by Victor Milán
A hissing swelled within the hall like the sound of air escaping from a breached JumpShip hull as a thousand warriors inhaled at once. ‘‘I must consult with the Clan Council in private as to the appropriateness of your challenge, Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen. Only if we deem the challenge permissible will it be presented to Khan Jana Pryde.’’
Malvina opened her mouth. With perfect timing Julia Buhalin slammed down the metal tip of her staff of office on the polished wooden floor of the dais. Electronically amplified like the contending women’s voices, it tolled like a great wooden bell.
‘‘In Turkina’s name,’’ Julia Buhalin declaimed, and her own voice rang like bronze, ‘‘the loremaster of Clan Jade Falcon has spoken!’’
Malvina Hazen’s near-white hair swirled like her cape as she turned from the dais. Her face was as frozen as the ice sculpture it resembled.
Rorion Klimt let out a breath in a long voiceless whistle. ‘‘That is some woman, my lord.’’
Heinz-Otto von Texeira probed in his left ear with a great forefinger. ‘‘Is it, Rorion? ‘Demon from Hell’ seems closer to me.’’
His aide shrugged.
They had reverted to their native Portuguese as a basic security measure. Neither man assumed it provided perfect confidentiality: no khan could survive long without at least fairly competent internal security, provided by either a personal bodyguard or the Watch, especially after the better part of a century’s cohabitation with conniving Spheroids had tainted the feral purity of the Clans.
Not wanting for any number of reasons to be any closer than necessary to the furious Galaxy commander when she stormed past, the two faded down a short corridor into an octagonal antechamber. Von Texeira glanced across the smaller but still not insubstantial room.
‘‘Himmelherr Gott!’’ he exclaimed. ‘‘A child!’’
It was true: a little girl in a blue-and-white dress was tossing a ball against a whitewashed wall, clapping her hands, then catching it. She was pretty, her blond hair tied in pigtails. She seemed to be singing softly to herself. Over the furious commotion pouring from the main hall von Texeira could make out no words, just a sort of lilting flow. She could not have been more shockingly out of place had she been a four-meter-long Nova Suevian golden onza with saber fangs and six legs.
A pair of female warriors wearing sidearms and narrow glares stood guard over her. Several other warriors idling in the antechamber seemed to look everywhere in the room except at the Spheroid child. Their manner reminded von Texeira of a dog which, having two or three times been startled or frightened by something, studiously pretends that thing doesn’t exist.
‘‘See the nice new insignia,’’ Rorion murmured. Von Texeira realized that the little girl’s two guardians each wore an unfamiliar patch on the right breast of her jumpsuit: a heavily stylized eye, with a stripe descending from it like a falcon’s eye-stripe, in brilliant emerald green.
‘‘The Eye of Horus,’’ he murmured. ‘‘Apparently what our friend Senna told us was true: our prodigal twins did manage to wangle some rudiments of actual education.’’
"Appropriate symbol for Malvina,’’ Rorion said. ‘‘She and her sibkin were known as the Eyes of the Falcon, não?"
"Then Turkina and Malvina have one thing in common," von Texeira said softly as the woman in question and her larger shadow swept by, ‘‘in that each has but one eye left.’’
Six more warriors in gleaming black, green and yellow entered the antechamber to surround the two Galaxy commanders. Three men, three women, two of them elementals, each bore the green falcon-eye symbol that Malvina apparently had taken for her own. From their unit badges von Texeira noted that two came from Malvina’s own Gyrfalcon Galaxy, two from her dead brother’s Zeta, and two from Beckett Malthus’ Turkina Keshik.
‘‘Aren’t Turkina Keshik the khan’s personal bodyguard? ’’ Rorion asked sotto voce.
‘‘So I understood.’’
Malvina turned aside to approach the little girl. At a word from one of her guardians the child caught up her little ball and turned. Her face lit with delight as she saw Malvina. Still grave as a priest saying Mass, Malvina knelt, gathered the girl into her arms, brushed back a lock of the child’s hair with a gauntleted hand—the false one, if von Texeira remembered rightly. Then she turned and swept from the antechamber without another look around.
‘‘You’re right, my lord,’’ Rorion said. ‘‘That woman is creepy.’’
Von Texeira fingered his beard. ‘‘I wonder,’’ he said, ‘‘if Malvina has ever seen an expression like that on the face of anyone looking at her before? It’s about the last thing I ever expected to see.’’
‘‘Let’s hope it isn’t close to the last thing you do see.’’ His aide looked back into the main hall, from which noise blew out in a continual blast of contention. ‘‘And that defines ‘hitting the fan.’ Minha nossa, they sound more like a cageful of angry gibbons than birds of prey, don’t they?’’
‘‘Try as they might,’’ his master said, ‘‘they can’t change the fact they’re just apes, like the rest of us.’’
He sighed. ‘‘There goes her Khanship and the loremaster,’’ he said as the two women hustled into a dark opening at the dais’ rear. ‘‘Let’s try to find to someone who’ll actually look at our credentials before some crazed Clansman decides to vent his spleen on the first lowly Spheroids he sees.’’
‘‘That cull!’’ Jana Pryde shouted, yanking off her ceremonial helmet and flinging it across the room. It bounced. The khan’s personal quarters in the great spiny keep were small but appointed quite comfortably, if not luxuriously. Austerity for its own sake was one of those Clan traditions with which Jana Pryde had little patience. ‘‘I’ll take her challenge and burn those mad blue eyes out of her head! That Shrike of hers must be a limping wreck after all the damage it’s taken.’’
‘‘My Khan,’’ Julia Buhalin said, her voice low and smooth, ‘‘do you not believe she has had her Black Rose fully repaired by now? Given the immense amount of isorla captured from our enemies on Skye and salvaged from our own machines scrapped in combat, she must have had ample parts available to repair her BattleMech."
Jana Pryde growled low in her throat. ‘‘You’re right,’’ she said. ‘‘Of course.’’ Her Watch spies had kept her apprised of the broad course of events in the desant.
She took off her feather cape and flung it over the back of a chair. ‘‘So what now?’’
‘‘We should consider matters carefully, my Khan. It will do no harm to let Malvina wait.’’
Jana turned with a slow smile. ‘‘No. I suppose it won’t.’’ A tap at the door. The room was an outer one; the translucent ferroglass wall let in the thin gruel of light of the storm and the dying day. Its thickness reduced the wind to a whistle interspersed with booming buffets, just this side of subliminal, and concealed heaters kept the chill at bay.
‘‘Enter,’’ commanded Jana. Only a trusted aide or laborer-class servant would dare trouble her, especially at such a moment as this. Or an assassin—Jana found her gauntleted right hand resting on the well-worn butt of the sidearm laser holstered on her right hip.
I almost hope Malvina’s sent murderers after me, she thought. Time to remind my people I didn’t just ride to power on the black-feathered back of Malthus the Crow!
The door opened. ‘‘Excellency,’’ a female servant in a blue-gray and mauve jumpsuit said, keeping her eyes carefully downcast, ‘‘there are men from the Inner Sphere to see you. They claim to be personal emissaries of the Archon Melissa Steiner.’’
‘‘Send them away,’’ Julia Buhalin said. But Jana raised a finger.
‘‘No,’’ she said. ‘‘I sent for them. I want to see them. Bring them in.’’
A pair of young MechWarriors in full battledress and falcon helmets escorted them in. The emissaries were, the khan saw, quite a disparate pair. One was huge, a broad-shouldered, bull-chested man with a frizzy cloud of hair and a gray-dusted black beard f
raming a broad and jovial dark face. He had a great disgusting belly and limped with the aid of a stout cane. His eyes were a bright astonishing blue. With him came a smaller, slimmer, younger man, about average height for a Spheroid, with lighter skin and dark, dancing eyes. He had about him a slightly vulpine look.
‘‘Khan Jana Pryde,’’ the big man boomed out in English flavored with a Steiner German accent. ‘‘It is a great pleasure to meet you. I am Heinz-Otto María Manoel de Soares zu Mannstein, Markgraf von Texeira. This is my aide, Rorion Klimt. My Archon, the Duchess of Tharkad, sends us in response to your request, in order that we might restore the peace that has prevailed between our great peoples for decades!’’
He turned and deposited the datachip containing their bona fides in the palm of the MechWarrior to his right as if giving the young man a tip. He beamed all over his great bearded face and seemed to Khan Jana Pryde to be enjoying himself hugely. The MechWarrior, who belonged to the Turkina Galaxy Cluster that had taken over for Turkina Keshik when Jana dispatched it to the Inner Sphere with Malthus, looked utterly nonplused.
After a moment he turned and marched up to Khan Jana Pryde, who accepted it with a curt nod. ‘‘Dismissed,’’ she said.
The young man stood his ground. His eyes flickered toward the two Inner Sphere men. Jana Pryde’s brow hardened, and her green eyes narrowed and went paler in her long, narrow skull. Her bodyguards turned about and all but fled.
As her initial flash of fury faded Jana felt something akin to amusement. A fat, lame old merchant and a skinny man a head shorter than I, and my warriors act as if they were a pair of real Ghost Bears? Still, it was the task her guard was set; she must remember not to chastise them for carrying it out in the manner of Clan Jade Falcon. Which was to say, with fanatical zeal.
‘‘I bid you welcome, Margrave, Citizen Klimt. This is Julia Buhalin, our loremaster.’’
Buhalin’s brows were lowered, but she nodded graciously.
‘‘Will you sit?’’ Jana nodded toward chairs.
The older man nodded gratefully. ‘‘Thank you.’’ He sighed as he lowered his bulk gingerly. His aide did not offer to assist him, but did not sit himself until his master was ensconced. ‘‘The years and the kilos don’t make it so easy on my stump, you know.’’
She laughed. ‘‘You are a most remarkable man, Margrave. Almost as remarkable as the phenomenon of one of the richest men in the Lyran Commonwealth materializing so abruptly in our Eyrie.’’
‘‘Really, Madame Khan, we had few other options. It was hard enough finding someone in the Eyrie who would read our accreditation. You may imagine what it was like getting here. Which also accounts’’—he smiled again and gestured at his aide—‘‘for the sparseness of my retinue.’’
Her forehead clenched again. ‘‘You were hindered?’’
‘‘ ‘Ignored’ would be a better word. No one knew what to do about us, so mostly they hoped we would go away.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘Eventually we did, so they were wise, ja?’’ He leaned forward with both hands on the crown of his cane. ‘‘You know of me then, Excellency?’’
‘‘We are civilized here, Margrave. We even received regular Inner Sphere newsfeeds before the hyperpulse generator network went down. You Steiners are our nearest neighbors in the Sphere; you were a prominent media figure.’’
His eyebrows rose. He seemed pleased. Almost any other Jade Falcon would instantly have passed him off as a mere buffoon, a vain bag of Spheroid wind.
Not Jana Pryde. I learned from the master, she acknowledged. If only he had had the decency to stay exiled!
As if in response to her thought the exterior wall reverberated to a basso roar. Orange light filled the chamber. A glaring point rose upward, screened by cloud and blowing snow as well as the ferroglass. It brightened, changed color to white and then blue-white before climbing out of sight.
‘‘The Galaxy commanders depart,’’ Buhalin said dryly.
‘‘If she goes anywhere but back to orbit or to the designated cradle at the Hammarr spaceport she will be shot down,’’ Jana Pryde said. ‘‘I hope she decides to sightsee.’’
‘‘You have a WarShip orbiting above your head, Khan Pryde,’’ von Texeira said. ‘‘That might be considered a restriction on your scope of action. I confess, I can almost feel its dark mass looming over me as I sit here in your eyrie.’’
‘‘I have three WarShips orbiting over my head, thank you, Margrave. To answer the Emerald Talon I have the Whirlwind-class Jade Tornado, and Jade Talon, an Aegis.’’
‘‘Are not the Whirlwind-class destroyers, O Khan?’’ von Texeira asked blandly. ‘‘And is your Aegis not a heavy cruiser? And please forgive me if I err, for I am but a civilian and more, a mere merchant, but it seems to me that together they mass about the same as a single Nightlord, do they not?’’
Julia Buhalin snorted. Jana Pryde regarded the Lyran for a moment with one eyebrow strongly arched. Then she laughed.
‘‘You undoubtedly personify the very class of Spheroid I should most despise,’’ she said. ‘‘But your effrontery shows more courage than you may suspect. You are quite right: it would take the Jade Talon and Jade Tornado together to match the Emerald Talon. But don’t forget your Yggdrasil badly damaged the Emerald Talon at Skye—’’
‘‘Hardly my Yggdrasil, my Khan,’’ von Texeira murmured.
‘‘—and I also have a number of armed DropShips, as well as a great many aerospace fighters on call. Malvina might do substantial damage to Sudeten, but at the cost of her life. And more to the point, her ambitions, don’t you think?’’
‘‘You are quite correct, Jana Pryde,’’ Buhalin said, a trifle hastily.
‘‘The loremaster speaks truly,’’ von Texeira said. He nodded decisively. ‘‘It would appear that you and my sovereign share a problem. Which means that you and I share a problem.
‘‘So how may I help you, Khan Jana Pryde?’’
8
The Falcon’s Perch
Hammarr, Sudeten
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
14 September 3135
‘‘Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen,’’ intoned the loremaster of Clan Jade Falcon, ‘‘approach the dais.’’
Her words echoed through a vast circular hall ringed with ranks of seats in which sat Falcon MechWarriors. It lay not within the Eyrie in the desolate Hameward Mountains but rather in the Falcon’s Perch, the great structure in the center of Hammarr from which Jade Falcon space was ruled.
It did not escape Malvina that she had been summoned to the political center of Clan Jade Falcon, rather than its heart, to hear her judgment.
The Bec de Corbin, Malthus’ personal DropShip, had obediently settled in at Hammarr spaceport two days before, a few short minutes after blasting off from the Eyrie. The two Galaxy commanders and their retinues had spent the interval aboard, awaiting the decision of loremaster and Council.
‘‘In the matter of your challenge to a Trial of Possession with Khan Jana Pryde, it is deemed prejudicial to the interests of Clan Jade Falcon, and denied,’’ Loremaster Julia Buhalin said.
Malvina’s eyes flashed, but she gave no other sign of reaction. ‘‘I challenge Jana Pryde to a Trial of Position then!’’
‘‘Denied,’’ Buhalin said.
One can at least say for the Falcons that their proceedings tend to be brief and to the point, reflected Heinz-Otto von Texeira, who sat watching with Rorion from a gallery overlooking the amphitheater. A short attention span has its advantages.
‘‘I challenge—’’ Malvina cried from the floor.
The ferrule of Buhalin’s staff slammed down on the word. ‘‘Your challenges are improper and disallowed. In matters of this magnitude the interests of Clan Jade Falcon overrule your personal pride and desires.’’
Malvina’s cheeks had slowly reddened throughout the exchange. Now they went dead white. ‘‘Hoo,’’ Rorion half whispered. Both Lyrans knew well what that meant: a sudden, massive adrenaline dump withi
n the tiny Mech-Warrior’s bloodstream. ‘‘She’s ready to fight right now.’’
But like a great black raven perched on her shoulder Bec Malthus leaned forward and whispered in her ear. She nodded, abruptly, chin clenched. Color slowly returned to her face.
‘‘All honor to the loremaster and to Clan Jade Falcon,’’ she said. ‘‘I obey the Council’s decision. I am Jade Falcon!’’
The last four words came out as a pealing scream. It was echoed by no small number of the warriors in attendance. A minority, von Texeira could tell. But a distressingly large one.
He looked to Khan Jana Pryde. He was surprised green laser beams didn’t spear from her eyes and impale her rival as Malvina spun as if one heel were nailed to the polished marble floor and marched from the chamber. She had not so much as acknowledged the khan’s presence since striding in.
He shook his head and shifted his weight, preparatory to leaving. Rorion laid two fingers on his forearm.
‘‘Wait, milord.’’
Von Texeira raised an eyebrow. ‘‘What is it?’’
‘‘A feeling,’’ his younger aide admitted, ‘‘no more. I smell trouble.’’
‘‘And I have learned to rely on that nose of yours, my boy,’’ von Texeira said. He grounded his cane again. ‘‘We wait. The fleshpots of Hammarr beckon not very loudly at the best of times.’’
‘‘What now, Galaxy Commander?’’ It was a lost-child wail from MechWarrior June, one of Malvina’s bodyguards who waited outside the Perch, a slender woman with a tattooed face and long black hair.
Malvina looked up. The day was mostly clear, the sky a blue as pale and merciless as Malvina’s eyes. She held Cynthy in one arm. The little girl wore a heavy blue coat and white earmuffs against the chill. She clung comfortably to Malvina with her head against the Clanswoman’s chest.
‘‘We know powless,’’ Malvina said. ‘‘For now.’’
She started down the wide steps of the Falcon’s Perch. The air was crisp; the chill suppressed most smells save the dull reek of petroleum fractions burned by internal combustion engines. Across the wide boulevard called Turkina’s Path, laborers moved purposefully around a plaza in the white morning light, some engaged in the never-ending chore of sweeping and otherwise keeping the concrete plain spotless, others going from task to task. Her retinue, six warriors and Cynthy’s two minders, protectively surrounded her and Beckett Malthus, eyes as keenly alert as their namesakes’.
