Falcon Guard

by Robert Thurston

"Is there some sign of battle activity?" Joanna asked. "Is that why we are standing here like metal vegetables?"

  "I have been informed of no enemy activity," Aidan said. "None of my sensors indicate activity of any kind. I think we merely await the order from Galaxy Commander Mar Helmer."

  "I hope it comes before moss starts to grow up the legs of my 'Mech."

  Aidan chose not to respond, not to express his worries. He had been in on all the command conferences. His superiors had rejected his battle-strategy proposal for its high element of risk. He did not mind that, yet it did seem that the Clan's high command had become surprisingly cautious. He believed they were placing too much emphasis on the Jade Falcons' superior recon capabilities.

  Aidan knew that Prezno Plain offered few hiding places, while the rest of the battle terrain consisted of a river and then more relative flatland leading to the two objective cities. Reconnaissance did not seem truly vital to the campaign.

  Then all further speculation became pointless. The order came for the Falcon Guards to move forward.

  Aidan turned control over to Star Captain Joanna, who would coordinate the style and rhythm of the march. He had already instructed the Falcon Guards that he expected them to move in a controlled and even manner. The skirmishing 'Mechs and Elementals of the advance guard were to move swiftly forward to find, contact, and fix in place any ComStar units to their front. The main-body 'Mechs were assigned interlocking fire zones to the flanks, to cover any potential ambush sites as well as to engage any ComStar forces that the advance guard encountered.

  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 what I 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 Stormcrow pilot to recalibrate his leg progress, then order a pilot in a Summoner to 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 Warhawk pilot, 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 Wolf itself, 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 u
se 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.

  Aidan radioed Joanna for a report on the sneak attack involving her Star. "Any BattleMech damage?"

  "A few hits," she said. "One BattleMech severely damaged, needs to be taken back for repair. One pilot down."

  * * *

  Faulk's Gargoyle took the first major hit when forty LRMs blazed from a Bombardier's torso and destroyed the Gargoyle's, left arm, amputating it messily just as Faulk fired a cluster of SRMs. The missiles landed harmlessly, gouging holes in the ground and exploding in front of the Bombardier. Meanwhile, the Com Guard 'Mech rushed onward toward Faulk's 'Mech, burning away large chunks of the Gargoyle's ferro-fibrous armor as it went.

  Diana tried to cut off the Bombardier, but a Centurion blocked her path. Looking like someone wielding a thick pipe in one hand, the Centurion fired the pipe, an LB-10X, at her. Much of the fragmented submunitions fell harmlessly around her, the hits only minimal. Diana returned fire with a blast from her extended-range PPC, knocking out the Centurion's center-torso medium laser.

  Joanna rushed her Mad Dog into the fray, wanting to go after the Centurion personally. Firing from a distance were the other two MechWarriors of Alpha Striker, Khastis and Leema. When Khastis' Hellbringer hit an Enforcer with a cluster of SRMs, the enemy pilot immediately engaged his 'Mech's jump jets and leaped away from the action.

  The Bombardier was meanwhile raining more damage down on Faulk's Gargoyle. With torso bent forward, the Com Guard 'Mech ran swiftly at the Gargoyle, its short-range missiles joining the pillars of fire laid by their larger cousins. The Gargoyle, disconcerted by the speed of its foe, could not effectively return fire, especially with its left arm gone.

  Faulk ejected, but he chose the wrong moment. His trajectory took him through a stream of laser fire not even aimed at him. It sliced away part of the seat and severed Faulk's right leg along with it. Even from where they sat in their cockpits, the other pilots in his Star heard his sudden, earsplitting scream.

  The Com Guard 'Mechs, apparently satisfied with the outcome of their ambush, abruptly ceased their attack and withdrew into the darkness. Diana started to pursue, but Joanna ordered her back.

  "I want at them," Diana protested angrily.

  "It would be a waste of effort," Joanna said. "Those 'Mechs are faster than yours, and none were damaged enough to be picked off as a stray lagging behind. It was one of their hit-and-run operations. The cowards. Filthy freebirth cowards!"

  To Diana the freebirth epithet seemed empty when applied to this enemy, who, after all, came from a culture where none of the births were genetically engineered. As she spent more time among the trueborns, Diana had begun to resent their casual rejection of everything freeborn. Freeborn or not, she was a good warrior. Indeed, many of the trueborns in the new Falcon Guards could not claim to have distinguished themselves in past combat.

  Horse had told her many horror stories from his life as a freeborn, and she realized she was fortunate. Perhaps because of the invasion or because of her considerable skill as a warrior, Diana was not treated much different than if she were a trueborn.

  She could not resolve her feelings about her dual role in this Jade Falcon unit. On one hand, she wanted to show that a freeborn was equal to any trueborn; on the other, she wanted to forget she was a freeborn and just do her job. When she expressed these feelings to Horse, he pondered a moment, then said, "Seems to me you get your armor chipped off either way. Either way you admit shame at being freeborn. Who says trueborn is better just because someone picks out their genes and stirs them up in some vat? Then again, who am I to talk? I'm just one of those lousy freebirths, you know." Diana heard the sarcasm, but the two never found time to finish the conversation.

  Dismounting from her 'Mech, Diana searched the nearby field for Faulk. By the time she found him, a medic unit was already ministering to him. His face twisted in grimaces of pain, and she saw that the laser had sheared off his leg neatly just below the hip. This battle was over for Faulk almost before it had begun. He would be fitted for a prosthetic leg, however, and there would be other battles, other wars. Just not Tukayyid.

  Joanna came up beside her.

  "A clean hit," she said. Faulk, seeing his formidable commanding officer, managed to choke back his moans.

  "Yes," Diana said. "I pity him."

  "Oh? An odd reaction from a warrior. Are we not supposed to be pitiless?"

  "Perhaps you are, Star Captain Joanna. I am freeborn. We are . . . peculiar."

  "You certainly are. But I am glad to have you in my Star, Diana."

  Joanna walked away before Diana could answer. What a queer bird Joanna was becoming, Diana thought, an even rarer kind of falcon perhaps.

  When Faulk was sedated but conscious, Diana knelt down beside him. "Sorry," she said.

  "For what? You did nothing, MechWarrior Diana."

  "I did not heed your caution, Faulk. You were right about the orchard."

  He shook his head. "No, that was coincidence. I feel the same anxiety about every dark patch I pass. Something always seems to be lurking in my mind. This time it was really there. Coincidence, MechWarrior Diana."

  "If you say so. Be well, Faulk. I expect to fight beside you again some day."

  Faulk seemed confused by what she said, and his lids fluttered until he could no longer hold them open. Soon he was asleep, then loaded into a med hovercraft and taken away.

  * * *

  Aidan felt helpless. Detecting something amiss, Horse asked his old friend what was wrong.

  "It is command. They have ordered no retaliation, not even a pursuit of those Com Guard cowards. Worst yet, Khan Chistu has directly ordered the Falcon Guards to maintain its position. He will not yet release us to operate independently."

  "Those Com Guards were in swift 'Mechs, and we have not made contact with any major Com Star units. Pursuit would have been useless and the Guards cannot break through an enemy that is not there, quiaff?"'

  "I suppose so. But the implications of it all are what anger me most. They are as cautious in this matter as with the whole campaign. We move ahead slowly, slower than we have to. We use the dead of night for cover.

  When has a Clan unit ever hidden in the night? I tell you, Horse, something has changed in the Jade Falcon leadership, perhaps in the entire Clan command structure."

  "What has changed, Aidan?"

  "There is a word in the old books we read, Horse. Subtlety. You know what it means. Well, we are being subtle. Imagine, the Clans being subtle in combat or anywhere else. We are a fearless people. Have not Clansmen always preferred the direct, even the brutal, approach? If we did use tricks, we accomplished them in an open field, with no concealment. Now our strategy is more like our enemy's. Eventually, we will be hiding behind disguised topography before springing out."

  "Let us hope not. So you think subtlety—if that is the right word—is the wrong approach?"

  "I simply do not know. All I know is how unClanlike it seems."

/>   Horse laughed quietly, but the sound came distinctly over the commlink.

  "What amuses you, Horse?"

  "I was thinking back to when first we met. You were not one to worry over whether something was Clanlike or not. UnAidanlike maybe, but not—"

  "That is enough, MechWarrior Horse."

  "Yes, sir."

  The march toward the Prezno River slowed even more. Other Com Guard units attacked and did some damage, but no more Jade Falcon BattleMechs went down. However, the Jade Falcon lines were spread thinner, as the Falcon command group ordered several Elemental units to patrol the flanks.

  Aidan began to feel uneasy. It made no sense that the Clan forces were not sweeping easily to victory on Tukayyid. How had the previously arrived Clans lost so many encounters? Events were not supposed to turn out like this. The Clans had a cause, a just cause, an almost sacred dream. If the Star League was to be restored, it was only just that the Clans should already have arrived on Terra. Then a strange idea struck him. Perhaps, Aidan thought, it was not justice they were dealing with, but fate.

  26

  The Falcon command group called a halt to the march ten kilometers from the Prezno River, calling all Cluster commanders to a nearby grove for a war council. The MechWarriors remained in place with their 'Mechs, waiting for rations to be brought them by the field techs.

  A thin line of dawn outlined the mountains in the distance as Aidan's VTOL descended to the landing area just outside the grove. He would have liked to take the battle into the mountains, for something about rough terrain appealed to him. The relatively uncomplicated flat-land of Prezno Plain seemed favorable only to the defender, especially with the Com Guards' propensity for sneak attacks and ambushes. The enemy had not actually done much damage since the maiming of Faulk, but they had disconcerted the Jade Falcon forces.

  What we need now is an all-out assault, Aidan thought. Something that would bind all the Jade Falcon units together. Something that would shock the command group and Khan Chistu out of their ridiculous caution.