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Now, instead, he would hunt down the raiding force and deal with them personally, leaving the rest to Torrent. And when the Steel Wolves tried limping back to their DropShips, bloodied and weak, then Erik would be waiting.
But first, the Legio
Ortega. No matter that Eus claimed to have intercepted a transmission, placing the militia warrior at the spaceport. Erik bet family money on the Legio
All of them would learn before this day was finished.
Some faster than others, he decided as his sensors painted a Warrior H9 attack helicopter cruising over a shopping mall and parking itself over the top of a bank. Its missile system reached for a lock on the Hatchetman. Erik pulled his crosshairs over the fragile craft, held the shot for a solid tone, and then pulled into the trigger with a gentle caress. Eighty-millimeter slugs roared out of his left-arm autoca
The pilot tried to sideslip, banking his craft over the main avenue, but Erik corrected his aim faster and the armor-piercing metal chopped into and through the H8’s light armor. Walking the stream of hot metal up into the rotor blades, he chopped away one, long vane and chipped up another. The unbalanced craft slewed through the air, losing altitude and finally dashing itself into the middle of the wide avenue where it erupted into a ball of orange fire and spreading pool of greasy flames.
Erik watched the fall, the fire. He rocked his throttles forward, kicking up into a walk, before he saw the Legio
A gout of yellow flash-fire erupted from the Legio
“Legio
A JES tactical and his Condor had already homed in on the light of the burning VTOL. Two other ground units radioed in confirmation while a pair of Swordsworn VTOLs raced up from the south to take spotter positions overhead.
Michael Eus called in with other contacts. “Lord Sandoval, we have heavy infantry contact across the southwest edge of the city and as many as half a dozen vehicles reported. They hit and run. Our forces are being pulled southeast and northwest at this time. My bearing on you, one hundred ninety relative, distance point-eight kilometers.”
Erik felt his upper lip twitch toward a snarl, worked to keep his voice level and authoritative. “They are opening up a hole for the Legio
The Purifiers leapt onto the bank roof, skipped over to the shopping mall… and disappeared inside a conflagration of missile impacts and converging lasers.
Forewarned, Erik was not about to walk into an ambush. “Five second delay,” he ordered his armored lance, then slammed down on the jump jet controls with both feet. His Hatchetman leapt skyward on jets of superheated plasma, rocketing in a short arc up and over one corner of the deserted mall while Erik counted, “Five… four…” At three he began the sharp, short fall into the wide parking lot on the building’s other side. Two found him raising back his five-ton hatchet, ready to decapitate the Legio
Landing on bent knees into a ready crouch, Erik stepped forward and delivered a shoulder-level swipe at the nearby Legio
His blow staggered the Legio
From down the local boulevard, a hoverbike squad raced up to support Erik’s assault. He left the smaller forces to them, concentrating on the Legio
Then the Legio
Also enough to rob him of several crucial seconds. Erik rocked forward, putting his BattleMech back on stable footing. He traded one last burst of autoca
The fire-gutted Condor was Erik’s, as was a crippled but safely landed VTOL. He counted a militia Demon and the smashed ruin which had once been a Joust also among the victims of the short, violent firefight.
Raul Ortega had stung at him again, but not without losing blood of his own. Erik would make it cost him again.
“Legio
Giving up on their attempt and heading for the spaceport, Erik throttled up to his best walking speed, just over forty kilometers per hour, and struck a parallel course to the fleeing raiders. This street had not been reinforced, not even in the old days, before the Succession Wars, when Achernar IndustrialMechs was one of the region’s largest producers. His feet punched down through brittle-thin ferrocrete, like a man walking over hard-crusted snow, and forced the Hatchetman to slog forward at less than optimum speed. It slowed him down too much. Not that he doubted it would matter.
Erik had only a basic idea of where all his units were, but he had to imagine that three ’Mechs working together would find a hole and crush whatever light resistance he might toss at their feet. City streets were too confining—too favorable for the smaller, mobile force. They had a slight advantage. Until he could pin them in the open, inside the industrial sector which lay in between the San Marino and River’s End proper. That was where he would hit them with everything he could muster.