I am Jade Falcon

by Robert Thurston

  For a moment she wondered if this whole mission was an elaborate lie designed to move her into a solahma unit without drawing her complaints. Perhaps Kael Pershaw, like Ravill Pryde, merely wanted Joanna out of the way.

  No, she had already agreed to obey orders and return to the homeworlds for the nanny assignment. That would have gotten rid of her easily enough.

  Anyway, Kael Pershaw was not that malicious. Or was he?

  The puzzle was only giving her a headache. With a sigh, Joanna turned over to try to go to sleep, banging her head painfully on a rock as she did so.

  18

  Solahma Number 34B Camp Site

  Dogg Station, Dogg

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  1 November 3057

  "Bailly's a real dogbrain," MechWarrior Karlac said one day, after observing a particularly caustic exchange between Joanna and the other warrior. The comment took Joanna by surprise because until now Karlac, with her downturned mouth and sad eyes, had been unfriendly. Age and frustration seemed etched into her face, permanent in her eyes. Her rough, weatherbeaten skin was darkened into what appeared to be a perpetual tan. She looked, in fact, like another Joanna.

  Though it was rare for the real Joanna to socialize with other warriors, Joanna the spy had spent almost two months on Dogg trying to put on a friendly face. It was no easy feat, but what else did she have to do and how else might she glean information except through chance bits of information picked up here and there? Perhaps her efforts were finally bearing fruit.

  "He gets on everybody's nerves at one time or another. Seems to know just what to say to rile you. He got to me with a remark about my chest."

  "Your chest?"

  "Aff. He said that I had rather a large chest for a Jade Falcon warrior, especially since our female warriors tend to be small-chested. He said that a warrior should be ashamed of having a big chest. Well, I did not know what he meant and I was foolish enough to ask him. His eyes had that nasty gleam, and he said they were so big they reminded him of the breasts of a mother. A freebirth mother, was the way he said it. I immediately went for his throat."

  "As would I," Joanna said with a shudder. It was a deep insult to suggest to any trueborn that he or she was in any way appropriate to the role of freeborn parent. "That stravag has a talent for finding weak spots."

  "He found yours, quiaff?"

  "Aff. I am afraid so," Joanna said ruefully. "But I will get him for it."

  "Let me know when you do, so I can be there to see it."

  Karlac's remark made Joanna smile, a rare event in any situation. Just as suddenly a chilly gust of wind changed the smile to a frown and a shiver.

  "A godforsaken place, Dogg, quiaff?" Karlac commented.

  "Seems it is my destiny to be stationed in very cold places, except of course for those times when I have been assigned to worlds that were intensely hot. Either way, it makes riding in a 'Mech cockpit a memorable experience."

  "Know what you mean. I do not know what is worse, feeling like you are trapped in a stove or a block of ice. But I would still give anything to be back in a cockpit again, anything but duty in this solahma group. I do not even feel old, do you, Joanna? If we only had 'Mechs or, failing that, good weapons. There are nights when I lie awake and hope somebody will attack us, so I can go out in a blaze of glory. I would like that, I think. A bit of combat at the end, then the eternal darkness."

  This time Joanna's shudder was from the coldness of Karlac's words. Jade Falcon warriors generally accepted death as a blotting-out of existence, with the hopes that their genes would be accepted into the Clan genetics program or at least that their ashes might be deemed worthy for use in sibko-nursery nutrient solutions. In that, Joanna believed, would be a kind of immortality. She would be absorbed by many sibkin who would go on to high achievement in Clan warfare, and the ashes of some of the sibko's warriors might be fed to a new sibko, and so on. At any rate, she was not bothered by the concept of an eternity of darkness. She could not recall ever meeting any warrior who was—no trueborn warrior, anyway. It was the freeborn warriors who had been raised in the villages who tended to pick up such strange ideas.

  "This place must have been a hellhole for the miners," Karlac commented.

  "Miners?" Kael Pershaw had, of course, briefed Joanna fully on Dogg and its background, but she had a part to play. She was even getting good at it.

  "Yes. Did you not know? Long before we came to Dogg, its only inhabitants were the crews of a trio of mining settlements. Supposedly, they excavated minerals which were used in jewelry."

  Joanna made a face. "Jewelry? You mean that they dug up stones from this desolate world and shipped them across the stars for simple adornment? No wonder these Inner Sphere surats are so inferior. They do not understand the meaning of waste."

  "Well, either the ores ran out or the popularity of the stones declined. I have heard that Dogg was virtually abandoned for nearly a century. When our forces came spoiling for a fight all we found was a weary garrison unit that surrendered without firing a shot. Even the supplies they were guarding turned out to be nonessential materials, except for a few weapons and, I am told, four or five 'Mechs in good condition, which we were able to convert and send into battle."

  "So—just because some Inner Sphere merchant decided that this planet was a good place to store useless stuff, we have to follow his lead?"

  Karlac looked at her suspiciously. Joanna wondered if she had gone too far in her efforts to draw out information that might be useful. She had told Kael Pershaw she was ill-suited for such a mission, but he had merely smiled in that insidious way of his. Intelligence-gathering required subtlety, and Joanna had never thought of herself as subtle.

  "This place is quite valuable to the Clan," Karlac said. "There are not too many stepping stones back to the homeworlds that the enemy could not easily penetrate. But we can guard this roundabout route and, incidentally, perform some secret—"

  Karlac stopped suddenly. She looked disturbed by her own words. And slightly embarrassed.

  "Some secret what?" Joanna asked.

  "I am sorry. I should not say. I forget you are new here. It is not up to me to spread company gossip, as it were. Forget I said anything."

  Joanna tried to probe Karlac further, but the other warrior suddenly became taciturn, within moments slipping back into her earlier unfriendly manner.

  19

  Solahma Number 34B Camp Site

  Dogg Station, Dogg

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  2 November 3057

  Joanna had enjoyed leisure times on a few rare occasions, but never before had she been forced to live day to day without any real duties, few scheduled activities, or any real purpose. The solahma unit on Dogg had been given a stated purpose—to be ready in case Dogg Station was attacked— but Joanna could see no sense to that at all. All she had seen while passing in and out of the warehouses that were virtually the only architecture on Dogg were packages and cartons of apparently trivial items. Why risk warriors, even mere solahma, over mess hall and bathroom supplies? The few weapons she had seen during a couple of forays into the buildings were outdated and powered down. They would be more trouble than they were worth to a genuine, combat-ready unit.

  "We are all rusting here," she said to Karlac. "Why do we not at least guard the buildings?"

  "What is the use of that? No one comes here to threaten the warehouses and they contain nothing of special value. Here on Dogg we solahma are just waiting for our chance to die."

  "Maybe so, but do you not wonder about the way the techs behave? They treat the place as their own little domain."

  "It is true they seem very nervous when any of us is inside."

  "Exactly," Joanna said. "They watch every step, as if we were thieves or intruders."

  Karlac raised her eyebrows and shrugged, as if to say that what the techs did or did not do was all the same to her.

  * * *

  That night Joanna could not
sleep. Though the air had turned unbelievably frigid, her restlessness drove her out of the comparative warmth of her rough blanket to go for a walk. Anything to keep from lying awake and staring helplessly at unknowable stars.

  The solahma's sleeping ground was located on the other side of a hill, away from the warehouses. Heading now in their direction, Joanna noticed a curious aura of light hugging the hill's rim. Something must be going on at the warehouses, she decided, and picked up her pace.

  Reaching the top of the hill, Joanna was astonished at the intense activity occurring around the big semicircular buildings. Sitting on the airstrip adjoining the warehouses was a DropShip, one that could only have arrived tonight because it had not been there earlier. The ship totally lacked insignia and was painted black as though to obliterate its identifying marks. Ramps thrust out from the bay doors leading from the cargo hold to the ground, where techs worked frantically—faster than Joanna had ever seen them move before—to load large, oblong metal structures onto carts with wide roadbeds. It took several techs to push and pull the carts away from the ship and through the wide open doors of the middle warehouse.

  Standing on guard at the DropShip and all along the way were massive Elementals, the elite Clan infantry bred to be giants. Though not wearing their distinctive battle armor, they were nevertheless garbed for combat and scanning in every direction. Several kept touching their holstered side-arms as if they expected to use them any minute. They all wore Jade Falcon uniforms, but were too far away for Joanna to recognize their insignia. Since they had apparently come from the DropShip, perhaps they had been detached from their normal units for this apparently secret duty.

  More Elementals stood outside the perimeter of activity.

  They, too, continuously scanned the area around them. With their great height and slow, sinister way of moving, they resembled the fearsome apparitions that sometimes crept into the dreams of sibkin.

  Seeing that it would be futile trying to get closer, Joanna decided to move sideways trying for a better view from another angle. Crouching low, her steps careful and quiet, she suddenly felt just like a spy—and worse, one spying on her own people.

  While maneuvering in his skulking fashion, she nearly tripped over Karlac.

  "Joanna!" Karlac hissed from her position on the ground. "What are you doing here?"

  Joanna dropped down beside her and spoke close to her ear. "Just taking a walk. Could not sleep. I came upon this. What is going on?"

  Karlac put a finger to her lips and nodded to her right. An Elemental, his powerful body and large head making his shadowy form seem like a moving tree, passed nearby. Karlac did not speak until he had gone.

  "This happens about twice a month. The black DropShip arrives, and these tanks are unloaded and carted into the building."

  "Tanks?"

  "Storage tanks, looks like. They remind me of cryogenic tanks, but I really have no idea what they are used for. They are heavy, that much is for sure. These techs sweat more on these black DropShip nights than any other time."

  "Where do the tanks end up?"

  "That I have never been able to figure out. I have explored the buildings without ever finding a trace of the tanks inside. They simply disappear."

  "Maybe we should investigate."

  "We?"

  "What else is there to do on Dogg? We can have some fun for a change.”

  “I am not sure—"

  "What are you worried about? We are Jade Falcon, we have a right to learn what is being hidden from us. Otherwise it would be like admitting that we have earned solahma rather than being assigned to it, quiaff?"

  "I am curious, yes—"

  "That is the spirit, then. Tomorrow night we will go there."

  "Night? Why not just go in during the day? They are not allowed to stop us."

  "Ah, but they are watchful, quiaff? They will not expect a midnight visit."

  "I suppose so. Agreed. Tomorrow night then."

  Karlac soon left, but Joanna continued to watch the many deliveries being toted with such effort by the techs.

  The operation eventually ended. The DropShip ramps were lifted and the bay doors shut with a clang. The bright lights abruptly switched off, and the Elementals disappeared into the black DropShip. Firing its thrusters the ship lifted off on orange flames, without—Joanna noted—having taken on any cargo for its now-depleted holds. It was unusual for a DropShip to go away empty. The way of the Clans did not condone waste, and this definitely was wasteful.

  Joanna was about to return to the patch of cold, hard ground that was her bed, when she saw a man come out one of the side doors of the main warehouse. At first she thought it must be a tech because he was dressed in the standard coveralls and carrying a clipboard. He stood in the shadows and seemed to be looking about watchfully, then vanished inside the warehouse once more. Joanna waited a while longer to see if he would reappear, which he did, minus the clipboard. She was utterly surprised to see him head straight toward her, up the hill.

  His pace was measured, but confident, with a youthful rhythm in the way he swung his arms. As he came closer, she saw that the man was now wearing warrior's fatigues. What little light Dogg's distant moon offered illuminated his profile as he passed. With his head held high and his back so straight, Joanna did not at first recognize him.

  Then she saw that the man looked like Bailly, MechWarrior Bailly with a younger face and an unbent body. How could it be?

  As Joanna twisted around to watch him continue up the hill, the movement created a faint rustle in the grass around her. The man turned and looked back.

  His fierce gaze, so full of hate, left little doubt in Joanna's mind about his identity. It was definitely MechWarrior Bailly, not as young as she had first thought, but not as old as he pretended. Not seeing anything to further draw his suspicion, he resumed his journey toward the solahma camp.

  Joanna followed cautiously, her escape and evasion training permitting her to escape detection. As Bailly reached the top of the hill, his back magically seemed to bend and his gait slow down to an agebound pace. In the last few steps before reaching camp, he looked like an old man whose age could have been measured in centuries rather than decades. Now she saw he had been playing a part.

  * * *

  Safely back in her sleeping area, Joanna lay awake for most of the rest of the night. Who was this Bailly? Was he the Wolf Clan agent Kael Pershaw had sent her here to discover? And what was his connection to the black DropShip and its mysterious cargo?

  She would have to find the answers to these questions and also learn what the secret delivery was all about.

  Well, she seemed to hear Kael Pershaw say, that is your job, quiaff?

  20

  Solahma Number 34B Camp Site

  Dogg Station, Dogg

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  3 November 3057

  The next day Bailly was just as ancient in appearance and unpleasant in manner as ever. For the first time, however, Joanna noticed how exaggerated his responses seemed. The voice was too growly, the moves too dramatic, and he seemed to take too much relish in his more devastating comments.

  Maybe Kael Pershaw would be happy now if she had finally discovered the spy after two months on Dogg. But she also realized that it did not matter so much who was spying, what Pershaw required was the why and the wherefore.

  After witnessing the mysterious goings-on connected with the black DropShip last night, she was sure that whatever intrigue was involved, whatever spying was going on, it had to do with the deliveries of the black DropShip. And Bailly's presence meant he was also involved.

  She considered the possibility that the black ship was a Wolf Clan vessel. That might account for the fact that it was painted over and all insignia obliterated. But if that were so, why was the cargo guarded by Elementals clearly decked out in Jade Falcon uniforms? Were the Wolves so deceptive that they would actually dress their own warriors in another Clan's colors? That was hard to say, sh
e realized. Although Clan warriors generally could not abide the idea of having the clothing of another Clan—or worse, that of another caste—next to their skin, it was possible that any Clan devious enough to use spies in the first place might stoop to the indignity of disguising their troops. Perhaps the wearers of the Jade Falcon uniforms were not true warriors at all. They could be bandit outcasts pressed into duty. Such people would not cringe at wearing the clothes of the warrior caste.

  The whole issue of disguising identity confused Joanna. She was, after all, a Jade Falcon, and Jade Falcons hated deception, but who could say what the Wolves would do? As she had told Pershaw, the idea of pretending to be something other than what she was felt unnatural, even though she accepted the assignment. Hiding the truth about Ravill Pryde's unusual genetic legacy had been equally troublesome, although that at least made some sense.

  This mission disoriented her. Joanna may have been an embittered warrior who tended to scoff at what others believed, but she was totally committed to the way of the Clan, the way of a Jade Falcon warrior, and that life had made sense even when she hated it. Now nothing made sense. Old men were young men, Clan Wolf sent spies, secret missions were taking place, black DropShips were materializing out of black skies. Joanna did not know what to make of it all. All she did know was that she needed to put some of this confusion into some kind of order—and, above all, get away from this ancient collection of useless warriors and back to—back to what? Back to Sudeten and Ravill Pryde and the next DropShip out to the nesting worlds to become a canister nanny?

  The thought sent another one of her increasingly more frequent shudders through her. There was not a reasonable option in the lot. The only way to get one was to make it for herself. Perhaps she could hijack the black DropShip the next time it came, get at its controls, and fly it off to another galaxy, one where an over-the-hill warrior might still find acceptance. Of course she did not have the first idea of how to pilot a DropShip, but that seemed a minor obstacle in the face of her other dilemmas.