bruise-like petechiae, produced by radiation-sundered capillaries. In themselves, he knew, they signified little: they were temporary, and could be produced by minor exposure not otherwise harmful.
He brushed a stray lock of hair, its near-white pallor sullied by oil and char, from her forehead. Then he stood and signed for the medical techs to take her aboard the helo. It lifted in a swirl of dust.
“Let us go,” Aleks radioed his companions, once back in White Lily’s cockpit. “Time to finish this.”
New London
15 August 3134
“—fighting moved into the western suburbs of New London,” the impersonal news-voice said from the speakers of the burly Harley-Indian-Messerschmitt motorcycle. “Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner has vowed to turn the invaders back before they reach the city proper. ...”
Ten blocks away from the chief minister’s house the average-sized man put down a booted leather-clad leg as he swung the 1800-cc bike to a stop. The streets here were deserted. People were staying home, trusting to their Duke.
More fools they.
The man sat upright in the saddle and pushed his shades down his nose. A chill breeze blew snow in his face, and a choking stink of smoke. To the west a column of brownish-white smoke rose from a base that seemed as wide as a small city in itself. Its lower portion was lit from within by an unhealthy pallid-orange light, with flares like parti-colored lightning adding their hues at random intervals. The battle sounds had grown to a sussurating growl.
“It’s no concern of yours,” he said to himself. “Your job here’s done.”
As if in reply, a column of orange sparks shot into the air like an immense Roman candle. It was clearly closer than the smoke column. The crump and crackle of the serial blasts reached him far sooner than he wanted to hear them.
The news said the roads to the spaceport northeast of town, on the north shore of Thames Bay, were jammed up tight: it was why he had the radio on. So he told himself. If there was transport available off-world it could lift without concern: the JFs had left no ships in space near Skye to intercept them.
Nor were Falcon aerospace fighters a concern, although interlaced contrails and the occasional black smudge where one rocket jock had gotten lucky and another’s luck had all run out scored the sky high to the southwest. The New London spaceport was guarded so densely by heavy weapons and air-defense batteries that not even Falcon fighters cared to test it. Clanners abhorred waste, after all.
Of course, if any bottoms were lifting offworld, passage inboard them would be at a mad premium. But getting onto or off planets despite all obstacles was a specialty of the man on the big Elsie bike, which grumbled on idle as if eager to be off again.
It was far easier than, say, impersonating anaccountant . Even a forensic one. He suspected his superiors were deliberately tormenting him with his latest cover.
Then again, they’d have long since liquidated him, if he weren’t one of their top field operators.
“And much too professional,” he said aloud, “to let personal attachments get in the way.
“And then again,” he said as the raps of more explosions reached his ears, louder and sharper and from close enough by that he got a little after-ring of high-frequency harmonics in his ears, and even thought he felt a puff of dynamic overpressure on his face, “then again, the Falcon invasion threatens the whole Inner Sphere. Let them get their toehold here and their wholeTouman will follow—and how long will it take every holdout Crusader crazy and young glory hound from all the damned Clans to join the march toward the center, after that?
“And then again—” he sighed—“I’ve always been a romantic fool at heart.”
He turned his fat front tire to the west and all the fuss, and kicked the bike to roaring life.
Weston Heights 15 August 3134
Taking control of the advance, Bec Malthus showed no mean skill as a battle commander. He threw his fresh Turkina Keshik against the Highlanders and militia, driving them briskly back through the houses and schools and shops of Weston. Aleks’ troops followed in echelon left, supporting the Keshik and sending out Elemental patrols to mop up bypassed pockets of resistance.
Shocked by their charismatic leader-goddess’ fall, the Gyrfalcons had cracked right across. If there was one thing Malthus knew, it was Jade Falcon character; if he sent Delta Galaxy into battle again it would snap. Its men and women would hurl themselves shrieking on the nearest foe without thought of defense, not stopping until all were slain. Having at the moment no need for suicide attacks he sent the Gyrs off to the north to guard his flank—mainly to lurk in the woods, where they could assuage their raptor egos sniping at Duke Gregory and serve the authentic function of keeping him from aiding Countess Tara Campbell.
Tara Campbell, for her part, fought as good a withdrawal, maybe, as could be fought. She would have credited her troops, the steely skill of her Highlanders and the Seventh Skye Militia’s fury at the violation of their homes. The Garryowens hungered especially for revenge: their comrades had borne the brunt of the Falcon advance. Both the formerly careless and disreputable locals, now in their glory and fighting like tigers, and certain backwoodsmen from Northwind’s northern continent displayed a startling facility for rapidly improvised and savagely lethal booby traps.
Still, a fighting retreat, no matter how brilliant, is nothing more thanlosing slow . Turkina Keshik was proud, fresh and fearless. The defenders gave them as much as human flesh and Clan could stand, and more. When at last the Republicans broke contact and fell back upon their seminary hill, the Keshik warriors stopped to rest and tend their wounds.
So in the end it fell to Aleks’ once-despised Turkina’s Beak, tired but triumphant, to mount the last advance and seize the prize: the planet Skye.
***
Let Bacchus’ sons be not dismayed,
But join with me, each jovial blade—
Come, booze and sing and lend your aid To help me with the chorus.
The man whose name was not, any longer, Paul Laveau was well and trulyin the wind, riding flat out, leaning over the bars of the HIM cruiser and shouting a song into its teeth:
Instead of spa, we’ll drink brown ale And we’ll pay the reckoning on the nail;
For debt no man shall go to jail From Garryowen in glory!”
Okay, he admitted to himself.! lied to Tara when I said I didn’t know “Garryowen.” It was one of only two I told her.
Of course, the other was alittlemore substantial ....
He was so near the fighting now that a misaimed volley of LRMs brought down the facades of two trim brick houses, one yellow, one red, in the center of a cross-street block to his left as he passed. The racket of explosions and collapse could barely be distinguished for the general din.
Ahead of him, just half a kilometer away, he could see the hill with the seminary building on top of it and the Highland command post on the near slope. Just to his right stood Tara’s distinctiveHatchetman , with a bend in the weird tailfin assembly on its head crest. Five other BattleMechs stood or clanked around, getting set to meet the Falcon onslaught.
Much nearer to his left he saw a big Clan ’Mech striding among houses. His face split in a wide grin as he recognized an old friend among hostile strangers: “APhoenix Hawk IIC, by God!” Though the Falcons had it tarted up with that ridiculous hawk head—the wings it had already—they seemed to be sticking on all their new models and upgrades these days.
He stopped the bike, kicked down the stand, dismounted and opened the big panniers beside the rear tire. He removed certain items which he tucked into zippered pockets of his leather jacket and pants. One particular item he tucked, gingerly and not without a silent unbeliever’s prayer, inside the front of his waistband.