Flight of the Falcon

15

Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmeraldTalon

Jump Point

Chaffee

Lyran Commonwealth 20 May 3134

“Nestlings of Turkina,” Beckett Malthus’ voice intoned in the darkness, “attend me.”

It was the briefing theater inboard theEmerald Talon . The auditorium, like half a bowl, was full of expeditionary force officers. Malthus stood at a podium with Aleksandr and Malvina Hazen seated flanking him. They were all but unseen in the dark: all eyes were fixed above and behind them, upon the holovid tank displaying a giant map of Prefectures VIII and IX of The Republic of the Sphere and the Lyran Commonwealth frontier, in which Chaffee was highlighted, a glowing green orb bigger and brighter than the rest.

“The time has come,” the Supreme Commander said, “to drop all pretense. Themaskirovka has served its purpose. Now the time has come for the Jade Falcon to swoop in a mightydesant ”

Shrill falcon screams pierced the dark, and cries of “Seyla/"

“In the first wave, Zeta Galaxy shall jump first to Laiaka” A red line descended from Chaffee and to the left, away from Terra and into Prefecture VIII. It touched a star which glowed yellow. “From that staging point, Turkina’s Beak shall have the honor of striking Alkaid”

The line took a short jog down and right to a star that suddenly expanded into a red giant, as if going nova. The Zeta contingent cheered lustily. The Turkina Keshik officers looked bored and restive, and the Gyrs openly hostile, at the scantling Zetas being named first.

“The Gyrfalcon Galaxy”—the Deltas uttered falcon screams—“jumping through Zebeneschamali and Carnwath systems, shall strike at Ryde” A white line zigzagged to the right.

“Finally,” Malthus said, as a third, green line radiated a short distance down and right from Chaffee, “the Turkina Keshik will seize and hold the world of Glengarry.” The Keshik officers maintained an aloof silence, as if to signify to their rivals and inferiors—to be redundant—that they were professionals, and had done this sort of thing before.

“In the second phase, the Keshik will consolidate its hold upon Glengarry and begin its reconstruction according to the Founder’s precepts, as has commenced on Chaffee. Zeta Galaxy will take Summer.”

The red line looped beneath and past Skye, through Alcor and Mizar, then hooked up and right, almost to the border of Prefecture X, The Republic’s core.

The white line forked like lightning. One line stabbed almost straight down, through a system called Unukalahi, and then to a system right next door to Skye, virtually on a line between it and Terra. The other white line thrust a short jump up and right.

“The Gyrfalcons will split at Ryde. One element will take Zebebelgenubi, near our final objective. The other will strike at Kimball II.”

He paused. The cheering, which had devolved into a lusty exchange of insults between the Gyrs and the Zetas, dwindled to silence.

“And then,” Malthus said, “ten weeks from this very day, we rendezvous in Skye system. The Falcon shall spread her wings above Skye itself as all three forces converge. Skye shall fall. The road to Terra will lie open before us, and then Khan Jana Pryde will not withhold the Jade FalconTouman . They will surely join us in our triumph. Our ancient Crusade will be victorious at last: General Kerensky shall have truly returned home!”

“Seyla/ ’’the Falcon’s brood thundered in a voice of one.

“I knew I would find you here.”

The tall, broad-shouldered shape brooding over the railing that overlooked a shuttle deck, which was a cavern of darkness whose floor was grown with little mushrooms of light between dark, gleaming masses, looked up and around.

She saw the flash of his teeth in the dimness of the gallery, the darkness of his face. “I am surprised you would seek me out.”

The command council following thekurultai had quickly curdled into rancor. Malvina pressed her case for harsh action: Chaffee had been subdued by her destruction of Hamilton. It could provide their model for conquest:applied_ifrightfulness . The Mongol way.

Her sibkin had argued that conquest by terror was repugnant to Clan ways. That while harsh measures might be necessary in response to extreme provocation, the Falcons could not rely on them too greatly without overturning what they stood for, what they had returned to the Inner Sphere for: to free and safeguard the people there, not destroy them.

Sentiment clearly ran against him. The officers of Beckett Malthus’ Turkina Keshik had supported Malvina almost as enthusiastically as her own Gyrs. Only among his own commanders had Aleks found support; and even some of them seemed dubious.

Despite the fact the consensus was going away from Aleks, Bec Malthus ordained compromise: each Galaxy Commander might conduct his and her campaign as they wished; and when the fleets rejoined, at the zenith jump point four days out from Skye orbit, they would see what had been seen.

Pale face and silver hair appeared to float in air, vaguely agleam as if from within. The rest of her was cloaked in deep-space black with token green, itself scarcely other than black. The difference could not be seen in the dim amber footlights.

“It seems a waft of the air of home blows through,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble, “banishing for a moment the smell of hot metal, lubricants and ozone.”

“The soap with which I washed my hair and body,” she answered artlessly. “Made of Sudeten herbs. Home, if you would call it that.”

His smile was crooked. “We Clanners,” he said. “We dote upon nature, even though we ourselves are but little products of it. We so love to retreat into it during training and brief respites from duty. And to smuggle its smells and sometimes stolen scenery into the steel wombs into which we were born from glass ones.”

She was close enough that he could see the arch of her brow. “You find fault with our Clan ways?”

“I am amused by some of them, right enough.” He turned back to the rail, folded his big arms onto it, leaned there gazing out across the hangar deck. Above and beyond the shuttles being made ready for departure to the other JumpShips in the fleet, two great oblongs of starfield shone, silver upon black, one on either side of the central launch-lock. So arrogant had Clan Snow Raven been in their technology and might that they built huge crystal viewports on the battleship’s hangar deck, as if the shuttles were mettlesome steeds and needed to be able to see the starry realm to which they would soon or late return. In times when danger impended, armor shutters heavy as aBroadsword -class DropShip descended before each like closing eyelids.

“Our ways have changed since the first return to the Inner Sphere. Some out of need, others ... just changed. Some changes were for the best. Others I would see made right again. And others are not yet made, that need to be.”

She stood close beside him. She seemed clenched, and at the same time aglow with something like fury. It was as if she had something to say but could not.

He turned and looked at her in wonder. There were few things she could not do, if she chose.

“You have right,” she said at last. “But we might differ as to what should be changed, and how.”

“It is true.”

He turned, reached a broad square hand to her. It stopped midair. It seemed as if some sort of membrane, invisible, insensible to touch, but real nevertheless, had descended between them.

His eyes met hers. He dropped the hand.

“Change comes,” he said. “Changes greater than any of us expect.”

“Not greater than I expect.”

“We shall change the Inner Sphere as drastically as did our predecessors of the First Crusade, win or lose,” he said. “What upheavals will the Inner Sphere inflict on us—win or lose?”

“Exalt us,” she said. “Or destroy us. Better that than slide deeper into decadence.”

She laughed. It was brittle music, like tiny icicles shattering in a cold Sudeten dawn.

“You disappoint me, brother,” she said. “I had come here hoping you might give me answers. Instead all you have in your mouth is more questions.”

She turned from him. “What answers we find, we shall find in action. And so our ways part. For now.”

New London Spaceport

Skye

15 May 3134

Though the day was warm, especially here with the primary sun—so much like Terra’s own Sol—bouncing its heat off the blacktop of the spaceport into the faces of Tara and her escorts, the breezes blowing down from the Sanglamore Mountains west of New London were bladed with chill. They carried the scent of great splayed leaves turning all gold and tan and russet and orange, and the smell of the rich black soil they sprang from, and from heights greater still lordly evergreens twice taller than any ’Mech.

“Here she comes!” the shout went up from the troops around them. A point of blue-white brilliance had appeared above, burning laser-like through the white horsetails of clouds brushed across a sky as achingly blue as Northwind’s own. The powerful defensive emplacements, which like the ones guarding New Glasgow’s spaceport boasted powerful weapons remounted from DropShips as well as conventional anti-aircraft armaments, moved automatically to track its descent.

“About bloody time,” said Command Master Sergeant Angus McCorkle, standing a respectful distance behind his commander and her taller, brown-haired aide. He wore full Northwind regimentals, including a kilt and sash of the blue and black Campbell tartan, though he wore a tartan-banded cap instead of a bearskin-covered helmet. The two Taras wore conventional dress uniform, khaki with trousers. Although neither tradition nor regulation forbade a woman of the Highlanders wearing the kilt, and although she was in factthe Campbell, with better claim upon the sett—the traditional plaid pattern—than any, Countess Tara seldom wore it. She had enough trouble overcoming her pretty-girl image without appearing at solemn public functions wearing what was in reality a short skirt.Especially on a day as breezy as today.

And far lessregimental, she reflected Although it would almost be worth it, to hear that fat fool Herrmann howl .

With a roar of drive jets the DropShipBlue Bayou settled toward the designated blast pit. It lay well away from the spaceport’s main buildings, beyond any number of invitingly vacant landing spots. Tara suspected the remote location was another half-subtle dig from her hosts. It did sport a boggy fen of tall, feather-headed grasses gone gray in the long summer heat across the wire to discourage the protesters who still dogged Tara’s steps.

There seemed no guile behind the smile of Lieutenant Colonel Brigid Hanratty, commander of the planet’s largest remaining military formation as well as today’s escorts and security detail—no more Ducal Guards for Tara. Hanratty was a big, rawboned woman with a face like a prizefighter and a great mass of curly, metallic red hair bound, unlikely enough, into pigtails. Despite the fact she looked like the cliche image of an Irish washerwoman, she had shown herself, in the few days Tara had been liaising with her, to be at the least a competent officer with a solid grasp of military matters.

She also professed a high regard for Tara Campbell’s military accomplishments, from Sadalbari onward.

Far from resenting the petite and beautiful Countess, she seemed vastly tickled that such a redoubtable battle leader should appear to her in the guise of what she termed a “wee porcelain doll.” So hearty were her expressions of admiration that Tara had not even felt the usual stab of resentment—champion martial artist that she was, as well as much-bloodied MechWarrior and proven battlefield commander—that being referred to as a “porcelain doll” normally inflicted.

Hanratty seemed legitimately delighted to have Tara Campbell on Skye and working with her, under whatever plan. Well, she’s the only one, Tara thought as the ship’s landing jacks extended and it settled onto the ferrocrete rim of the pit with a vast roaring and grinding.

That statement was not altogether true. The Skye mass media were as adulatory as the media on Terra had been—except for those owned by the powerful Herrmanns AG, who portrayed her as a demon incarnate. Yet her official reception had little warmed: Planetary Legate Eckard was so introverted as to be a cipher, Prefect Brown was aloof and disapproving, Minister Solvaig openly hostile. In general the Duke himself seemed to find her as welcome as a cold sore; yet he had shown no reticence about intervening in her behalf, either at the first unfortunate meeting with Prefecture officials or subsequently when Tara had been reluctantly compelled to call instances of bureaucratic obstruction and noncooperation, quite frequent at first, to his attention. It was as if he was torn between resentment and relief at her presence—and blamed her for both.

Whatever the case, she knew full well she could not be running incessantly to the Lord Governor for help. Not without sacrificing any credibility and authority she might have, not to mention that self-esteem which she was only now becoming able to permit herself to feel.

Seeming to read her mind, as she had more and more in the weeks since the victory on Terra, Tara Bishop leaned her mouth close to the smaller woman’s ear and murmured, “At least we’ll have some troops now. That should get us treated a little more seriously.”

Tara nodded.

With a hiss of equalizing atmospheric pressure, the main locks opened and flower-petaled into ramps. “Sar’nt Major!” rapped Hanratty. Her own top kick, an immense, square, slab-faced man named McDougall who looked remarkably like an ancient North American Plains Indian warrior from Terra and wore a uniform with kilt and sash of a plaid unknown to Tara, barked orders. The regimental band of the Seventh Skye Militia enthusiastically if not expertly began skirling out “The Campbells Are Coming,” which they had also played for Tara on her first visit to the regiment’s cantonment outside New London several days before. It seemed that Hanratty’s easy grin tightened a bit at that, and her eyes narrowed. Then she relaxed again as if accepting something inevitable.

Tara’s eyes, a cool green today, flicked up and aside to her aide. A corner of the taller woman’s mouth quirked up. “I’d rather fight Nasty Kerensky in herRyoken II naked with a sidearm on the steppes in September,” Captain Bishop muttered, “than listen to bad bagpipes.”

“Are there any other kind?” grumbled McCorkle. His own Northwind-Scot upbringing did not extend to an appreciation for the culture’s traditional music.

Led by their commander, Colonel Robert Ballantrae, riding in aCougar BattleMech taken as spoils from the Steel Wolves on the Belgorod plain, Tara’s Highlanders stepped and drove forth into the bright sunlight in smart style. They formed a column of infantry with shouldered arms, flanked by armored vehicles and with theCougar striding in the fore, and marched toward their waiting commander, her immediate entourage, and the militia platoon behind. The band finished off their tune, mercifully, only to

begin another: a lively, driving air that they played with such panache as to almost make up for their lack of skill.

Tara found herself nodding her spike-haired head in time. “What’s that tune, Colonel? It sounds familiar.”

Hanratty’s homely face split into a gap-toothed grin. “That’s the ‘Garryowen,’ marm,” she said. “We’ve our unit nickname from it. And might I ask that you call me Brigid, if the Countess pleases; I forget I’m no longer a major, the rank’s that new.”

The Seventh’s commander had gone with Jasek and his followers—and a sigh of relief, if scuttlebutt were to be credited. He was a hard-core, Lyran-loving hardass. Whereas the Seventh’s grunts were overwhelmingly Anglophones.

Tara nodded to the woman’s request. “If you’ll call me Tara,” she said.

“But how the devil will you know which one I mean?”

“Tone of voice,” Tara Bishop said. “We’re used to it; we’ll know. Or just call me TB, ma’am.”

The colonel shrugged.

With a final stomp of broad metal feet that rang on the pavement and rattled Tara’s teeth, Ballantrae brought theCougar to a halt ten meters from his Countess. He raised the ’Mech’s right arm in the stiff-armed Highlander salute.

“Countess Campbell, ma’am!” boomed from the ’Mech’s loudspeakers. “Colonel Robert Ballantrae and Task Force Bruce reporting as ordered,ma’am !”

TF Bruce was a scratch company of First Kearnies and Fusiliers, with nearly an equal number of Republican Guard newbies recruited on Terra after the Steel Wolves’ defeat. Tara wondered how glad the latter would be to be restored to the presence of Master Sergeant McCorkle, who had been the bane of their existence until crash-dispatched with his Countess and her aide and a bare-bones staff to Skye to begin shoring the defenses remaining after the defection of Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.

She returned the Highlander Colonel’s salute smartly. “Welcome to Skye. The strength of our arms is The Republic’s!”

The Highlanders gave back the slogan with the enthusiasm of men and women who had fought to make it real.

Behind her back, though, Tara thought she heard snickers from the assembled Seventh troopers.

It did not betide particularly well. But it was small surprise. The Seventh Skye Militia was not only the planet Skye’s largest intact military formation. It was also legendarily the largest collection of sad sacks and screw-ups in the planetary armed forces. And a hotbed of Free Skye subversion, to boot.

Alkaid

Prefecture VIII

The Republic of the Sphere

14 June 3134

The rotary-wing VTOL seemed to stumble in air as a double-speed burst from the Ultra autocannon in the left arm of Aleksandr Hazen’sGyrfalcon caught it full in the nose. Its fuselage vanished into a comet of yellow flame that continued to streak against the merciless white desert sky trailing black flame, its rotor still spinning above it, until a plane-topped column of wind-graven sandstone halted its careen.

“The defenders of Alkaid are brave,” he said over his general frequency channel. “But we outmatch them.”

This time he had issued a batchall. And more: it had been accepted.

Reviewing Alkaid’s history, reports from Jade Falcon intelligence and intercepts of radio traffic from the surface on their seven-day transit from the pirate point whose coordinates had been provided by Jade Falcon merchants, Aleks and his analysts had calculated their strategy carefully. Alkaid possessed a small but proficient defense force. More to the point, it possessed a history of successful guerrilla resistance against the brutal fanatics of the Blakist Jihad, who had seized the spaceports and beaten down its conventional defenders.

Aleks wanted no rerun of Chaffee. Nor did he believe thedesant could afford it—nor the grand long-term plans he had had such a hand in shaping. It was imperative to subdue Alkaid as expeditiously and yet as completely as possible. Aleks faced a fight for a far more populous world after this one, as well as a tight timetable leading to the three-pronged attack on Skye itself. And his Clan needed Alkaid for a base and more. Unlike Chaffee, Alkaid, also hot, also dry and even higher-gravity, possessed strategically significant resources in the form of vast chemical extraction and processing operations. All qualms or compassion aside, the Jade Falcon plan required Alkaid be subdued with minimal disruption, either of the physical plant or the workers who made it run.

With a full Galaxy at his command, Aleks could have seized the world in a coup de main, simply dropping ships to seize the spaceports at the industrial center of Moravska Ostrava and the planetary capital Verstigrad in the far north, and Nobadi on the southern supercontinent of Inahalia. Such an expedient would have put the bulk of Alkaid’s slightly more than one hundred million population under his guns.

Aleks instead chose a plan he deemed less liable to produce unnecessary destruction. Even before his DropShip fleet shaped Alkaid orbit, he was blanketing the planet with a challenge to Governor Chandler Neville and Legate Renee Zollern to block his entrance to Moravska Ostrava from a landing spot forty kilometers into the desert with a militia battalion, which he promised would enjoy at least a two-to-one numerical advantage over the attackers. He assured the authorities—for the consumption of the populace, to whom the powerful communications gear inboardRed Heart helpfully beamed the whole negotiation—that he had no intent of disrupting Alkaid’s normal way of life or imposing Clan values. All he asked was submission, with all resistance ceased, should he win the battle.

The local authorities went for his deal. They weren’t eager to get smashed flat by the preponderant force

Aleks could bring to bear. The cost of losing would be tolerable. And the local militia might actually win—the old overwhelming Clan superiority was history, whereas the old overbearing Clan arrogance was not. Who knew; the invaders might just bid themselves into bringing too small a force.

As it happened, Aleks himself won the enthusiastic bidding for the honor of carrying out the attack, with his tender of but a single Trinary—armor, Elementals and conventional infantry, stiffened by three ’Mechs and two points of VTOLs. That bettered the deal he had offered the local authorities.

It also raised the possibility that the defenders’ hopes for Clan overconfidence might be borne out.

“Galaxy Commander," said a voice in his ear. “This is Red Eye One. We have visual contact.” Aleks’ kicker back was that he had selected only hovercraft for his vehicles, for their superior mobility over the uncertain Alkaid terrain.

“They lead with Scimitars and hoverbikes. They appear to deploy only all-ground-effect vehicles, even as we do."

“Well done, Warrior Till,” Aleks said to his scout.

He laughed. This will be a battle of maneuver, he thought. Just as I intended. The Alkaidians mean to take advantage of their knowledge of local terrain; against that I oppose our proficiency. That the Turkina’s Beak Galaxy had never heretofore been notorious for its proficiency did not dampen his eagerness to join battle. Instead,challenge whetted his appetite.

“Second Star Points One and Two, skirmish forward,” he commanded. “MechWarrior Nina, join them in yourEyrie . Engage them, hurt them, pop smoke and withdraw at speed.” All according to the plan he had sketched to his troops in advance.

“But, Galaxy Commander,’”Nina responded, “it would be dishonor to flee."

“One of two things now happens,” Aleks said levelly. “You will carry out your orders as a Falcon Clanswoman. Or you will swap ’Mechs with me, you will provide fire-support in myGyrfalcon and I shall carry out your orders in your machine.”

“But, sir—”

“Never shall it be said Aleksandr Hazen ordered a subordinate to do something he dared not do. Now do as your honor bids, MechWarrior. But choose within the next ten seconds.”

The light ’Mech instantly broke into a ground-eating run after the red-dust rooster tails raised by the light hovercraft, which had plunged instantly ahead as if to shame the high and mighty MechWarrior.

“Galaxy Commander, I obey/”Nina’s voice said.

“Well done.” With purpose but without hurry he deployed the rest of his forces. His infantry dug into a semicircle, twenty-five trooper Points widely spaced, bowed toward the enemy. His Elementals, useless at range but horribly effective close up, he grounded behind them. His remaining vehicles he kept back in defilade with aSpirit ’Mech and the Lily, except for his pair of speedy little Nacons, which he split to patrol the red wastes to either side of his main force. The sun, a blinding bluish pinpoint above their left shoulders, would shine full into the enemy’s eyes. It was a potent defensive formation—and surprisingly static for a commander bent on mobile warfare.

Aleks was a man who loved surprises. Especially when he did the surprising.

“All static units to air-defense mode,” he directed at last. “VTOLs, give their flyers as much to worry about that isn’t us as possible.”

His four helicopters put snouts down and spurted toward the onrushing enemy, now visible as columns of dust. Aleks saw the Alkaidian VTOLs on radar and magnetic-anomaly detector—some of them. The enemy craft were making maximal use of the terrain, hugging the ground, following saw-backed ridge lines, masking themselves behind the numerous tall, flat-topped ventifact columns. The high iron content of the rocks played hell with the MADs, a phenomenon Aleks had encountered before.

It worried him not at all. His Donar assault helos were fast and potent, each built around an extended-range long laser that gave them lengthy reach; and no matter how shaky their morale and state of readiness had been when he took command of Turkina’s Beak, his jocks were still purpose-bred Clan aerospace warriors, as superior in their perceptions and reaction time to standard Spheroids as were their MechWarrior kindred. And they were as skillful as intensive hands-on Clan schooling could make them, keen for action from many hours of simulator combat during the endless weeks of waiting for the fleet’s stardrives to recharge.

Reports rattled in his earpiece as his skirmishing detachment engaged the oncoming Republic Alkaid Militia. He had sent forward two twenty-ton Fox armored cars carried away as booty from Porrima, an Asshur armed with a single-volley Streak SRM launcher and a pair of extended-range medium lasers, a forty-five-ton Bellona for punch, and MechWarrior Nina’sEyrie . He listened to their quick falcon-screams of triumph as his eyes scanned skies of pale blue, alternating with his instruments, keeping a wary eye for intruding VTOLs.

His eye caught a flicker to the left edge of his windscreen. A Crow scout helo had popped up from behind a ridge just half a klick from his defensive line behind low hills and clumps of red boulders. Before he could respond, MechWarrior Mordechai had fired the large laser in his ’Mech’s left arm. The chopper flared ruby, then banked and swooped down out of sight with smoke pouring black from it like blood into water.

Two more VTOLs streaked toward them from the direction of the growing, multiplex dust cloud. Aleks noted symbols on his display indicating they were two of his own Donars. He hoped his people would check their own sensors and hold fire. This as much as battle itself will indicate whether I am succeeding with these warriors , he thought,whether I have begun to instill discipline and, more important, pride where before there was but dezgra.

His Trinary refrained from firing up their own air. A black smoke ball rolled up the sky in the wake of his VTOLs, which banked to his left with a swarm of enemy ships after them like angry hornets. Green and red lasers stabbed at the Jade Falcon helos but missed.

With satisfaction Aleks noted that MechWarrior Mordechai had shifted to a secondary firing position and crouched back down so that his machine was mostly behind cover. He hoped the Alkaidians had been too preoccupied to note the origin of the shot that wounded their VTOL, but it did not matter hugely. The locals already knew—roughly—where his troops were. All lay in the details.

A white smokescreen wall sprang up from the desert. His skirmishers came flying back through it. All were functional, though the Bellona had a blown-out missile launcher box trailing a thin gray streamer of smoke.

The first of the enemy craft hove into view in pursuit, two Fox armored cars closely followed by a lance of Scimitars: sleek machines painted mottled tan and gray, bristling with armaments, sliding over the rocky desert soil with sinister ease. The Jade Falcon craft split to pass to either side of their hull-down comrades.

The lead pack of pursuers all chased the bunch to Aleks’ left. The rest of the Alkaidians began to appear on Aleks’ MAD, behind the smoke.

Despite Aleksandr Hazen’s unremitting efforts over the weeks to instill his Turkina’s Beak warriors with their namesake’s headlong zeal, now they, at his order,contained that zeal, withheld their fire. It was a most un-Clanlike discipline, but it too was part of war—Aleks Hazen’s way.

“All long-range units choose targets and prepare to engage,” he commanded. Then: “Weapons free.”

Heavy lasers and PPCs drew scarlet and blue-white lines between dug-in Jade Falcons and attacking Alkaidians. The giant autocannon of an SM1 tank destroyer thudded from Aleks’ right, so near he could feel the vibration through his cockpit thrust falcon-like from theGyr ’s upper torso. White trails of long-range missiles sprouted from the Falcon positions and grew toward the onrushing hovercraft like shoots.

White flashes and black smoke balls appeared among the Alkaidians. A Fox disintegrated into a rolling ruin tumble. Aleks’ target, a fifty-ton JES tactical missile carrier, veered away from a laser and autocannon volley belching smoke from its left-hand SRM launcher. It disappeared behind some irregularity of the red ground Aleks could not see.

What he could see, even without White Lily’s vision enhancements, was the Alkaidian infantry hastily dismounting. Some rode in poorly armored personnel carriers, others clung to the backs of combat hovercraft like baby scorpions to their mother. Neither offered much shelter against the metal storm the Jade Falcons now unleashed upon them.

Aleks smiled and nodded. Infantry was always a concern, although Clan MechWarriors all too often dismissed them as mere residue, even today. They carried support weapons heavy enough to be dangerous, and could swarm and capture vehicles or even an unwarily piloted BattleMech. Now, though, they were afoot, hence slow—and meat for his Elementals when it was time to let their leashes slip.

Although they had lost over half a dozen vehicles in the first surprise volley—and destroyed no Clan machines in return, Aleks’ display told him—the Alkaidian forces carried on undaunted with their plan: swarming around both flanks of Aleks’ surprisingly dug-in Trinary. Even forcing their infantry to dismount probably did not disrupt their tactics: they would want a force out front to pin Aleks’ troops in place, or flanking would mean little.

“MechWarrior Mordechai,” Aleks directed, “attack as ordered.”

With red sand cascading from its flanks, Mordechai’sSpirit erupted from cover, weapons flaming. At the same time the waiting Falcon hovercraft rose up amidst hurricanes of swirling dust to lunge at the flankers to their left in a smashing attack. MechWarrior Nina’sEyrie joined them, as planned.

With his infantry out front, in good cover with overlapping fields of fire should the Alkaidian foot seek to advance, Aleks was left to handle the right-hand flanking force with the aid of his squat-armored Elementals.

It was not an even fight. Nor a long one.

Ryde

Prefecture VIII

The Republic of the Sphere

24 June 3134

Malvina Hazen descended upon Ryde like a plague from ancient prophecy.

Although the voyage from the jump points was only eleven days, that was too much for the impatient Galaxy Commander, who took the risk of employing a pirate point five days out—and like her sibkin won her gamble. Upon arriving in-system and before launching her DropShips, Malvina convened her officers in the briefing amphitheater inboard her flag JumpShip,Za Vie en Rose , captured from the Davion contingent of the then-Federated Commonwealth in the last century and renamed; Malvina had insisted upon restoring its original name, and as a ristar got her wish, especially since Khan Jana Pryde could not care less what they called their ships so long as theywon .

Naked, Malvina stood before her subcommanders. She held her slender white arms above her head, cut them with her great-bladed fighting knife—carefully, so as to avoid damage to muscle, nerve and tendon—and let the blood stream over her silver pale hair, down her face, to spatter her breasts and shoulders and run in twining networks down her flat domed belly.

In a ringing voice she promised: so it would be with all who stood in the path of the Falcons’ return to the Inner Sphere. She would bathe in their blood.

Her Gyrfalcons screamed themselves hoarse in an orgy of approbation.

She broadcast the ceremony live to Ryde, so they could see in full tridee what Fate had in store for them.

In the glare of a bright but distant yellow-white sun, her DropShips descended through thin, sulfurous atmosphere to land at strategic locations on the world’s three continents. She herself led her First Falcon Striker Cluster in a drop on the vital Water Pure complex, which provided drinkable water to the cold, dry world’s populace and lay near the capital Heaven’s Gate on the southerly continent Kale. Her command ship came down inside the wire, its landing jacks digging deep into the pavement of its parking lot, vehicles and cement melted into a bubbling cauldron by its drive jets.

Her Gyrs sprang forth ready for battle. Ryde’s defenders did not disappoint her. Most of the strongpoints erected during the Succession Wars, when the chemical-rich planet had changed hands frequently between Houses Steiner and Kurita, had been stripped of armament and allowed to fall into desuetude after The Republic’s rise. The fort near the water-purification plant had not. It was not the prize an invader would seek the planet/or —but it was unmistakably key to possession of the planet itself. The peace of The Republic notwithstanding, the Ryde authorities had kept the plant carefully guarded.

The Republic Ryde Militia strongpoint lay near the facility but several kilometers outside its confines, sprawled on a yellow plain not far from the capital. By dropping audaciously into the facility itself Malvina put the militia in the position of having to invade its own industrial complex to dislodge the Falcons. However, the Corridan IV-based Water Pure Industries, wealthy and powerful, owed both wealth and power—especially on Ryde itself—in no small part to this very plant. It maintained a large and comprehensively trained security detachment of its own, equipped with VTOLs, armored vehicles, armored infantry equipped with Gnome power suits based upon the older Elemental design, and even a Hatchetman BattleMech; WPI gave protecting its precious plant precedence over Devlin Stone’s desire to eliminate ’Mechs from private hands. As reliant as anyone else on the planet upon the steady stream of purified water flowing from the facility, successions of Governors had done nothing to pressure the corporation into scrapping the machine.

While Gyrfalcon aerospace fighters drew networks of white contrail against mauve sky, dueling in the stratosphere with Ryde fighters, Malvina herself burst forth from the landing ship’s bay in her huge, hawk-headedShrike , ornamental wings extended, followed by an Elemental swarm. Ten ’Mechs emerged after hers. A Star of five immediately set off to the south to counter any thrusts by the Defense Force regulars. The rest, supported by the Elementals in their super-sized power armor, strode off at once into the Cubist jungle of pipes and giant tanks after their commander, leaving the Galaxy’s vehicles, VTOLs, and unpowered infantry to sort themselves out.

It was not that Malvina disdained the combined-arms paradigm dominant in modern war; like her brother she had earned ristar status and Galaxy command by successfully leading troops in battle as well as by her sheer prowess as a MechWarrior—and her force-of-nature ferocity. Battles were not won without understanding how to fight vehicles and infantry in concert with BattleMechs; and battles she had won. What made her plunge right in was her sheer bloodlust, her desire for the hunt, especially in the wake of the frustrations of Chaffee. She had gone to extremes to instill the sameyarak —the bird of prey’s eagerness for the hunt—in her Gyrfalcons.

Now she unhooded them and let them fly.

Although a range of jagged mountains, source of the plant’s raw material, stood near, the morning was warm. Ryde’s sun stood high in the sky. It was already hot in Malvina’s cockpit as she settled her ’Mech down just beyond a hash of white-gleaming pipes two meters through.

Gunfire flashed in her peripheral vision. Heat-blooms of chemical propellant ballooned in her IR display. A fire team of WPI security troops was engaging her with conventional projectile rifles. And somewhat more: she felt a tiny shudder ripple through Black Rose’s ninety-five tons of mass as the shaped charge warhead of a light anti-armor rocket spent itself on the armored housing of her left hip actuator.

A subconscious glance at her internal status displays confirmed what she already knew: the rocket had left a hot spot and dug a slight crater in the armor.

She laughed as she destroyed the unarmored infantry with a burst of flechette rounds from the heavy autocannon twinned in theShrike ’s left arm.

Around her men and women hunted others, killed, died. The shrieks of unarmored infantry soldiers caught by Elemental flamers shrilled in her audio pickups like the cries of startled seabirds—on a world that had seas, and birds. Explosions boomed and crackled and cannon cracked on all sides.

Not all the dying was being done by one side. A Point of Elementals leapt into the sky like giant fleas to attack a group of light armored vehicles with their short-range missile launchers. A Crow scout chopper appeared abruptly from behind a huge, yellow-painted tank as if falling up. Its lasers flared scarlet, tumbling two giant warriors from the sky. A third power suit exploded as first its right-hand launcher and

then its flamer fuel were ignited by the beam’s hot kiss. The other two Elementals ducked for safety behind a spatter of missiles that missed. Then a PPC bolt from somewhere behind Malvina blew the VTOL into a black cloud raining yellow fire.

In her ears rang the raptor cries of her MechWarriors outside the plant striking south. The planetary militia, forewarned, had reacted to her landing with exemplary quickness. It was killing them. With their own vehicles, infantry clinging to armored backs and flanks, trailing after, the five Gyrfalcon BattleMechs charged at full speed through the defenders’ advancing armor, slashing, slaying, more like diamond sharks ripping through shoals of ice cod in the chill, inhospitable waters of Strana Mechty than Jade Falcons stooping on prey.

The metal tangle all around made gibberish of Malvina’s magnetic anomaly detector. She didn’t know theHatchetman was there until it suddenly lunged from behind a three-story cinder-block pumping station. Its huge depleted uranium hatchet, the size of a house wall, swung toward her cockpit in a desperate all-or-nothing shot for the one target that might permit the forty-five-ton ’Mech to take down her twice-as-heavy and more behemoth.

But Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen had senses keen and reflexes quick even for a Clan Mech Warrior. Although she could read the display strip beneath the low, wide windscreen that compressed the whole three-sixty view around her machine as readily as her natural vision, it was her peripheral sight that showed the heavy blade flashing in the glare of the distant primary. She folded her ’Mech’s right knee, pivoting clockwise in a flash.

Just missing theShrike ’s head, the great blade smashed into the extended-range medium laser set in Black Rose’s left shoulder. White smoke gouted from it like arterial spray. Malvina’s board lit with red lights and warnings shrilled. It had been a good stroke, a vicious one.

But not enough. Far from that.

She swung her machine’s torso back the other way. The hatchet had sunk deep into theShrike ’s torso and stuck fast. The Rydian jock managed to wrench it free, and then the two autocannon that made up Black Rose’s left arm blasted the codpiece-like armored housing protecting theHatchetman ’s groin area and slammed it back into the pump house. The wall cracked and sagged.

With commendable speed, theHatchetman pushed off from the crumpled wall with its elbows and jumped straight up. Malvina followed. The humanoid ’Mech with the oddParasaurolophus -like head, with its long back-sweeping crest, could climb away from her spiky monster; even wizard Clan design could only do so much with a ninety-five-ton machine.

But the lighter ’Mech had not gotten that great a literal jump on Malvina—Clan reflexes again. The pilot aimed another hatchet blow at Malvina’s cockpit. Laughing, with gentle pressure on the attitude jet controls, Malvina pirouetted the vast machine out of its path.

The massive weapon’s momentum almost toppled theHatchetman off its drive columns. The pilot managed to keep it upright and airborne, just barely.

Until with a blast from her 100mm autocannon Malvina blew off one of the Spheroid ’Mech’s Luxor 2/Q jets.

TheHatchetman fell to the sulfurous hardpan with such force that displaced air rocked the hovering Shrike . The Rose had excellent thermal efficiency, but heat rose quickly in the cockpit, coating

Malvina’s near-naked body in instant sweat. The stink of sulfur pressed like thumbs at her nostrils, infiltrating through the cockpit seal or perhaps gaskets aft in the fuselage—she would have words with her tech crew on returning to the ship.

It was time to come down. An unfamiliar voice spoke in her ear across the general frequency she left open in case the locals found something to say to her.

“Terms,” it said. A woman’s voice.

“As if,” Malvina replied. Her taloned right foot came down on the front of theHatchetman ’ s sloped head, eliciting a sharp scream, quickly cut off.

With the Water Pure plant secured, the Ryde planetary government capitulated, even as fighting continued at other Jade Falcon landing sites across the planet. Malvina was almost disappointed. Yet with limited numbers and less time—both needed careful husbanding, for the crowning glory at Skye—she could not afford the luxury of a campaign of any length. She had places to be and people to kill. There had been no choice but to go for the planetary jugular.

Unlike Chaffee’s, Ryde’s defenders were professionals, thoroughly conventional. When they surrendered it was likely they considered it binding. Yet despite their unconditional surrender, Malvina wanted to ensure that there would be no repetition of the guerrilla campaign that had caused such difficulties on the Lyran world.

Of a global population of almost 680 million, Malvina’s Gyrfalcons quickly rounded up sixty-eight thousand at random and herded them into confinement areas improvised from sports venues and factory parking areas near the Clusters’ landing sites. Then with local media broadcasting the scene on tridee under threat of Elemental flamers, they proceeded to decimate the captives: making them count down, having every tenth one step forward, driving that tenth portion together and then killing them with machine gun and laser fire—men, women, children.

Evolution had come to Ryde, Clan style. Or at least that version practiced by Malvina Hazen and her Mongol faction.