Shadows of War (Twilight of the Clans, #6): BattleTech Legends, #46 by Thomas S. Gressman

Author:Thomas S. Gressman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
Published: 2016-11-23T08:00:00+00:00

The Smoke Jaguars were indeed pulling out, only not as the enemy might have expected. The Com Guards had been pushed clear of the spaceport by the Jaguar assault. Then, caught between the southwestern edge of the city and the spaceport, the ComStar troops had dug in their heels and refused to be pushed any further.

When a regiment of the Eridani Light Horse slammed into the Clan force’s left flank, the force of the impact was enough to shatter the Jaguar formation and drive the Clanners northward out of the spaceport. It angered Galaxy Commander Hang Mehta to see the warriors of her Clan withdraw before an enemy. But she was a warrior, and not one to give up easily. And there was the second string to her bow.

As the surviving warriors of Delta Galaxy drove toward the spaceport, one Trinary, made up of the Jaguars’ remaining light and the fastest of its medium OmniMechs, split off, making for the symbolic heart of their Clan— Mount Szabo. It was an open festering sore to every warrior under her command to think of the filthy barbarians soiling the Hall of the Hunters and the Field of Heroes with their honorless presence. Retaking those places, and most especially the genetic repository that stood at the foot of the mountain, would help to expunge the shame and outrage that every Jaguar warrior felt at seeing the savashri on Huntress.

Mehta conceived the attack in haste as her forces were making their long, roundabout march crossing and recrossing the Black Shikari River. She had considered leading that attack herself. She would have exulted in the slaughter of the barbarians who had sullied her homeworld with their presence, but her sense of duty dictated that she command the attack on the barbarians’ main line. Once the enemy’s strongest warriors were dead, then she could drive on to Mount Szabo.

In response to this sweeping, flanking move, the battered St. Ives Lancers launched a counterattack. For a time, the Lancers, then down to only twenty-four battle-worn ‘Mechs and a handful of conventional infantrymen, stopped the Jaguars cold, just west of the city. When the Jaguars’ main body was driven back by the charge of the Eridani Light Horse, the Jaguars slammed, quite by accident, into the flank of the embattled Lancers. The Lancers, thrown into disorder by the sudden appearance on their flank of a larger, more powerful enemy force, broke and ran.

Then as so often happens in the heat and confusion of battle, the pell-mell retreat of the St. Ives Lancers triggered a general rout among the Inner Sphere forces. At first the Com Guards tried to stage a fighting withdrawal, but were soon driven into Lootera, where their tight formations were broken up. Once unit integrity was lost, their morale broke, and the elite ComStar troopers fell back. Even the Eridani Light Horse, for all their claims of elite status, were driven from the field in disarray. Pride swelled in Galaxy Commander Hang Mehta’s heart as she considered what her battered, pieced-together Galaxy had accomplished.

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