second since 3016 in Charlie Battalion, and he trusted her more than most other Dragoons.

“You hate me because I’m cute,” he said. There was no snappy comeback.

“I’m sorry about Kaley, Luke,” she said after a moment.

Kenner’s mind closed down to the two-meter reality of his cockpit. “Not now,” he said.

“I know you wanted it to work,” she said.

“Later!”

“Sometimes—”

“Unity, Ari!” he shouted. “Shut your malfing mouth!”

There was a click as the Atlas’ pilot closed the channel. Kenner snarled inside his neurohelmet and squeezed his controls. He stared out of his cockpit canopy, watching the backs of the lance in front of him disappear around a bend in the ravine. The Marauder II had a slow, rocking gait, and he lost himself in the comfortable motion for a bit while his mind kept watch on his sensors and his heart sewed some fresh stitches on old wounds.

“Contact!” a voice cried. Kenner snapped into focus and searched his HUD. Nothing. He turned to the feed from the rest of his company, the feed displayed on his secondary tactical screen. “’Mechs, nine o’clock and closing.”

Red icons appeared to the left of the point lance. Dumphries. The ravine had narrowed, barely a hundred meters wide at its narrowest and two hundred at its widest, with steep walls of about twenty meters height. Kenner swore and looked at the rest of his dispositions.

“ID contact!” he called.

“Lyrans!” came the reply.

“Unity, Ghanjia,” Dumphries snarled. Her anger carried quite well through the static of low-level ECM jamming. Even if Kenner’s mind hadn’t been ready to fill in the missing emotion he’d have heard it. “They’re all Lyrans. Which ones?”

“Sixth Lyran Guards,” came the prompt reply. “One lance, heavy spread.”

Kenner checked his sensors, saw nothing, and dialed his communications systems. “Able First to regiment,” he called. “Contact enemy ’Mechs, Sixth Lyran Guards, these coordinates.” A touch slugged his current position to the transmission. “Engaging.”

“Watch for flankers!” Jennings called. His lance was still in the middle, ready to support in either direction.

“Watch our six!” Kenner ordered. He was already doing that, expecting the frontal attack to be a feint while the real weight of the assault fell behind them, trying to cut off the Dragoons’ escape. That’s what he’d have done, were the positions reversed. He tapped a quick series of preset order transmissions to his lance and moved the Marauder II forward, anxious to get a look at his enemy.

Janos Marik, lord of the Free Worlds League and holder of the Dragoons’ contract, had sent them to Hesperus II in an attempt to cow the Lyrans into quiet along the battered Marik border. No enemy had ever damaged the Defiance Industries complex in combat. Simple entropy had done more damage to the once-great Terran Hegemony facilities than enemy action ever had. The Dragoons had fought their way across the lower half of the Lyran Commonwealth to get here, despite all that, this was Kenner’s first fight of the campaign. His first fight in command of a company of Dragoons. His first combat on famed Hesperus II.

He didn’t want to miss it.

Half a minute’s travel brought him to the Attack Lance’s position. Jennings had arrayed his lance facing out, slowly rotating around a small rock outcropping for cover from unseen attackers. At the sight of his Marauder II Lieutenant Jennings brought his smaller Marauder out of rotation and stopped it before the company commander’s ’Mech.

“Sir,” he said. “No contacts in my area of operations.”

Kenner snarled. “Get back to your troops, Jennings,” he said. “And don’t ever paint me as a target again.” He stalked the Marauder II around the lance position, already swearing at himself. Sure, that jackass bringing his ’Mech out to meet you is about as amateur as saluting an officer in a combat zone, but it’s not like anyone with half a neuron wouldn’t figure one ’Mech moving toward combat instead of away from it might make a good target.

As if summoned by his thoughts, a brace of autocannon and long-range missile fire laced the canyon wall barely fifteen meters from the Marauder II’s carapace. Kenner staggered the throttle, chopping the already-slow ’Mech’s speed, and more fire tore into the soil where he would have been standing had he not slowed down. He smiled savagely and looked into his HUD, searching.

A big Lyran Zeus stood on an outcropping above him, with the fat-bodied shape of a Dragon standing nearby. Kenner nearly laughed at the incongruity of seeing the two flagship BattleMechs of two warring nations standing side by side but held it in. Someone took that ’Mech away from a Drac, he thought. Never an easy thing.

“Watch for leakers!” Dumphries said. “A Zeus and a Dragon.”

“Found ‘em,” Kenner said. Then he twisted the Marauder II on its narrow waist and brought the ’Mech’s bulky forearms into line. Sparks flickered as the capacitors dumped energy and ions into the firing matrix and each Hellstar PPC vomited a gout of charged particles at the Zeus, both bolts taking the Lyran assault ’Mech over the heart. Heat washed through Kenner’s already-warm cockpit, a raw dry heat that parched his lips and evaporated the sweat from his forearms. The Zeus staggered but held its ground. Kenner triggered the heavy Magna laser mounted in a restricted turret on his upper hull, but the ruby lance flickered away into the sky behind the Zeus. The heat spiked again, making Kenner gasp through cracked lips.

“Captain?” Foster called.

“Stay where you are,” he rasped. “Watch the six!”

“Unity, Luke,” Ariana said.

“Follow my orders!” he cried. Already the Marauder II’s prodigious number of heat sinks was working, drawing the waste heat out of the BattleMech (and the cockpit). Kenner turned the ’Mech to an oblique angle of approach and watched his recharge indicators. The Vlar 300 fusion engine groaned and howled as it fed power to the weapons and heat sinks, but Kenner wasn’t listening.

The Zeus started moving, in the same direction as the Dragoons’ line of march. Its course would take it back past Dumphries and her lance, but with the four ’Mechs of Jennings’ lance pounding up behind him, Kenner was carrying better than two to one odds. Pulling back was the smart thing to do. No ambusher would waste precious ’Mechs when he could strike and fade away, and the ravine walls would keep most of the Dragoon ’Mechs stuck in the narrow lane, unable to pursue.

Most of the Dragoon ’Mechs.

Kenner slammed his feet down against the foot pedals. Massive plasma jets roared to life and lifted all 100 tons of the Marauder II from Hesperus’ embrace and carried it up to alight on the ridge a little under a hundred meters behind the fleeing Lyran ’Mechs. Kenner paused, letting the Marauder’s Dalban targeting system sweep and process, and then started after the two ’Mechs. The Dragon had already spun to face him, putting its heaver frontal armor toward the threat. The Zeus accelerated, trying to flee out of the Dragoon’s firing range before his thinner rear armor could be breached.

Kenner ignored the Dragon. The Hellstars blazed again, both shots blasting great glowing rents in the Zeus’ back. The eighty-ton ’Mech staggered and collapsed on its face, overbalanced by the run and the furious power of the PPC strikes. Kenner’s follow-on laser shot missed high again, tracing a glowing weal across a rock face a half-kilometer distant. He snarled into his neurohelmet and stalked the Marauder forward, trying to close the distance. There was roaring behind him and he checked his 360 degree vision strip. The angular shape of Kerri Tennler’s Grasshopper touched down sixty meters behind him, lasers flashing.

“More ’Mechs!” Foster reported. “Another lance, heavies.”

“You got them?” he asked.

“Hush,” she said, and cut the connection.

Kenner chuckled and checked his readouts. The Marauder II had been designed nine years earlier to correct a few of the feared Marauder’s flaws… the most serious of which had been lack of armor and heat dissipation. The Marauder II, aside from being a full twenty-five tons heavier, was more heavily armored and carried enough heat sinks to keep up an insane rate of fire. Kenner let his face climb into a grin as he though about that. Rate of fire, he thought. He fired again.

The Zeus managed to get to one knee before the brace of PPCs took it in the back again, this time coring through the armor to smash the ferro-titanium bones of the ’Mech. A blossom on his thermal readout announced the destruction of part of the Zeus’ fusion engine shielding, and Kenner triumphantly triggered his large laser. This time the shot didn’t miss, instead stabbing deep into the ravaged cavity in the Zeus’ back. A series of small explosions erupted and quickly cascaded into a hellish torrent that threw the eighty-ton ’Mech back onto its face before it disappeared in the ruckus of a runaway ammunition explosion. Kenner shouted in victory, riding out the Dragon’s fire, trusting the Marauder II’s heavy armor to hold against the autocannon and missiles. Tennler leapt past him, charging hard, lasers flashing, melting armor from the Snake machine’s arms and legs.

“Zeus down,” he said.

“Another one here,” Dumphries reported. “Also a Crusader and I think what used to be an Orion. It’s all little pieces now.”

The Dragon abandoned its shooting and spun and charged away in full retreat. Tennler kept up her pursuit until the Dragon darted into a cut in the rock face and then throttled back. The sounds of combat lessened from ahead, but picked up from behind.

“Ari?”

“We could use a little help,” Foster admitted.

“Jennings, get back and support Foster,” Kenner ordered. “I’ll keep Tennler with me.”

“Copy,” the lieutenant said.

“Do we pursue?” Kerri Tennler asked, bringing her Grasshopper to stand beside the Marauder II. Kenner was motionless, letting the Marauder’s excellent heat sinks bleed off the last of the waste heat from the skirmish. Her ’Mech pointed back toward where the Dragon disappeared. “We could probably catch him.”

Kenner laughed. “You might,” he said. “Not me. I can’t stump through these hills that fast.” He called up a topographical map on the lower-left quadrant of his HUD and studied it for a moment. “We’re about two klicks from where the scouts bought it,” he said.

“They won’t stand here much longer,” Tennler guessed.

“Even engaging was a mistake,” Kenner agreed. “We’re Dragoons, and we’re heavier. Even the Sixth Lyran couldn’t be that stupid.” He looked at the map again, tracing elevation lines and marked obstacles. The scouts had been sending back regular reports, and the techs on Chieftain had been steadily updating the radar survey the DropShip had made before landing. Sure they’d gotten the scouts, but those were armored vehicles and light ’Mechs. Why even strike an assault company, except to prove something?

Or slow us down.

“What if they’re hiding something?” he mused.

“It’s Hesperus, Captain,” Tennler said. She moved her Grasshopper around behind Kenner and directed her sensors that way. “They’re pissed as hell we’re even here, and they’re not thinking straight. The first battles of any landing are like this.”

“This isn’t my first drop, Sergeant,” Kenner snapped.

“Respectfully, sir, it is with us.”

Kenner opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut at the last moment. She was right. He’d only been in command for a few days, and this was his first engagement as a company commander. So far he’d fought as a lance leader, looking to see for himself what was going on before looking at the rest of the company.

“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Leading the Grasshopper back to where they’d jumped up, Kenner used his jump jets again to drop down to the ravine floor and started back toward the sound of fighting. He heard the sounds of battle played over the radio when he switched to the Command Lance frequency, but he didn’t speak. He wasn’t fighting—he’d only be a distraction to his troops without actually being there, and distractions got Dragoons killed.

I’ll have to remember that.

By the time he reached his lance the skirmish was over. Two more Lyran ’Mechs were scattered in pieces across the landscape, victims of ammunition explosions from the looks of them. Kenner shivered despite the heat. He often had that reaction, and thanked the Unity again that his Marauder had only energy weapons.

“Two got away,” Foster reported when she saw him. From the looks of her Atlas, it had been a serious fight. “A pair of Quickdraws—they used their jets and went over the hills.” Kenner acknowledged her report and looked at the rest of his company.

The Attack Lance ’Mechs were pristine, having come into the battle in time to only help chase the Lyrans off. The three Command Lance ’Mechs were more battered. Foster’s Atlas was scarred with laser burns and PPC strikes, and Barrows’ Awesome was limping where melted armor had clogged his knee actuator.

“So,” he said after a moment. “Was this the troop that got the scouts?”

“Our boys were already hurt,” Foster said. “I checked. That Thunderbolt,” she beckoned to a still-smoking pile of debris, “had some fresh laser scars. Maybe some short-range missile pocks, too… I’ll have to look at the ROMs when we get back to be sure.”

“I didn’t get a look at ours,” Tennler said.

“It’ll be on the ROMs,” Kenner said. “Dumphries?”

“Nothing to report,” came the immediate reply. “We’re holding a half-klick ahead of you, but there’s nothing on scanners.” The Heavy Lance commander’s voice was devoid of emotion, which made the edges of Kenner’s awareness tingle. For Dumphries to be calm was not right. He wondered about it for a moment before reminding himself that the time to wonder was later. He was in the middle of the assault.

“Hold your position until we rejoin,” Kenner ordered Dumphries. The he switched frequencies. “Tennler, I want you to scout the high road. See where those ’Mechs were going. Watch out for the Dragon. You’re doing a recon, not an assault.” The Grasshopper raised a hand in salute and moved off, using its jump jets to ascend to the cliff face again.

“The rest of you, sweep forward. There might be wounded Dragoons out there, and we need to find out how far the Lyrans have advanced in the defense.” He suited action to words, moving the Marauder II to the head of the column and keeping a close eye on his sensors. Tennler’s IFF pulsed by itself, even though her ’Mech was out of sight, but no sign of the enemy was found.

“Anyone see a way to get up there?” he asked a kilometer later.

“Not without jets,” Dumphries said.

“We could go back for jump packs,” Foster suggested.

“They’d just send one of the other companies,” Kenner said. “Keep an eye out.”

“How much farther do we go?” Foster asked on a discrete channel.

“Until we make contact again,” Kenner said. “We need to know how far forward the defense is.”

“That’s a job for a recon lance, Luke,” she said.

“It’s our job,” he said. “We’re out here.”

“If we make contact with a heavy unit,” she said, after a moment, “you know we won’t be able to disengage without killing them first. We’re too slow.” The Atlas stumped along stolidly in Kenner’s vision strip, its gait confident and fearless. There was no trace in the ’Mech’s appearance of the doubts its pilot was espousing.

“Then we’ll fight it out,” he said.

“Spoken like a true assault ’Mech pilot,” Foster said with a chuckle.

“Zeta’s always looking for a few good men,” he said back. The ravine bent around to the right a dozen meters ahead, and he slowed the Marauder. There hadn’t been anything at any of the last dozen doglegs, but he hadn’t survived this long by trusting past practice. He ordered the rest of the company to halt and then edged around the rock face, sensors open and watchful.

The Lyran Atlas doing the same thing reacted first, stepping in close and slamming a solid right jab into the Marauder II’s center-mass. Kenner rocked with the blow and let inertia carry him back a few steps, away from the Lyran ’Mech. He clutched at his yokes, adjusting his aim.

“Contact!” he screamed, and fired. It was too close for his PPCs to focus so he ignored them, instead firing the paired medium lasers mounted beneath the heavy Hellstars and the big laser on his upper hull. All three shots hit, melting at the thick armor over the Atlas’ heart, but not doing any appreciable damage. The Atlas’s return fire, however, was just as accurate and more damaging.

Six short-range missiles raced across the space between the two ’Mechs and scattered explosions across the face of Kenner’s ’Mech. The 100-ton monster shook the damage off, however, and straightened, only to be blasted back by the hail of autocannon fire that chewed through more than half the armor over the Marauder II’s left leg. Kenner yelped and fought to keep his ’Mech on its feet. He was too busy to try and aim again.

Yelling filled his cockpit as the other Dragoons of Able First charged forward. Foster was there first, matching the Lyran Atlas’ with her own ’Mech’s firepower, blasting with lasers and autocannon. She skipped her missiles, instead concentrating on the potential cutting damage of her lasers. She sidestepped around Kenner’s Marauder II and then sidestepped again. Kenner frowned.

Barrows’ Awesome took two steps closer until the range between his ’Mech and the Lyran Atlas was just over 100 meters and then cut loose, three coruscating cyan torches that annihilated armor wherever they touched the Lyran ’Mech. Kenner blinked at the backscatter from the PPCs and tried to move left, to clear the lane of fire.

“More ’Mechs behind it!” Dumphries called. “It’s a full company.”

Kenner snarled at himself and brought his ’Mech back under control. He kept the machine moving backward, trying to get the range necessary to bring his PPCs into play. The Atlas that had met him retreated around the rock face, but two more Lyran ’Mechs stepped forward to fill the hole. The largest, a Banshee, fired its autocannon and PPC at him, but only the autocannon hit, spraying damage across his right arm. Kenner brought the arm back into line and triggered his own PPCs, blasting armor from the ninety-five ton ’Mech’s chest. Florence Milhaus’ BattleMaster stalked forward, torso-mounted lasers flashing while its armor drank the ineffectual damage from the Lyran Rifleman’s autocannons. Kenner let the Heavy Lance jock wade in close—her ’Mech was built for it—and concentrated on his gunnery. For the next minute or so, this was going to be a slugging match.

And the Lyran Commonwealth, whatever else its flaws, lived and died in the slugging match.

More Lyran assault ’Mechs waded around the corner, common Lyran machines like the Zeus and the Atlas, and Kenner felt a trickle of sweat defy the heat in his cockpit and slip down between his shoulder blades. Able First was an assault company, the finest in the Dragoons, the equal of any comparable company in the Inner Sphere. It fielded some of the heaviest ’Mechs and had the hottest jocks in the regiment. If anyone could smash this Lyran company, it would be them.

But they’d get killed doing it, and being in refit for the rest of the Hesperus campaign didn’t appeal to Lucas Kenner on his first day of combat command.

“Able First,” he shouted, cueing the company push, “concentrated fire, by lance. Let’s bring these bastards down quick and get out of here.”

“Heavy, confirmed,” Dumphries said. “You heard the man, kids… let’s get the Banshee.”

“Attack, roger that,” Jennings said. “We’ve got the Rifleman.”

“And us?” Foster asked. Her Atlas had retreated to beside Kenner’s Marauder II. “Who are we killing today, sir?”

“That one,” Kenner said, selecting a target. He fired.

His PPCs took the Lyran Atlas high in the chest, both discharges spending themselves on the Atlas’s bulbous shoulder housings. It was the same ’Mech from earlier, and the damage Kenner and Foster had done was prominent. Foster fired a half-second later, a full spread of twenty long-range missiles. The Atlas was just inside the missiles’ minimum arming distance but that didn’t matter—at that short range the unspent rocket fuel made up the difference in high explosive. The other two Command Lance ’Mechs fired again as well, and the Atlas flapped over onto its back, its desultory autocannon barrage destroying the rock face behind Kenner’s ’Mech.

The Lyrans were masters of the long line of steel, at standing and taking the damage necessary to inflict the maximum damage back upon the enemy. The Dragoons had plenty of experience with that strategy, from three years of cattle raiding along the border. It was an effective strategy, one the Mariks and Kuritas had been expending themselves against for decades, centuries. The Dragoons had chosen a simple tactic in retaliation, and it involved two stages at the company level.

First, keep moving. Kenner led his lance on an arcing course past the main line of battle, near the edge of the rock face. It would only be moments before the Lyrans extended their line past the mouth of the dogleg and turned the entire short distance back to the previous turn into a killing field. Moving the Dragoons was a more difficult target. Which led to the second half of the tactic.

Shoot to kill.

The only way through an assault ’Mech’s armor was overwhelming firepower. Dragoons were superior gunners, and while their ’Mechs’ armor was just as susceptible to fire as the Lyrans’, the other side was usually too busy trying to get away or dying to concentrate their fire in return.

Kenner hit the Atlas again as it was rising, knocking its forearm out from under it. Foster’s missiles scattered explosions across the tough armor of its back, and Barrows hit it with another triple-PPC barrage. The Atlas fell again, this time missing its left arm at the shoulder and bleeding smoke and fire from its shattered torso armor.

Dumphries and her lance hit the Banshee again even as it fired back. The Banshee hit Milhaus’ BattleMaster with its PPC and cannon, but its fire was nothing compared to what it received. After the smoke cleared the Banshee was sitting on its rump, missing its left leg at the knee and armless.

After Jennings and his lance fired again, the Rifleman was gone.

“Start backing up,” Kenner said.

“We can hold them here,” Dumphries protested. “The dogleg is a natural obstacle. We can bring the whole company against them one or two at a time.” Her ’Mech stamped its foot and speared the Banshee again, destroying more of its torso armor.

“Yes, we can,” Kenner said. “And we can be here an hour doing it while they just keep moving more and more ’Mechs up behind them.”

“Then we’ll kick their asses, too!” she shouted.

“You have your orders!”

“Unity, Captain,” Dumphries swore. But her ’Mech began moving backward.

“We’ll fight again,” he said. But the taste of it was sour in his mouth. You’re doing a captain’s job, he told himself. A captain’s job is to preserve his company.

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