Bolo!

But Chartres was lightly touched no longer.

Benjy’s assault pod separated from Ta

Maneka studied the visual images from Benjy’s optical heads as the assault wave howled downward.

Laroche City, the planetary capital, with its population of over thirty million, was a smoking, blazing sea of ruins. Provence and Nouveau Dijon were little better, although at least a rim of Nouveau Dijon’s suburbs appeared to have survived partially intact, and the same was true for at least two dozen of the planet’s other cities and larger towns. The green and brown patchwork of farms and the dark-green woodlands surrounding what had once been the habitations of man were dotted with the wreckage of missiles and air-breathing attack craft which had been destroyed by the ruined cities’ perimeter defenses, and towering pillars of smoke and dust seemed to be everywhere.

Although Chartres’ population had been tiny compared to one of the Core Worlds like Old Earth, it had been large enough, and the star system’s industrial base had been extensive enough, to provide quite heavy ground-based defensive systems. The local planetary and system authorities, with the assistance of the Concordiat’s central government, had taken advantage of that and spent most of the past six Standard Years fortifying and preparing against the probability of an eventual Melconian attack. But with the Line grinding back only slowly across the Camperdown Sector, the pla

Someone should have seen it coming, she thought grimly. Sure, they had to send in the equivalent of an entire fleet to pull it off, but the tempo of this war’s done nothing but accelerate from the very begi

But at least the system’s defenders had been given enough warning to execute their evacuation plans. Maneka had no way of knowing—and didn’t want to know—how many citizens of those butchered cities had failed to get out in time, but the glowing green icons of scores of huge refugee centers, all of them with at least rudimentary previously prepared defenses, burned in Benjy’s strategic plot. In addition to the fixed defenses, most of them were ringed by the additional icons of planetary militia and the remnants of the detachments of Regulars deployed to the planet. And those defenses appeared to be holding against the aerial bombardment raining down upon them, now that the fleet units which had been providing the Melconian attackers with fire support from orbit had been dispersed. But there was no way any of them could have hoped to hold more than briefly against the terrifying concentration of ground-based firepower the Melconians had managed to land on the planetary surface before the Concordiat relief force arrived.

It was silent on Benjy’s command deck, despite the hypervelocity hurricane howling about the assault pod’s hull as it blazed deeper and deeper into the atmospheric envelope, and Maneka felt her heart sink as she studied the available data.

The planetary reco

The Melconian planetary assault had been led by five of their heavy assault brigades, each composed of two armored regiments of thirty mechs each—twelve Heimdall—class light reco

That, unfortunately, wasn’t something the Battalion could count on them doing. The Melconian advantage in stealth technology applied to their ground systems, as well as their space-going platforms. Human sensors were better than their Melconian equivalent, which tended to level the playing field somewhat, but Melconian platforms like the Lokis could be extremely difficult for even a Bolo to spot, especially if they’d had a few hours in which to perfect their camouflage.

Still, it appeared from the reco

Whatever their reasoning, they had avoided dispersing their forces in smaller concentrations the Thirty-Ninth could have chopped up in detail. Instead, the vast majority of their ground units were concentrated in a single, roughly semicircular defensive perimeter near the southern end of Lorraine, the planet’s single heavily populated continent. The ends of their perimeter’s arc of fortified positions were firmly anchored on the ocean, which provided at least some protection to their backs, and while concentrating their forces that tightly might make them a tempting target, it also allowed them to concentrate all of their defensive firepower. What they had assembled there would have been sufficient to make a battlecruiser squadron think twice about closing in to engage them from space, and it was obvious that despite the relatively short time they’d been in possession of the planet, they’d dug their ground combat elements in deeply.

Maneka’s command couch jolted her suddenly, as the assault pod hit the surface of Chartres.

At least we got down unopposed, she told herself, and felt more quivers as Benjy released the docking latches, threw power to his drivetrain, and ground free of the pod. The Bolo was monitoring Captain Belostenec’s communications cha

Benjy’s starboard infinite repeaters fired suddenly, knocking down an air-breathing Melconian recon drone as it popped up over a nearby line of hills. The drone disintegrated into a flaming, fragment-raining ball before it could possibly have gotten off a contact report, and Benjy’s secondary turrets swung smoothly, rotating back and forth as he waited for additional targets.