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 the seared and excavated cavern of rib cage, provided air for the Elemental to speak.
“Have a ... care, my friend,” he croaked. “It is not the fighting that kills you, but the downtime... ”
Pink froth bubbled from his lips. He died.
Aleks rose. A single tear cut a track through dust and cinders on a cheek that was frozen like a slab of fired clay.
“Let them learn what befalls those who treacherously murder a warrior of Clan Jade Falcon,” he said in a voice like a raven’s croak. “Destroy the district. Leave no building intact, nor anything living within.”
PART TWO Desant
“. . . (1)n. Descent;esp ., an airmobile landing operation, generally to attack strategic targets deep in an enemy’s rear areas.Russ. From Soviet Military Art, TerraArchaic ”
—New Avalon Institute of Science Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Edition CCCV, New Avalon, Federated Suns, 3032
8
Central Government Complex Geneva, Terra Prefecture X
The Republic of the Sphere
3 April 3134
The hush between the briefing room’s powder blue walls was almost palpable as Tara Campbell, Countess Northwind and Prefect of Prefecture III, and her aide-de-camp, Captain Tara Bishop, were solemnly ushered within by an aide. Exarch Damien Redburn did not rise from his central position on the far side of the long, truncated-oval table.
The ruler of The Republic of the Sphere and successor to Devlin Stone nodded his narrow, brown-haired head. “Countess Campbell,” he said, “it is good of you to come on such short notice.”
“The Secretary’s message indicated it was a matter of grave concern to The Republic,” Tara Campbell said. The Countess’ gaze did not quiver by a micron from his, but she could feel the pressure of her aide’s eyes like heat upon her cheek. The lack of any discernible quantum of irony in Redburn’s voice only emphasized the seriousness of the matter that had caused the two to be summoned here. Because, in truth, the Countess Northwind and the Exarch, duly elected ruler of The Republic to which she had sworn her life to serve, cordially detested one another.
The two women settled themselves into seats across the table from the Exarch. Various other high officials were present. They acknowledged the women from Northwind with muted mutters of greeting.
Exarch Redburn placed his hands interlaced on the table before him. “At 0533 this morning, local time,