A Rending of Falcons

by Victor Milán

  Speaking together, the two proud Galaxy commanders pledged their undying fealty to Malvina Hazen as Chingis Khan of all men, emperor.

  The cry went up from thousands of throats, from the lowest laborer to the haughtiest MechWarrior, starting low, but rising like a triumphant tide: ‘‘Chingis Khan. Chingis Khan.

  ‘‘Chingis Khan!’’

  After Malvina’s initial meeting with Amirault, the Hell’s Horses had packed up and loaded back into their DropShips, to relocate on a plain a kilometer or two east of Alba. In the field the Horses dwelt in power yurts: smallish internal-combustion lorries that when parked, unfolded into tents. Although Clan Hell’s Horses emphasized friendly cooperation among castes, it did not by any means erase the lines of demarcation. Yurts were allocated on the basis of rank: MechWarriors, tankers, and elementals customarily two to a tent. High-ranked scientists lodged three to a yurt. Infantry and solahma, as well as technicians and more modest scientists, four. And so on, down to larger fixed-bed trucks that blossomed into barracks housing ten laborers each.

  On her earlier trip Malvina could not help noticing, with unexpressed amusement, that the power yurts were indistinguishable from a certain class of what frivolous and luxury-obsessed denizens of the Inner Sphere would call RVs.

  Such humorous comparisons were the furthest thing from Malvina’s mind when, sometime after midnight, clad in a simple white silk gown, she let herself into Manas Amirault’s power yurt. As Galaxy commander he rated one to himself. Around her the Horses cantonment buzzed and flashed with activity: the voices of warriors and technicians and laborers working together in heretic harmony to service their war machines; music, bubbling quicksteps and plangent ballads; the whine of sono-wrenches; showers of sparks from plasma cutters and welders. She smelled the tangs of hot metal and ozone. Like her Falcons in and around Alba, the Horsemen worked watch-on-watch to hone the edge of their battle force: on the heels of the night’s oath-ceremony had come the word that the enemy had entered Antares system at zenith and nadir jump points almost simultaneously. They now drove toward the world at full two-gees acceleration. They would arrive in five and a half standard days.

  Long-range observation revealed they carried a number of DropShips sufficient to transport upward of two full Galaxies. In addition they brought a WarShip, the Aegis-class heavy cruiser Jade Talon. They emerged at the zenith point, where Binetti’s battleship lurked to seize passing traffic as well as defend against attack. Although the Emerald Talon remained far more powerful than the much smaller newcomer, much of the severe damage it had been done by the Lyran battleship Yggdrasil remained unrepaired and irreparable shy of a protracted refit at an orbital shipyard. To directly contest the smaller vessel would risk further diminution of the Talon’s battle-readiness, or even its total loss.

  But it was not the Chingis Khan’s intent to resolve this battle either in or from space. Her Golden Ordun would meet the Falcons on the pink dust plains beneath Antares. Accordingly, she ordered Star Admiral Binetti to withdraw in-system ahead of the invaders, harrying with fighters and using his still-formidable armament only to preserve his command from harm.

  It went against the crusty old space dog’s nature to run in such a way. But he had accepted Malvina Hazen’s mastery, and his sense of duty was too great to issue a Refusal despite his personal feelings, or even military judgment. He carried out his orders with the precision and fury expected of a Jade Falcon naval officer.

  The only communication had been a terse holovid from the invasion force’s leader, Galaxy Commander Erik Chistu, demanding of all bloodtrue Jade Falcons in-system that they should immediately deliver the heads of the traitorous renegades Malvina Hazen and Beckett Malthus (attached to still-living bodies, strictly optional) or face outlawry after a Trial of Abjuration. He uttered no challenge. Just the naked demand to submit.

  In return Malvina recorded and beamcast back her invitation to the invaders to swear allegiance to her new Golden Ordun. She challenged Chistu himself to a one-on-one Trial of Possession for his war fleet.

  No answer came back. That was as Malvina anticipated. When Erik Chistu delivered his response, it would come in the form of hot steel, high explosives and ravening energy beams.

  As would Malvina’s rebuttal.

  ‘‘Enter,’’ a deep voice came from within the yurt.

  Malvina parted the heavy fabric hanging and stepped up a short perforated-metal stair to the platform inside. It was dark, lit by low amber lamps placed on short-legged tables. The sleeping platform was lined with cushions, furs and silks. Tapestries hung from the walls, laser-printed with scenes of Hell’s Horses victories.

  In their midst stood Manas Amirault, to his bare shins in cushions, wearing a short dark robe of some lightweight material.

  His teeth shone bright in his dark face when he smiled. ‘‘I bid you welcome, my Khan.’’

  ‘‘Here,’’ she said, ‘‘we are not Galaxy commander and khan. Here we are Manas and Malvina.’’

  She let slip her own robe. Beneath it she was nude. Her natural alabaster skin made a strange contrast, a curious Taijitu, black yin, white yang, with her opposed artificial limbs of shiny obsidian.

  ‘‘Do my deformities displease my ristar?’’ she asked in a level voice.

  ‘‘I see no deformities,’’ he said. ‘‘Only marks of courage and indomitable will.’’

  ‘‘And what will I see beneath your robe?’’

  He held his arms out to his sides. His smile widened to a grin. ‘‘Look for yourself, and judge.’’

  ‘‘Judge you I most certainly shall,’’ she murmured. She glided forward, managing by dint of extraordinary control of her body—not bettered by any Spheroid gymnast or dancer despite her prosthetics—not to waddle and wallow through the thick, resilient bedding. She undid the belt and unfolded the wings of the light garment down his muscle-roped arms.

  As expected, his torso was spare as desert land, ridged with muscle. Pale scars ran across it like rills and gullies. A puckered pink crater the width of a fist and depth of a finger’s breadth dented his ribcage beneath his right nipple.

  ‘‘You too bear the marks of valor,’’ she said.

  She embraced him then, the cheek with the scar pressed to the depression in his chest. His arms went around her whiteness like dark metal bands. He felt hot to her skin. She felt cool to his.

  For a moment they gripped each other fiercely. She tipped her head back, eyes half closing, lips parting. Their mouths met and melded in a kiss. His eagerness burned like metal heated by a cutting torch between her breasts.

  Then breaking free, she slid down him with agonizing deliberation, hands flowing cool down his sides as she folded to her knees, to begin her own private ritual of sealing his fate to hers.

  19

  Alba, Antares

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  14 December 3135

  Screaming like their namesakes amplified ten millionfold, Jade Falcon aerospace fighters attacked into the vast, bloated crimson face of Antares rising.

  Galaxy Commander Erik Chistu may have been a student of history, recalling in his tactics how Crichell served the Lyran defenders during the glorious Return. More likely, since he had seldom impressed anyone as particularly thoughtful, or overly attentive to recitations of the Remembrance (indeed, his eyelids had been observed to droop during lengthier passages), he simply hoped to smash the bloodfouls in their dens.

  His surprise seemed complete. Only a few laser beams, ill-armed missile volleys and bursts of autocannon fire greeted his craft as they seeded the town with bombs and rockets. Fire, smoke and ruin blossomed rapidly in their wakes.

  The shock wave of their hypersonic passage, less than five hundred meters above ground, only added to the destruction. Even the great statue of Turkina toppled in the middle of its great cement square. Though they had been ordered to avoid hitting it, the dynamic overpressure of multiple blasts and passage had done the trick.

  Since the
first rude combat jets screamed into the skies of Terra, fast movers had always been notoriously bad at spotting targets on the ground, or even engaging them at speed—if they happened to be smaller than, say, a town, or at least an armored column caught in the open. These craft of Chistu’s, his Sholagars and Vandals, rode fusion flames to velocities far higher than any mere jets could attain. So they curved around, taking kilometers to do it, for a second pass without observing anything of note below them. Nor did they on the third pass, nor the fourth, as their beams and projectiles raked the ruins. By the last turn they were mainly stirring dust and broken chunks of masonry.

  Chistu ordered them to attack at speed because Emerald Talon had taken station in geosynchronous orbit directly above Alba. Whether the great WarShip intended to participate in the coming battle against Khan Jana Pryde’s invading forces he had no inkling. It clearly meant to prevent them from bombarding the defenders from orbit, and it succeeded. If the Talon tried to use her naval weapons when Chistu’s ground forces struck he would defy the spirit if not the letter of his khan’s orders and risk his own valuable WarShip, as well as DropShips and fighters, to drive away the wounded giant. Short of that, he took no chances with his bombing and strafing runs.

  He landed his DropShips west of the smoking waste his aerospace crews had made of Alba. While other fighters with full magazines engaged renegades in combat high overhead, drawing twisting contrails in the violet morning sky until they could no more be traced than a full bowl of spaghetti, he unloaded his ’Mechs and vehicles and VTOLs and arrayed them in the order he desired on the pink hardpan.

  Then, preceded by Stars of hoverbikes, scout cars and ducted-fan Skadi aircraft, the avengers of Clan Jade Falcon’s established order advanced.

  They met ... nothing.

  A frown compressed Galaxy Commander Erik Chistu’s already compact and generally pugnacious features as his Night Gyr stalked through the husks of Alba. Controlled through the neurohelmet clamped over his shock of stiff brick-colored hair, the 75-ton metal monster waded easily through grayish-pink dust that had drifted in places to the height of a man, compounded of the world’s friable soil and cement powdered by the merciless aerial bombardment.

  It had savagely provoked him already. While little but dust-covered mounds and broken shells remained of the Falcon-built settlement, they and the deep dust slumping to cover all the streets had proven to be almost impassable barriers for his track-laying vehicles. They were forced to wing out north and south of the ruins, become mere reserves backing his BattleMechs, elementals and infantry clinging to the backs of hovertanks or riding in ground-effect APCs as they cleared the town.

  But the town, it appeared, was already clear. He hadn’t seen so much as a dead laborer in the debris as he advanced, flanked by his command Star. What is mad Malvina up to? he wondered.

  Out of respect for the Hazen Bloodname he refused to append it to her, even in his mind. It was a good thing she was so famously the last of her sibko left alive. Malvina had been Decanted of a tainted batch: she was truly bloodfoul. Certainly every microliter of that particular sibling cohort’s genetic material must be poured down the drain.

  But that was not his concern. Crushing this . . . it was more than rebellion. It was a sacrilege against Turkina and the Falcon Way. Crushing this abomination, and incidentally avenging his own long-distance humiliation by his Khan, was his concern.

  He entered the central square. Perhaps a quarter of Alba’s total area, even its cement, blast-heaved and crazed, was drifted with dust like gritty snow. He averted his maroon eyes from the statue of Turkina, overturned and shattered by his bombs, his rockets. Another crime to add to Malvina’s codex, he told himself savagely.

  ‘‘Galaxy Commander,’’ a voice said in his skull. ‘‘Tango Rider Two.’’ It was the recon Star of hoverbikes, supported by Nacons and elementals, scouting the devastation in advance of his main force. ‘‘We take fire from the rubble on the eastern outskirts.’’

  ‘‘Flush them and crush them, Tango Rider Two. We advance to support.’’

  At last! he thrilled. The stravags dare to bite back. He kicked in his four powerful jump jets. His form-fitting seat pressed his back and tailbone. The heavy ’Mech, with its dome head hunched down between huge shoulder-actuator armatures, took off in a long leap and whirl of dust.

  As it reached the apex of its long, low trajectory, Skadi VTOLs, summoned as if by his will, prowled past on down-blasts of their great shrouded fans. They raked the half-intact buildings from which enemy fire came with lasers and rockets. Chistu smiled as his threat-assessment display blanked out the symbols representing first one, then two knots of resistance, identified as enemy infantry supported by a few elementals. He was not vain enough to feel anger at being cheated of first blood. Not quite. And anyway he presumed that honor had gone to his aerospace fighters when they pounded Alba to shards and powder. But his heart sang with joy that the infection raging within the blood and body of his beloved Clan was at last being expunged. Even one cell at a time.

  Alba rested on a low plateau surrounded by rolling plain, irregularly twined with giant serpentine whitethorn and dotted with clumps of dark blue brush with tough swordlike leaves. From below the far western lip of the plateau now sprouted a hundred white tendrils, like plant stalks growing in fast motion.

  ‘‘Long-range missiles!’’ Chistu called out on Vau Galaxy’s general frequency. ‘‘Evade, counterattack, destroy!’’

  The Night Gyr slammed down in the middle of a street, its jarring impact scarcely cushioned by a meter of dust. Held in place by the five-point harness clamped over his sternum, Chistu instantly crouched the huge, blocky machine and launched it in another leap. The hot lust to be at his foes, tearing out their throats and tasting their tainted blood, overpowered concerns of heat management. Besides, he had yet to fire his weapons.

  That changed as his BattleMech descended into the very fringe of the rubbled town. As Arrow IV missiles streaked overhead, from behind him a half dozen conventional infantry in green-and-black Falcon battledress bolted from a small ruined structure to his left.

  Striding his BattleMech forward, he swiveled its torso to bear on them. Green beams lanced from the Night Gyr’s torso and head. Where the medium-laser spears touched running soldiers, the enemy simply vanished into puffs of black greasy smoke and pink-tinged steam. Transmitted by audio pickups, the last shrieks of air superheated by the beams, bursting from their lungs out through their mouths, sang like the calls of dying prey-birds in his ears. Those sounds of final agony made him hard within the tight white trunks of his MechWarrior suit.

  Reports of enemy forces sighted swamped the death cries as the last fleeing bloodfoul was vaporized. Chistu turned forward again with his heads-up display lighting with threat reports processed through the ’Mech’s battle computer. Apparently, his enemy had abandoned the town to await his assault concealed by the escarpment and by arroyos and folds of the land beyond. With the ferric mass of the immense Star League base buried beneath the plateau to mask their magnetic signatures, and proper orbital surveillance forestalled by the Sword of Damocles presence of Emerald Talon overhead, simple drapings of camouflage netting had sufficed to hide the renegade army from detection by Peregrine fighters as they flashed overhead in their ground-attack runs.

  Now Mongol VTOLs appeared over the far horizon, rapidly growing larger in Chistu’s viewscreen. Most of his aerospace fighters had returned to base well in the rear, or to DropShips in their own geosynchronous orbits with the planet’s bulk between them and the dark metal cloud that was the enemy’s mighty WarShip, to replenish their munitions. Those still on station reported the arrival of enemy fighters at high altitude, evidently forming a giant combat air patrol to interdict further aerospace attack. Glancing briefly up he saw contrails twine like yarn high above; a small white flash turned into a small white puff as a fighter was exploded by a foe’s weapons.

  The battle for Antares, and the heart and soul of
Clan Jade Falcon, would be fought and won on the plains west of ruined Alba. Erik Chistu smiled.

  That was just the way he wanted it.

  Leave the pilots to their games, he thought, and let Jade Falcon MechWarriors do the real fighting. Just as it should be.

  He ordered a general advance. His heat levels already settled back to nominal, he led his forces on a pounding charge from the rubble.

  The enemy vehicles did not close with his units. Rather they swept at top speed back and forth before Chistu’s onrushing tanks and BattleMechs, drawing rooster tails of pink dust behind them and raking the invaders with their weapons. To his right his saw a little Fox armored hovercar take a head-on hit from a hypervelocity ferro-nickel Gauss slug. The twenty-ton mass leapt straight up in the air before the inertia of its two-hundred-kilometer-per-hour-plus speed flipped it forward to bounce across the plain, coming apart in chunks and finally vanishing entirely into a yellow smear of burning fuel.

  ‘‘Galaxy Commander,’’ one of his own scout units reported, ‘‘many enemy vehicles display the insignia of Clan Hell’s Horses.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ In his surprise he almost faltered his ’Mech’s forward stride.

  A Scimitar II darted at him from ahead to his right. Unwisely, for by attacking straight-on its pilot threw away most of the advantages of his high rate of speed and solved most of Chistu’s targeting problem for him. Splendidly proficient at MechWarrior skills Chistu found it crèche-play to line up the sights of the Ultra autocannon in his ’Mech’s right arm. Almost contemptuously he fired a normal-rate burst. A one-hundred-millimeter shell smashed the hovertank’s left SRM rack. Another smashed through the armor of its right bow, tearing open the skirt.

  Bleeding air, the 35-ton craft dropped its prow into the sand. A normal driver might well have lost control at such breakneck speed. But this pilot was a master. He—or she— managed to keep the craft under control, even as it fish-tailed madly, plowing up a great surge of earth that must have almost obscured the view from the cockpit.