It did, however, tumble it off its drive-thrust columns, dramatically enough that gyros and Clan-rapid work with attitude jets by Binetti’s naval crew still failed to prevent catastrophic return to the blast pit.
The resultant explosions rockedBec de Corbin on her landing jacks, destroyed seven of her weapons emplacements, and lit the whole side facing the wreck with burning fuel. The combustion did no additional damage to the armored DropShip, designed to resist high-speed atmospheric re-entry temperatures.
The blast and spreading inferno did envelop an Elemental, five Solahma infantry, and an unknown number of indigenous civilian laborers pressed into service unloading supplies from theBec , as well as the supplies themselves. Three VTOLs were kicked across the blacktop by the dynamic overpressure; one smashed into the central administrative structure. All three were destroyed by fire, as were many spaceport service vehicles. Two aerospace fighters were damaged by blast and splashed with liquid fire, but rapid action by stood-down pilots and groundcrew technicians saved them.
As for the passengers and crew inboard theCaracara, it was fervently hoped among their comrades that none survived the shock and explosion of crashing into the pit. Nothing but fused lumps remained of them or the cargo when the inferno was finally beaten down.
In white fury, Malthus ordered Duke Oswald—across a table from whom he sat negotiating administration of the captured world when word of the disaster reached him—executed with his family on planetwide tri-vid. It was a standard technique from the unwritten Clan handbook on pacification of conquered worlds, and far from unknown among the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere. It was also a blood-rare exhibition of emotion for Beckett Malthus.
The response was not what the handbook said it would be. Either the planetaries were roused to vengeful fury at the murder of their noble rulers; or they thought good riddance. Or possibly both. What they were not waschastened .
Within two hours a truck bomb shattered civilian police headquarters in Lazenby. Shortly after that, reports of casualties from sniping began to filter in.
Lacking a military tradition to speak of, Chaffee had quickly folded under assault from two complete Galaxies and a reinforced Cluster.
Lacking a military tradition to speak of, Chaffee’s widely scattered residents did not feel bound by any surrender so-called “authorities” claimed to make in their names.
The aliosaur would have been a fearful sight, even to a mighty Jade Falcon MechWarrior, had it not
been piteous. The darkness did not hide its grievous injuries: missing its hook-taloned right forelimb, scaly hide charred and blistered. It limped, dragging a stump of tail along the cinder-strewn ground, drawing a line of blood behind it that glowed black in the corpse-blue shine of the gibbous moon Grissom.
Its intent upon approaching the tall, unarmored man who stood with his heavy black hair blowing in the stinking breeze was unguessable.
With a firecracker crackling, a spray of pulse-laser bolts caught it in the back, pale yet brilliant pink in the darkness. The creature squalled, threw its head back, and collapsed. Its single remaining eye fixed reproachfully on Aleksandr Hazen as it slowly glazed.
“Did you ever meet anything you did not kill?” he asked the small, slim, night-clad figure who approached from behind the ruined beast, reholstering its sidearm.
“There is you, my brother,” Malvina Hazen said with a sweet, angular smile. Cinders and fragments of charred wood beams crunched beneath her soles.
He waved a hand at the blackness, greater than the night, that stretched out along the ground for kilometers to all sides of them. “This is all that remains of Hamilton. One stone scarcely stands upon another. Not one thing remains alive—now”
Malvina paused to push over a heat-glazed stub of brick wall, perhaps a meter long and half that high, with a boot’s armored toe. “Unforgivable sloppiness on my people’s part,” she said, “unacceptable in a Gyrfalcon. I expressly directed thatno stone be left upon another. And that hapless raptor, which I presume wandered into town scavenging for food and got caught in the overkill, had best be the only multicellular organism left living, or all my field officers from Star Commander up will soon be exercising their rights ofsurkai/ ”
“This was deliberate?” Aleks asked. A hot ember flake from one of an uncountable number of fires still guttering low in the devastation lit on his cheek to cling and sting like an acid beetle. He made no acknowledgment, neither flinched nor moved to brush it off.
“It takes a lot of work to utterly level a city, complete with fifty thousand inhabitants,” Malvina said. “How do you imagine it might have been done by accident?”
He lowered his head and shook it as if it weighed a hundred kilos. “Why?”
Malvina’s head was encased in a somewhat bulbous Jade Falcon field helmet; neither was dressed for the cockpit of a ’Mech. In the moonlight her expression of puzzlement was unmistakable. And at least seemingly authentic.
“To end resistance, of course,” she said, hauteur and sarcasm gone from her voice. “To stop the killing.”
He waved his hands about him. All was a black plain as far as the eye could see, to the mountains on one side and the sea upon the other. “The whole city isgone . Scrubbed from the face of Chaffee. The river scummed over with ash and grime and ... and the grease of melted bodies for ten kilometers downstream! How could youdo that?”
She shrugged. “It took but a day to accomplish. But my command DropShip White Reaper added its firepower, which expedited things considerably. We might have used orbital strike, but I would have had to trouble the Supreme Commander for clearance.”
She smiled again. “Besides, my people needed the practice.”
“That is not what I meant,” he said hoarsely.
“I know that. I was only seeking to save you embarrassment. As you may remember, I have long shielded my brother, the only companion of my childhood, from harm. And now when there is none in the universe who can touch him, I seek to save him from the only one who can.”
She reached up to touch his cheek with gauntleted fingertips. “Yourself.”
His hand snapped up as if to smash hers away. At the last millisecond it slowed. The great hand that enfolded her slim wrist and removed her touch from his leather-brown cheek did so as if she were spun of gossamer.
She ripped it free, whirled from him, stormed away three paces. The brief black cape of her not-quite- regulation dress uniform fluttered about her shoulders.
“Do you care nothing for our people?” she snapped. “Our warriors struck down from coward’s cover? Let me tell you of these Freebirths. Within the cities most of them carry arms, even technicians and laborers—not that these bellycrawling mongrels make such distinction.”
At the uttering of the word “bellycrawlef’ Aleks’ lower left eyelid twitched. He said nothing.
“Outside the cities theyall have firearms—and all know how to use them. And not just small arms. The Zeus heavy rifle is considered suitable to be left with minor children when parents are compelled to leave them unattended at their homesteads. The parents carry super-powerful laser rifles in their vehicles for defense against the larger local beasts. And for hunting or protection from some of the local fauna, nothing less than portable short-range missile launchers or even particle-projector cannon are required.”
Aleks nodded reluctant concurrence. “I understand. I have lost three Elementals in the last two days, all sniped from over two kilometers’ distance. Not even our ballistic radars can pick us out the snipers—who run away as soon as they see their targets fall through their scopes.”
She turned to face him. She seemed in control of herself again; her voice was almost light. Almost taunting. “And you have taken retribution.”
He grimaced, shrugged. Nodded slowly. “We must. We cannot permit the people of a conquered world to defy us. Especially when all our plans hinge upon pacifying Chaffee and using it as a base.”
“To liberate the Inner Sphere,” she said. “Precisely.”
She drew near him again. He did not draw back, but neither did he show sign of softening. “Do you not care about your precious belly—precious Spheroids? The ones we are on Crusade to save from their venal leaders—and themselves?” she asked.
He turned away. “These folk are masterless even forstravag ,” she said to his wedge-shaped back. The word was a term of abuse for Freeborn. “They have no honor.”
