by Victor Milán
That crazed surat Malvina must have the Devil’s own luck, as the Spheroids say, Jana thought, carefully scanning the wreckage with sensors and Clan-keen senses. For her Shrike to drift in here was a million-to-one chance, even with all this debris floating nearby.
The thought brought a certain gratification. Because the bloodfoul’s luck had now run out.
Jana hoped to find her rival dead inside her shattered ’Mech. Here at the end of things she felt not just the respect due a Falcon warrior of Malvina’s. . . . Call it magnificence, she thought. Despite all Malvina’s unspeakable crimes, the unforgivable insults she had leveled not just at her khan but at Clan Jade Falcon itself, Jana felt even a tingle of affection for her rival.
You really were the best of us, she thought. I’d like to credit Turkina’s intercession for getting the better of you, but I know it was dumb luck.
She laughed to herself. Malthus told me sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. She wondered what her renegade advisor was doing now. Probably calculating the next turn of his coat, she reckoned.
As she orbited the half ship with subtle nudges of her side-jets, Jana found herself thinking of the upheavals Malvina Hazen had tried to wreak in Falcon society toward the end. I thought I was the radical reformer, she mused, but she put me in the shade.
Might she be right? the khan of Clan Jade Falcon wondered heretically. Perhaps there was merit even to her most extreme notion: allowing the lower castes, honored in word and despised in fact, to aspire to join the warrior aristocracy.
‘‘Look at Malvina herself,’’ Jana said. Her voice sounded loud in her ears. ‘‘We’re not doing such a grand a job with our breeding and upbringing programs, we Clans, to produce a monster like her.’’
Fear shivered through her as she maneuvered around the wreck’s open end. Malvina Hazen had threatened not just the order of the Clans but humanity itself. Could another like her arise?
Perhaps a radical rethink—
Blue lightning broke her reverie.
33
The Casts
Hammarr Commercial Spaceport, Sudeten
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
3 April 3136
Right beside them the concrete storage structure flew apart as a PPC bolt twisted into it like a plasma drill bit. ‘‘Deus meu!’’ Rorion shouted. He could not even hear himself as LRMs roared off around the fleeing Piranha.
Real fear filled his breast when he glanced over at his patrão. The older man’s body flopped apparently lifeless in time to the pounding footsteps of the BattleMech as it ran at terrific speed, darting between buildings and around parked ground vehicles. Their only chance to survive this pursuit was the Piranha’s scout-’Mech speed. Can the Markgraf survive the jostling? Rorion wondered.
The Thor had appeared from around the side of a multiple-story stone structure that may have dated from Lyran days as Senna neared the outskirts of The Casts. It instantly fired on the Piranha. Rorion had no way of telling which faction the heavy ’Mech belonged to. Possibly it hunted them on purpose. Or perhaps, today on Sudeten, any unknown was an enemy.
They raced between storage buildings and semi-improvised residences, most likely built for freebirths who had no place in the current Clan order—unless Malvina won. Ahead lay heath beneath a light coat of snow. Beyond that rose low hills spiked with conifers. Whether Senna thought she could find shelter among them, the Lyran had no way of knowing.
He was whipsawed cruelly in the steel fist as Senna veered left to avoid a spread of rockets from the Thor’s drum-shaped shoulder launcher. Though the Thor was fast for a heavy BattleMech, the lithe little scout machine should have been able to show it a clean pair of heels in short order. But it could not outrun rockets, must less particle beams. Senna had to trade speed for breakneck evasion.
The Piranha vaulted a hovertruck grounded crosswise in the street. Rorion’s head snapped back. Apparently everybody else in Hammarr had gotten the word about the balloon going up before he and von Texeira did. The transport drivers in the seedy but busy spaceport district had all stopped their vehicles where they were, it seemed, and gone running off down the street—whether foreigners going to cover like rabbits or laborers lustily racing off to join the Revolution.
No MechWarrior from a Crusader Clan could have handled the Piranha any more skillfully than the master merchant. The jump jets barely hissed; clawed feet scraped paint on top of the truck’s box. The ’Mech jolted back down in the street, slamming Rorion’s jaws together.
Blue pulsations stitched the sky right overhead. The pursuer’s large pulse laser would have ripped apart the Piranha and flash-cooked its passengers had Senna proven a whit less expert. Rorion set his aching jaws and made himself not glance at his boss. All he could do was torture himself with his inability to help his margrave. And he needed his wits about him; the situation could shift drastically at any time. It already had half a dozen times today.
A yellow glow grew against the clouds sky to his left. A comet slanted down the sky. Right at the bridge of Rorion’s nose.
‘‘Great,’’ he said, his words whipped away by the wind and drowned by the thunder of another near-miss volley from the Thor. ‘‘Everyone else is shooting at us today. Why not God?’’
But it wasn’t God. Or if so, He used human proxies. Rorion made out a stub-winged shape tipping the glow. A shot-down aerospace fighter burned in on catastrophic reentry. But still it seemed to be coming right at him.
To his horror Senna braked, backpedaling and even firing retro jump-jets to halt the Piranha’s forward progress. ‘‘No! No!’’ he shouted, beating the metal fingers with his fists. ‘‘We have to get out of the way—’’
Half a kilometer to the left the blazing fighter struck the planet. A blocky three-story building stood between the impact point and Rorion’s horrified eyes. The wreck bounced, blasted through the building’s upper half. Hypervelocity compression had superheated the air in front of the craft; it blew the building to pieces like a giant yellow glowing fist.
Tumbling, blazing, breaking apart, the fighter arced high over Rorion’s head. Then darkness covered him as the Piranha , now stopped, knelt and bent its upper body protectively over the human cargo it clutched to its metal breast.
Hell hit them.
The Thor pilot, a second-line MechWarrior from the Jess faction, was locked-in on her quarry. She lined up her PPC sight for the kill. The hurtling aerospace fighter she ignored. A quick check of her battle computer showed it would miss her by three hundred meters.
The dynamic overpressure and thermal effect from the craft’s smacking the planet at five kilometers a second did not miss her. Absent the ionizing radiation, they were little less than the effects of a kiloton-range tactical nuke going off at a quarter-klick’s distance. Neither heat nor blast was severe enough to disable the 70-ton metal monster. They did however, catch the running giant mid-stride and knock it what von Texeira would have called ass over teakettle.
Though her five-point harness kept the garrison MechWarrior from serious harm, the jostling of cartwheeling a hundred whole meters and rolling another hundred, through three buildings, tumbled her gyros as thoroughly as it did her BattleMech’s.
When the Piranha uncoiled, a pair of ground cars abandoned nearby blazed merrily. Rorion coughed, choking on the smoke. His cheeks felt sunburned and his ears rang.
Now he could not prevent himself looking to his master. To his amazement the big man stirred.
‘‘I . . . love . . . a nice . . . vacation,’’ von Texeira muttered. Then his eyes rolled up and his head slumped bonelessly.
Rorion cried out. His voice was drowned by the roar of rocket engines as an aerodyne lander swept down from the sky and flared to a jet-assisted vertical landing on the snow two hundred meters ahead. It hovered, spun, wobbling slightly on its axis. Miniguns snarled, casting tracer streams over Rorion’s head. He registered the jaunty orange-and-blue Sea Fox emblem painted on the dark hull. Then he fainted
too.
Heat filled the cockpit of Khan Jana Pryde’s Turkina. Red lights flared in her heads-up display as systems failed.
A great arrowhead of steel crashed through the viewscreen to her left. She yelled in surprise as the Shrike’s talon crushed the front of her cockpit. Instrument panels flickered and died as the air rushed out.
‘‘—caught you—’’ a hoarse vindictive voice said in her ear.
Malvina Hazen was not surprised when Jana Pryde came swimming out of the shattered cockpit to meet her. The khan of Clan Jade Falcon was no coward. Not one to wait like a rabbit in a hole to be dug out by a badger.
But if she was brave as a Falcon should be she was also that arrogant. Too arrogant in her moment of triumph to be as suspicious as she ought after the shattered Black Rose, apparently out of control, had conveniently disappeared into a tumbling hunk of wreckage.
Now the two BattleMechs were joined together by Black Rose’s locked claw. And Malvina came, indeed, to dig her foe from her hole.
The taller woman wore a form-fitting green-and-yellow pressuresuit over cooling mesh and vest. Malvina’s space-suit was black and silver. Neither was armored to an appreciable degree; a BattleMech was a suit of armor, after all.
Jana Pryde was long and strong. Malvina was quick as a weasel. She snatched the laser pistol from Jana Pryde’s grasp as it loosed a futile red blast into the void.
Then holding it before the faceplate of her enemy’s pressuresuit Malvina Hazen crushed the weapon in her prosthetic hand. Which inside its glove was black as the space around them.
Floating free of the immobilized BattleMechs, the two warrior women grappled inside the shadowy half hull. Jana Pryde’s strength told first. She pinioned Malvina’s legs with her own, forced her arms to her sides. Futilely Malvina tried to head-butt her; Jana Pryde merely hugged her close with her chin on top of Malvina’s pressure-hooded head. Had they not been forced to wear faceplates it would have exposed her throat to the madwoman’s sharp teeth.
As it was, the khan held her foe helpless.
Malvina struggled wildly to break free. ‘‘And so it ends,’’ Jana Pryde murmured, through jaws tight-shut to prevent Malvina’s breaking them with a quick head bob. ‘‘You might have been a worthy successor. But you could not wait.’’
Malvina strained her head upward. Jana Pryde locked an arm around her throat, flowed behind her, caught her in a headlock.
‘‘Good-bye, little Hazen,’’ Jana Pryde said, twisting the smaller woman’s head to break her neck. ‘‘Your Bloodline is overdue for a Reaving.’’
Malicious laughter rang in her ears. A hand reached up, caught her arm in a grip like an elemental battlesuit’s, effortlessly peeled it from Malvina’s throat. Jana Pryde grunted more in surprise than pain as the prosthetic arm twisted savagely, torquing her elbow from its socket. Malvina’s legs scissored open; Jana’s could not hold them. Malvina squirmed round and clamped her legs about her opponent’s waist.
‘‘I but toyed with you,’’ Malvina said over their private channel, ‘‘to make your failure sting the worse.’’
Her flesh-and-blood hand seized her foe’s right biceps. Her prosthetic reached for the faceplate of Jana Pryde’s pressuresuit.
Pain exploded in her left side. Jana Pryde had drawn a knife left-handed and stabbed her. Unfortunately for Jana, the blade was vertical in relation to Malvina’s ribs and could not slide easily between. Nor could Jana Pryde get leverage in freefall to punch the blade through.
The faceplate came away in Malvina’s artificial hand. Jana Pryde’s last surprised shout followed, condensing in a white cloud. Releasing her knife hilt she covered her mouth with her functioning gloved hand. It was a futile gesture. ‘‘Farewell, Jade Falcon khan,’’ Malvina said in a musical, hateful voice. ‘‘The Chingis Khan has taken your place.’’
As Jana Pryde, once khan, stared at her enemy with eyes beginning to redden as capillaries burst within, Malvina Hazen reached up and opened her own faceplate. She pressed her lips against Jana’s mouth in a deep kiss.
Then Malvina backed away. Her prosthetic arm forced her faceplate closed against the one-atmosphere rush of escaping air, sealed it again. Behind it she was laughing. Breaking capillaries had brought a maidenly flush to her cheeks.
Jana Pryde struggled to reseal her own helmet with her good arm. Malvina caught and held it with her prosthetic.
With her other hand she pressed something into Jana’s glove. Through reddening vision Jana Pryde saw it was a black rose with a curled stem. Little splinters of ice drawn in the vacuum from its cells and flash frozen sparkled on the still-faultless bloom.
The fallen khan fought for air. But there was none. She weakened, weakened . . .
Laughing, Malvina unwound her legs from around Jana Pryde’s waist. Drawing her knees to her chest she put her boot soles against the other woman’s stomach and pushed.
The thrust sent Malvina backward deeper into the wreck. It propelled the suffocating Jana Pryde into open space, tumbling over and over toward Sudeten’s distant sun, the black rose still clutched to her breast.
34
Jade Falcon DropShip Bec de Corbin
Approaching Sudeten Orbit
Jade Falcon Occupation Zone
4 April 3136
Spurning assistance from solicitous naval crew, Malvina emerged from the shuttle onto the hangar deck of Bec de Corbin. Cynthy ran wordlessly toward her, wrapped her arms around her waist and buried her small face beneath Malvina’s breasts. Wincing slightly at the pressure on her knife wound, in bandages beneath the midnight-black uniform she had donned in the rescue craft, Malvina hugged her back and kissed the top of her blond head. Then she straightened to face Beckett Malthus and Galaxy Commander Manas Amirault of Clan Hell’s Horses.
‘‘Loremaster Julia Buhalin has acknowledged the correctness of your victory in your Trial of Possession, my Khan,’’ Malthus said gravely. ‘‘She reports all fighting has ceased in Hammarr and worldwide. Sudeten awaits you, my Khan.’’
‘‘Does she follow my instructions?’’
‘‘To receive you in the Falcon’s Perch in Hammarr rather than at the Eyrie? Indeed she does. Although she seems puzzled.’’
‘‘Let her puzzle,’’ Malvina said, ‘‘so long as she obeys.’’
Malthus cocked an eyebrow. ‘‘Be cautious of letting her hear you speak so, my Khan. Not even a Khan has authority to command a loremaster.’’
For a moment Malvina’s eyes narrowed. Then they relaxed. She laughed.
‘‘We shall soon see what authority the Chingis Khan has over a Clan loremaster,’’ she said.
Manas Amirault frowned. ‘‘Surely you would not trespass upon a loremaster’s prerogatives, Malvina Hazen?’’
‘‘I do as I please!’’ she flared. He stiffened. From a Falcon such an outburst would have drawn challenge if not immediate attack. But he only looked puzzled. Perhaps it is a cultural thing, she thought. Perhaps it was not. She made herself smile. I have use for this one, she thought. And soon. ‘‘I have run roughshod over all manner of Clan traditions,’’ she said, ‘‘no few at your suggestion. Why hold back now?’’
He continued to look troubled. She reached up to briefly stroke his tanned cheek. ‘‘Worry less, Manas Amirault. I have promised you glorious conquest. Have I not delivered Sudeten?’’
She turned to take in the others—warriors of Falcon and Horse, naval personnel, technicians—assembled on the brightly lit deck.
‘‘Have I not delivered Clan Jade Falcon to you, as I have promised?’’
‘‘All hail Chingis Khan!’’ Malthus cried. His voice rang throughout the deck like a tolling bell. Manas Amirault joined, and then the others. Only Cynthy, clinging wide-eyed to Malvina’s hips, stayed silent.
When the cheering died away Malvina smiled. ‘‘Thank you,’’ she said—in itself as uncharacteristic as apology. ‘‘You have all well earned your part in this glorious victory. And in what is to come!’’
She turned to Malthus. ‘‘I wish to speak to Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti in my compartment. Have the connection made.’’
‘‘At once, my Khan.’’ Malthus turned to summon a technician. The ship was, after all, still nominally attached to his command.
Malvina beckoned the pair of technician-class minders who had escorted Cynthy here. Gently prying loose the girl’s arms, Malvina knelt and took her face in her hands, the black and the pale. ‘‘There are things I must do now, child. I will see you soon.’’
Cynthy blinked several times. She nodded. Malvina smiled and kissed her cheek, then rose as the minders in their turquoise jumpsuits took her in hand and led her out.
‘‘I would consult with you in private, Galaxy Commander Manas Amirault,’’ Malvina said. ‘‘Please join me in my compartment in fifteen minutes.’’
She trailed flesh fingers across his cheek as she walked past and out.
In the cold, in the dark, Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti floated alone.
I die, he thought.
Not fast enough, old man, said a different voice of his thoughts. That was true enough: he had been slammed into a bulkhead of his CIC by the prodigious blast wave of a ship-killing missile, transmitted through the fabric of Emerald Talon herself. It broke him up severely inside, so that he must struggle to retain consciousness during the last of the space battle. As he drifted in and out of awareness, another giant missile exploded amidships, close enough to spall fragments from the bulkhead that had killed the rest of his command staff.
He had established communication with a backup command center—the flying bridge in the outer hull, which ironically survived unscathed. By that point little remained to do: Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen had challenged Khan Jana Pryde, and the Emerald Talon was designated their dueling grounds. The fight was over for the once-mighty WarShip. She had covered herself with glory; and even if Binetti was uncertain of the rightness of the cause in which he fought, it had never been his place to question commands. He and his crew had served Turkina bravely and well.
