“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.
