by Victor Milán
From birth Jade Falcon warriors were trained— brainwashed, Malthus would have said, not necessarily with disapproval—not to fear death. But he had learned early on that even for such men and women there were still things to fear. One of them was a disgraceful manner of death.
Malvina, it seemed, also had learned that lesson. Which meant she was learning from him. Which meant he must watch her very, very carefully indeed.
But then, he thought sourly, it is not as if I did not know that, now, is it?
‘‘But to consent to duel to the death over a copyright infraction?’’ he said.
Malvina shrugged. ‘‘I perceive it serves me.’’
‘‘Challenging a Hell’s Horses ristar to a single-vehicle duel? Why not a game of Russian roulette with autopistols, and you going first?’’
Perhaps no one else alive would dare speak to the highly volatile Malvina in such a way. Certainly Malthus trod closer to the edge than he liked. But he also knew that if he deferred too much, Malvina would lose respect for him. That was the most dangerous outcome of all.
Instead of flashing off, she smiled. Despite the twisting of the scar, it made her look disturbingly beautiful; worse, almost friendly. ‘‘I will win,’’ she said in a tone that closed the door on further discussion. ‘‘When I do, I will enhance my standing in the desant and of our Clan as a whole, and reinforce my image as an invincible monster in the eyes of the Inner Sphere.
‘‘More importantly, I bind the Horsemen to me. By winning the right to what they call the Mongol doctrine, I harmonize our destinies, even in those Hell’s Horses minds less dim than Tristan Fletcher’s. Thus that Clan becomes available to my use, when I am ready.’’
‘‘What do you think to gain from this hypothetical usage of the Horses?’’
‘‘Eventually?’’ she said. ‘‘Everything.’’
Red lights flamed in Malvina’s heads-up display as a laser stabbed into the Scimitar’s right rear with a shower of coruscation and a nasty buzzing in her headset. She was thrown against the left side of her harness as Wyndham broke right.
She checked her display. The enemy hovertank rounded the flank of a hill behind them. With remarkable skill, Fletcher’s driver kept the machine at the same angle as the slope, using blasts of the steering jets to prevent it from sideslipping downward instead of moving upright on a column of downblast, which would make it slower and vulnerable to strikes against the weakly armored belly and to being toppled by explosive near misses. It came rapidly through a tunnel of dust and vegetation bits swirled up by powerful fans.
By slewing the 35-ton tank sideways and then accelerating forward at full throttle, Wyndham avoided twin streams of slugs from the enemy tank’s miniguns. Confident of his unanswerably superior skill, Malvina’s adversary conserved his heat by firing less potent weapons, just as he withheld his single volley of short-range missiles. She expected him to use his extended-range laser and miniguns to herd her, then close for slashing attacks with the short-range lasers and the powerful rockets.
Damage indicators showed a chunk of armor blasted from her Scimitar’s stern. First blood to Fletcher, she thought.
Wyndham’s maneuver had set the tank skidding across the flat at forty-five degrees to its previous course. He kicked up the right-side thrusters to kill the lateral vector. In her 360 display Malvina saw the other vehicle, not a quarter kilometer distant, lining up another shot from the left rear.
‘‘Halt!’’ she rapped. Driven by hot Clan egotism, many expert drivers might have questioned the order. Wyndham instantly complied. He hit full-power reverse. The tank’s nose bucked up, and a shudder ground through the vehicle as its stern skirt scraped hardpan.
Fletcher’s long-range laser slashed a brilliant green cut between land and sky ten meters ahead of Malvina’s Scimitar. His paired miniguns plowed furrows in front of her, throwing up short-lived dust curtains.
The dust was still falling to earth as Wyndham powered through the impromptu screen with a roar of motors and scream of fans. Clods flipped up by the bullets pattered on the top and turret armor. Malvina could smell the hot, dry soil through the air intakes.
She had not ordered Wyndham to drive on. But he had successfully anticipated her intent. Had he disobeyed, she would have treated him with abrupt mercilessness. Otherwise, only results mattered.
A burst of ammunition raked the Scimitar, jackhammering along its left flank. Lights flared. Klaxons blared. Despite the cleverness of Wyndham’s stutter-step maneuver, bullets had holed the rear left-side armor. No internal systems damage registered.
Fletcher is almost as good as he thinks he is, Malvina thought dispassionately. She hit a rocker switch preprogrammed for this battle. Then they passed behind the shielding jut of a gray-green granite extrusion covered with spiky brush.
3
The Falcon’s Reach
The Desolation, Skye
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
3 August 3135
The instant before she vanished behind a rock ridge, Galaxy Commander Tristan Fletcher saw black smoke billow from his prey.
It wasn’t just that he had already damaged his opponent without taking a scratch on his paint in return that shaped his lean, dark features into a smile. It was the map displayed on his own HUD from satellite imaging taken from Skye orbit. His quarry had bolted into a box canyon.
In her panic his prey had trapped herself.
‘‘I hoped for better from you, Malvina Hazen,’’ he said aloud. He broadcast it, in case the outcrop did not block his signal. It hardly mattered.
‘‘Now, Jebe,’’ he told his driver over the intercom. ‘‘This is all the sport these pitiful Falcons can give us. Let us finish this.’’
‘‘Yes, Galaxy Commander!’’ his driver responded eagerly. Though he was new—Fletcher tended to use up drivers at an alarming pace—Warrior Jebe’s personality and his vehicle commander’s meshed very well. They became a true team, a concept far less developed among other Clans. So far less developed, in fact, that some hard-core Crusader MechWarriors not-so-secretly regarded the Horsemen as scarcely Clanners at all.
Destroying the vaunted White Virgin, scourge of The Republic, will go far toward refuting that lie, he thought, his joy as fierce and hot and nourishing as blood drunk straight from a slash on his horse’s flank on a long steppe ride.
He checked his own readouts as Jebe wound up the engines. All nominal; his heat was low, despite his driver quickly punching the Scimitar to near its full 162-kilometer-per-hour speed across the mostly flat terrain. It was risky, but Hell’s Horses teammates trusted one another implicitly.
Jebe rotated the tank widdershins around its vertical axis, throwing Fletcher violently sideways in his five-point harness. The fans outboard of the turn howled to prevent the 35-ton mass from heeling over. If the skirt kissed ground at this speed, even a rise of soft loose soil, the hovercraft would flip and bounce itself to flaming pieces across The Desolation.
It did not. With artistry, Jebe kept a finger of highpressure air between the steel skirt and the steel-hard dirt. The Scimitar righted, then continued to slide sideways at over a hundred kilometers per hour as it passed the outcrop with all weapons bearing on its target.
Which loomed as large as a Rommel assault tank in Fletcher’s display. His enemy was not floundering helplessly at the far end of the long U-shaped cut. Instead, it was poised just inside it. It no longer vomited smoke; only a trickle streamed upward, blending quickly with the dust cloud remaining of its wake.
Fletcher shouted in inarticulate surprise as it accelerated straight toward him.
There was a moment in which Jebe might have spun the machine clockwise again and darted to escape the charging Scimitar. But that would have let their quarry slide out of his main-battery firing arc. Jebe held his maneuver, braking his sideways slide as Fletcher fired his whole battery in a furious spasm that spiked his heat meter to the redline.
And then Fletcher knew what was happening.
He had time only to scream, ‘‘Dishonor!’’
Then impact.
Noise ravaged Malvina’s ears even through her headset. Her Scimitar’s multiton mass shuddered like an Inner Sphere child’s toy struck by a sledgehammer as three SRMs smashed the turret launcher to flaming ruin just over her head. Heat soared in the cockpit as she triggered off all surviving weapons in reply. But her gambit did not depend on winning an exchange of fire. It only required her machine to survive her enemy’s full fury for a few crucial seconds.
A laser penetrated the hovertank’s thick frontal armor. Coherent green light-needles stabbed through the cockpit and would have burned out her retinas had she not been wearing protective goggles. Metal screamed agony as it sublimated away beneath laser beams, was battered and torn by bullets. The Scimitar began to slip sideways as even Wyndham’s iron nerve and raptor reflexes could hold it no longer.
But Fletcher’s craft filled her display, the driver’s viewscreen dancing with a reflected hell of green glare and yellow muzzle flame. She braced.
Her tank struck its gaudily painted twin at a good fifty kilometers an hour. Even though most of the velocity was its own, the enemy tank still skidded across her bow. Avalanche roar and an abominable shrieking deafened Malvina. Then she was shaken as if by a giant’s hand.
The impact could have knocked one or both tanks tumbling across the steppe. Instead, the armored flesh and foamed-steel bones of both craft interpenetrated, locking them together. Both hit the dirt with showers of sparks visible through Malvina’s still-functioning heads-up display like maddened fireflies swarming round them. Boulders banged against the interlocked hulls like Gauss slugs as they bucked across the land.
At last they ground to a stop. With a near-supersonic screech they broke apart at last, coming to rest in clouds of dust and smoke not ten meters from one another.
For a moment Malvina sat stunned. Not even her catlike constitution and demon will could force body and mind to yield to her command.
The weakness passed. She took quick stock of herself. Her body felt as if it had been fed through a hammer forge. Every square centimeter was bruised down to the bone. Her left eye was blind, causing her a stab of panic. Rapid blinking brought a sensation of gumminess, then blurs of light impinging on her optic nerve: blood from a cut on her forehead had flowed into her eye socket. She wiped it out with the back of her hand and blinked the eye clear.
Around her the ruins of her light tank pinged and hissed and creaked as stresses relieved themselves and heat overloads equalized. ‘‘Galaxy Commander,’’ Wyndham’s voice said in her ringing ears. ‘‘I am afraid I am pinned and my right leg broken.’’
It surprised her he had survived. That had played no part in her plan, one way or another. She did feel brief satisfaction that he had lived: he had proven himself most useful indeed.
‘‘Your performance makes Turkina proud,’’ she said. ‘‘Now your task is done.’’
‘‘Aff.’’
She hit the button to open the hatch over her head. Nothing happened. She scowled in frustrated fury: it was simply not acceptable that she be trapped in her broken vehicle at the very moment of her triumph.
She reached up and yanked the manual release. It resisted, causing her to fear the frame had buckled. She punched out of her safety harness, took the lever in both hands and, doubling in her seat, braced both boots against the compartment overhead for leverage. She pulled with all the strength of her muscles and powerful prosthetics.
Grudgingly the lever gave. Then it popped open. Dust-laden, sun-heated air streamed in as the hatch seal broke, seeming sweet and cool compared to the oven the cockpit had become. So focused had Malvina been on the battle that she had scarcely noticed the stinging heat and choking smoke until now.
She pushed the hatch full open and scrambled out. Movement soothed her aching muscles, as it usually did. A fresh surge of adrenaline did the rest, rushing like a tidal bore through her veins as she wriggled beneath the smoldering wreckage of the SRM turret and slid to the ground.
Swaying, she put a hand to her tank’s steel flank to steady herself. After a few heartbeats she smelled burning as the synthetic palm of her glove melted on the hot armor. By now she no longer needed the support. She took her hand away.
The enemy tank’s cockpit had been blown open. The Horseman driver’s whole right side was blood. Shining scarlet in the sun, it streamed from a metal splinter driven into his eye socket and from a shoulder crushed to pulp and white chunks. Still he struggled in his harness, left hand clawing at his sidearm in its holster beneath the same arm-pit. A blue eye glared at her with almost insane fury.
Walking forward she drew her own sidearm, pushed her arm out to full extension and shot him through his good eye. His head jerked back, driven by a jet of organic steam, then lolled to the side.
She holstered her laser. The casual killing was already forgotten. The Hell’s Horses machine’s top hatch lay open. A bloodstained hand moved about it like a blind spider. Malvina scrambled up, nimble as a monkey, disregarding how the burning-hot wreck scorched her skin where it came in contact through her uniform.
Fletcher’s head, with its shaven sides and smoldering topknot, emerged from darkness. Grabbing his scalp lock, Malvina helped haul the much larger warrior out onto the top deck. He snarled something inarticulate. She lifted her foot and shoved him off the vehicle.
Red flames began to wave out the open hatch like tiny tentacles.
Malvina slid down the Scimitar’s flank. Her boot soles crunched on sand.
Fletcher faced her, feet beneath him, legs coiled. It pleased her to see he was resilient, as befit a high-ranking Clan warrior and ristar. It also pleased her that, bloody, bruised and scorched though he was, he appeared largely intact and fully functional.
Her vision dimmed. The temperature dropped around her, almost imperceptibly. It took her a moment to realize a shadow had fallen across her and her enemy. She looked up in annoyance to see the Herrmanns blimp occulting the sun. She scowled, promising herself to stand the fat, useless German against the wall of his own mansion if his airship’s blunderings made it difficult for the other media to get good shots of what came next.
Fletcher reached behind his right shoulder. His curved-bladed sword slid free with a metallic slither, a ringing Malvina heard beneath the crackle of the flames from his tank.
‘‘You have not won yet despite your coward’s trick, Malvina Hazen,’’ he said.
He screamed with fury and lunged at her, slashing down diagonally from right to left.
She ducked beneath the stroke. Then she sprang at him. Her battleknife flashed in the sunlight as she passed.
He spun, clapping a hand to the side of his neck. He looked at his palm. His eyes narrowed at a bright smear of red on his scorched glove.
‘‘Such a mosquito sting will do you no good,’’ he said. ‘‘You must do better.’’
‘‘I think not,’’ she said. She stood facing him with her arms at her sides, apparently relaxed. ‘‘Your every step I have controlled, from the moment you began your batchall. You are brave, Tristan Fletcher. But you are a fool. And brave fools are but culls, unworthy of the memory of Kerensky.’’
His face darkened, then went white. ‘‘What?’’ he screamed. ‘‘You dare—?’’
He stopped. His eyes flew wide before he could ask what she might dare. A feather of pink mist, scarcely visible in the sunlight, sprouted from the right side of his muscular brown neck.
‘‘My cut went through your skin and halfway through the wall of your carotid artery, Tristan Fletcher. When I taunted you, your blood pressure soared. It was enough to force the tiniest of ruptures.’’
He put his hand back to his neck. This time red sprayed it like paint from an aerosol can. He reeled.
‘‘I first learned of that cut from a Kuritan samurai holovid we watched in the crèche, my brother and I. At the time I failed to realize it was merely entertainment, not meant to be real. S
o when I came into my first rank as Star commander I began to practice on prisoners.
‘‘At first I had them immobilized. These were rebel laborers, and the means of their disposal was of no account. After many, many tries I found the cut could be made— for I learned to do it.’’
He took a halting pace toward her, raising his yataghan.
‘‘Then I began using it on opponents able to move. I was fair: if they managed to defeat me they would win their freedom. None did.
‘‘After more than thirty fell to my blade in such duels, I learned to make that cut consistently against a mobile opponent. You are the first to feel it in true combat.
‘‘And now the strength drains from your body and limbs. Your eyes grow dim. And now—’’
She stepped quickly forward. He tried to lift his sword arm. It rose but a centimeter, slowly, then drooped. The hilt slipped from his limp fingers. The blade bit with a crunch into the sand by his feet.
She caught him behind the head with both hands and pulled his face toward hers, ignoring the dwindling arterial spray that drenched her flesh hand in his life’s hot blood. Her lips crushed his. His brown eyes stared as her tongue probed deep into his mouth.
Then she broke away. Stepped back. Her mouth was a brilliant crimson smear.
‘‘—I drink your soul.’’
He toppled dead at her feet.
She turned and raised bloody arms to the sky, and to the watching cameras, and pealed forth a mighty falcon scream of triumph.
4
Tshombe, Mkuranga
Province of New Katanga
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
3 August 3135
‘‘I apologize, my lord,’’ the functionary said nervously. She was a small woman, pinch-faced, with pale hair pulled back in a painful-looking bun, wearing the coverall of a Jade Falcon laborer. Her garment’s russet color and her badges, however, identified her as a Spheroid in service to the occupying Clan. Her half-defiant, half-apologetic manner likewise marked her to the man she addressed. As did her use of an honorific, which few true Clanners would have bothered with. ‘‘The border with the Lyran Commonwealth is closed. Your vessel must turn back.’’
