The uneven exchange was enough to convince the Jaguar warrior that he needed some cover, but too late. The light ‘Mech had throttled into a run when Sinclair’s second strike slammed into it. Missiles pockmarked leg and chest, the ruby beam of the large laser cutting in afterward and probing deeply into the center torso. The Puma dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, shaking as if with a palsy. Large chunks of metal shot out the rent in the armor at high velocity, the gyro tearing itself to pieces in catastrophic failure. The Puma tumbled gracelessly through a thick patch of quillar. Connor turned his back on it to smash his way through several support beams and the far outside glass wall. Behind him the greenhouse facility collapsed inward like a broken house of cards.

Furey didn’t require monitors. Wherever he was waiting, the destruction of the greenhouse had to be easily visible. “Stravag!” he cursed over Smoke Jaguar frequencies. “I will crush them myself.”

But where was the local commanding officer? And for that matter, where was Dominic? Running out from between two buildings and over the second bridge, the Bushwacker’s footsteps clanged against the metal decking. The lieutenant saw the broken and smoking form of a destroyed Blackhawk, its cockpit obviously smashed inward by a gauss round. Dominic’s handiwork, sure enough. But no sign of the Shadow Cat.

“This is Gunner. I’m over the last bridge and hitting the factory. There’s an Orion over here!”

Both questions were answered at once. The Orion was an old Inner Sphere design. Not quite on par with a Clan-tech OmniMech, but at 75 tons was only one step shy of an assault ‘Mech and was one of the larger machines he’d seen so far. Certainly the star captain would be piloting it.

And with 30 tons over Dominic’s Shadow Cat, the commando MechWarrior^® was definitely outclassed.

Edging the Bushwacker over 85 kph, its maximum speed, Connor ran the squat war machine over the coastal plains and toward the third bridge -- too slow. Slender towers flanked access to the island factory, but the lieutenant paid them little heed as he saw Dominic’s Shadow Cat in a deadly dance around the larger Orion. The latter ‘Mech moved slow but with lethal grace, always on the verge of smashing Dominic’s Omni into scrap. The Shadow Cat packed a deadly punch with its gauss rifle, but then the Orion also massed twice as much armor protection as the smaller machine. Connor pounded his Bushwacker across the bridge -- never fast enough -- then dug his shovel-blade feet into the soft earth of the small island as he raced up into the battlezone.

Too late.

Metal fragments littering the ground winked in the late afternoon sun, testament to the hard-hitting engagement. The Orion’s left leg was all but stripped down to titanium skeleton, and large gouges in chest and right side told of other gauss hits. But even as the Bushwacker’s targeting reticle burned the deep gold of hard lock, drawing a bead with large laser and autocannon, the 75 ton machine struck back with a vengeance.

A flight of twenty long-ranged missiles, launched from impossibly close, scattered a flurry of jagged holes over the Shadow Cat’s right arm and body. Twin medium lasers grouped into Dominic’s left leg, spot-welding the knee joint immobile. Then the Orion’s 80-millimeter autocannon ripped into the previous missile damage, hammering at support struts and knocking the smaller OmniMech back. The onslaught proved too much for the ‘Mech’s gyro, and it toppled backward into one of the auxiliary factory buildings. The wall caved in behind Dominic’s Shadow Cat, and then everything seemed to happen in slow motion as two stories of wood and stone collapsed over the top of him.