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.His mind was already on the Confederation’s eventual victory, wrapped about his return to the graces of the Chancellor’s service.He had not lost favor in those months as Mai Wa’s minder.He had never been forgotten.His was a powerful future, following one of the Chancellor’s many divined paths.And in the end, he would see justice done.Mai Uhn Wa would not be allowed to succeed.He would die in one last service to the State.Michael Yung-Te now believed.20VanguardEven though Wei’s lunar New Year is a month past, the people are just now beginning their festivities.Parades and nightly displays of fireworks thrill the crowds.Cargo DropShips filled with Confederation delicacies arrive alongside military transports and logistics vessels.It is a world celebrating its relief.—Authorized Press Release, Governor Fowkes, Wei, 9 July 3134Overland OrchardsParagon Province, LiaoPrefecture V, The Republic10 July 3134Wading through a bramble of spike-topped trees, Viktor Ruskoff slammed his throttle forward against the upper stop.His Zeus limped onward, eating up six meters in every stride as it pushed for speeds nearing sixty kilometers per hour.Naranji tree limbs snapped off as the eighty-ton BattleMech brushed past row after row, leaving smears of greenstick splinters down its legs.His machine’s left arm, amputated at the elbow, swung just above the dead canopy.Scattered machine gun fire pecked and prodded from thicker parts of the orchard, which the Legate ignored.The Zeus broke through to a dirt road, passing between orchard stands, and Viktor throttled back as a new threat icon popped on his HUD.Half a klick along the road a Po II heavy tank crawled forward on chevron treads.A flash of electrical storm and a dark blur, and a Gauss slug shattered armor across the Zeus’s right leg.Then the Po spun and powered into the next orchard, hiding from the assault ’Mech’s return fire and no doubt calling in support on its position.Wrong again.The Po II immediately backed out, turret wheeled over, and struck at him a second time.A new Gauss round hammered into the assault ’Mech’s left side, raining shards of fractured armor around its feet.The number of Viktor’s guesses being proven wrong were beginning to mount up.He’d guessed that he could move forces and supplies up to Qinghai from Paragon Province without alerting the Second McCarron’s Armored Cavalry.And then he’d gambled that a pair of BattleMechs and a mechanized infantry company would be enough to run vanguard on the convoy.Now he was second-guessing Terrence McCarron himself, and paying dearly each time he underestimated his opponent.Dropping his crosshairs over the Po’s blocky profile, Viktor reached out with large laser and missiles in an attempt to smash the cocky bastard before he dodged back into the orchard.McCarron hammered into a reverse-right tanker’s turn, taking the laser against his stronger front armor and letting the flight of missiles chew up nothing worse than the soft, black earth.Staying into the turn through an entire one-eighty, the Po finally backed itself into the orchard and out of sight.Rather than chase along the open road after McCarron, Viktor crossed the shoulder to wade once more into the sleeping orchard.Like flushing pheasant, a pocket of Achileus and Infiltrators popped up on jets, scattering in three different directions.The Legate ignored them, turned his Zeus eastward, chasing after the Po II and the leader of McCarron’s Second.“Alpha, Bravo,” Ruskoff barked into his mic.“Report.”“Alpha, NOC.”No official change.Which meant the 122nd Pathfinders were still down one transport and three men, and had yet to claim an enemy kill.“Bravo.Lose one Harraser.” Both VTOLs down now.“Cripple one Demon and score a squad of Infiltrators on the belly flop.”So the VTOL had spoil-sported and crashed itself into a McCarron’s armored infantry squad.A waste of damn fine infantry, in Viktor’s opinion, but better a waste of their infantry than his.“Alpha,” he checked his HUD in a practiced glance, backed it up with a scan through his ferroglass shield.He picked up only one hundred twenty degrees of the horizon, but sometimes it helped him keep the pieces straight in his mind.Like playing chess and looking at only half the board, playing the rest from memory.“Alpha, start drawing them nor’ nor’west.If you can’t scratch their paint, at least leave your trail of bodies to lead them toward Reggat’s Canyon.”Reggat’s Canyon might let Alpha eventually circle back toward the convoy.If not—if McCarron’s forces proved too bullheaded to let them run—he could save lives as his men worked their way into the Reggat’s Canyon caves.By the position of their VTOLs, dipping and hovering over trees to the far north, they had at least ten rough minutes ahead of them.Bravo had lost both of its attack choppers, but there was no mistaking the swarming attacks of McCarron’s VTOL formation just a few kilometers to the east.The other side of Terrence McCarron’s position.“Bravo, I want you to hold.You’ll see armored infantry and maybe some assault tanks pushing back your way, but stand fast.”They could do it.They still had antiaircraft Partisans to worry the VTOLs.One unit in flight, one to hold fast as a wall against which he pushed the enemy.That was never an easy call, deciding who lived and who risked death.The difference this time was that he was in a position to work with only one of the demi-companies, and if he had to leave one unsupported, he’d at least give them the chance to extend and escape.Military talk for run like hell.McCarron wasn’t through throwing little twists into the Legate’s plans, though.Threat alarms wailed for his attention as Infiltrators and Achileus battle armor took turns popping up above the trees on their small jets to snipe at the assault ’Mech.The Zeus did not have great antiinfantry weapons, but Viktor managed to swat one Infiltrator from the sky with a pulse laser.Then a JES II tactical carrier broke cover, slalomed between trees and traded flight after flight of short-range missiles for nothing worse than a few red-tinged scars from Viktor’s laser.He wished again for his particle projector cannon, lost with his left arm in earlier exchanges of firepower.Standing a full story higher than the trees around him, the Legate had a commanding view.If he’d wanted, he could have pointed out each heavy encounter, places where oily smoke seeped up above the canopy, or where fires burned in the local orchards.Ten kilometers back, for example, when the Armored Cavalry had struck with such numbing force that his small vanguard had shattered.Five klicks: a full-fledged forest fire marked where Sergeant Ho gave his life for two infantry carriers and a Regulator.A Confederation head-hunter team broke the seal on his cockpit and smeared him over the inside of the cockpit shield.Hardly equitable, trading away an experienced veteran and his Phoenix Hawk.The Zeus was too heavily armored.Too slow.Ruskoff had been unable to rendezvous in time.Three klicks, then one: Places where units lay dead or crippled or where the Zeus had been delayed by McCarron’s wheel-and-flank tactics.“Contact!” Bravo’s commander, Sergeant Jason Lee, let worry tell in his volume.“Four… five! Five armored vehicles closing.Battle armor everywhere.”Ahead Viktor saw an explosion in the tree canopy where a Gauss rifle punched through from below.Enemy VTOLs swarmed down toward the break, searching for prey.Spot fires began to show in the branches, and smoke rose in a haze as ground support vehicles battled unseen.“We’re in thick soup here, Commander
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