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.
No trace of devastation showed here. Devastation had been kept to a minimum. Yet Aleks’ spirit was troubled.
Is not the object of our Crusade to free the people of the Inner Sphere from their incompetent and barbarous overlords, and deliver them from the horrors of civil war and disorder?he kept asking himself. Yet we have not brought the blessings of rational Clan life and all-important order to Porrima: all we brought is destruction, controlled or not; and that is all we shall leave behind us.
If successful, thedesant might pave the way for Porrima’s eventual liberation by his Clan’s Touman.But still —
He shrugged his wide shoulders. Which were bare: he wore his cooling vest, his coolsock, trunks, short boots, a synthetic-mesh belt supporting a holstered pulse-laser pistol, and nothing else, having climbed straight down from the Lily’s cockpit. He was not the sort to brood or plague himself with his thoughts, albeit for reasons different than most Jade Falcons, even in the throes of the systemic slump following the adrenaline jag of battle.
We are destined by the Founder’s will to save these people. Yet in the process we are compelled to frighten, displace, injure and sometimes kill them. That is simple reality. Such is our burden as Clan warriors.
He headed toward a hoverbus kiosk that was plastered with bright placards, set diagonally across from a refueling point for civilian ICE vehicles, currently deserted. It had a cement bench well-shaded by maroon-leafed trees with widespread branches springing out like parasols from about seven meters up straight, grainy-barked boles.
As he walked, he waved at the battle armor with the chipped enamel, which never strayed far. “Hoy, Magnus. Trust your troops to keep me safe and join me; you’ve not been out of that can all day.”
He wore a headset with boom mike. He didn’t bother activating it, but let the Elemental Star Colonel’s external pickups convey his words. The bulky suit descended toward him on small blue flames.
“Refreshments,” Aleks told the Eyrie warrior in charge of the infantry detail. He nodded toward the fuel stop. “Inside you should find a machine dispensing cold beverages. Bring some for me and the Star Colonel, then distribute them to your people.”
The young woman bobbed her helmeted head and barked earnest orders to her troops. Aleks smiled, pleased with his knowledge of alien culture.
An older trooper with his full-head helmet tipped back on his close-cropped graying hair came over bearing two cans. The gaudy printing on their thin-gauge metal skins was already glazed with condensation. They had been secured by the simple expedient of one of Magnus’ Elementals grounding, walking through the security-reinforced front door—without the formality of opening it first, far less
bothering to unlock it—and wrenching the door off the dispensing machine.
Alex took both cans with a nod of thanks. He sat down on the shaded bench, placed one can beside him, popped the opener, and drank, savoring the coolness and crisp alien sweetness. A breeze ruffled his hair with thick fingers.
Magnus stood in the middle of the intersection as the traffic-control lamps cycled disregarded from green to amber to red above the domed top of his suit. The Star Colonel’s cheery nature did nothing to vitiate a much- seasoned warrior’s wariness. Temporarily mollified by the scene’s slumbering tranquility he lumbered over to plant the armor’s broad foot-pods in the shade near his leader’s bench.
He popped the seal with a hiss of equalizing air pressure. “Why do we loiter here, small Aleksandr? What isorla do you think to find?”
Aleks laughed. “Knowledge. Understanding of the people we have come to help.”
Grinning, the red-bearded giant shook his head. His carapace’s breastplate had swung open, revealing his head and powerful torso down to the trunks which, with his coolsock, constituted his sole garments. Notwithstanding their girth, his fingers were deft as they unfastened various sensors from his skin.
Then he stiffened and thrust his arms back into the arms of his battle armor. His suit was powered down: a metric ton of inert mass, it was almost impossible for even the strongest of Elementals to budge it by muscle power alone.
Magnus Icaza was among the strongest of Elementals. He made the powered-down suit lunge forward three meters at running speed for a normal human. The manipulator-tipped right arm swung, striking Aleks in the center of the chest, knocking him over the back of the bench.
It was as if a black explosion went off behind Aleks’ sternum. The air was smashed from his lungs by the impact of the massive armored club. As he toppled he saw a line of dirty white smoke streaking toward him from the alley just north of the fuel stop.
It was a short-range missile fired from a man-portable launcher. It struck Magnus Icaza at the left side of his chest, right at the edge of his open armor shell, and detonated with a white flash that momentarily blinded Aleks.
Falling behind the cement bench saved the Galaxy Commander from flame and fragments. Overpressure withheld air from his empty lungs. The other Elementals of Aleks’ escort let go all six of their own shoulder-mounted SRMs at once toward the point from which the shot had come, while the unpowered infantry added a crackling volley from their Gauss rifles. The whole brick side of a dry cleaners collapsed onto the Porriman missile crew.
A Solahma infantryman knelt above Aleks, concern on his face. Aleks waved him away, clambered to his feet as briskly as he could. He had cracked the back of his head hard on the ground and trying to breathe felt like daggers through his chest where his friend had struck him with the arm of his suit.
When Aleks knelt in turn over Magnus Icaza, his friend still lived. Somehow. The one remaining blue eye opened and recognized Aleks, the scorched and shredded lips smiled; and the one lung still extant, fully exposed in
