by Victor Milán
His own deep blue eyes went wide.
Senna Rodríguez ducked down and right. The heavy metal chair the defeated Jade Falcon had swung one-handed at the back of her narrow, crested skull grazed her shoulder and struck the cement floor with a ringing clatter.
Senna kept spinning, right into her attacker. A two-edged fighting dagger had appeared in her right hand, blade tapering downward from her fist. Whirling behind the off-balance MechWarrior she struck him in the right kidney. Not once but half a dozen times, too fast for the eye to follow, reminding Heinz-Otto of an industrial sewing machine as much as anything.
Dropping his failed makeshift bludgeon the Falcon arched up and back, his face a mask of agony. Veins and tendons stood out like cables from his neck. A strained, keening whistle emerged from his wide-open mouth. It changed to a gurgle as Senna slashed him across the throat, stepping deftly back to avoid the blood that hosed from severed arteries as he fell.
‘‘No second chances,’’ she told the crowd. ‘‘That’s the kind of woman I am.’’ She plucked a stray napkin off the floor, wiped the blood from her dagger, made the weapon disappear.
‘‘Buy a girl a drink?’’ she asked von Texeira with a half smile, wiping red droplets from her face with another napkin she snagged from a table in passing. The three men who sat at the table, outland spacers by their dress and somewhat soft appearance, said nothing.
‘‘He can afford to,’’ said Rorion sourly.
‘‘Hush,’’ von Texeira said. ‘‘It was my intention even before your most remarkable display.’’ He gestured to a vacant chair. She sat, crossing long legs. She seemed restless.
‘‘Of what? Utter incompetence?’’ The Sea Fox shook her head. ‘‘I’d break a ’prentice to laborer for such misjudgment. ’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ asked Rorion thunderstruck. ‘‘It was brilliant.’’
She looked at him with her brow furrowed. ‘‘What do you mean? Bad business all around.’’
‘‘To kill a full-fledged Falcon MechWarrior? If you’ll refrain from killing me for disagreeing with you, that is a most impressive feat.’’
The noise was coming back as the mostly-offworlder crowd returned to the serious business of drinking by the strands of multicolored lights strung along the bar and ceiling in a failed attempt to alleviate pervasive drabness. Someone started another mad electronic song skirling from the player.
Senna gave Rorion a grin rather more lupine than vulpine. ‘‘I try not to kill men who make an effort to charm me. You’d have definite potential, if I went for glib. Sadly, you’re a touch too callow.’’
Rorion sat back trying not to look outraged. Von Texeira tried to suppress a laugh. He wondered when was the last time his aide—whose feats as a lady-killer nearly matched the legend in his own mind—had heard himself described by a woman he’d just complimented as callow.
‘‘I meant, it was bad business. What kind of practice is it to kill a potential customer?’’
Von Texeira noticed that the body of Senna’s foe had quietly disappeared. He heard the incident being discussed in hushed tones, but the talk concerned the remarkable prowess a despised Sea Fox, Bloodnamed or not, had shown. The killing itself was a commonplace; it might not have been the tavern’s first that night. Life was valued differently in Clan space than in even the most desperate favelas of Recife, von Texeira knew from weary experience.
‘‘What an amateur mistake,’’ Senna said in disgust. ‘‘I misjudged him. I forgot that while these Birds possess all the physical courage in the universe, they’re scarcely aware the moral brand exists.’’
‘‘How could you know he’d dishonor himself after a challenge? ’’ Rorion asked.
She laughed shortly. ‘‘Dishonor? A Falcon Court of Honor would have cleared him in an eyeblink, certainly. Any warrior Clan would do the same. There’s no dishonor in stamping on a stravag like me.’’
Rorion blinked and pulled his head back, astonished to hear a Bloodname bearer, no matter of which Clan, refer to herself by the most viciously derogatory term for freebirth.
‘‘So why have you come here, your Merchant Highness? A taste for these surroundings?’’ She waved a hand around at the dark and humid bar, which was beginning to return to normal. ‘‘Or perhaps you didn’t get enough of my sparkling company?’’
‘‘Do not undervalue your charm, dear lady.’’
Her laugh was harsh as a vulture’s call. ‘‘You try to flatter me? I am Clan.’’
‘‘I do not flatter,’’ he said, a trifle sternly. ‘‘But despite the genuine merits of your conversation, I have more specific ends in mind.’’
‘‘You’ve no doubt heard by now,’’ Rorion said as a dour waiter plunked down a tray of three glass mugs filled with pale and slightly murky local beer, ‘‘of this morning’s amateurish attempt on the lives of Malvina Hazen and Bec Malthus.’’
‘‘Amateurish?’’ Senna asked with a lift of her eyebrows.
Von Texeira looked to his subordinate. ‘‘It failed,’’ the younger man said with a shrug.
‘‘If you’ll pardon my saying so,’’ von Texeira said, ‘‘it’s the Clan proclivity for trying to drive a tack with an assisted-inertia sledgehammer. Hopeless.’’
‘‘What would, say, a Lyran CEO have done?’’
‘‘Not resorted to assassination, one hopes. Still: only luck can prevent a sufficiently resourceful and determined individual from getting within range of his target with a scoped rifle,’’ von Texeira said. ‘‘Should the rifle be powerful enough, the target can even be killed with a reasonable chance of the assassin escaping. The flip of a coin, in any event.’’
‘‘As you say, that is not the Clan way. Not even of Clan Sea Fox. Too distant and impersonal a kind of murder. Though I daresay we Foxes would make a better job of it.’’
She rocked back in her seat and looked at them beneath lowered brows. ‘‘A succinct appraisal, anyway. Is this standard operating procedure for Lyran diplomats, then?’’
‘‘Let us just say,’’ von Texeira said, ‘‘that any negotiator’s hand is strengthened by an appreciation of the realities of the way the world works.’’
She shrugged. ‘‘I’ve noticed the same thing, myself,’’ she said, drawing abstruse patterns with her finger in the water condensed on the scarred tabletop. ‘‘So. You need an adviser on high-energy Clan politics, quiaff?’’
‘‘You are most perceptive.’’
‘‘I was waiting. What kind of interstellar trader would I be if I didn’t know babes in the woods when I saw them?’’
Rorion looked sour and took a drink of his beer as if biting it off. ‘‘We are not so cherry in dealing with the Clans as you seem to think,’’ he said.
Senna leaned forward and smiled a slow smile. ‘‘But never so close to the center, I wager,’’ she said. ‘‘And never for such high stakes.’’
‘‘Is it good business to make fun of your customers, then?’’ von Texeira asked. His eyes twinkled—but the question still rang with challenge.
‘‘Sea Fox or no, I’m still Clan. A little arrogance goes with the territory.’’ She slouched back and sipped from her mug. Her long turquoise eyes held von Texeira closely. ‘‘Anyway, we have a seller’s market here, quiaff?’’
Von Texeira slammed a palm down on the table and laughed. He did not laugh quietly; he never did. He believed anything worth doing was worth overdoing. Heads turned to stare. But briefly.
‘‘Aff,’’ he said.
‘‘It’ll cost you,’’ she said.
They dickered for a time. Rorion amused himself sitting back with a half smile, walking a Steiner gold piece over his knuckles, making it appear and disappear. Around them conversation ebbed and flowed; they were basically ignored. Even in Clanspace a spaceport dive was pretty much a spaceport dive.
At length Senna leaned back and favored the two men with a lopsided smile. ‘‘You do not disappoint, Heinz-Otto von Texeira. You may have inhe
rited your position, but you hold it with considerable skill.’’
A shadow seemed to cross his face. ‘‘I have increased my family’s wealth,’’ he said with simple pride. ‘‘I note also that, whatever the nature of your Clan’s Trial of Bloodright, you have well earned your Bloodname.’’
‘‘I did,’’ she said. Her gaze flicked toward Rorion, who gave her back a hooded smile. ‘‘And remind me never to play cards with your man.’’
Von Texeira laughed. ‘‘A wise course even if he doesn’t cheat.’’
‘‘You offer an attractive bargain,’’ the Clanswoman said. ‘‘But what if your archon decides you’ve exceeded your discretion?’’
‘‘Her Grace the Duchess of Tharkad has extended me considerable latitude for this assignment. And I doubt strongly you can find anything prejudicial to the interests of either the Commonwealth or House Steiner in the offer I’ve made. If anything, expanding trade with Clan Sea Fox will likely benefit us, especially in such uncertain times.
‘‘But should my archon decide to disavow my agreements with you, in whole or in part, you have my word that Recife Spice and Liquors and a família von Texeira zu Mannstein stand ready to make good on them.’’
‘‘Are you not maybe relying a little too much on still having your job when you get home? Out of sight, out of mind, or some people say. Heads of states have been deposed in their absence. I suspect the same fate has befallen corporate heads, a time or two.’’
‘‘This week,’’ agreed von Texeira. He leaned forward and held up a finger.
‘‘Now. Whatever anyone else within the family may think—and I grant you, some of them are certainly thinking hard along the very lines you have suggested—the real head of our family has given her blessing to this undertaking and will permit no moves against me in my absence. I speak of Mamãe Luci, our matriarch.’’
Rorion hoisted his half-empty mug. ‘‘And a fearful old gargoyle she is,’’ he said, and drained the dregs. Then he grimaced. ‘‘These damned Falcons could be more subtle in their recycling of this stuff. At least filter it a time or two before pouring it back in the bottle!’’
Senna’s scrutiny never left von Texeira’s face. ‘‘Are you that sure? Your Victor Steiner-Davion could give you testimony about the keeping of faith within powerful Inner Sphere families.’’
‘‘Indeed,’’ von Texeira said with a nod. ‘‘And with the greatest respect for my distant, and ever so venerable, cousin, for all his vast experience I submit that even he has very little to teach a man of my home province of Nova Suevia about full-contact familial politics.’’
The master merchant rubbed her chin. Then she nodded and tossed back the last of her own beer.
‘‘Very well,’’ she said, setting the mug down with a clack. ‘‘Bargained well and done!’’
11
Jade Falcon Naval Reserve WarShip Emerald Talon
Orbiting Graus
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
19 September 3135
‘‘My intentions?’’ Malvina Hazen flared her voice to seeming fury while showing a feral grin to Beckett Malthus, who stood upon the WarShip’s flying bridge with her in the bright yellow shine of Graus dayside. ‘‘My intentions are my own, Star Colonel Watrous. Must I then challenge you for my right, as a Galaxy commander of the Jade Falcon touman, to make planetfall upon one of Turkina’s worlds?’’
Silent naval crew and technicians bent to their consoles. Dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, her hair carefully arranged in pigtails by the laborer attendants Malvina had now assigned to her, Cynthy stood with nose and one hand pressed against a port. Burton Bear dangled from the other.
There was actually a stammer in the voice that emerged from the speakers. ‘‘Ah—of course not, Galaxy Commander Hazen,’’ the planetary governor said. ‘‘It is merely that we received no advance warning of your arrival. It is most irregular for a vessel of the size and nature of the Emerald Talon to shape orbit without notice.’’
Or what little notice the planet’s administrators—and putative defenders—would have gotten when the million-plus metric ton WarShip had popped into existence from a pirate point scarcely eighteen hours out at standard one-gee thrust like a smuggler or a Sea Fox.
Malvina wore a midnight-black jumpsuit that clung to her trim form. Her pale skin and hair looked ghostly in the planet shine. She walked to stand beside her ward and stroke her hair. The little girl looked up at her, smiled, then returned her attention to the commanding spectacle of an entire world spread out before her wondering eyes.
From a corner of her real eye Malvina saw Malthus’ long, heavy face momentarily stiffen into greater-than-usual impassivity. She laughed silently at his priggish disapproval. I keep the child and see her cared for and schooled in accordance with Inner Sphere customs, in part from plain curiosity, in part because it gives me pleasure—and altogether because I can.
‘‘I await, Star Colonel Watrous,’’ she said aloud. Watrous, she knew, was, like Malthus, old for a warrior. The fertile world was something of a breadbasket for the Jade Falcon empire. Recent industrialization, including commissioning of a BattleMech factory, had enhanced its strategic value. Even among the Falcons, the governor of such a world must be a more capable administrator than fighter, even if extensively advised by a cadre of scientists, as was indeed the case. Like a naval admiral, therefore, he tended to be immune, by custom and force of Khan Jana Pryde’s titanium will, from challenge by inferiors. Only if he displeased his khan by no longer being able to discharge his duties—meaning, to meet quotas—would he face a trial.
As a warrior in name only he was naturally despised by his nominal peers. Despite his indispensable service to Turkina, the Star colonel bore no Bloodname, and never would.
‘‘A-await what, Galaxy Commander Hazen?’’
‘‘Either landing clearance,’’ she said sweetly, ‘‘or a declaration of the forces with which you intend to defend the planet.’’
‘‘I—we would not dream of resisting your landing, Galaxy Commander,’’ Watrous said. ‘‘We are all Jade Falcon, after all. I shall instruct New Paris traffic control to transmit permissions and landing paths to your DropShip pilots immediately. ’’ The colossal WarShip, of course, was not streamlined for atmospheric insertion, nor could her whale bulk survive the forces involved, much less grounding on a surface under about a standard gee. The Nightlords were creatures of deep space, like all WarShips.
‘‘Hazen out,’’ Malvina snapped, cutting off Watrous, who seemed to be drawing breath to say more.
Anger flared within her. She withdrew her hand from the child’s head, turned and paced toward the center of the bridge. ‘‘The spineless fool!’’ she said. ‘‘I should order Binetti to part his hair with a naval PPC. If not scour New Paris from the face of Albion.’’ Albion, in the northern hemisphere, was Graus’ main and most populated continent.
Malthus arched a brow. ‘‘It would be most inadvisable.’’
‘‘Why? Damn you, tell me why.’’ Anger filled her now; it prickled her skin, and itched like a rash at the interfaces between her prosthetic arm and leg and the natural stumps, and deep within the socket of her synthetic eye.
‘‘For one thing,’’ Malthus said, ‘‘it would obviate much of our reason for coming to Graus by damaging the key industrial center. Please recall that, thanks to Countess Tara Campbell’s destruction of the Cyclops, Incorporated, facility on Skye, we have been unable to make full repairs of our ’Mechs and vehicles, despite the amount of isorla we took.’’
‘‘I know that as well as you do,’’ Malvina said. Her own Shrike, the Black Rose, remained but marginally operable from the brutal battering it had taken in the fight for the Prefecture IX capital world. ‘‘What else?’’
‘‘The power this vessel gives us is immense, but tenuous as mist,’’ he intoned. His manner only infuriated her more. He was something else rare among Jade Falcons: pompous. Worse, he knew she could not
stand it. ‘‘Despite the damage Yggdrasil did, her weapons remain capable of easily ravaging planetary defenses—and the cities they defend. Let us once use that power for such a purpose, though’’— he snapped blunt fingers—‘‘and it will vanish.’’
‘‘Why should that be, Beckett Malthus?’’
‘‘Should we employ your Mongol doctrine of terror for strategy’s sake against our fellow Clansmen and women,’’ he said, ‘‘every Jade Falcon alive will turn her or his hand against us. That will be the end of us. And your ambitions. The Emerald Talon’s armament gives us no more than the common hostage-taker’s advantage: if the hostage is actually killed, the advantage not only vaporizes but turns to lethal liability. Such threats become worse than useless once carried out.’’
Malvina’s shoulders and full breasts rose and fell in an angry sigh. ‘‘So you have told me, many times. And once again, I see the force in your arguments. The time has not yet come to let Jade Falcon feel the lash.’’
She walked back to the great ferroglass viewport and stretched out her hand with her fingers curved like a raptor’s talons.
‘‘Yet.’’
Her fingertips touched the insulated glass. ‘‘But when that time comes, they will learn what terror means. As Chingis Khan, I swear it.’’
Belching fire like a legendary dragon, the Bec de Corbin descended toward the New Paris spaceport. While it sat well distant from the city center, port and shuttle having after all been built by the prudent Steiners long ago, the landing field was surrounded not just by warehouses and workshops but immense blocks of worker housing. The Falcon found it efficient to keep them near their jobs. Should a landing go awry or a DropShip’s fusion bottle lose containment—there were more workers where those came from. Such was the Clan way.
Above Bec two white contrails spiraled lazily downward, tipped by starlike drive flares: a pair of small Broadswordclass DropShips, streamlined for atmospheric maneuvering and capable of horizontal landings, either rolling on wheeled gear or dropping straight down on ventral jets.
