A Rending of Falcons

by Victor Milán

  A pause, crackling with static. ‘‘I am Jade Falcon.’’

  ‘‘Then engage the stravags, and destroy!’’

  The house looked peaceful and oddly homelike under its blanket of snow. Its mounded shape, harsh ferrocrete outlines softened by the blanketing snow, might have been a natural feature. ‘‘Reminds me of a hobbit hole,’’ von Texeira said with a certain satisfaction.

  ‘‘What’s that?’’ his aide asked. The younger man looked briskly around, black eyes bright. The hand inside his jacket pocket, von Texeira knew, clutched his handgun.

  ‘‘From a book I loved as a child,’’ the Margrave said.

  Rorion bent his sleek head toward the city. ‘‘That low intermittent rumble is gunfire from street battles, milord,’’ he said. ‘‘The invaders aren’t even here yet. Now may be a poor time for reminiscence.’’

  ‘‘Impertinent as usual,’’ von Texeira said. He sighed heavily. ‘‘Also, as usual, correct.’’

  ‘‘I live to serve, mestre.’’

  ‘‘My large left buttock. Although you do serve me well, my boy. Well, let us proceed and find out what Petah and Nestah find so momentous but cannot share over the phone.’’

  As they approached the dwelling a horrific crack struck their ears like an ax. Both men hit the slush-wet pavement. Glass exploded from the windows of a panel van parked a few meters down the street.

  ‘‘What in hell’s name was that?’’ shouted Rorion. He had his gun out and lay prone, looking wildly around for enemies. His voice was scarcely audible above the ringing in von Texeira’s ears.

  The older man pointed off toward a bright blue spark moving low above the center of Hammarr. Green beams snapped toward it, leaving streaks of afterimage pulsing magenta on his retinas.

  ‘‘Now the invaders are here. Malvina announces her presence in advance.’’

  ‘‘Will they bomb, do you think?’’

  Several kilometers to their left a series of flashes lit the sky, silhouetting structures humped on a hilltop. Brown smoke boiled upward, quickly turning black. A rippling crack hit their ears several heartbeats later.

  ‘‘You needed to ask?’’

  ‘‘Wonderful,’’ Rorion said.

  ‘‘Look on the bright side,’’ said von Texeira, picking himself up gingerly. ‘‘If only all our questions could be answered so quickly!’’

  He dusted at the fronts of his pants legs. ‘‘Let’s see what our Sea Fox friends have to tell us.’’

  The gate into the front court, surrounded by a low wall stuccoed a strange dark-mauve color, stood ajar. Rorion frowned. Von Texeira gimped to the door.

  ‘‘Open,’’ he said softly.

  ‘‘I don’t like this.’’

  Fusion jets and the drum thunder of more bombs growled in the distance. ‘‘We face a menu of unpalatable dishes,’’ von Texeira said. He pushed inside.

  He stepped quickly inside and to his right, exiting the notorious ‘‘fatal funnel’’ in which an enemy waiting in ambush could easily target him. Rorion followed his handgun through a beat later. He shifted left.

  Von Texeira blinked. The only illumination was cloudy daylight filtered through half-closed blinds. After the greater brightness of outdoors it took his eyes a moment to adjust.

  Enough to see the dark shape sprawled between the low table and the sofa.

  29

  The Casts

  Hammarr Commercial Spaceport, Sudeten

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  3 April 3136

  ‘‘Dead,’’ said Rorion, crouched by the fallen man’s lolling head. ‘‘Neck’s broken. It’s Nestah.’’

  ‘‘How can you tell?’’

  ‘‘Can’t you?’’

  Before von Texeira could respond a noise from behind made him turn. A gigantic ginger-haired face leered into his. The doorway behind had filled with an elemental, bent over like a fairy-tale giant entering a cottage.

  To avoid being knocked down, von Texeira sidestepped further away from the door. A tall, slender youth emerged from the house’s rear: a Jade Falcon MechWarrior by the badges on his yellow-tan jumpsuit, with a needler in his hand. Another elemental, female and entirely shaven-headed, came in after, likewise bent over to clear the door from the hallway. In the main room she could just stand full upright with her shaven pate almost touching the ceiling.

  ‘‘You outlanders must have thought yourselves quite clever,’’ the MechWarrior said with a sneer. ‘‘Have you been sending back messages to your friends so that they might attack Sudeten, too?’’

  ‘‘Sudeten?’’ asked von Texeira.

  ‘‘Too?’’ said Rorion.

  ‘‘We have learned of your treacherous Lyran raids along the frontier,’’ the female elemental said. Her voice rasped, suggesting a serious blow to the throat at some point in her young life.

  Von Texeira stared at her. His big broad shoulders rose and fell in a profound sigh.

  ‘‘Fuck us,’’ he said.

  "They have," Rorion said cheerfully. ‘‘Just like the good old days, não?"

  "There were never any good old days in Loki," said von Texeira.

  The MechWarrior drew his head back on a slender neck. ‘‘You admit to being terrorists?’’ he said, sounding half eager and half astonished. He had a fine, thrusting bone structure and slanted lavender eyes that made him appear almost elfin.

  We never encountered nonhuman intelligent life, von Texeira thought incongruously, so we’ve gone and made ourselves aliens.

  ‘‘Retired,’’ Rorion said.

  ‘‘What does it matter?’’ von Texeira said. ‘‘Julia Buhalin sent you to kill us anyway, quineg?’’

  The elemental who loomed to von Texeira’s left like the proverbial elephant in the parlor laughed like a boulder rolling down a chute. ‘‘Neg,’’ he said. ‘‘She wants you questioned and given public trial. Then executed.’’

  ‘‘Following the forms,’’ the MechWarrior said, smiling unpleasantly, ‘‘just as your Devlin Stone would have wanted.’’

  ‘‘He was never our Devlin Stone,’’ Rorion Klimt said. He shot the MechWarrior through the chest twice, firing from inside his coat and blowing the pocket into a smoking lint cloud.

  Roaring wordlessly, the male elemental reached for von Texeira. The diplomat turned to face him, apparently overbalanced and fell onto his broad posterior on the throw rug.

  The woman lunged at Rorion. She was wiry for an elemental and moved much faster than he anticipated. She swept up the end table, upsetting the lamp to shatter on the floor, and flung it at him. Struggling to extract his handgun from his ruined pocket he had to let go to ward off the piece of furniture.

  Grinning, her compatriot advanced on the fallen Markgraf . ‘‘Fat, clumsy cripple,’’ he said. ‘‘You make it too easy.’’

  Von Texeira clutched his right hip. He raised his false right leg straight out with his heel toward the vast face. He clenched his lower belly muscles in a certain way.

  His shoe heel exploded. The elemental’s face seemed to implode, crumpling around the dense column of double-ought buckshot fired from the single-shot twelve-gauge shotgun built into von Texeira’s prosthetic leg.

  ‘‘Depends on your definition of ‘easy,’ ’’ the margrave muttered through ringing echoes, wincing at the pain the recoil shot up his stump. He had to roll to the side to avoid being pinned to the floor by the giant’s inert bulk.

  Half-crouched, arms outspread, Rorion faced the female elemental. She was seventy centimeters taller than he, and her own arms, likewise spread, seemed to span the room. The shotgun’s bang drew her gaze aside.

  Rorion moved. Not left or right; instead he threw himself forward and down, into a handstand right in front of her. Her eyes went wide.

  She started to smile. Rorion’s right boot slammed into her mouth. Her head rocked back. She leaned farther back as he spun on his hands to deliver a second capoeira kick that broke her nose and sent blood cascading down her upp
er lip.

  She screamed in rage and fell backward, unbalanced more by sheer surprise than pain or the force of the blows. She landed sitting. Rorion flipped himself the rest of the way over and landed astride her lap. He slammed his open palms together on the sides of her head, breaking her right eardrum. She screamed again, lashing out half-blind. He ducked the strike, scrambled behind her and up onto her shoulders like a monkey. Wrapping his arms about her head like steel bands he drove his weight sideways with all the strength in his legs.

  Her neck broke with a noise like a cannon.

  Rorion sprang clear as she collapsed. He looked to his boss. The older man had pulled himself up to a sitting position against one wall and sat clutching his own holdout pistol in one vast paw.

  ‘‘Well done, lad,’’ von Texeira said.

  Abstractedly Rorion nodded. He finished extracting his Taurus autopistol from his blown-open jacket pocket. Holding the weapon in both hands he quickly checked the other rooms of the small house.

  ‘‘I found Petah in the second bedroom,’’ he reported, returning. ‘‘He was dead too. Shot—looks like he put up a fight.’’

  The older man crossed himself. Rorion put his autopistol in his intact pocket.

  ‘‘So Archon Melissa crossed us up,’’ he said bitterly.

  ‘‘Someone did,’’ von Texeira agreed. ‘‘But after all, we always knew we were expendable, didn’t we? It’s not as if things have changed from the old days.’’

  ‘‘We both know the real reason for the raids, don’t we?’’ Rorion asked.

  They spoke Portuguese, which Senna had confirmed few Jade Falcons understood. Nevertheless, von Texeira held up a stubby finger as he nodded, warning his aide to say no more. They may have planted bugs after murdering the Sea Fox factors, he thought.

  ‘‘I wonder where Senna is,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Well away from here.’’ Rorion searched the room rapidly and methodically. Not from any real expectation of finding anything, von Texeira knew, but from habit. Instilled by long training—and hard experience.

  ‘‘Ah, well.’’ Von Texeira sighed volcanically. Setting his cane, he began to struggle upright. ‘‘She always told us not to rely upon her—’’

  The house shook around them. Dust fell from the ceiling.

  In a bound Rorion was beside the older man, reaching down to grasp him under the arms. A monstrous thud resounded. The floor jumped in response.

  ‘‘Come on, old man,’’ Rorion shouted. ‘‘Get up! We have to—’’

  The roof fell on them.

  ‘‘Chingis Khan,’’ the Horsewoman said, ‘‘Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti reports that he has lost most systems in the Emerald Talon. He strives to recover at least maneuver control.’’

  Beckett Malthus marked how the warrior aide addressed Malvina directly without looking at her own nominal superior, though Galaxy Commander Manas Amirault stood directly at Malvina’s side. Amirault apparently did not notice. Between Malvina and the space battle unfolding before their eyes, he was thoroughly entranced.

  ‘‘But they have dealt their opponent deadly blows,’’ Malvina said. She actually clapped her hands in delight, seeming as young as the girl who still stood by her side, speechless again, the teddy bear dangling from one pale arm.

  ‘‘We have received independent communications from the Emerald Talon,’’ the Hell’s Horses aide went on. ‘‘A missile penetrated the combat information center. Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti has suffered severe injury. It seems he refuses treatment.’’

  ‘‘Ahh,’’ said Malthus. It was almost a sigh.

  Around them holoprojections showed images of the action, computer-assembled from a range of sensor inputs and enhanced into video that lagged imperceptibly behind the actual events. Even seen unassisted through the great ferroglass viewports, the battle had been breathtaking in its chaotic fury.

  Ravaged by the Emerald Talon’s terrible broadside the Jade Talon drifted, a dark mass, her main drives cold. A greatly diminished swarm of Sudeten fighters orbited her like fireflies. But the mighty battleship now drifted as well, hundreds of meters of its length masked by clouds of condensate, lit only by pale flames fed by oxygen leaks, and here and there a lamp’s icy gleam. Had it not been for a scatter of radio transmissions, she could have been a ghost ship.

  The naval aide, one ear encased by a comm-button, cocked her dark-blond head suddenly to that side. Hell’s Horses naval personnel tended to wear short full-head cuts, rather than the flamboyant ponytails and scalp locks their ground warriors favored. The rare Horse elementals, male and female alike, wore buzz cuts.

  She spoke softly to Amirault. He pulled a mouth, nodded, then grinned at Malvina.

  "A call for you, O Khan,’’ he said.

  Malthus opened his mouth to caution his protégée. ‘‘Put her on,’’ Malvina Hazen said.

  Khan Jana Pryde’s face appeared in projection to port of the central viewport. It was sallow; the skin seemed to sag on the angular scaffolding of her cheekbones. An angry red weal streaked her right cheek, and something black was smeared above her left eyebrow.

  ‘‘What do you wish of me, Jana Pryde?’’ Malvina asked.

  The head raised. The skin seemed to tighten on her face, and her slanted green eyes flared.

  ‘‘You have not yet won,’’ she said.

  ‘‘True enough,’’ Malvina said with a careless gesture. ‘‘But every second that we speak brings me closer to victory.’’

  ‘‘Perhaps,’’ Jana Pryde said. ‘‘But this much is certain: every second—every death, every fighting machine disabled or destroyed—weakens Clan Jade Falcon. At a moment of great uncertainty, and perhaps grave threats to our Bloodlines.’’

  She shook her head, weary, slow. ‘‘I believed that you would give up your rebellion once word came of the Wolf withdrawal. Believed that you, with your vaunted strategic vision, would understand both the crisis and the opportunity it posed for Clan Jade Falcon.’’

  ‘‘I might observe that the Wolf’s mysterious actions make it more imperative than ever to have a firm hand in control of the Falcon’s destiny,’’ Malvina said. ‘‘But if we debate politics, I prefer to let my warriors do it for me. They appear to argue most persuasively.’’

  Jana Pryde glowered. ‘‘Already Emerald Talon, pride of our fleet, floats helplessly, a crippled husk. My flagship is seriously damaged, as your sensors no doubt show. But despite your intact outlander WarShip, you will not quickly overcome Sudeten’s defenses. And when my Grand Fleet arrives—’’

  ‘‘I trust you reach for a point?’’ Malvina said. ‘‘By the time your fleet returns, the Bucephalus can make green glass craters of Sudeten and the Falcon’s Eyrie as well.’’

  ‘‘You wouldn’t!’’

  Khan Jana Pryde had always been careless about contractions, Malthus thought with a bit of pedagogic twinge. But that was one thing Malvina would not criticize her for. Perhaps the only one.

  ‘‘Don’t talk nonsense,’’ the tiny woman with the white-blond hair said, as if to emphasize Malthus’ unspoken thought. ‘‘You know of what I am capable.’’

  For a moment the two women looked death at one another. Had thousands of kilometers not separated them, Malthus had no doubt they would leap at each other’s throats. He noticed how Cynthy’s hand had gone white where it gripped Malvina’s, how the tiny chubby fingers dug in.

  Jana Pryde sighed. ‘‘I do. I cannot comprehend your madness—let it go.’’

  She shook back strands of straw-colored hair that had escaped her ponytail and drifted across her high forehead. ‘‘You challenged me to a Trial of Possession for Clan Jade Falcon. I now accept that challenge. I will fight you, one on one. The loser’s forces will swear uncompromised obedience to the victor. The war must end here and now!’’

  ‘‘That challenge has rather passed its due date,’’ said Malthus, pleased at being able to use a Spheroid metaphor—and far more pleased at getting to sneer at his former p
rotégée who had cast him aside.

  ‘‘I accept,’’ Malvina said. ‘‘We shall fight in BattleMechs. The Circle of Honor: outboard the Emerald Talon. The time: two hours.’’

  ‘‘Done,’’ Jana Pryde said. The screen went blank.

  Beckett Malthus shouted in outrage. ‘‘You cannot do this! I—’’

  Malvina turned, stepped close, slapped him sharply cross one bearded cheek. She was a very strong woman, for all that she must stand tiptoe to reach him. The blow stung.

  Malthus’ cloudy green eyes slowly blinked, once, twice. They stung as well.

  He felt wide eyes upon him, was aware of mouths gaping in slack faces. His vision had contracted to a tunnel. No graver insult could be offered a Clansman. Indeed, he could not recall ever hearing of anyone slapping a Clan warrior— much less living to tell of it. It cried out for a challenge.

  He said nothing. Did nothing. Not even reach to touch his face.

  ‘‘Never,’’ Malvina said, practically hissing anger. ‘‘Never tell me what I can and cannot do. I am Chingis Khan!’’

  She swept a glare about the chamber like a large laser. ‘‘None of you! I am Emperor of All. You have acknowledged me, and now we crush all before us!’’

  Cowed by her stellar-furnace fury, the Hell’s Horses aide dropped to one knee and bowed a submissive head. Beckett Malthus was next, thanking Turkina he did not have to go first. One by one the technicians left their stations to turn and kneel before the khan.

  Smiling slightly, Galaxy Commander Manas Amirault was last to kneel and lower his head. Only Malvina remained standing. And the tiny child who clung stubbornly to her hand, but who did not cry, and whose face showed no fear.

  Malvina stepped forward to stroke the shaven side of Manas’ head. Then she turned to approach Malthus. He steeled himself, but felt a hand catch him gently beneath his beard, raise him up with insistent gentle pressure.

  Malvina beamed at him as if he had done her a marvelous favor. ‘‘There, now, Bec Malthus,’’ she said. ‘‘No long faces. Don’t you see? Our enemy has delivered victory into our hands.’’