Jordy had wanted a clean flank.

  That was the point of outrider work. You didn’t crash headfirst into a massed group unless you had no choice. You slid around them. You hit their edges. You forced them to turn their heads while the big machine behind you did the killing. That was how it was supposed to be anyway. It rarely worked out that way.

  He took his squad of stormtrooper STVs wide, skimming over broken ground just off the ley-rail, engines humming hard as they searched for an angle that would let them rake the enemy outriders from the side.

  He could see them now.

  A dense knot of enemy STVs, thirty or more, churning dust and stone as they surged forward in a loose mass, all pointed at the Ol’ Five Seven. He could make out charges strapped to frames, satchels clutched tight, men hunched forward like they thought speed would make them invincible.

  “Keep spacing,” Jordy ordered. “Don’t bunch. Don’t stop.”

  Acknowledgments flickered back.

  Then the enemy split.

  A dozen or so peeled away from the main pack and turned directly toward Jordy’s wing, cutting across the open ground to intercept. They didn’t slow. They didn’t hesitate. Their intent was obvious.

  Stop the stormtroopers. Or slow them down, at least.

  Jordy’s visor display marked the new group in red as it surged closer.

  “Intercept group,” he snapped. “We have to get through these first. Engage!”

  Energy rifles came up.

  The first stormtrooper fired and dropped an outrider clean off his seat. The enemy STV kept going riderless for several meters before slamming into a rock and rolling.

  A second shot burned through another rider’s chest. The man jerked and fell, his charge tumbling from his hands and bouncing harmlessly across the ground.

  Projectiles snapped back at them.

  Low-caliber rounds sparked off stormtrooper armor and skittered away. The enemy riders were firing, but it was almost reflexive. They had seen what bullets did, or rather what they didn’t do.

  Jordy felt the shift before he saw it.

  The enemy stopped trying to shoot them.

  Instead, the outriders stayed low in their seats, bodies pressed tight to their machines, giving almost no target above the handlebars. They closed fast and began to throw.

  Charges.

  They came in arcs like crude bombs, heavy satchels tumbling end over end.

  “Charges incoming,” Jordy barked. “Spread. Spread!”

  The first detonated short.

  The explosion punched dirt and stone upward in a geyser of fire and debris. The shockwave slapped Jordy’s armor hard enough to make his teeth click inside his helmet. His STV skidded sideways for a moment before he recovered control.

  The second charge landed closer.

  It hit the ground just off a stormtrooper’s left track and detonated instantly, a blast powerful enough to tear up a Steam Fort tread if it was placed right.

  The STV vanished in a cloud of smoke and shattered track segments.

  The stormtrooper riding it launched sideways, thrown clear by the explosion. He hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up on one knee by pure instinct, energy rifle already in his hands.

  Another charge exploded beneath a different STV.

  The trooper avoided the center of the blast by swerving at the last second, but the shock still hammered the machine. His STV bucked violently, one track shedding links as it skidded. The vehicle didn’t die, but it was damaged, slower now, forced to compensate.

  A third blast tore the ground open near the rear of the formation.

  One of the stormtroopers lost a tread completely, his STV lurching and then grinding to a stop, metal screaming as the remaining track chewed uselessly at stone.

  The enemy riders kept throwing.

  They weren’t trying to hit the stormtroopers directly.

  They were trying to cripple their machines.

  Jordy understood the logic immediately. If you could not kill the armored rider, you killed what carried him. Then you closed in and finished the job with another charge, placed close, under the armor’s joints, where blast and shrapnel could do work.

  “Rifles,” Jordy ordered. “Pick throwers. Don’t let them close enough to throw."

  The stormtroopers answered.

  Energy bolts snapped across the field, burning through riders mid-motion, catching arms as they lifted charges, punching through torsos and engine housings alike. Two outriders died in the same second, one slumping forward as his STV veered into another and sent both tumbling.

  Another enemy rider took a bolt to the head and simply disappeared backward, his charge flying free and detonating in open ground.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Even under explosive pressure, the stormtroopers did damage.

  They stayed mounted where they could, using speed and armor to survive the worst of it, firing in controlled bursts whenever a target presented itself. They used the ground, using small rises and rocks to shield their treads from direct hits.

  But the enemy had numbers.

  And desperation.

  A charge landed almost at Jordy’s front track.

  He jerked his STV hard, leaning his weight into the turn, trying to clear the blast radius.

  The explosion slapped him anyway.

  His STV shuddered. Warning lights flared on his visor. The machine held, but he felt the track grinding rough, a wobble that hadn’t been there a second ago.

  Jordy pushed it aside.

  Now was not the time to baby a vehicle.

  “Fall back to hard cover,” he ordered. “Two dismounts move wounded. Others keep fire.”

  The stormtrooper who had been thrown clear sprinted low in his armor, boots pounding stone. Another trooper dismounted from his damaged STV to help, grabbing the injured man by the harness and hauling him toward a shallow depression where broken rock offered cover.

  The injured trooper moved, but not well. He favored one leg, armor joint whining, likely jammed or damaged by shrapnel.

  They made it behind cover and dropped to the ground.

  Jordy’s remaining mounted troopers started circling their dismounted comrades, STVs churning the ground, rifles braced.

  The enemy outriders surged closer, trying to press their advantage.

  They paid for it.

  Energy rifles burned through them in clean, brutal strokes. One rider’s chest plate glowed white before collapsing inward. Another lost control when a bolt tore through his shoulder, his STV spinning and flipping. Two more were cut down as they tried to throw charges from too close, their satchels exploding harmlessly as their bodies hit the ground.

  Still, the charges kept coming.

  The explosions were constant now, overlapping blasts that threw dust into the air and made the world strobe with light and smoke. Each detonation was a reminder that one good hit on a tread could end everything.

  Jordy felt the fight narrowing.

  Pinned.

  Not beaten, but pinned.

  He keyed his channel to the fort.

  “We pulled a few of them off,” Jordy reported, voice steady despite the chaos. “But now we’re pinned down. They used charges.”

  ***

  Fort Master Merwin had been in worse situations.

  Not many, and not often, but enough that panic never quite found purchase in his chest. Panic wasted time, and time was the one thing a Steam Fort never had enough of once guns were firing.

  He stood at the command pit with his hands braced on the rail, eyes flicking between displays as information streamed in faster than any one man could comfortably process. He did not try to absorb everything. He filtered. He categorized. He prioritized.

  North.

  The northern Turret Fort still moved.

  Its main gun was dead, the turret warped and smoking, but its tracks were intact and its secondary systems were still responding. It was slower now, wounded, but not helpless. A fort without its primary weapon was still a fort, and Merwin had learned the hard way never to underestimate a crippled machine.

  West.

  The western fort worried him.

  It tracked faster. Its firing solutions tightened quicker than the others. Its rate of fire was higher, its gunners cleaner. Someone competent was running that machine. Someone who knew how to push a turret crew without breaking them.

  That one would not make mistakes easily.

  South.

  The southern fort was closing.

  It had just entered effective range, its silhouette resolving cleanly on the external displays. Its turret began to turn, slower than the western fort’s but deliberate, confident in the sheer mass of its gun.

  And then there were the outriders.

  Merwin glanced at the lower tactical overlay, jaw tightening.

  Jordy’s stormtroopers were pinned.

  Charges. Explosions. STVs disabled or damaged. A cluster of red markers bunched behind shallow cover where the ground dipped just enough to keep men alive. Enemy outriders still pressing in, still moving, still trying to finish the job.

  Merwin did not swear.

  He did not shout.

  He inhaled once, slow and deep, then keyed the command channel.

  “Sharpshooters,” he said, voice steady and carrying. “Concentrate on the incoming outriders. Break their momentum.”

  He switched channels without pause.

  “Mage,” he continued, eyes flicking upward toward the tower. “If you have anything left, now is the time to use it.”

  He did not soften the order.

  Ben had already spent power. Merwin knew that. But sometimes a man still had one more card to play if the situation was bad enough.

  “Acknowledged,” Doke replied immediately.

  On the upper feeds, the sharpshooters shifted positions, optics slewing as priorities updated. They stopped watching the forts. They stopped waiting for perfect shots.

  They started killing outriders.

  Rifles cracked in a controlled rhythm, one shot per breath, per trigger pull. Enemy STVs shuddered as riders were punched out of seats or slumped forward, machines veering into one another and piling up in tangled wrecks. The massed approach began to thin, cohesion unraveling under precise, relentless fire.

  Merwin nodded once.

  “Angle the shield toward the southern fort,” he ordered. “The western fort is too close and likely lost tracking. They can only move that turret so fast.”

  “Aye,” came the reply from the shield crew.

  The magno-shield’s tone shifted as its field geometry realigned, power routing adjusting in response. Merwin watched the indicators settle, the forward arc swinging southward.

  Good timing.

  The southern Turret Fort fired.

  The twenty-pounder roared, the muzzle flash stark against the growing haze of smoke and dust. The iron ball cut through the air, its trajectory imperfect but dangerous all the same.

  Merwin felt the impact through the deck.

  The magno-shield caught the shot at an angle.

  Not a clean deflection.

  The magnetic field clawed at the iron, wrenching it just enough to spoil its path. The ball screamed as it skidded along the edge of the shield, sparks of distorted force flickering where metal and field fought each other.

  The projectile tore free of the field and went wide.

  Straight into the western fort.

  Merwin’s eyes snapped to the external display.

  The iron ball punched into the lower tower section of the western Turret Fort, smashing through armor and internal structure alike. A bloom of debris and smoke burst outward as secondary damage rippled through that section.

  The western fort staggered.

  Not crippled.

  But hurt.

  Merwin let out a bark of laughter before he could stop himself.

  “Excellent!” he shouted. “That’s why my name is MerWIN, not MerLOSE!”

  No one laughed.

  The bridge crew did not even look at him.

  Merwin grimaced and waved it off.

  “Right,” he muttered. “Too soon.”

  He leaned back over the rail, focus snapping back into place.

  The battlefield was still a mess.

  The northern fort was wounded but mobile.

  The western fort was damaged but dangerous.

  The southern fort was fully armed and pressing in.

  Outriders were still moving, but fewer now, their numbers steadily carved down by sharpshooter fire.

  Merwin felt the Ol’ Five Seven surge beneath him as engines compensated, systems adjusting to damage and demand. The fort was hurt, but it was holding together. Better than holding.

  It was fighting back.

  “Maintain pressure,” Merwin ordered calmly. “Keep us moving. Don’t give them time to breathe.”

  The fort obeyed.

  And for the first time since the ambush closed around them, Merwin allowed himself a thin, satisfied smile.

  They were still alive.

  And that meant the fight was not over yet.