Flight of the Falcon

29

Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon

Zenith Jump Point

Skye

10 August 3134

When it came to the decision by thekurultai, almost all of Aleksandr Hazen’s Zeta officers voted for his proposed forbearance from terror. The officers of Turkina Keshik and the Gyrfalcon Galaxy were surprised: such near unanimity was rare among the Clans, especially adezgra unit supporting a new commander.

They were perhaps more surprised when some Keshik officers and even a few Gyrs voted with Aleksandr’s warriors.

Yet in the end, Malvina’s proposal of calculated savagery won by a margin of almost two to one—her heretical pronouncements notwithstanding.

“I challenge,” Aleksandr said simply, when the results were formally announced by Star Colonel Rianna Buhallin, Bec Malthus’ aide de camp.

“Such is your right,” Beckett Malthus intoned solemnly. “In accordance with tradition you shall be opposed in your Trial of Refusal by two warriors, reflecting that your will has been rejected by that proportion.”

“I will fight him, augmented, alone.” All heads turned to stare at Malvina. She was literally half his size—her body mass half his—but in the cockpit of a ’Mech, that mattered not at all. “MyShrike carries twice the firepower of hisGyrfalcon . And he has never beaten me in BattleMech combat.”

Aleksandr Hazen raised his head. His smile was nova bright.

Bec Malthus did not bother to ask if Malvina meant what she said. As well ask a bullet if it meant to hit you.

It was a huge breach of tradition. He doubted he was the only one unsurprised that Malvina should propose such a thing.At the least, he thought,this should prove amusing .

“What venue?” he asked her in a voice subdued even for him. “Our choices are somewhat circumscribed.”

“I care not. Let Aleksandr choose.”

And that was unorthodox as well. Where willshe lead the Falcon, Malthus wonderedf allowed her head?

Aleks’ smile widened. “I shall, sister,” he said. “I shall.”

Sanglamore Military Academy

New London

Skye

14 August 3134

“I fail to understand, Countess,” Legate Eckard said, not unkindly. “Is it not poor tactics to announce our dispositions in advance to the Falcons—not to mention make them before we even know where they will land?”

Once half-abandoned, Sanglamore Academy now bustled as de facto planetary-defense headquarters. The two Taras occupied a former classroom with the Duke, Eckard, Prefect Della Brown, and several cadets serving as ducal aides. With the Countess were Colonels Ballantrae and Scott, commanders of the First Kearney Highlanders and the Fusiliers respectively, and Republican Guard commander Major Linda Hirschbeck.

“It’s all the same,” muttered Duke Gregory. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out a tall narrow window with a pointed arch and leaded glass at the overcast day. Fallen leaves blew across the imported terrestrial grass of the old quad three stories below, gone yellow as winter impended. “They’ll spot our major concentrations from orbit, wherever located.”

The Legate made a circular gesture of his hand. “As I say.”

Making herself stay seated, since she feared she would look uncertain if she gave in to the desire to hop up and pace, Tara nodded. Tracked by powerful telescopes since its emergence was reported, the Jade Falcon fleet was now within hours of shaping Skye orbit. The tension had grown almost unbearable.

“You’re right, Legate. The thing is to understand the Clan mentality. Their predisposition is to fight—and they believe they can defeat any number of Spheroid fighters.”

Duke Gregory half-turned. “They’ve always been attracted to the idea of One Big Battle, haven’t they?” It seemed that in the extremity of the current situation, he had come to completely accept Tara Campbell. Concern for his planet had overcome his desire to find things to sulk about.

“Precisely so, your Grace. And actually it’s in their strategic interests: it’s much easier on them if we’ll agree to all clump up and get beaten by them at once, rather than making them engage in a long grind to conquer the planet.”

“Wouldn’t it be in our interests to act counter to theirs?” Della Brown asked. The Prefect’s voice lacked challenge: the question seemed sincere, rather than another attempt to undermine the Countess.

“That’s an excellent military principle, Prefect,” Tara said. “Yet in this case I believe our interests coincide with theirs. More particularly, the interests of the people of Skye whom we’re defending. The longer we draw this thing out, the more they suffer.” “Then too,” Eckard said, “there’s this lot’s demonstrated propensity for atrocity.”

With supreme effort Tara kept her face and voice under control. “Precisely.”

“Your Grace,” said one of Gregory’s aides wearing a commo headset. “We are receiving a transmission from the commander of the Jade Falcon fleet. He wishes to speak to our chief battle leader.”

Duke Gregory pursed his bearded lips. “Countess Campbell, I believe this call is yours.” To her utter surprise, the Duke had chosen to defer to her recent—and greater—experience in leading troops into battle, particularly against Clan forces. He would command Skye’s indigenous forces under Tara’s operational command.

She drew a deep breath and turned to face the holovid tank at one end of the room. The Duke nodded.

A heavy, handsome face, bronze-bearded and large-pored, appeared in the tank. “I am Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus,” it announced, “commanding the Jade Falcon expeditionary force.”

“I am Countess Tara Campbell, commanding for Skye,” she said crisply.

“Countess Campbell, I wish to issue a batchall: a formal challenge—”

“I know what it means,” Tara said with calculated rudeness. “Here are our terms: we will fight you in the hills west of New London; there are plenty of surfaces hard and flat enough to land your DropShips. You bring what you have, we bring what we have, winner take all.”

The expression of placid superiority never wavered. That was in itself highly unusual for a nitroglycerin-touchy Clansman. That bears out Master Merchant Senna’s assessment of the man,

Tara thoughtDoesn’t it?

“Lady Campbell, you are hardly in position to dictate—”

Here’s where it gets tricky. “This is not any of your Clan bidding. There is no negotiation. The alternative is to fight an endless guerrilla war—and no matter how many of us you murder, there will still be more of us left to slaughter you in your beds. Or are you afraid, Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus, to meet us force against force? Perhaps you doubt your Falcons’ invincibility.”

The man’s brows had fisted as she spoke and his face darkened, slightly but perceptibly. “You speak rashly, Countess. Your words are far larger than you. And you will soon learn their folly.

“A Clan warrior fears nothing. We shall meet you in the country west of your prefectural capital.”

He raised his right hand, palm up, squeezed his fingers into a fist. “And crush you! Beckett Malthus out.”

The image vanished.

Tara looked to her aide. A breath she was unaware of holding gusted from her in a sigh that shook her whole thin frame.

“Countess!”

“Huh?” She sat up on her cot. Sunlight streamed in the window of her office, afternoon by its buttery hue.

A female cadet stood in the doorway. “Apologies for disturbing you, milady. But you asked to be informed when the Falcon fleet entered Skye orbit.”

Tara rubbed her face briefly. “Quite right.” She struggled to recall the woman’s name. She was even shorter than Tara and dark-haired. “And thank you, Kathy.”

“There’s more, Countess. The Falcons communicated with us to confirm that they will land to fight us tomorrow morning. But one of their DropShips has entered atmosphere ahead of schedule, on course for the North Pole.”

North Continent

Inside the Arctic Circle

Skye

14 August 3134

A great armored ovoid descended through a sky of perfect arctic blue. Five hundred meters above a frozen lake two kilometers wide by seven long, it slowed to a hover on its blue drive pencils. Bays opened in its flanks. Six BattleMechs emerged and descended toward the ice surface.

Contrails drew white traceries in the dome of the sky overhead as Falcon aerospace fighters contended with Skye craft sent to intercept the DropShip. Because this landing played no part in the agreed-upon combat terms, the locals were treating it as open season.

Four ’Mechs came down at the points of a square two kilometers on a side: Malvina Hazen’s aide-de-camp Star Captain Matthias Pryde in hisUller, Star Colonel Folke Jorgensson in hisPlack Hawk, Star Colonel Rianna Buhallin in herMad Cat, and Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus in his black and silverVulture : the Circle of Equals for Aleks’ Trial of Refusal. The three BattleMechs without jump jets temporarily repaired that lack with strap-on booster kits.

Malvina’s ninety-five-tonShrike and Aleks’ fifty-five-tonGyrfalcon touched down facing each other across a thousand yards of blue-white ice, drifted with gritty decayed snow that eddied in a wind that knew no rest.

Being seasoned battle commanders, the principals realized that if the intercepting fighters should take down the DropShip, they would at a stroke decapitate thedesant . Being Clan, they accepted that risk. Some things were just important. Besides, the site was remote; the defenders were unlikely to commit too much of their aerospace strength defending a howling waste. The Falcons’ fighter coverage was excellent, and the DropShip itself a formidable opponent.

It hovered, now, overhead, like a great dull-gleaming cloud.

“Galaxy Commander.”

“Speak, Star Colonel Rianna Buhallin.”

“I am troubled.” “Why so?”

“Why do you permit this? There should be two MechWarriors vindicating the Will of the Falcon. The senior Clan champion should have chosen the field. Yet here is one who has claimed Refusal, and was adjudged wrong by a margin of two to one, facing but a single champion—and on ground of his choosing.”

“So the Clan champion willed it, Rianna”

“But it is wrong! The ritual—”

“Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen has seen fit to alter ritual to suit her. She claims to represent the forces of evolution. I propose to see if she is right.”

“Can we so disrupt our ways, with our greatest battle impending?”

“If your honor will not permit you to serve in the Circle of Equals, Star Colonel, I will replace you. Only speak quickly. Battle, as you say, impends.”

“Beckett Malthus, I will serve.”

“I knew you would, Rianna, child.”

Standing on the snow-clad shore, Bec Malthus’Vulture, Turkina’s Crow, raised its right arm. Its two extended-range medium lasers pierced the sky with cyan lances. It was the order to begin.

Ornamental wings folded, the two ’Mechs sprinted toward each other. At long range, Aleks fired a burst from Lily’s right-hand autocannon that kicked up a string of white explosions right in front of Malvina, then cut into a clockwise run around Black Rose.

Malvina slowed. Her sibkin’s tactics perplexed her. TheGyrfalcon ’s weapons outranged hers. It was much faster than herShrike, especially if Aleks triggered his myomer accelerator signal circuitry. He could, in theory, use his speed advantage to stay out of her reach forever and pick the Rose to pieces. Naturally, it was not so easy: Aleks must stay within the one-kilometer Circle or forfeit, limiting his scope of motion. His lasers and autocannon did not shootthat much farther than hers, nor her missiles. Solid hits from her battery would quickly disable his lightly armored Lily, especially if she could lock her targeting computer onto a limb.

And then, Aleks had never beaten her ’Mech to ’Mech. No one had.

Yet here he was throwing away his sole advantage, spiraling toward her. Malvina was not so caught up by her own Mongol rhetoric to believe her brother’s head had grown soft, no matter the state of his heart.

She triggered her medium lasers. The cyan beams, just visible in the sun-glare from sky and ice, missed just behind theGyrfalcon . One tip of the middle “feathef’ of its right wing sparked white and gave off pale-gray smoke; no more.

Malvina stared in startled frustration. Then the battle computer in her mind told her: her diabolic brother, concentrating on moving without even trying to shoot since his opening barrage, was already so close that

he orbited her faster than she could track theShrike ’s massive torso on its waist-swivel.

She would have to move her feet to keep him in front of her weapons. She could still move her arms faster than she could traverse the torso; she aimed the big double autocannon across her body and fired an Ultra burst.

Leading the running ’Mech was a trivial solution—she thought. Yet even as she fired Aleks stamped a sharp-edged claw hard into the ice for traction and changed direction. Malvina’s 10-centimeter shells missed, to raise sequential geysers of pulverized ice several hundred meters beyond.

Aleks pivoted the Lily’s upper body and returned fire with the 5-centimeter guns mounted in either arm. Malvina jumped. Inexplicably, the spray of projectiles fell just short, smashing holes in the ice and throwing up ice shrapnel that clattered harmlessly off her rising BattleMech. He followed with a short ruby flare of his large lasers that melted an infinity-sign hole right beneath Black Rose’s taloned feet.

Does he think I’ll fall through into the lake?she wondered. That would be folly: both ’Mechs were airtight and proof against the pressure of water far deeper than the DropShip’s millimeter-wave radar probing of the bottom showed the lake to be. Dumping her into the icy depths would simply cool her cockpit to a level of actual comfort, at most.

She jetted her ’Mech backward before descending on still-solid ice. She turned in flight, swinging past Aleksandr, then let go with her lasers once more.

As if reading her intention, Aleks, still at a dead run, cut a different way again. He ran now with full MASC boost, risking actuator lock for speed over a hundred klicks an hour. Malvina could not lock him up with her targeting computer. She fired her autocannon. A hit blasted a shard of ferro-fibrous armor off the side of his right thigh. The runningGyrfalcon wobbled at the impact, then steadied itself and juked again.

She scowled fiercely. “Am I that predictable?” she raged.

“Only to me,”came back promptly through her neurohelmet.

“Damnyou!” A bone-piercing wind buffeted the BattleMech; it was merely hot inside her cockpit, not baking.

Judging on the fly that he would cut away from her she fired another autocannon burst—and at the same time launched a missile volley from her torso 10-rack aimed to beat the zone he would run through if he

did.

Instead he turnedtoward her. Charging, he blasted on Ultra with both autocannon. Explosions smashed across Black Rose’s chest armor, rocking the hugeShrike back on its rear toes.

The ferro-fibrous plate was where she was hit; Malvina knew in a flash that her sibkin had done no serious damage. Nonetheless she uttered a shrill nasal scream, of outrage rather than alarm.

She triggered her whole battery: missiles, autocannon at double rate, both medium lasersLet him dodge faster than light.

He couldn’t, of course. Far less his fifty-five-ton ’Mech. Instead, he anticipated her again, jagging to her right. The root of Lily’s left right wing arced and sparked. The wing fell off.

With both wings retracted, the mass of the remaining left one did not even unbalance theGyrfalcon significantly. Not for a pilot of Aleks’ consummate skill.

“How are youdoing this?” she gritted, turning the Rose’s feet to keep tracking him. “You have never beaten me!”

“Times change, sibkin,”he said. “We change, quiaff?”

“Neg!You shall not win.” She blazed with the paired autocannon, tracking with the muzzles pointed exactly at him so that the bursts would overtake him if he cut tightly toward or away from her. Then she led him with an LRM volley.

The ice before his racing BattleMech erupted in a white cloud of ice splinters, snow and steam. Instead of shying away—and being smashed by her powerful weapons—he plunged straight ahead into the cloud.

He did not emerge from the other side.

Malvina poised, tense, waiting. An aerospace fighter fell smoking from the sky, to burst in yellow glaring billows against the hip of a conifer-clad peak several kilometers away. Malvina noted it in the compressed three-sixty display beneath her windscreen and never glanced its way.

“What do you play at, Aleksandr?” she demanded.

“It has been years since we played this way,”his voice said, “but all I learned I learned from you, my sister. Ten thousand times I lost to you; and now perhaps I shall lose— ”

Right in front of theShrike ’ s talons a crimson beam stabbed up through the ice. Its crack nearly deafened her within her cockpit.

Ultra autocannon fire chopped ice behind her right hip, drawing a curving curtain of glittering particles whose facets diffracted the pale sunlight and broke it into rainbow fragments.

“—more!”

Driven by the power of its MASC-augmented legs, theGyrfalcon pushed upward from the lake bed, fifteen meters beneath the surface, and slammed its fifty-five metric tons upward against the ice between the Black Rose and the jagged gape left by Aleks’ opening salvo. Ice squealed, groaned—and gave. As if the cuts Aleks had made with his large lasers were hinges, a great plate of ice beneath theShrike ’ s feet was driven up and over.

As was the ninety-five-ton BattleMech itself.

Malvina cried out, and then the monstrous machine crashed down on its side with an impact that pounded her into the side of her cockpit. She blacked out.

TheGyrfalcon ’s jump jets would not function under water. Instead, Aleksandr ran submerged to where the bed began sloping up toward the shore, blasted the ice clear to let his head and shoulders emerge as

he slowed to a walk. Slowly, shedding a great rippling skin of water, the Lily rose from the lake. When his jets were clear he jumped to stand beside the fallen Rose.

“I fear I have done you no kindness, sister dear,” he said softly. “But I could never hurt you.”

He raised the White Lily’s right foot and planted it on the Black Rose’s torso.

“I declare Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen the winner of this Trial of Refusal,”Bec Malthus said ponderously. “We shall conduct the invasion of Skye as he desires.”