Flight of the Falcon

by Victor Milán

  He finally forced sound out: “The gun,” he said, waving at the SMG. “You can’t take a gun into the Palace. Security. Regulations.” His accent, not surprisingly, was Steinerdeutsch.

  The two Taras exchanged glances. Tara B unshipped the subgun and tossed it unceremoniously to the sergeant. “I’ll be back for that,” she said.

  The women swept on past. The patrol stood as if turned to statues. They made an interesting composition group with the parked BattleMech, pinging as it cooled from its high-speed jaunt into the heart of the prefectural government.

  Helicopters swarmed overhead as the two women mounted the broad steps. They were mostly media: the civilian-cop traffic-control job that had been bird-dogging them the last couple klicks as the Pack Hunter jumped blithely into and through the gridlocked central-business district—coming close to but never quite squashing any land cars—had backed off as the ’Mech descended toward the palace lawn.

  “They’re getting an eyeful,” TB commented. “Guess what’s leading tonight’s evening news?”

  Tara produced an un-Countess-like grunt of annoyance. Then she rocked as an orange and white chopper with a fenestron antitorque shroud encircling its tail rotor descended so low its skids almost brushed the grass. The ferocious side blast threatened to slam her off her feet. Tara Bishop grabbed her biceps to steady her.

  On the chopper’s flank was painted the unmistakable winged-helmet logo of Herrmanns AG and the legend Herrmanns HoloNews.

  The VTOL came down so near the security detachment that several of them had to duck and dart to evade the lethal flickering scythe-sweep of the main blade. The sergeant shook his fist and bellowed curses, red-faced and unheard for the aircraft’s uproar.

  Then his face paled with the adrenaline-dump of real anger. He cocked his head forward and spoke for the benefit of the microphone curving before his lips. His squaddies all turned toward the intruding news-helo and, standing or kneeling, aimed their lasers at the cockpit with what seemed unseemly eagerness.

  The VTOL shot straight up as if yanked into the sky on a string.

  Tara Campbell laughed aloud, then sobered. “Great,” she said. “This is all we need.”

  Her aide shrugged. “They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. . . .”

  An armed guard stood at the door, glorious in the full green-and-white plumage of the Palace Guard—a different outfit from the Duke’s own squaddies on the lawn, building security in bald truth. She tried to bar Countess Tara from entering, holding her Imperator machine pistol crosswise before her.

  Tara Bishop politely helped the Guardswoman back to her feet, picked up the gun off the floor, dropped the magazine with a clatter to the polished Skye marble, and handed the empty weapon back to its owner before following her boss through the heavy door of dark-stained local hardwood.

  Duke Gregory looked up, salt and pepper brows ferociously abristle, as Countess Tara Campbell swept like a north wind through the door. His brows kept rising.

  Prefect Della Brown jumped erect from her seat at the table across from him. “What is the meaning of this—oh, my God!”

  “Prefect,” Tara said, nodding crisply. “Legate Eckard. Your Grace.”

  “The disrespect—” Della Brown sputtered.

  Tara cut her off with a gaze cool as liquid helium—and piercing as a laser beam. “Indeed,” she said in a precisely metered tone. “However, given the emergency that confronts us all and the necessity of working together in the best interests of this planet and The Republic, I am willing to overlook the disrespect shown me by convening a meeting of this gravity without notifying me.”

  The Duke’s brows had stopped short of displacing his scalp. He covered his momentary imbalance by bluster: “This is purely an internal matter—a matter of Skye politics. Nothing which is the rightful concern of The Republic.”

  “Prefect Brown is a Republican official,” Tara said, “as is Legate Eckard. If they belong here, I belong here.” She heard Tara Bishop slip in behind her and quietly shut the door, felt the reassuring warmth of her on her back.

  “Please excuse the informal attire of myself and my aide, Duke Gregory,” Tara C added crisply. “We were conducting vital field exercises with the Republic Skye Militia. Had we been given proper notice of this meeting we would have had time to change to something more appropriate.”

  “You’ve pushed it too far this time, Campbell,” Prefect Brown began.

  “Enough,” Duke Gregory growled. He had clearly adjusted to the newcomers’ state. A MechWarrior himself, he knew they didn’t dress that way to be provocative. “The confounded woman is here, and I am in no mood to bandy words over sartorial details. However, I must insist that this is purely a local matter, and—”

  The door opened behind Tara B. Chief Minister Augustus Solvaig entered wearing his umber and russet robes of state. He stopped dead and opened his mouth, his face going crimson.

  Duke Gregory held up a big, scarred hand. “Peace, my friend. We’ve had the debate already.”

  The minister nodded with an emphasis that frankly surprised Tara Campbell. It set his jowls jiggling.

  “I have made all necessary preparations, my lord,” he said. “You have but to give the word, and a company of Ducal Guards will secure the Palace of Counsel and dissolve the Deputies.”

  “What?” Tara Campbell demanded.

  “The Chamber of Deputies debates whether to send an offer of surrender to the invaders.” To her surprise it was Legate Stanford Eckard who answered. “To Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen, to be precise.”

  Tara drew in a deep breath. The scene seemed suddenly sharp, the colors bright, sounds piercing and painful to the ears.

  The Duke had begun explaining the situation in his deep, sonorous voice. Tara heard the words with enormous clarity but without deriving sense from them.

  But she didn’t need to. She already knew.

  Although it played no part in The Republican scheme as outlined by Stone, Duke Gregory’s father had formed a Chamber of Deputies, popularly elected, to “advise” the planetary governor. The real point had been to bleed confrontational steam from a population possessed of two large minorities bitterly opposed both to The Republic and each other. The people of Skye would be granted a voice, precisely to keep the fractious talking instead of busting heads. But the Chamber possessed no actual legislative power.

  So now the Deputies had got the bit in their collective teeth. Wishing to spare Skye and the rest of Prefecture IX the horror the whole world now knew had been visited upon Chaffee, Glengarry, Ryde and Zebebelgenubi, they were preparing to vote on a resolution calling upon the Duke to capitulate to the least fearful of the invaders.

  “Which is treason,” Duke Gregory concluded. “So, yes, Countess, I am preparing to dissolve the Deputies for the duration if that’s what it takes.”

  “Your Grace, is that wise?” Tara demanded.

  “Wise? To counter treason?” Solvaig made great show of shaking his head. “Why must we listen to this—this—”

  “Add a noun to that,” Tara Bishop said, deadly quiet, “and I call you out.”

  As he turned puce and sputtered, the Countess continued: “I grant there is no provision for such a body within the Republican Charter. Nonetheless, having consented to seat such a body, to suppress it by arms for fulfilling the function you tasked it with would, I submit, violate the spirit of that Charter. It would smack of plain tyranny. And cowardice.”

  Everybody else in the room talked at once, quite loudly. Except for Captain Bishop, who contented herself with a brief, low whistle at Tara’s back.

  Tara stood her ground, head up, not bowing to the storm. The tiny hairs upon her arms seemed to tickle her individually, so keen had her senses become. When the tumult died down—the others needing more or less simultaneously to draw breath—she went on in a tone of reason backed with steel.

  “Should we betray the principles they’re fighting for,” she said, “such as freedom of
speech—which is in the Charter—we shall already have surrendered. We shall ultimately be no better than the Clans or the most oppressive Great Houses. We might as well be Dracs ourselves—or Wolves!”

  Surprisingly Duke Gregory had subsided. “Grant me the wit at least to have thought of that, my lady,” he said evenly. “But tell me—cowardice?”

  “In retreating from that position your father took and you assumed,” she said. “Giving your subjects a voice and then shutting it up when it speaks words you’d rather not hear. Fearing mere words—defending yourself against them with bayonets and bullets.”

  The Duke’s face crumpled in a frown. But it was a pensive expression, not angry.

  “Curious that this Countess should be so ready to take up the cause of traitors,” Solvaig sneered. “And in the face of the Clans.”

  Eyes aflame, she rounded on him. “It is not those who preach surrender I champion—although I understand their feelings, as you who have never faced a foe in battle, seen friends die—heard them die—cannot. I know what it is like to see my home world devastated by Clan brutality.

  “I have suffered at Clan hands. I ordered my ancestral castle—my home, in which I was raised from childhood—blown to rubble to prevent the Steel Wolves befouling it like the beasts they are. I saw my world’s beautiful capital city, the city whose name I bear, destroyed out of nothing but spite. I saw Terra itself invaded—and my troops and I it was who threw the Clanners back.

  “So do not presume to tar me with the brush of treason, Mister Minister, when I stand forth for the rights of Republican citizens to free expression.”

  Solvaig’s face worked like a bagful of fists. He turned pink and red and white by turns. Before he could find words, Legate Eckard spoke again, quietly yet with a firmness Tara had not heard from him before.

  “I have sworn an oath to uphold The Republic and all its principles, intact. So have we all. I intend to honor that oath. And I do see the force in your arguments. But before we go further—Countess Campbell, have you seen any notice of weakened resolve on the part of the troops actually charged with fighting for this world?”

  “I have not, Legate. They are ready to face the Falcons’ worst.” Emotionally, at least, she thought. But one worry at a time, here. . . .

  “They don’t pay any attention to debates in the Deputies,” Tara Bishop said. “They don’t give a rat’s—don’t care what anyone says there.”

  Without looking Tara raised a hand to forestall her aide saying more. She was right, and her words to the point; but they had entered a zone where it was risky for juniors to be seen or heard.

  Eckard turned to the Duke, ignoring a glower from his nominal superior Brown, who had resumed her chair and sat with arms folded tightly across her rib cage. “Your Grace, in truth I see no sign of this debate in the Chamber weakening anyone’s resolve in such a way as to justify shutting it down. Your Republic Skye Militia will fight, you have just heard. The Countess’ Highlanders, veteran soldiers of unquestioned quality, will fight. And your people, the people of Skye, continue volunteering for Countess Campbell’s . . . special initiative faster than our clerks can process their applications. Have you reason to believe the Assembly will actually pass a measure suing Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen for terms?”

  The Duke looked to his Chief Minister, who still hovered by the door like a pudgy pale thundercloud. “Augustus?”

  “No, your Grace,” he blurted. “But—but still, that such a question should even be debated, it demands decisive action, the harshest action—”

  The Duke held up his hand again. Solvaig sputtered to a stop.

  “I am no tyrant, Countess,” Duke Gregory said. “Neither am I coward. And I understand that you imputed neither to me, only to actions which remain at this moment hypothetical. Which I think you will admit is just as well for all concerned.”

  Tara nodded. Child of career diplomats, she knew in her marrow when to yield as well as when to stand.

  “Credit me, please, with understanding what I undertook in consenting to allow the Chamber of Deputies to continue to sit since my accession. I uphold my father’s wisdom in creating it. My commitment to The Republic and its ideals has not wavered and never shall.

  “Yet in the end I fight for the people of Skye. I will not sacrifice them to principles—not even Devlin Stone’s. If that makes me a traitor I will answer for it—after we have whipped the Falcon scum back to their Occupation Zone!”

  Tara snapped to attention. “Your Grace, I have said harsh words. I regret the necessity of saying them. Yet I would never presume to name you traitor for choosing your people’s welfare over all other considerations. I only thank God I did not have to choose between Northwind and The Republic.”

  “Fair enough,” the Duke said.

  Then he sighed. “Very well. You have made your case, Countess, in a most eloquent and emphatic manner, if one as unorthodox as your fashion sense. I shall permit debate to continue unrestricted—so long as it remains no more than debate. Should the Deputies actually go so far as to pass a surrender resolution, then I shall feel compelled to take decisive action—to preserve the integrity of Prefecture IX and The Republic, as well as the welfare of Skye.”

  Her first day of training as a Mech Warrior, her one-eyed, one-legged, one-armed instructor had said, “Whatever else you learn, learn to know what victory is.” Tara Campbell had taken those words to heart—and suffered when she neglected to observe them. She nodded, and made herself do so briskly.

  “On behalf of The Republic of the Sphere, I thank you, your Grace.”

  Prefect Della Brown frowned at her rival’s presumption in speaking for The Republic. She said nothing, though. She’s not the house I’m playing to, Tara Campbell thought grimly.

  “Perhaps if your Grace spoke a few words in the Chamber yourself, it might help keep minds right,” Legate Eckard said.

  “The Duke is not allowed to make personal presentations to the Deputies!” Augustus Solvaig crowed as if it was a battle he had won. “It’s in the old duke’s Constitution.”

  “For which reason you yourself shall make the speech for me, Augustus,” Duke Gregory said in a tone which did not invite demurral, “and do so eloquently and well. Have it on my desk in half an hour for my approval.”

  Solvaig looked to his master. Being so summarily dismissed did not sit well with him. He nodded and was gone.

  Duke Gregory looked a long moment after him, brow furrowing. He turned to the Countess.

  “You’ve won. Now I suggest you return to your preparations.”

  His beard split in a gigantic grin. “And if you show half the spirit defying the Falcons as you have defying me, those bottle-baby bastards don’t stand a bloody chance.”

  26

  DropShip White Reaper

  Orbiting Zebebelgenubi

  Prefecture VIII

  The Republic of the Sphere

  1 August 3134

  Malvina awoke with a jar, like falling several centimeters.

  She snapped upright. Around her the bedclothes were a swamp sodden with fearful sweat.

  She was alone. Although not in the dark. She always slept with the lights on, alone or not.

  She had been dreaming about the last time she slept with the lights out. The night of the sixth anniversary of her and Aleks’ Decant.

  The night they came for them.

  There were eight of them, motivated by sound calculation in the scheme of Darwinian crèche economics: fewer mouths to feed equaled more food for all. So it was only fitting the runts, the two weakest, should sacrifice for the good of the sibko. It was the Clan way that had been dinned into them unceasingly since before their ears could make sense of speech.

  Aleks fought back, furiously and in the grip of transfiguring fear, throat too tight to scream, his face white and twisted as the bedsheets now clutched in Malvina’s wound-wire fists. They concentrated on him as the boy, even though he was the smaller. Small and scared as he was, w
ith his body wastes streaming down his skinny brown legs, he fought them: a merciless mortal battle, there in the dark of the studiedly cheerless dormitory room.

  Aleks’ hopeless frenzied valor had bought Malvina the freedom to act.

  By the time two burly Proctors, mere laborers, had arrived to subdue the combatants with blows and stunstick, two nocturnal assailants lay dead. Yimm would survive, but hampered by having but a single eye died two years later in a training accident without help from Malvina. But only because it took her too long to get to him. The other five attackers who lived through that terrible night had predeceased him, not by accident, although several seemed so.

  She shook herself, came back to herself. Her eyes refocused. She had been seeing it all as if the air between her eyes and the bulkhead of her cabin in White Reaper were a holovid stage.

  They came back, she thought, riding a nebular ring of desolation. They always come back.

  No matter how often she killed them. No matter how many she killed. They kept returning for her and her brother in her dreams.

  She gripped her head in her hands and screamed. The bulkheads swallowed the sound.

  She would hold to the lesson she had learned as a terrified child: keep killing until no one threatened her and her sibkin any more. She would kill as many as it took to make the attackers in her dreams stay dead, stay away.

  And if what it took was for her to kill every living human being in the galaxy, then cast herself into the blazing heart of a star—

  Her breathing had returned to normal. She lay down on her side, happily curled, resting her cheek on her folded hands.

  Then at last we will all sleep in peace, she thought, and slept again, and dreamt no more.

  27

  Ceres Metals Fab 17

  Warsaw Continent, Kimball II

  Prefecture IX

  The Republic of the Sphere

  7 August 3134

  Far away against a bank of slate-colored clouds whose tops were night, an orange flame glared like a second sun at the top of a flare tower burning off unused fractions of petroleum drawn from deep beneath the surface. The real sun had just descended below the horizon of the industrial waste-scape that surrounded the 305th Assault Cluster of the Gyrfalcon Galaxy as far as the eye could see.