across the fields to hide in the transient suburbs which sprang up nearby during the sixty-two-year calm spells between bouts of catastrophic weather. The rest, most of them, turned to meet the invaders.
Even before theUnion C -class vessel had settled its forty-seven hundred tons on its landing jacks on the pavement and the last flames had quit flickering above the blast-pit rim, sally ports opened and the bulky man- shapes of Elementals in Clan battle armor suits sailed out on the impulses of their jump jets. They fanned out around the vessel as muzzle flashes sparked from militiamen lying in the grass around the apron or crouching beside parked service vehicles. A few laser rifles stabbed ruby beams toward the leaping squat figures on the ship.
A point of aerospace fighters streaked past low and subsonic to the north of the main terminal. Flame blossomed as they strafed and rocketed the barracks.
The Elementals struck ground twenty meters or so beyond the ovoid DropShip’s splayed landing jacks, bounded into the air again. Ramps had descended to the pavement. BattleMechs now began to clump down behind them, a dozen, more.
At sight of the metal behemoths, some vaguely manlike, some not at all, many more of the militia threw down their weapons and fled. Everybody knew what ’Mechs were—the tri-vid adventures were full of them. Which was the problem: they were terrifying potencies, monsters from another age. Most people of The Republic of the Sphere had never seen more than one or two in person in all their lives. Now, confronted with what to them was a stupefying profusion of the giant killing machines, many simply panicked.
The Elementals descended toward the ragged lines of prone riflemen. Liquid flame gushed from the arms of their armor. The militia troops became torches, to rise and run screaming, leaving footsteps of flame dying slowly behind them in the dew-moist morning grass.
Other power-armored giants unleashed rockets from launchers rising to either side of their heads like grotesque shoulder padding. The heavy short-range missiles shattered stacked cargo crates and the bodies of troops firing from their shelter. One cargo mule rose several meters in the air upon a speed-growing stalk of smoke flowered scarlet in flame, then toppled back to the pavement.
From a fen outside the perimeter wire a huge flock of waterfowl rose into the sky on two-meter wingspans. They streamed away from the port like a cloud of white crosses.
With the BattleMechs laying down a base of fire the Elementals moved onward, pursuing fleeing foes or rooting them out from among the buildings nearest the ship. Vehicles and unpowered infantry were streaming down the ramps now, spreading out in turn to secure the vast facility.
The battle for the spaceport was over. Only the killing went on.
“We cannot do that!”
“The wordcannot is not in the Clan Jade Falcon lexicon, Star Captain Mason,” Aleks said affably into the boom microphone of his neurohelmet. He sat in the cockpit of his fify-five-tonGyrfalcon BattleMech clad only in shorts over his coolsock. He was totally relaxed. His reservations, strategic as well as moral, about the assault remained in full effect. He had pushed them totally from his consciousness, and was now aware of nothing except happy anticipation of doing what he had literally been bred, raised and trained his whole life to do.
“Besides,” he continued to the officer commanding his DropShip, descending toward the outskirts ofAllisonCity with atmosphere pounding and shrieking at the hull as if in protest of this violation, “we obviously can. The place I told you to land lies beneath us; we are dropping toward it. All we need do is allow things to take their natural course.”
“But it is swamp,”the captain protested. “I would not dare even hot-drop you and your ’Mechs into such terrain, Galaxy Commander!”
By hot-drop he meant dropping the jump-capable ’Mechs of Aleks’ command, which was most of them, from his craft while it remained airborne. He was bold to speak in such a manner. Almost any other Galaxy Commander would have relieved him of command by now and called him out into the bargain. Malvina would probably have popped out of her cockpit, clambered up to the bridge, and put the captain’s brains all over his own bridge viewscreen with her sidearm. The thought made Aleks smile.
He himself felt no rancor toward Star Captain Mason. Although he had not fought with Mason before—only Magnus Icaza and Folke Jorgensson had accompanied him to Zeta Galaxy—he was satisfied that Mason was a competent, courageous officer. His concern was how best to use his ship in the Falcon’s service, not craven personal safety.
“I test the mettle of my pilots as much as my Mech Warriors,” Aleks said. “You have landing jacks, Star Captain,quiaff? ”
“Aff.”
“Use them. Put us down where I have said. Hold us level with jets and gyros while we debark. If you start to sink after, blast free and fly away and land where you please. Only get us off first!”
“But, Galaxy Commander! If we topple we could all be killed, our equipment lost!”
Aleks laughed. “We all die sometime, Star Captain. If I am wrong I shall pay the price. Now show me that as a true Falcon’s son you know how to fly—or how to die.Quiaff? ”
Since Porrima was the direct holding of the Archon, ruler of the Lyran Commonwealth, both jump points were watched by remote observation outposts. When the Jade Falcon fleet appeared at the zenith point it curtly informed the station of its ostensible purpose in entering the system: themaskirovka . The station’s commander protested the intrusion briskly.
Given that it was an unarmed space station with a complement of about twenty confronting a sizable fleet including armed JumpShips, DropShips and a full-on battleship, the sheer bravado of the stationmaster’s reply favorably impressed the Clanners from Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti down. It probably saved the station crew’s lives.
Shortly after emergence, one of the JumpShips launched a shuttle and a Star of ten aerospace fighters. An underofficer on theEmerald Talon broadcast a “courtesy” call to the station to inform them that this was a training exercise, of no concern to the Porrima authorities nor the station occupants, and, of course, to threaten prompt retribution if the station interfered in any way. Which it palpably could not, thus showcasing Clan Jade Falcon concepts both of courtesy and humor.
In the course of juking through space, spilling bundles of radar-reflecting aluminum-coated plastic chaff in hopes of evading its pursuers, the shuttle dodged within a hundred meters of the station. The flyby evoked a storm of complaint from the station, which this time was met by bland obduracy, as if Falcon Clanners understood neither English nor German.
Between their excitement at the reckless near-miss and the war fleet’s infuriating nonresponse, and a good deal of internal commentary on high-handed Clan arrogance, no one heard a thing as ten small rubberized magnets clamped themselves to the hull near the main airlock. Nor did they hear the lock’s outer hatch open and close, nor hear it cycle.
Their first warning was the slight pressure change as the inner hatch opened. And then it was much too late. The station’s unarmed crew—nominally military, but in fact LCAF technicians who had no weapons nor even instruction in their use beyond a gesture in that direction during basic training—found themselves facing five figures, four gigantic in armor and one dwarfed by them in a standard EVA pressure suit. They also faced three microlasers swapped with flamers—a daft weapon in enclosed quarters—in the arms of three contemporary suits of Clan battle armor, an old-style suit’s small laser, and one pulse-laser pistol gripped in a spacesuit-gauntleted hand.
“I am Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen of Clan Jade Falcon,” the smallest figure, who still loomed over all the observation post’s crew, said in a pleasant and cheerful baritone voice. “You are now my captives.”
And so they were. In part because of the courage shown by their initial challenge, no Falcon challenged Aleks’ mandate that the crew be kept safe under lock down and then released unharmed when the Clanners had no further use for their silence.
After the initial excited reports of the Jade Falcon emergence, all further beamcasts from the station indicated that nothing whatever of interest occurred.
Somehow they omitted to mention when half a dozen DropShips detached themselves from JumpShips and headed for the ecliptic at a one-gee standard burn.
“No opposition, Aleks,” Star Colonel Magnus Icaza’s voice said into Aleks’ earpiece. “I am disappointed in these Porrimans ”
The giant stood in his Elemental battle armor beside theGyrfalcon ’ s right foot on the low, marshy bank of
