Flight of the Falcon

7

Allison City Porrima 3 April 3134

Aleks looked down into the city. A mixed force of armor and unarmored infantry approached the gate from within, supported by a gigantic Ml Marksman tank and aRyoken II BattleMech.

He grinned. A favorite among the Wolves, the seventy-five-ton ’Mech was an old friend. It was a very serious machine, as for that matter was the ninety-five-ton tank. Golden Age of Peace or not, the Archon had provided her suzerainty some real firepower.

“ ’Mech’s mine,” he said over the Binary command channel, and jumped. “Take down the rest. Try not to damage the gatehouses.”

The rocket barrage, fired from both tank and BattleMech, smashed down where theGyrfalcon had briefly stood, sending out great geysers of grayish dirt from the wall’s berm backslope and slabs of cement flying from its top. He shot back with the Ultra autocannon in his ’Mech’s arms. HisGyrfalcon bled heat beautifully; he could run and jump and shoot all day so long as he was judicious in firing his two large extended-range lasers, also arm-mounted.

“Unidentified PorrimanRyoken II pilot,” he broadcast on what, during their descent, had been identified as a general armed-forces channel. “I am Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen of Clan Jade Falcon. I challenge you to single combat.”

A burst of light autocannon fire raked across his ’Mech’s chest armor, rocking it back. The heads-up indicators showed no damage done.

“I am Leutnant Colonel Rahne von Kleist of the Eighth Lyran Guards,” a woman’s voice answered. “You have come a long way to die, Galaxy Commander.”

Aleks roared laughter. Although Allison City had a population of over two million, according to his latest information—updated regularly by Jade Falcon merchants plying the Inner Sphere, and generally quite reliable—unless the Lyrans had a wholly unlooked-for troop concentration on hand, it stood no chance of successfully resisting the Clan assault force disgorged from the three DropShips the Leutnant Colonel, like everyone else across half the southern continent, had seen descend through the thin overcast this morning.

“You have the spirit of a Clanner,” he told her. “Let us see if you fight as well as you talk.”

He lit on the roof edge of a square, solid-looking warehouse across the street which ran along the inside of the wall. As he expected, it began to crumble as soon as the machine’s enormous weight came down on it. He bent theGyr ’s legs and jumped again, letting his jets carry it deeper into the city. A hellstorm of

long-range missiles pulverized the whole southern side of the warehouse in a sparkle of white flashes, raising a great cloud of cement dust. One rocket exploded against the armor plating of his right upper leg, cracking a plate. The medium BattleMech swayed alarmingly, but gyros and his own light touch on the controls held it, kept it from crashing to the ground.

Instead he landed under power in the street in front of the warehouse. Most of the immediate district seemed to be light industrial. The parking lots were mostly bare; either the invaders had beat the morning shift or the civilians had evacuated.

Elementals bounced in crisscrossing patterns like fleas on a dog. Thin pink lines stabbed through dust and smoke as infantry lasers flashed at them. The Marksman tank was concentrating on Folke Jorgensson’ sBlack Hawk, firing its Gauss rifle and medium missile launchers and clearly trying to close within range of its powerful and plentiful Streak SRMs. Jorgensson darted hisHawk up the inner slope of the seawall and back down to the broad street as fleetly as a light ’Mech, twisting its torso to shoot back with the two large lasers mounted in the ’Mech’s body.

TheBlack Hawk staggered as a solid hit from the big Gauss rifle slammed into it, locking up the shoulder actuator for its right arm. At the same time, a threat warning shrilled in the erstwhile Ghost Bear’s ears: the tank was trying to lock him up with its Streak guidance system. Firing his own heavy-missile volley from his immobilized right arm, Jorgensson jumped straight up and then veered for the top of the wall.

The Marksman lost its lock. A lucky hit from Jorgensson’s snap shot smashed the Streak quad rack on the left hand side of the turret. A moment later Magnus Icaza’s old-style Elemental battle armor landed on the tank’s front glacis to the right of the main gun.

The four Bulldog miniguns mounted in two pairs atop the turret blasted him. They chipped the fierce green visage, yellow beak, and buff belly of Turkina, Elizabeth Hazen’s own Jade Falcon, enameled on the armor’s front, began gouging streaks in the durable plate itself. But their impacts failed to dislodge the one-ton suit as Icaza grabbed the barrel of the Lord’s Thunder Gauss rifle with the armor’s right manipulator and bent it upward.

Frantically the Marksman gunner let go with the two sextuple SRM launchers mounted to either side of the now-defunct main weapon in hopes of blasting its tormentor free. But Icaza had already bent his legs and, squatting, wedged himself beneath the useless Gauss-cannon barrel outside both launchers’ arcs of fire. He plunged the manipulator down, tore away the heavy hatch over the driver’s position, and discharged the small laser in his left arm down into the tank. Steam boiled up around him as the energy beam flash-boiled the bodily fluids of the hapless driver within.

Aleks raced toward the broad highway running from the great floodgates. Explosions ripped street and structures as the Lyran armor fired desperately at racing Falcon ’Mechs and Elementals. The impacts of theGyrfalcon ’s feet buckled pavement and jarred up into Aleks’ tailbone. He scarcely noted the punishment, as he barely noticed the heat building in the cockpit. He was inured; this had been his home from an early age. It had been the first environment totally under his control—the first over which he had any degree of control whatever.

Past the end of the warehouse, a Demon wheeled tank was burning in the middle of the highway. The Ryoken II appeared at the corner, silhouetted against the beacon-like yellow flame. Its two twenty-millimeter autocannon chattered from its torso.

Not even Clan Jade Falcon’s most proficient MechWarrior—which Aleks was, after Malvina—had reflexes faster than cannon shells. But Aleks had a seasoned fighter’s cunning; he anticipated both the

Ryoken II ’s appearance at just that spot and its pilot’s response to seeing him. He had already triggered his jump j ets when von Kleist triggered her guns.

One burst raked the inside of theGyr ’s left thigh. Aleks’ display lit red: he processed the information without conscious thought-grazing hit, armor penetrated, a few sensors lost but no function .

A beat after firing her autocannon the Porriman volleyed her shoulder-mounted LRMs. But she had been aiming for Aleks on the ground; the rockets drew a twisting skein of smoke trails beneath and around his ’Mech’s legs without any striking him. As he soared over the enemy ’Mech he kicked the cockpit at the front of its fuselage—it was built more like an aircraft with arms and legs than a human. In years past, the Clans had generally disdained physical ’Mech combat. That was beginning to change; though some still adhered to the unwritten code against physical attacks, Aleks was not one of them.

Von Kleist’s reflexes were surprisingly fast for an Inner Sphere warrior. She managed to slip the blow’s brunt by thrusting hard with her left leg, even though that and the glancing kick threatened to topple her. Instead, she slammed into the fa9ade of the building across from the warehouse. Cement cast to look like cut-stone block exploded in powder and shards—and theRyoken II bounced right back onto its raptor-clawed feet.

But Aleks, using his jets and the rebounding energy of his own kick, had spun while still airborne. He touched down behind the Lyran BattleMech, so close he could almost reach his machine’s arms out and touch his foe. Von Kleist spun her ’Mech’s “fuselage” without moving its feet in a desperate attempt to bring weapons to bear.

Aleks triggered both large lasers, sending his own heat soaring. Dazzling ruby beams converged on the Ryoken II ’s right-leg actuator.

Blue dazzle arced like a cutting torch as the tough aligned-crystal-steel armor and the myomer pseudo-muscle beneath flashed into vapor. The ’Mech’s right leg blew off in a shower of sparks and fragments. So violent was the reaction that the fifteen-missile launch box mounted on its right shoulder blew open; half the ready missiles’ propellant lit off in a crackling series of sympathetic explosions.

The brutal noise reverberated between the industrial building-fronts, muted by Aleks’ cockpit, which computer-filtered out potentially damaging levels or frequencies of sound. He could still clearly hear shrieks behind him as Lyran infantrymen were set ablaze by Elemental flamers or dismembered by their powerful claws. He felt a stab, not of triumph, but of sympathy:these are brave men and women to face BattleMechs and battle armor unarmored, with nothing more than small arms and a few support weapons. They died bravely, but hard.

But flesh and mere human will could take only so much. Especially when the whole supporting armored column was now shattered and ablaze.

“Aleks,” Magnus Icaza’s voice said in his ear, as his heat indicator retreated back through orange, “it is done. The last have thrown down their weapons and fled. The gate controls were secured without loss to either side: the crews saw reason.”

And no dishonor, to Aleks’ mind: the crews were techs, not warriors. Not all Clanners felt the same.

Yet to him, expecting techs and laborers to fight like warriors itself bordered onchalcas .

“All units Zeta Command Binary cease fire,” Aleks directed at once. “Do not pursue, fire only if fired upon.” Then on a restricted channel: “What is the butcher’s bill, Magnus?”

The Elemental chuckled. “No damage done to man or machine,” he said, “that a little time in the shop won’t set right. Your pet Ghost Bear got his ’Mech’s arm pinned solid for him. And my armor needs a new coat of paint.”

“Well done,” Aleks said to his whole Binary. “Now open the gates.”

Aleksandr the conqueror strode tree-shaded streets he had made his. Although the raid sent to seize the planetary governor, Countess Orianna Steiner, had failed, the city administrator and the southern continent’s governor had yielded to Aleks’ radioed demand when he had the floodgates thrown open. Indeed, it was the first communication he had accepted from them, since his fear was they would roll over too soon. Now that he desired their capitulation, and quickly, he had sweetened the pot by promising they had no intention of staying, and would be off-planet and headed out-system before another sunrise.

The defenders who still hung on with admirable, if doomed, tenacity between the walls and the attackers approaching from outside had gratefully obeyed their commanders’ orders to lay down their arms. They had also obeyed their conqueror’s orders, relayed through the loudspeakers of his fighting machines, to disperse into the surrounding suburbs and countryside. Aleks desired neither gratuitous slaughter nor to be burdened with prisoners for the few hours he intended to remain upon Porrima. Broadcasting that anything, human or vehicle, armed or not, spotted moving within five hundred meters of the forces outside the walls would be instantly destroyed had the desired effect of moving along the surrendered troops.

He had made a token pass through downtown, mainly to impress upon the local authorities that they were to cooperate entirely with the team of scientists and high-level and specialist technicians who would choose the Falcons’isorla, or plunder. It would consist of low-mass and -volume items, primarily data, although technology of sufficient novelty or interest would also be taken. Gone were the days when any Clan enjoyed a decisive technological edge over the Inner Sphere; the top scientists worried out loud that the Clans might be in some ways falling behind, though Jade Falcon kept better abreast than most of technological developments in the Sphere by means of their large and active merchant class. Especially here in affluent, forward-thinking Steinerspace—most especially on a world of such emotional, if not enormous strategic or economic, import to the Commonwealth’s ruling house—the raiders might well find lore or artifacts new to Turkina’s brood.

Now Aleks toured a pleasant subdivision outside the walls, not a kilometer from the Archon Katrina Spaceport. Curious to see for himself how the Spheroids lived.

A mixed security detachment of Eyrie and Solahma infantry trotted warily behind and to either side of him. A BattleMech stood on the suburb’s edge. It was a light machine, anEyrie , only thirty-five tons, but its alien appearance with flamboyant wings deployed was overawing to Inner Sphere civilians whose sole experience of ’Mechs had been on tri-vid or the odd Archon’s birthday parades; and the advanced tactical missiles and lasers packed into its arms and torso provided enough authentic menace to squelch any thought of resistance. And had it not, Aleks’ ownGyrfalcon, parked up the street, lent theEyrie all the authority it needed.

An Elemental Point also accompanied him, leaping on their jump jets to maximize their own visibility to the apprehensive faces peering out windows. One battlesuit was a classic Toad, its snarling, wings-spread portrait of Turkina badly chipped, with bright streaks of metal exposed by Bulldog minigun bullets.

The streets were deserted. The day was hot and humid; the air redolent of peculiar odors: cooking oils

and indigenous spices, diesel exhaust, the smell of summer-lush foliage, itself unfamiliar yet somehow unmistakable; a faint hint of decaying fish from the mud flats. And the smell, just tainting the somewhat sluggish breeze, of burning. Buildings. Machines. OilPeople. That smell, Aleks knew, would linger for days in air and hair and clothes. And longer in the people’s memory.

Though his mouth smiled, it was primarily out of habit, despite his triumph.

No trace of devastation showed here. Devastation had been kept to a minimum. Yet Aleks’ spirit was troubled.

Is not the object of our Crusade to free the people of the Inner Sphere from their incompetent and barbarous overlords, and deliver them from the horrors of civil war and disorder?he kept asking himself. Yet we have not brought the blessings of rational Clan life and all-important order to Porrima: all we brought is destruction, controlled or not; and that is all we shall leave behind us.

If successful, thedesant might pave the way for Porrima’s eventual liberation by his Clan’s Touman.But still—

He shrugged his wide shoulders. Which were bare: he wore his cooling vest, his coolsock, trunks, short boots, a synthetic-mesh belt supporting a holstered pulse-laser pistol, and nothing else, having climbed straight down from the Lily’s cockpit. He was not the sort to brood or plague himself with his thoughts, albeit for reasons different than most Jade Falcons, even in the throes of the systemic slump following the adrenaline jag of battle.

We are destined by the Founder’s will to save these people. Yet in the process we are compelled to frighten, displace, injure and sometimes kill them. That is simple reality. Such is our burden as Clan warriors.

He headed toward a hoverbus kiosk that was plastered with bright placards, set diagonally across from a refueling point for civilian ICE vehicles, currently deserted. It had a cement bench well-shaded by maroon-leafed trees with widespread branches springing out like parasols from about seven meters up straight, grainy-barked boles.

As he walked, he waved at the battle armor with the chipped enamel, which never strayed far. “Hoy, Magnus. Trust your troops to keep me safe and join me; you’ve not been out of that can all day.”

He wore a headset with boom mike. He didn’t bother activating it, but let the Elemental Star Colonel’s external pickups convey his words. The bulky suit descended toward him on small blue flames.

“Refreshments,” Aleks told the Eyrie warrior in charge of the infantry detail. He nodded toward the fuel stop. “Inside you should find a machine dispensing cold beverages. Bring some for me and the Star Colonel, then distribute them to your people.”

The young woman bobbed her helmeted head and barked earnest orders to her troops. Aleks smiled, pleased with his knowledge of alien culture.

An older trooper with his full-head helmet tipped back on his close-cropped graying hair came over bearing two cans. The gaudy printing on their thin-gauge metal skins was already glazed with condensation. They had been secured by the simple expedient of one of Magnus’ Elementals grounding, walking through the security-reinforced front door—without the formality of opening it first, far less

bothering to unlock it—and wrenching the door off the dispensing machine.

Alex took both cans with a nod of thanks. He sat down on the shaded bench, placed one can beside him, popped the opener, and drank, savoring the coolness and crisp alien sweetness. A breeze ruffled his hair with thick fingers.

Magnus stood in the middle of the intersection as the traffic-control lamps cycled disregarded from green to amber to red above the domed top of his suit. The Star Colonel’s cheery nature did nothing to vitiate a much-seasoned warrior’s wariness. Temporarily mollified by the scene’s slumbering tranquility he lumbered over to plant the armor’s broad foot-pods in the shade near his leader’s bench.

He popped the seal with a hiss of equalizing air pressure. “Why do we loiter here, small Aleksandr? What isorla do you think to find?”

Aleks laughed. “Knowledge. Understanding of the people we have come to help.”

Grinning, the red-bearded giant shook his head. His carapace’s breastplate had swung open, revealing his head and powerful torso down to the trunks which, with his coolsock, constituted his sole garments. Notwithstanding their girth, his fingers were deft as they unfastened various sensors from his skin.

Then he stiffened and thrust his arms back into the arms of his battle armor. His suit was powered down: a metric ton of inert mass, it was almost impossible for even the strongest of Elementals to budge it by muscle power alone.

Magnus Icaza was among the strongest of Elementals. He made the powered-down suit lunge forward three meters at running speed for a normal human. The manipulator-tipped right arm swung, striking Aleks in the center of the chest, knocking him over the back of the bench.

It was as if a black explosion went off behind Aleks’ sternum. The air was smashed from his lungs by the impact of the massive armored club. As he toppled he saw a line of dirty white smoke streaking toward him from the alley just north of the fuel stop.

It was a short-range missile fired from a man-portable launcher. It struck Magnus Icaza at the left side of his chest, right at the edge of his open armor shell, and detonated with a white flash that momentarily blinded Aleks.

Falling behind the cement bench saved the Galaxy Commander from flame and fragments. Overpressure withheld air from his empty lungs. The other Elementals of Aleks’ escort let go all six of their own shoulder-mounted SRMs at once toward the point from which the shot had come, while the unpowered infantry added a crackling volley from their Gauss rifles. The whole brick side of a dry cleaners collapsed onto the Porriman missile crew.

A Solahma infantryman knelt above Aleks, concern on his face. Aleks waved him away, clambered to his feet as briskly as he could. He had cracked the back of his head hard on the ground and trying to breathe felt like daggers through his chest where his friend had struck him with the arm of his suit.

When Aleks knelt in turn over Magnus Icaza, his friend still lived. Somehow. The one remaining blue eye opened and recognized Aleks, the scorched and shredded lips smiled; and the one lung still extant, fully exposed in the seared and excavated cavern of rib cage, provided air for the Elemental to speak.

“Have a ... care, my friend,” he croaked. “It is not the fighting that kills you, but the downtime... ”

Pink froth bubbled from his lips. He died.

Aleks rose. A single tear cut a track through dust and cinders on a cheek that was frozen like a slab of fired clay.

“Let them learn what befalls those who treacherously murder a warrior of Clan Jade Falcon,” he said in a voice like a raven’s croak. “Destroy the district. Leave no building intact, nor anything living within.”