When Aidan had submitted his marching orders to Star Captain Joanna, she gave him a rare half-smile. "You have changed, Aidan Pryde. Once you were virtually a rebel, and now you have become nearly a martinet. Not quite, though. You still stitch your patches too high on your uniform."
Aidan shook his head. "I am but a Clan warrior, Star Captain Joanna."
"No, it is more than that."
He raised his brows interrogatively.
"It is not only the taint from the Falcon Guards that you wish to remove. You wish to remove the taint from Aidan Pryde. I respect your goal, but let us hope that this new caution does not make you stay your hand at a key moment."
"What kind of key moment?"
"Truthfully, I do not know whatI mean. I am just trying to work out the new Aidan Pryde, even as I work out the new Falcon Guards. A formidable task, in either case."
It astonished Aidan to think that Joanna had spoken to him of his own caution, especially now that he was critical of the same tendency he perceived in his superiors.
As he took his rightful position at the head of the Falcon Guards, he wondered if there was something to what Joanna had said. It was true that he had craved this command, craved to be a commander on the front, craved to become a Clan warrior glorious enough to contribute his genes to the gene pool. He felt a definite thrill at the thought of his genes spawning generations of sibkos. He had sacrificed much to win this chance. Had he given up too much? Then, in typical Clan warrior fashion, in typical Aidan Pryde fashion, he shrugged off such thoughts in the face of more real concerns.
"Ready to move out, Star Colonel," Joanna informed him. He gave the command to march.
Once on the move, Aidan called up a visual from the small camera he had set on the Timber Wolfs,shoulders. Rotating it to capture a view of his warriors behind him, he brought the image as much into focus as possible, adding the infrared component to get more detail.
The Falcon Guards were spread across the landscape, the warriors strictly maintaining the space between themselves. Aidan could, in fact, eavesdrop on Joanna's regulating of the march. He could hear her tell a Stormcrowpilot to recalibrate his leg progress, then order a pilot in a Summonerto straighten the 'Mech's back because it was five degrees off angle and created a dead zone in the fire pattern of this Star. A Warhawkpilot, perhaps even MechWarrior Diana, was told to close the gap with another BattleMech. Joanna never stopped talking, never stopped revising the line, pattern, and rhythm of march.
All in all, the Falcon Guard advance was impressive, the massive fighting machines creating a pattern suggesting not only discipline but controlled force and power. It was exactly the look Aidan had wanted to achieve. That the other Jade Falcon units might not see it was irrelevant. Aidan had imposed all the restrictions to bring a pride to the unit itself. Already he had heard some talk that the Falcon Guards should take the name of "Pryde's Pride." Though he did not generally favor nicknames for fighting units, Aidan knew he would not block adoption of this name.
Satisfied, perhaps too satisfied, Aidan pressed his BattleMech forward. Whether it was his own loss of rhythm or some further problem with the Timber Wolfitself, the 'Mech misstepped slightly. Not much. An observer would only have seen the right leg jut ever so slightly to the side, but Aidan could have sworn he heard a crackle of sound when the misstep occurred.
"The commander has to stay in line, too," Horse commented. "What happened?"
"I do not know, but I am almost certain it was not due to anything I did."
"Well, stay on your feet. I may not have time to pick you up if you fall."
Aidan was glad Horse's joking only came over their private channel. It would never do for the rest of the Guards to hear such remarks.
Then all this was forgotten when he heard the first reports of an attack on another Jade Falcon unit. Calling up a visual on his primary screen, he scanned the immediate sectors of Prezno Plain. To the far left he saw flashes of fire where some Jade Falcons were involved in a skirmish.
25
As MechWarrior Faulk, in his Gargoyle,closed ranks with Diana's Warhawk,she wondered what was bothering Faulk now. The man was a fine pilot whose courage no one could question, but his habit of irritating his commanding officers was how he had happened to draw the dreaded assignment to the new Falcon Guards. There was nothing belligerent about Faulk, nor did he ever utter an insubordinate word. He was, Diana had decided, just nervous. Yet nervousness was rare among Clan warriors, which made his fidgety ways all the more irksome to his compatriots.
" MechWarrior Diana?"
"Yes, Faulk?"
"I thought I spotted something. Over there. To the left."
Aidan had moved the Falcon Guards to the right flank of the Jade Falcon advance on the Prezno River. Joanna's Star, by her choice, had taken an extreme right-flank position and sent the Elementals back to the main body. Joanna had told Diana that she wanted her own warriors there to counter any ambushes. "We have whipped the other Stars into shape, but I still prefer to cover at least one flank myself."
Diana saw only grid lines of geographical topography in her primary-screen scans. The only movement was among a clump of trees, an orchard near the main road they were now following.
"Might Com Guard units be hiding in that orchard?" Faulk said, his voice so tense that Diana imagined his thin body squirming with apprehension in the command couch. She knew Faulk had accumulated a first-rate codex in his years as a warrior and that his fears would not affect his skill, but the idea of him fidgeting in his seat was not comforting.
"The scan shows only an empty orchard, Faulk. Unless the Com Guards are disguised as some kind of native fruit and are hanging from branches ready to spring at us, I do not think we face any special danger there."
Later she would remember her sarcasm, cursing herself for not taking Faulk more seriously.
As they approached the orchard, Diana turned her attention to the area beyond it, seeking other potential threats.
"Does it not seem strange to you, MechWarrior Diana, that we have been on the march for fully an hour and yet have still had no response from the Com Guards?"
The man's apprehension made his voice tremble on every word of more than one syllable.
"Take it easy, Faulk. And, for the sake of Kerensky, we do not need formal address in the field. MechWarrior is a mouthful of a word, quiaff?"
"You have not noticed. I always use formal address, MechWarrior Diana."
"And why in the name of all the Clans do you do that, Faulk?"
"Because—"
Diana never learned Faulk's answer, for the peaceful orchard suddenly erupted into quite another scene. Fruit trees seemed to open up and splay outward, and holes in the ground suddenly disgorged a lance of Com Guard BattleMechs. And when they came out, they came out shooting.
* * *
From the Jade Falcon command group Aidan got the news of several minor attacks all around the route of march. The command group derived its information from the surveillance provided by high-flying aerofighters, which spotted 'Mechs emerging from the ground in four areas. In each case the Com Guard units had disguised their hiding place via some manufactured but realistic topographical construction. Besides the lance of 'Mechs coming from the fake orchard, others appeared from an apparent silo, a small hillock that was completely fake, a pile of rocks. With the advantage of surprise, the enemy 'Mechs did considerable damage before retreating just as quickly into the night.