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Co
The forces Co
Battered and busted up, the Legio
It waded up onto the bank, climbing for safety, protected by a pair of Schrek PPC carriers that kept up blazing salvos against the river-born targets. The armored vehicles on both sides of the shooting engagement bore the Roman profile crest of the Tenth Principes Guards, and Co
It was as surreal as it was likely to get for the ex-knight.
Co
He would need a great deal more down here very, very soon.
Toggling comms for his small team, Co
“Full force and damn your heat,” he ordered when one PPC carrier started alternating between weapons, firing the two outboard ca
It had to be hellishly hot inside those vehicles. But he’d push men to heatstroke before he saw even one more of his soldiers dead beneath Republic weapons fire.
The bridge trembled and buckled again, taking a severe list toward the western edge. Co
Fortunately, he’d called up a squadron of Stingray aerospace fighters to reinforce Stansill’s wounded VTOL support. The battle for air superiority had been fast and brutal, with two Hellcats down on the “Republic side” of the Rhein.
Two quick strafing runs had silenced the artillery positions barely a moment later.
Not that he was out of the woods (or into them, actually) yet. Hell, even a good nudge by one of the Fulcrums would have done the trick, sending Co
At worst he’d never return home. At worst he’d suffer the same fate as his second Schrek carrier, which took a pair of gauss slugs directly through the crew cabin even as he watched.
Gauss slugs accelerated to near hypersonic speeds tore through the PPC carrier with devastating power, both Regulators out on the river getting lucky at the same time. Raw kinetic force rocked the eighty-ton tank up on its hindquarters, as if it were sitting up to beg for a treat. The turret spun off its track, torn away and flipping end over end against the riverbank. Then the tank slammed back down on both wide-spaced tracks, rocked back and forth a few times, and finally settled.
No fires. No huge explosion. Just silent oblivion for the men Co
Swinging his Rifleman at the waist, Co
Water geysered up in twin lines, drawing straight up to and across one of the Regulators. The shots crisscrossed its flat body, tearing into the armor and blowing a few holes into the hovercraft’s lift skirt. Not enough to bring it down.
“Infantry teams, fall back over the bank. Someone check that carrier for survivors.”
He knew there wouldn’t be any. The concussive force alone would have snapped necks and pulped bodies against bulkheads.
“We’ve paid a high price. Let’s get out of here.”
But The Republic’s military force wasn’t finished. The Fulcrums drifted across the river below with an almost casual disregard for the hot fire zone. The same kind of disregard the exarch’s attack dogs had shown in hounding Gerald Monroe to his death. The same that Levin himself had proven in trying to disband the Senate. As if his word was enough to strip the nobles of their birthright and end centuries of enlightened rule.
To end the responsibility carried by generations of men and women.
One Fulcrum drove up very near the northern bank, angling in at the back of the struggling Legio
But it kept up its hammering attack, drifting slowly down the river’s course as it sent flight after flight of LRMs at the retreating BattleMech, slashing with the red-hot fury of its single large laser.
Drifting down to the bridge.
No time to attack the side of fresh armor facing him, to take the chance that he might—might–drive it away under the threat of his rotaries, Co
For a nonjumping ’Mech, the Rifleman had extremely strong and well-armored legs. As its double-bladed feet slammed into the top of the Fulcrum, crushing the missile launcher and one of the tank’s pontoonlike skirts, Co
High-speed vanes chopped against the water, pieces shattering at flaws and hairline cracks in the long blades. The struggling fans growled and snarled in an attempt to lift the Fulcrum’s body clear of the river, but it was impossible with an extra sixty tons sitting atop the craft.
After one hitching gasp, the Fulcrum completely disappeared beneath the Rhein’s surface, driven down into the muck and mud at the bottom of the river.
Co
Between his rotary autoca
“That’s it. Everyone back into the Schwarzwald. Infantry, clog up the rear lines in case one of those hovercraft tries to follow too close.”
It wouldn’t happen. The fight had gone out of The Republic’s attempt to contain the loyalist forces. The hovercraft skated back to their side of the river, patrolling for stragglers or simply setting themselves on guard against any attempt by Co