Victor Milan - Flight of the Falcon

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.