A Rending of Falcons

by Victor Milán

  Once the child was buckled in Malvina turned around and put her from her mind. Now she would live or die with Malvina. And the White Virgin always liked her chances.

  Warnings lit Malvina’s heads-up display red. Alarms trilled. Either the enemy’s ECM malfunctioned or, more likely, its coverage was insufficiently wide to mask all the attacking units. Her sensors detected the electromagnetic signature of a long-range missile launcher rack warming up some three hundred meters west-southwest: basically ahead and to the left of where she stood inside the great doors of the VAB. The display tagged it in pink as a Bellona medium hovertank. The light hue indicated the battle computer’s lack of confidence in its identification; the color showed her computer had no doubt it was a threat.

  Neither did Malvina. She knew at once what was to come. She smiled. Such a plan I myself might have conceived .

  As alarms crescendoed and warning lights strobed frenetically to indicate imminent launch, she clutched in the gyros. Black Rose toppled forward. Using the impetus of gravity Malvina hurled its ninety-five tons into a hammering run with its talons digging deep in the cement.

  Though the Shrike was not the slowest of the monstrous assault-class BattleMechs, there was no such thing as a truly fast one. Malvina’s risky maneuver started it at unexpected speed. Sitting behind her head, Cynthy watched raptly as the massive steel doors filled the viewscreen.

  The doors exploded as thirty LRMs smashed into them.

  Malvina screamed in something like exaltation as gray clouds rolled toward them. Dust and smoke enveloped them. The BattleMech’s mighty frame rang and rocked as shards of steel and chunks of concrete cascaded over it.

  They were through, into the afternoon sun. Malvina put the ’Mech’s right foot down hard, knee actuator locked, pivoted right and ran northwest.

  The second volley of twenty-five missiles, fired on a flat trajectory, passed right behind the lumbering assault ’Mech. Some slammed against the sagging outer wall of the VAB. Most streaked straight through the hole of the doors, striking the bay where Black Rose had stood. Had Malvina not reacted as she did they would have shattered her massively armored ’Mech. At the least it would have been badly damaged, and Malvina herself stunned, allowing her attackers to finish her quickly.

  And Cynthy. Her rage was ice and fire.

  The Vehicle Assembly Building’s west end gave onto a vast paved vehicle yard—what in the decadent Inner Sphere would have been called a ‘‘parking lot.’’ Beyond it an old sunken railroad line crossed at a transverse angle from northeast to southwest; beyond that rose small but steep hills, well forested by broad-leaved trees.

  Malvina’s HUD clearly showed four major threats now: the Bellona and three BattleMechs approaching from the west. She could see them herself: a tall Thor with a barrel-shaped LRM launcher on its left shoulder, rising over the trees just south of the peak of the tallest hill; two smaller ’Mechs advancing through the woods to its left and right.

  Elementals leapt at the Shrike like jet-assisted fleas. I’m facing a mixed Star, Malvina guessed, as she caught one in mid-leap with her claw. The battlearmor waved frantically to bring its right-arm flamer to bear on Malvina’s cockpit as she brought it close up.

  If it is just a Star, she thought, I have them where I want them. The motion of the battlearmor’s limbs grew more frenzied as the metal casing buckled under the relentless pressure of her claw. Cracks appeared, the viscous black of harjel sealant scarcely diluted by thinner red fluid streaming from them.

  With a final pressure on the grip controller she squeezed the suit and occupant in half and let the pieces fall.

  Its fellow elementals she ignored, though at least two struck her legs like wasps, clinging and trying to sting. Thudding at a run across the cement expanse she swung her targeting pip onto the Thor—the most dangerous opponent in view—and loosed ten long-range missiles at it.

  Rocking back as explosions flashed across its breastplate, the Thor fired its particle-projector cannon at Malvina. The discharge passed behind her, raising the hair on her neck. Blue-green and red lasers stabbed for her, gouging glowing streaks in the pavement. Hits sang off her armor; she didn’t need to check her damage displays to know they were glancing blows. Taken aback by their quarry’s dramatic countermove the killers fired wide, if not wildly.

  Extended garrison duty had made Graus’ defenders soft. She was surprised they found the courage to rebel. I should have purged them, she thought, for incompetence if not doubtful allegiance.

  Chain-link fencing, an ancient yet widely used technology, was surprisingly resilient. The perimeter fence around the VAB yard parted like rotten twine before Black Rose’s legs.

  A Spirit emerged from the trees on the foreslope. It aimed the weapon held in its right hand at Malvina. Four short-range missiles snaked out to slam full into the Shrike’s torso, homing on a Streak laser-paint. The massive BattleMech rocked, faltered, ran on, driven as much by sheer inertia as piloting skill on Malvina’s part. Without conscious attention she registered from her damage display that most of the blasts’ energy had been spent tearing huge chunks from the armor plate beneath her LRM racks. Electronics and hydraulics had taken damage, but nothing that wasn’t covered by backups.

  She laid her crosshairs on the light ’Mech’s jut-jawed head and fired alternate bursts from the twin PPCs in her left arm. Both lightning-like blasts struck their target in geysers of white and yellow coruscation. The Spirit fell heavily on its back.

  Multiple projectiles from the Thor’s LB-X autocannon rattled against her left arm but did not penetrate the armor. An elemental’s arm-mounted flamer sprayed her right lower leg with clinging fluid fire, undoubtedly bubbling off the Horus eye insignia so recently repainted there.

  Malvina frowned. I have to change the odds, and quickly. A wireframe drawing in her display showed that while she had hurt the Spirit, neither machine nor pilot was out of the fight. The two particle beam hits right in the cockpit area had startled a relatively green MechWarrior into yanking back the controls and overbalancing her biped machine, with a little assist from the jet-recoil effect of several hundred kilograms of armor erupting in the form of superheated vapor and embers.

  Malvina took a slight hop without using her jump jets and landed in the railroad cut. Once she ran her eye over any terrain she had an accomplished stage performer’s exact feel for where every feature was. It was her stage, the battlefield, after all. The cut was deep, masking her machine almost to the hip actuators.

  It was also not empty.

  14

  BattleMech Fabrication Unit #1

  Outside New Paris, Graus

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  17 October 3135

  No trains had run the track for years. But an Epona pursuit tank, the final element of the attacking Star, crept along it blowing a whirlwind of dead leaves and twigs from beneath its armored skirts. When the Shrike jolted down mere meters in front of it the whirlwind became a tornado as the pilot jammed full power to the lift fans.

  The tank’s four medium lasers pulsed green energy into the lower torso and legs of Malvina’s ’Mech as the top turret swung desperately around to bring its Streak quad-launcher to bear. The tank rose two meters into the air. At fifty tons the Epona was at the upper limit of hovercraft weight. It could not raise itself as high as a much lighter Scimitar—or escape the cut.

  The Shrike leaned forward. Its two shoulder-mounted medium lasers speared down. Both penetrated the boxy launcher. Yellow flame jetted from the holes as the propellant for one missile blew. Then the other three rockets exploded, shredding the launcher and sending bits of burning propellant, burning blue-white like magnesium, spiraling away drawing yellowish smoke corkscrews behind.

  A devil’s tympani erupted in Black Rose’s cockpit as a multiple salvo of long-range missiles slammed home on its left shoulder and head and both banks of the railway cut. Malvina ignored the impacts. She raised her ’Mech’s right foot. As the Epona’s four
lasers futilely raked the thighs and groin of the Shrike, making molten armor bleed down its legs in glowing yellow streams, she slammed the claw down on the ruined SRM launcher.

  The Epona was over half the weight of Malvina’s BattleMech, but it was never designed to absorb abuse of that sort. The twin-level turret pancaked and was crushed down into the body of the tank. Despite screaming lift fans the Shrike’s weight drove the hovertank down until its chassis cracked with a noise like a Gauss shot hitting its target.

  By instinct Malvina crouched the Black Rose. A PPC bolt from the Thor crackled overhead. She straightened and returned a volley of missiles.

  Her four missile-firing opponents dumped salvos on her as fast as the automatic feeders could reload their racks. Long-range missiles fell all around the Shrike, exploding on the bank, inside the cut, knocking divots from the machine’s tough ferro-fibrous armor, making a tremendous clamor more like continuous fireworks than anything else. The bombardment raised a perfect storm of smoke and dust and debris. . . .

  Perfect for Malvina. Thick clouds dense with thrown-up dust and hot gases from dozens of warheads exploding partially masked her ’Mech from infrared as well as visual observation and interfered with targeting radar, already questionable with the Rose in effect buried hip-deep in the planet. Lasers in several colors and the sporadic blue-white flash of a PPC strobed through the cloud. Most missed the big ’Mech.

  But like a person standing behind a loose-woven curtain Malvina could see out, and target, rather well.

  Black Rose shivered and rang. She was taking a lot of hits. But a 95-ton killing machine could absorb horrendous punishment, and the LRMs’ individual warheads were small. Yet soon, Malvina knew, the sheer concentration of firepower directed against her would result in a telling hit. If her ’Mech was immobilized, or sent to redline shutdown of her fusion engine by soaring heat, it would mean the end of Malvina. And, more importantly, her dream.

  The third attacking ’Mech, a Cougar, had come down out of the trees and strode out onto the apron, angling for a better shot at the Shrike. The Spirit struggled to get to its feet. Malvina targeted its right knee and hosed it with a PPC.

  In a shower of red sparks the actuator fused. The Spirit promptly collapsed onto its back once more, unable to rise.

  From the corner of her eye she saw an elemental leaping like a flea at her from her left. A volley from its own side raised earth fountains around it; an accidental hit ruptured the one-shot launcher on its right shoulder, tumbling its gyros and knocking it off the thrust-columns of its jump jets. The squat power suit fell from view and did not reappear.

  Why did they send battlearmor in the first place? Malvina wondered. The elementals had proven utterly ineffectual, five one-ton powersuits against ninety-five tons of BattleMech. Another ’Mech or even a single tank could have given her attackers the edge.

  She guessed the elemental Point had been deployed to dispatch her in the cockpit of her disabled BattleMech had the initial sneak attack succeeded, or hunt her down and kill her should she somehow get clear of a stricken Rose. The Graus rebels displayed about the mix of Jade Falcon arrogance and near-superstitious dread of a fearsome ristar that Malvina, scarcely less cynical in her assessment of her Clansfolk than Bec Malthus, would expect from second-line garrison troopers.

  But they were persistent. And they still had her outnumbered and sorely outgunned. A multiple-projectile blast from the Thor’s autocannon hammered into the Shrike’s beak and viewscreen with a horrifying noise. Another salvo of rockets smashed up and down the whole front of the ’Mech. Cynthy pressed her hands over her ears.

  Malvina let go the control stick with her left hand to touch the girl once, briefly. Then she resumed her grip. Through swirling smoke and dust she targeted the 70-ton enemy ’Mech in an icy fury. With red and yellow indicators flaring all over her damage display she launched the Shrike in a jump.

  A PPC blast from the Thor ripped the air beneath the jumping BattleMech’s talons. Malvina held her machine steady against the turbulence, as she did when another autocannon blast pounded up the front torso. Her own heat had actually dropped.

  About half her left-side missile racks showed red for non-functional. She had lost both torso-mounted lasers. She triggered off what LRMs she could into the Thor. Then, descending, she aimed a bolt from one of her own PPCs into the enemy machine’s cockpit.

  Melted armor cascaded down the Thor’s front torso in yellow streams. As Malvina landed on the hillside thirty meters from the Thor, its PPC hit Black Rose in the left breast. The BattleMech rocked back as missile tubes exploded. Its shoulder actuator locked. Malvina could only aim her PPCs by swiveling and tilting the Shrike’s torso.

  Despite secondary explosions ripping through the Shrike’s body Malvina launched the machine in a low leap. At its apex she unfolded its great metal wings. The Thor ducked, its pilot anticipating a death-from-above attempt to smash its cockpit with the assault ’Mech’s massive feet.

  Instead Malvina skimmed over the enemy machine to land heavily right behind it. The Thor tried desperately to turn its torso to fire at her. Too late: Malvina’s right claw locked into the barrel-shaped missile launcher on its shoulder. Heavy-gauge metal crumpled in its three-taloned grip. Holding the top of the enemy machine well above its center of gravity Malvina merely walked the greater mass of her Shrike a few paces down the backslope, shouldering trees aside.

  The Thor driver was helpless to prevent his machine from overbalancing and toppling backward to land with a bone-crunching impact. Letting go of the ruined launcher, Malvina turned, brought the muzzles of both particle-projector cannon to within two meters of the fallen Battle-Mech’s viewscreen and fired.

  Her cockpit instantly became an oven. But the Thor cockpit became Hell. All within was instantaneously vaporized or slagged—almost incidentally including the slight organic mass of the pilot.

  The Shrike rocked. The Cougar raced widdershins across the paved vehicle yard, the large pulse lasers in its arms stitching the left side of the Rose. From Malvina’s right the Bellona’s big laser hacked at the armor of arm and side like a great red sword, leaving gaping, glowing wounds. Had her attackers coordinated their efforts this well from the outset, she would be dead now. As it was . . .

  The bars displaying the crucial heat levels of chassis and engine fell quickly, though Malvina sweated freely through her cooling mesh and the sweat ran in tickling rivulets down her face. Cynthy sat huddled in the seat behind Malvina and watched out the viewscreen. Though her tiny frame shook, the Spheroid child made no sound.

  Malvina led the darting Cougar, aiming a pitiful four-rocket salvo to land in front of it. As she anticipated, the inexperienced MechWarrior shied from the blasts and jets of gray-white cement dust in his face. When the ’Mech paused to change direction she hit it with a blast from one arm-mounted PPC, then the other.

  The 35-ton ’Mech staggered as hundreds of kilograms of armor, myomer pseudomuscle and endosteel skeleton sublimated away. With deadly accuracy Malvina punched a third particle beam into the left side of the Cougar’s torso, firing the millisecond her heat levels dropped enough that a shot would not drive her to shutdown. She felt herself baking, smelled burning hair.

  Another PPC blast struck home in whitish vapor and yellow sparks. Orange flame vomited out. Though the light BattleMech had fired most of its rocket reloads, the probing lightning-like beams had found the ammo storage and detonated what remained.

  The Cougar’s large-laser left arm went spinning away, trailing smoke and gobbets of glowing metal. Desperately its pilot tried to pivot the unbalanced machine, turn its torn-open left side away from its relentless foe. Instead Malvina stabbed in a final blast of high-energy particles, closely followed by a hissing missile volley.

  ‘‘Hide your eyes!’’ Malvina shouted to her ward. The girl did, covering her head in arms reddened as if from sunburn.

  The Cougar toppled away from the Rose. As it did, the containment on its fusion eng
ine failed. Malvina averted her own eyes as a white flash devoured the ’Mech’s left side and cockpit. A moment later the truncated mess, steaming and smoking, bounced off the pavement with a clang.

  The Bellona charged close. Its missile stores depleted by mostly ineffectual volleys, its commander had worked behind the Shrike while Malvina was preoccupied with the last BattleMech, engaging with its two bow-mounted flamers as well as its large laser. It was a bold and cunning stroke: the tanker knew Malvina was crowding the redline with frequent pulses from the heat-hogging particle gun. He hoped to drive her over the redline.

  The Cougar destroyed, the Black Rose now turned to face the 45-ton tank. It veered to Malvina’s left. She raked the hurtling vehicle with LRMs and a particle discharge. The beam ripped open the skirt, dropping the tank’s snout to the ground. It slid along the pavement raising a bow wave of sparks until Malvina leaned down and punched through the cockpit with her BattleMech’s fist.

  She straightened her Shrike and looked around. No other enemies presented themselves in the immediate area. But contrails twined the blue sky, suggesting aerospace fighters overhead. The Cougar’s ECM suite had failed but the radio-frequency jamming had not. Mass detectors picked up movement to the east, approaching through the BattleMech factory complex. I must assume them hostile.

  She spoke to Cynthy. ‘‘Are you all right?’’ she asked. Her voice was cracked, her tongue swollen. It was still burning hot inside the cockpit, though she only now grew aware of it again.

  Cynthy reached forward and touched her head in answer. Malvina smiled.

  It turned to a twist of rage as she checked the damage display. Her newly repaired Shrike had incurred terrible damage, worse than what had just been so laboriously made right. Aside from losing her lasers and most of her LRMs and literally tons of armor, and having one shoulder locked, the right leg’s myomer pseudomuscle was damaged so badly the ’Mech could only limp at no greater than half its normal speed. Which was none too swift to start with.