Flight of the Falcon

by Victor Milán

  “And so we meet, little Countess,” Anastasia Kerensky called. “You’re every bit as appealing as the trivids make you out to be, in an underfed, gamine way.”

  “And you’re as striking as witnesses report, Anastasia Kerensky,” Tara said, “although one wonders if you can really fight unaugmented.”

  The other scowled, then laughed. “I cede the last word to you,” Anastasia said. “It’s little enough.”

  “In the name of The Republic of the Sphere,” Tara said in her most neutrally formal voice, “I thank you for your assistance. And—thank you for saving my life.”

  Anastasia’s laughter was silver and malice. “Ahh, little Countess—but what if I missed my real target? It will long amuse me to imagine you tormenting yourself with wondering.”

  The cockpit of the Ryoken II closed and the ’Mech clanked into motion, turning away from Tara’s Hatchetman. “Well, I’m off for a spot of bird hunting.” Kerensky’s words came over Tara’s headset. “Remember that my word’s good if yours is.”

  “My word is good,” Tara replied. “But once you’re out of the system—if our paths cross ever again, I’ll kill you.”

  “But first you must catch me,” the Wolf Bitch shot back. “And then—we’ll see who kills whom.”

  Her BattleMech strode away, leaving Tara standing alone.

  Three hours later, the Falcon DropShips lifted from their primary landing zone, trading shots with Steel Wolf ’Mechs and armor as they rose up on pillars of flame through the black bellies of the clouds, which now poured down rain as if to cleanse the burned and blood-soaked soil of Skye. At the same time, Gyrfalcon landing craft took off from their LZ near the still-smoking pit of the Hemphill mine.

  The Battle for Skye was over. The great Jade Falcon desant had fallen just short of its last objective.

  35

  New London

  Skye

  16 August 3134

  “So she’s really gone?” Captain Tara Bishop sat half-upright in her hospital bed, which was folded up into a sort of recliner. Outside, the yellow morning-after sun of Skye shone on the season’s first fall of snow.

  Tara Campbell nodded as she placed the giant bouquet she’d brought in a vase on a shelf across from the bed. “She’s really gone, along with all her little Steel Wolves. They broke orbit twelve hours after the Falcons lifted, headed for the pirate point they used to jump into the system to avoid tipping the Falcons they were here. Not to mention running afoul of the Falcon Nightlord.”

  Tara Bishop shook her head. Her cheeks were gray and sunken and her hair hung lank—the latter an artifact of anesthetic from the surgery to pin together her broken right femur. All told, she had come out surprisingly well from being blasted by a half dozen Falcons: a few broken bones, scorched a bit around the edges. She was alive, unparalyzed and still had all her parts—which made her wounds minor in MechWarrior terms.

  Nonetheless, Tara could see there was something wrong. She sensed a sadness in her friend.

  “What is it, TB?” she asked gently. “What’s bothering you?”

  The captain blinked three times rapidly and turned her face to the wall. “Nothing. Really, Countess.”

  “Don’t even try to run that past me,” Tara C said.

  Tara Bishop shook her head on her pillow. “It’s nothing compared to the victory we won—you won—”

  “We won.”

  “—not to mention the losses we took. Hell, I’m embarrassed to be malingering here when there are beds going begging for people who are really hurt.”

  “A broken thighbone isn’t exactly goldbricking, Captain. And everybody’s accommodated: it took some improvisation, but New London’s a big city. And the overflow crit cases we airlifted up the coast to New Glasgow last night. Now: give.”

  Tara Bishop sighed. “I can’t make myself stop thinking I’m Dispossessed now.” She spoke a MechWarrior’s greatest nightmare, right behind being burned alive trapped in the cockpit. A BattleMech had always been brutally hard to come by—and after Devlin Stone’s Redemption Program it had become a hundred times harder. “Like I say, I know it’s not much compared to what’s happened to so many people. And I always knew it was a risk, every time I strapped on my poor Hunter.” She shrugged, unable to continue.

  Tara C restrained a smile. “That’s it? You aren’t Dispossessed.”

  Her friend looked at her sharply. “Don’t try to blow smoke up my—don’t try to sweet-talk me, Countess. I’ve spent enough hours in my Pack Hunter to know she was dying when I punched out.”

  The Countess nodded. “I’m sad to say we couldn’t salvage your BattleMech—”

  “Then what—”

  “—but we won, remember? There’s plenty of salvage, and nobody’d deny you earned a high spot on the list. You’ll have your pick of a variety of rides, courtesy of Clan Jade Falcon.”

  Tara Bishop stared at her. Her eyes were huge; and hardened veteran that she was, she could not speak as they filled with tears. She looked at Tara as if the Countess had given her life itself.

  To a MechWarrior, she had.

  Tara Bishop gripped her friend and Countess by the hand, and held it tight.

  * * *

  Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner sat in his darkened office, smiling broadly.

  It was not because of the great peril from which his planet and people had been delivered, nor yet because of the smashing victory he had taken part in winning against fearful odds—granted, with help from a most unlooked-for quarter. Or rather, they were not the immediate cause of the gleeful expression illuminated on his bearded visage by the light bleeding from the holovid stage.

  Rather, it was the scene there reenacted: furious mobs smashing the windows and doors and trashing the ground floor of the New London planetary headquarters of Herrmanns AG Media.

  While the rest of Skye’s mass media sang delirious praises of the world’s defenders, especially the ever-so-photogenic young noblewoman who had led them to victory (granted, alongside the equally photogenic young woman who until recently had been her bane and Galactic Enemy Number One), Herrmanns had raised the roof with shrill accusations that Countess Campbell deliberately let the Skye volunteers of the Forlorn Hope be slaughtered to preserve the lives and BattleMechs of her precious Highlanders.

  The accusation particularly annoyed the Duke, and had no doubt deeply wounded the Countess, because it was true. As far as it went. What that fat simpering fool Arminius was not saying was that she had announced that as her intent from her very first appeals for recruits to the Himmelsfahrtkommando. The plan was to preserve her veterans—in sufficient strength to deliver a decisive blow to the invaders.

  Skye’s other media organizations had turned Arminius von Herrmann’s own vitriol back on him, at redoubled pressure and scalding hot. Whether inspired by their denunciations or something else, the people of New London—and New Glasgow as well, 300 kilometers north—had taken matters into their own hands and rioted, attacking Herrmann’s facilities.

  Certainly, the Duke’s own intelligence service had nothing to do with the riots. They had their hands full sorting through the aftermath of the invasion. Especially the Solvaig mess. . . .

  Sirens and whistles sounded from the holovid track. Down the street a Seventh Skye Militia Demon crept, its loudspeakers calling for order. Files of Garryowen and Ducal Guard infantry trotted alongside it, unarmed but still wearing their stained battle dress. The crowd gave reluctant way. It responded more quickly when a captured Eyrie appeared on the scene to back up the peacekeepers, wings spread to fill the street, barbaric Clan badges painted out and the flags of Skye and The Republic, and the Duke’s personal coat of arms, hastily but not unskillfully daubed onto its front armor.

  The Duke was pleased at the several-layered stroke of propaganda, and also by the way his Guard and the Garryowens, who in former times had got along as well as Wolves and Jade Falcons, acted together in perfect unison and apparent comradeship. Still, it was too damned bad t
hey had to intervene, especially before one or another mob caught Arminius and tossed his fat ass in a blanket for a while. But order must be preserved, even at such cost.

  Duke Gregory sat back in his chair, massaged his temples with the tips of his blunt, powerful fingers. The chair itself, sensing his muscular tension, began a motorized massage of his shoulders and upper back.

  The riot coverage faded, replaced by a bust of Skye’s late chief minister. Apparently, the stress of readying Skye to defend itself against horrible odds had caused the great man to break down, the female newsreader said in a plummily regretful voiceover: he had been found dead in his apartment after the battle, an apparent suicide.

  The Duke muted the sound. Ah, Augustus, he thought, at least you were considerate enough to spare the world you betrayed the agony of a public trial. Although it was a damned shame, Duke Gregory felt, to be cheated of the subsequent public execution. The Duke would have paid for ringside tickets when his former chief minister—and friend—went to the wall.

  But Augustus Solvaig had stolen a march on the firing party, vaporizing the upper half of his balding head with a laser pistol.

  He had left behind abundant evidence, at his flat and in his palace office, that he was a mole planted in the Duke’s cabinet by the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth branch of SAFE, the former FWL intel service. A dispatch not yet encrypted for sending off-world told how he had done what he could to weaken Skye’s defenses against the Jade Falcons. He believed that a successful Clan invasion of The Republic through Steiner space could greatly aid both resistance against the aggression SAFE knew the Lyrans planned against Marik-Stewart domains, and future Marik-Stewart efforts to reclaim territory from The Republic itself.

  Nothing he left gave a clue, however, as to why he’d blown his head off at the very moment his schemes were being consummated. Forensic pathologists judged that he had died sometime around the battle’s height, when a Falcon victory seemed all but certain.

  Duke Gregory lowered his hands to his lap. He wore a heavy burgundy robe over a pair of light blue silk pajamas. It was late in the day for him to be lounging about watching videos, and duty would soon enough draw him out of his warm, dark office into the cool light of day. But for now—this was what he paid his staff for, dammit.

  Jasek, he thought unbidden. The boy never liked Augustus a damn. The lad had just been entering adolescence, head swimming with lurid tales of the glories of House Steiner, when Augustus Solvaig had appeared from the obscurity of the planetary government’s bureaucracy and begun his rise to prominence—and increasing access to the innermost councils of the Governor of Skye and ruler of Prefecture IX. Jasek thought Solvaig was a rodent, and said so, in that forthright way of his.

  He was in many ways a reflection of his old man, Jasek was—and the reflection was not to the father’s discredit. The boy had passion, after all, and the courage of his convictions, and the wherewithal to act upon them. That counted for something, even if he had turned his back on his own father and The Republic which both had sworn to serve.

  His defection had left the planet cruelly exposed. No denying it. Yet Skye had pulled through.

  Much as the Duke resented Tara Campbell and her Highlanders as interlopers when they first arrived, they saved Skye. In post-battle interviews, Countess Northwind had lavished most of the credit upon The Republic Skye Militia, and the Duke himself.

  Well, if I’m going to admit I was wrong, I might as well make a habit of it, Duke Gregory thought. Within reasonable limits, of course.

  He rubbed thoughtfully at his bearded chin. Sometime after the battle, the Countess had mentioned to him in passing that she doubted House Steiner had designs upon either Prefecture IX or Skye. That seemed confirmed by Solvaig’s report to his secret masters: they planned to jump the Mariks. No skin off of any portion of Duke Gregory’s anatomy, withal.

  The Stormhammers, the army Jasek had . . . extracted from Skye’s armed forces, based themselves upon Nusakan, Terrawards from Skye—not far from Falcon-held Zebebelgenubi, in fact. Perhaps, the Duke thought, he could get discreet word to the boy, make overtures toward reopening communications.

  Falcon captives, holding themselves bondsmen and women, had explained the scheme to grab a foothold in The Republic, in hope of a follow-up by the whole Falcon Touman. They may not have Skye, the Duke thought, but they have themselves a foothold, and no mistake. The Falcons still held worlds in Prefectures VIII and IX, and even Chaffee in the Commonwealth.

  The Republic had not heard the last of Clan Jade Falcon. When they heard more, it would be well to have Jasek Kelswa-Steiner standing at his father’s shoulder against them.

  The Duke made mental note to order that planning for certain contingencies cease at once—and that all evidence of that planning be destroyed.

  For some reason his mind went back to the police, and later intelligence, reports from the scene of Augustus Solvaig’s demise. It seemed that, on the bureau in his bedroom, near where the body lay, a single playing card had been discovered. No one had any idea what it meant. No decks of cards were found among the chief minister’s effects. So far as the Duke knew, Solvaig didn’t own a pack of cards. He was not given to games of chance. Except, perhaps, the ultimate one.

  It was a false note, a loose end, and Duke Gregory vigorously detested both. Still, the universe was full of questions he was never going to learn the answer to, no matter how that vexed him. The card was doubtless of no significance whatever; perhaps it had been left there by some fool of a patrol policeman early on the scene.

  He picked up the remote control. Surely, there was time to watch the crowds busting Arminius von Herrmann’s windows once more before duty dragged him back to the weary business of helping his world recover from the invasion.

  “Countess Campbell?”

  In an airy hospital corridor, well lighted by tall windows along one wall, Tara Campbell, walking with her head down in thought, paused and turned to see Legate Stanford Eckard overtaking her.

  “Legate,” she said with a smile. “Good day to you.”

  “And to you, Countess. I am pleased to find you here.”

  She made an agreeable noise. She was still distracted: thinking about Paul. How he happened to materialize on the battlefield just in time to save her was as big and apparently unsolveable a mystery as how he happened to know how to pilot a Clan BattleMech—or how he’d got hold of one in the first place.

  They had grown close, these last few weeks, very close. He was the first man the Countess had let anywhere near, emotionally since . . . since Northwind. Now he was dead, in saving her, and she mourned for him.

  And for what might have been.

  She shook off her grief. “How may I help you, Legate?” she asked.

  He smiled. “You have helped more than words can possibly express already. I have thanked you before for saving Skye; I do so now, and intend to do yet again.”

  His manner grew grave. “I have received a report from Republican intelligence. With matters as up-in-the-air as they are, I am not sure it would reach you through normal channels, although doubtless it is intended to.”

  He handed her a flimsy piece of paper, pale yellow. With a quizzical glance at him she held it up and read.

  Her eyes skipped quickly over EYES ONLY and TOP SECRET and various routing codes and time/rate stamps, and got right to the meat: a warning that an operative of Loki, the terrorist branch of House Steiner’s intelligence service, might be en route to or have arrived on Skye. His mission was unknown. Threat-assessment was low: House Steiner maintained a neutral-to-friendly stance toward The Republic, blah, blah. But alertness was in order, since Loki had been known to have its own agenda.

  Although his actual identity was unknown, this operator was familiar to counterintelligence agencies throughout the Inner Sphere as the Knave of Hearts. Some Republican security experts, the report indicated, doubted his very existence, believing him to be pure Lyran Intelligence Corps disinformation, a bogeyman
to frighten the Liao, the Mariks and of course the Davies. But several sightings deemed moderately reliable indicated his appearance was that of an ethnic-Asian male in his thirties, medium height and athletic build, no other distinguishing characteristics. . . .

  “Countess?” The Legate’s own Asian face mirrored the perplexity in his voice. “Are you quite all right?”

  She raised her face to his. She blinked her eyes at sudden moisture. But her mouth smiled.

  “It’s nothing, Legate Eckard,” she said. “Just emotional aftershocks from yesterday.”

  Legate Eckard nodded. “I see,” he said. Plainly he didn’t.

  She remembered, of a sudden, forensic reports from Solvaig’s residence, and the unexplained presence of a playing card: a jack of hearts.

  Paul, she was thinking, you bastard. Yet the thought lacked heat.

  You lied to me.

  Still, she knew that—unlike a certain other—he had never betrayed her.

  Any more than he had died yesterday on Seminary Hill when his stolen Phoenix Hawk IIC exploded. She felt certain of that now, irrationally perhaps. No body had been found. It had seemed neither surprising nor mysterious at the time: another stone added to the crushing weight of post-battle depression that followed victory as surely as defeat, once adrenaline subsided.

  Smiling, she thanked the Legate and handed him back his scrap of paper, now crumpled from her brief fierce grip. Then, head held high, she strode off down the sunlit corridor, leaving the Legate looking curiously after her.

  “There you go, Rabbi Martínez,” the travel agent said, handing a chip encased in clear protective plastic to the red-bearded man in the heavy winter coat trimmed with lustrous black direbeast fur from the northern forests of Skye. “Your passage aboard the DropShip Grimalkin day after tomorrow, continuing to Syrma aboard the Gold Star Lines JumpShip Illuminatus Prime.”

  He smiled. “Have a safe and pleasant journey home.” It had been centuries since anyone would have found anything remarkable about a rabbi being named Martínez, any more than that he should have red hair. Or eyes of distinctively Asian shape, albeit a piercing jade green in color.