Flight of the Falcon

by Victor Milán

  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 her Ryoken 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 a Cougar 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 the Cougar 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 the Cougar 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.

  16

  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’s Gyrfalcon 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 the desant 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 inboard Red 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 the
mselves 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 your Eyrie. 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 my Gyrfalcon 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 a Spirit ’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’s Eyrie. 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 the Gyr’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’s Spirit 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’s Eyrie 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.