Flight of the Falcon

21

Summer Prefecture VIII The Republic of the Sphere 14 July 3134

Aleks hit Summer, three jumps from Alkaid.

Summer hit back.

It was a hot, hard-luck world with a population just under a billion. Its ozone layer was decaying and its old capital, Curitiba, had been nuked by Blakists during the Jihad. The planet’s primary industrial infrastructure on the northern continent Lestrade had likewise been shattered. The war depopulated Summer; some residents returned afterwards, their ranks augmented by the Resettlement Act of 3082.

Despite its negatives, Summer was a plum objective, being a major source for JumpShip parts, oil and radioactives. The planetary capital and major city of Mount Breighton was defended by a formidable defense force, including several BattleMechs and numerous Industrials.

Aleks dispatched his other three regular Clusters to various strategic targets on the northern polar continent of Aberdale, where both the population and the renascent industrial production centered. He personally led his Third Falcon Velites, augmented by his command Star and some Solahma and Eyries, into the assault on the capital.

His batchall challenge having been declined with blunt defiance by Legate Carlos Adler, Aleks dropped his DropShip in some rolling hills between sprawling Mount Breighton and the Summer InterStellar Components complex, crown jewel of Summerite industry, which had resumed production of JumpShip parts less than ten years before. A substantial thunderstorm buffetedRed Heart as it descended toward the surface.

“It rains upon the defenders as well as ourselves,” he observed from the cockpit of White Lily, his Gyrfalcon , strapped in its bay with blastaway bolts. His waiting warriors responded with a chorus of piping falcon cries.

How different they sound than when I took command, he thought, exulting. They are true Falcons now, and know it.

Yet today would be their greatest test to date, because a full division, three militia regiments, defended the capital and its environs, according to intelligence garnered by the ever-vigilant Jade Falcon merchants. Aleks was outnumbered roughly nine to one. Granted, the defenders were for the most part sheer cannon fodder, weekend warriors with hunting rifles: it was still long odds for his Zetas.

But keen tactician Aleks had no intention of fighting them all at once. Indeed, as usual, he reasoned if he could win a rapid enough and smashing enough initial battle he would not even have to defeat them in

detail: the planetary government would capitulate. Especially since, as was also his custom, his shuttles in orbit blanketed the globe with promises of good treatment and minimal disruption of daily life, corroborated by testimonials recorded by numerous Alkaidians, clearly bemused that he had honored such promises tothem .

Lightning stabbed the great armored egg as it burst through the water-heavy, blue-gray bellies of the clouds; in essence a giant Faraday cage that rendered neutral nature’s power, the ship suffered no harm. A country mall catering both to workers at the JumpShip parts plant and other residents of the city lay beneath, nestled among hills covered with Summer’s characteristic purple scrub. Fifteen minutes before, two points of Aleks’ fighters had overflown the mall faster than sound to produce a sonic boom and get the attention of shoppers and employees, then streaked back low in a finger-four formation, subsonic, dropping leaflets telling people to get outnow . Aleks had convinced his mettlesome pilots that this was a marvelous game and not a menial task demeaning to true warriors. When it was done, they streaked away to join their mates in combat air patrol keeping planetary defense VTOLs away from the drop zone.

Their work was well done: the highways leading from the mall were clogged with fleeing cars. The parking lot, which had not been overfull since this was an early workday afternoon, had largely emptied. Those motorists still stalled in traffic waiting to get out had their attention quickly drawn to the small constellation of blue-white drive stars descending upon them, and fled on foot with commendable alacrity. No one was injured, although numerous vehicles turned molten in puffs of igniting ICE fuel as the Heart sank her landing jacks three meters into blacktop.

Aleks had achieved the situation military history had taught him was optimum: strategic offensive and tactical defensive. While the balance shifted occasionally with the ebb and flow of doctrine and technology, that was the rest state. He quickly threw out pickets of fast scouts, vehicles and something new, hoverbikes liberated from Alkaid. His Eyrie youngsters loved those. The scouts formed a circling mobile perimeter, augmented by infantry observation posts with powerful sensor gear, to watch for counterattacks as Aleks unshipped his warriors and machines and readied them for action. VTOLs quickly rose to cover them.

The aircraft reported a regiment on the move from Mount Breighton. The militia had tracked the DropShip’s descent on radar and begun mounting their response before it made planetfall. Meanwhile, Aleks lost a Donar scout VTOL to an air-defense battery, learning that the somewhat smaller force protecting the JumpShip parts plant and the organic security was alert and angry but apparently digging in, making no moves to sally and confront the invaders.

Aleks’ lean, hard gut told him that would not last, was indeed likely a ruse—but he didn’t care. He had the trust of his Galaxy now, and they his. He would rely on them to carry out his commands as crisply as the veterans of Delta or the elite Turkina Keshik—indeed better, because unlike the “superior” units the once-dezgraZetas had grown accustomed to subordinating their individual lust for glory to the tactical needs of their Galaxy; and the will of their charismatic commander.

Leaving his circle of pickets out, reinforcing those to the southwest to cut the likely axis of any advance from the Summer InterStellar Components factory plex, Aleks marched the rest of his Cluster rapidly northeast to meet the defenders speeding down an eight-lane superhighway toward them. Per his custom, he left a tactical command post in the now-abandoned mall, under the powerful armament ofRed Heart, in command of an injured MechWarrior.

Aleks’ force quickly dug in under defilade of low hills flanking the highway. A bridge crossed a creek, now a roaring flood that had already escaped its banks, half a kay in front of his main line of resistance.

Hoverbike-borne sappers wired it for destruction, just in case, but he left it intact for now, with his personal coded signal the only thing that would drop the span: he wanted to invite the defenders in at full speed, not slow them down.

And so they came. Having been alerted by a jump-point observatory to the Jade Falcon emergence, they had made good use of the short three days intervening, even loading big, slow BattleMechs, including Legate Carlos Adler’s personalCenturion and aLegionnaire, fifty tons each, onto flatbed haulers for rapid transport to contest the expected invasion wherever it touched down.

As Summerite scouts clashed with Falcon pickets, the clouds opened up. The air between clouds and hills became a flickering pixilated ocean, pierced by angry red-tinged lightning. As battles went, it was epic, and many valiant deeds were done—and many men and women on both sides were mangled, crushed, burned, died weeping and rolling in tangles of their own intestines or crying for their mothers. But it was not particularly remarkable: another installment of humanity’s perpetual war with itself.

Though cliche anciently claims no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, the fight developed much as Aleks anticipated it. With cover and stable firing platforms on his side, his Falcon Assault Guards levied thoroughly professional slaughter on the advancing Summerites: men, vehicles and even ’Mechs. Concentrated fire forced the militia infantry to dismount well outside their effective battle range. Grimly determined, the armored fighting vehicles, BattleMechs and IndustrialMechs forged on.

Aleks did face one threat none of thedesant’s Galaxies had encountered before now: heavy artillery firing over the horizon. Bombardment by Arrow missiles and Thumper and Sniper tube artillery from self-propelled launchers blasted his hasty positions within half a minute of their opening fire, shredding dozens of infantry and even some Elementals in full power armor, several vehicles, including a Sekhmet assault vehicle, and two hovertanks, a fifty-ton Epona Pursuit tank and a forty-five-ton Bellona. A direct hit by an Arrow IV volley blew to pieces anEyrie, vaporizing MechWarrior Nina, who had been so reluctant to incur dishonor on Alkaid by withdrawing.

Surprised by the speed and effectiveness of the enemy arty, Aleks nonetheless had the best counter already in hand.counterattack . He led his Falcons in a charge as the distant artillery churned the muddy soil of their now-vacant positions.

Drawn out in front of their infantry, the Summerite vehicles and ’Mechs had lost their support. With the non-powered infantry riding on the backs of hovercraft and armored by their speed, and Elementals clinging to the legs and perched on the shoulders of Falcon ’Mechs, Aleks’ warriors engaged the militia with all assets simultaneously.

The battle lines came together with a crash that momentarily shamed the thunder. Falcon infantry dismounted and close-assaulted Summerite vehicles and ’Mechs with grenades and portable anti-armor weapons. Aleks in his Lily led his machines in slashes through the enemy line, back and forth, as his fast hover-mobile scouts raked the flanks of the gone-to-ground enemy infantry, keeping them out of the fray. With the two mechanized forces intertwined, the Summer heavy artillery was unable to fire effectively for fear of striking their own troops; they were hunted down and neutralized by Falcon VTOLs which, though outnumbered, had already gained local supremacy over the Spheroid air.

Slipping, sliding, throwing up great waves of mud and chopped vegetation, the foes savaged each other in a vicious dogfight. Aleks’ Gyrfalcon was swarmed by a whole point of Nova Cats in Gnome power armor. They actually tore off the Ultra autocannon mounted on Lily’s left arm before MechWarrior Mordechai in hisSpirit and a cadet-crewed Epona hosed them off with lasers and Streak missiles.

The Ghost Bear abtakha Folke Jorgensson, jumping to his erstwhile master’s aid, was knocked from the sky by a Gauss rifle hit and several long-range missile strikes from Legate Adler’sCenturion . Although his right-arm quad Streak launcher was destroyed and the ammo stowage in his right torso blasted open, and his own left clavicle was broken by his fall, the dour Star Colonel with consummate skill snapped his own fifty-ton machine back upright, staggering the Legate, closing as he thought for the kill, with a Streak barrage from his left arm launcher. It shattered the long range launcher in theCenturion ’s right torso and cracked the cockpit, momentarily dazing Adler.

Jorgensson jumped again, turning in air to light behind the Legate with weapons blazing. Adler tried to turn his ’Mech’s torso to fire back. Jorgensson just orbited him, firing up theCenturion with large lasers and his remaining Streaks, until the Legate’s ’Mech toppled with a shattered hip actuator.

In moments, a fuming Legate Adler was drawn from his cockpit, shaken but uninjured, by Solahma infantry. Ignoring the pain, the functional loss of one arm, and the diminished status of his firepower,

Folke Jorgensson stalked off in search of further prey. Beyond even his thorny Clan-warrior pride, he wouldnever show weakness in front of Falcons.

Soon Star Colonel Jorgensson took charge of mopping up the now-shattered Summerite combat team as Aleks, blissfully undeterred by the damage to his own machine, turned the Lily around and led a scratch Trinary to engage and defeat the thrust of vehicles and IndustrialMechs supported by infantry from the JumpShip-parts plant he had expected all along.

At the end of the day, Planetary Governor Minerva Hayne was more than willing to accept Aleksandr Hazen’s generous surrender terms, even though over half of the militia troops defending her capital had not so much as glimpsed the smoke of distant battle for the cloudburst which still raged long after the fighting in the hills was done.

In the streets of the surrendered city, Aleks celebrated with his warriors, encouraged them in their revelry, smiled, laughed, drank and sang with them. Yet his own triumph tasted of ashes in his mouth.

Almost a hundred of his Zetas had died, including Magnus Icaza’s successor as commander of the Third Falcon Velites, Star Colonel Keith Buhallin, killed by laser infantry after he successfully toppled the SummeriteLegionnaire by ramming it with his Skanda light tank in an apparent attempt to emulate Jorgensson’s feat in seizing a BattleMech. Half again as many lay injured.

Summer had lost three thousand, killed and wounded. To anyone but a Clansman, the victory might have seemed one-sided.

Aleksandr mourned for all those dead and injured, Falcon and Spheroid. Because as always to his heart—that of a knightsans peur and sans reproche such as he had read about as an undersized, perpetually frightened child—a warrior’s highest duty was protection, not destruction. To be sure, he still believed with his whole soul that even carnage such as today’s was justified by its promise: to put an end to such suffering and evil forever. Because one day, tomorrow or in twenty years, Clan Jade Falcon would arrive in force to complete the work he and his fellow Galaxy Commanders had begun.

But it wasjust begun, he knew. That panged him too. For all the butchery and pain this conquest had caused, the greatest spasm of destruction yet awaited: the battle for Skye.