Flight of the Falcon

33

New London Skye

15 August 3134

“Excuse me.”

At the softly spoken, almost diffident words the short, round-bellied man with the red muttonchops whirled. He still had a pair of black formal socks, gel-soled for comfort, clutched in a cheese-white hand. He had been on the verge of stuffing them into his valise on top of a hastily packed jumble of clothing and effects.

“Who the blazes are you?” Chief Minister Augustus Solvaig demanded. The fighting to the west was audible as a constant mutter of distant thunder, punctuated by distinctcrumps .

“No one,” said the man who had invaded the bedroom of the chief minister’s surprisingly modest bungalow on New London’s northwest side. “Just a fool. A knave, if you like.”

Eyes bugging from his pale, pitted cheeks, Solvaig sized him up. He didn’t look like much, only slightly taller than the chief minister himself, within a centimeter or so of average height for an adult Inner Sphere

male. His hair was dark, not long but not particularly short, receding from a widow’s peak. Yet his manner was confident beyond arrogance—beyond even the arrogance of a man who had strolled uninvited into the bedroom of the second most powerful man on Skye. And the black motorcycle leathers he wore were trimmed close to a figure that might have belonged to a professional gymnast, wide across the hips but flat of belly, carrying no slack.

“How did you get in?” Solvaig asked.

“Picked the lock.” He smiled and tipped the shades with the upward-angled half-oval lenses down his nose. His eyes were dark and Asian-shaped.

“And you, Mr. Chief Minister. What might you be doing?”

He waved around at the bedroom. Drawers hung open as if ransacked. Various possessions lay jumbled on the bed.

“Deserting a ship you think might be sinking?” He chuckled and shook his head. “Your pardon, Excellency; I malign you, I know. I should say, rather, that you’re taking advantage of the confusion to depart because your work here is done.”

His smile widened to expose his eyeteeth. “Your real work, that is.”

“Whatever you want,” the minister said, “I can make it worth your while to do nothing more than stand aside and allow me to walk out of here. Very worth your while indeed.”

Then his left hand snapped up from behind him holding a laser pistol. His right still held his socks. He presented the deadly energy gun for a pointblank hip shot as if he knew how to do it.

But the intruder, smiling blandly, was already sliding toward him like oil over water.

Close: too close.

Weston Heights

15 August 3134

Malvina Hazen still clung to life, if barely, when her sibkin, ignoring the shrill warnings of the radiation counter in his cooling vest, tenderly extracted her from the wreckage of her cockpit.

The enemy had already vanished back among the shattered apartment buildings. Aleks’ Zetas had secured the open ground. Lead elements of Turkina Keshik had come up as well; their Solahma and Eyrie infantry had begun probing into the built-up area.

A Turkina’s Beak VTOL touched down to dust the badly injured Galaxy Commander off to the Turkina Keshik landing zone. Aleks stooped to lay his sister gently on the stretcher. The blood that wrapped her body like a net came mostly, he had ascertained, from superficial cuts by flying fragments. But blood ran from her mouth, a bad sign, and herShrike ’s cockpit had been full of toxic gases, products of burning or heat-induced outgassing from internal components.

He knelt beside her, gazing down at her lovely and curiously peaceful face—as if this were the first true ease she had known in years, if not her life. Her pink, fever-flushed forehead already bloomed with

bruise-like petechiae, produced by radiation-sundered capillaries. In themselves, he knew, they signified little: they were temporary, and could be produced by minor exposure not otherwise harmful.

He brushed a stray lock of hair, its near-white pallor sullied by oil and char, from her forehead. Then he stood and signed for the medical techs to take her aboard the helo. It lifted in a swirl of dust.

“Let us go,” Aleks radioed his companions, once back in White Lily’s cockpit. “Time to finish this.”

New London

15 August 3134

“—fighting moved into the western suburbs of New London,” the impersonal news-voice said from the speakers of the burly Harley-Indian-Messerschmitt motorcycle. “Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner has vowed to turn the invaders back before they reach the city proper. ...”

Ten blocks away from the chief minister’s house the average-sized man put down a booted leather-clad leg as he swung the 1800-cc bike to a stop. The streets here were deserted. People were staying home, trusting to their Duke.

More fools they.

The man sat upright in the saddle and pushed his shades down his nose. A chill breeze blew snow in his face, and a choking stink of smoke. To the west a column of brownish-white smoke rose from a base that seemed as wide as a small city in itself. Its lower portion was lit from within by an unhealthy pallid-orange light, with flares like parti-colored lightning adding their hues at random intervals. The battle sounds had grown to a sussurating growl.

“It’s no concern of yours,” he said to himself. “Your job here’s done.”

As if in reply, a column of orange sparks shot into the air like an immense Roman candle. It was clearly closer than the smoke column. The crump and crackle of the serial blasts reached him far sooner than he wanted to hear them.

The news said the roads to the spaceport northeast of town, on the north shore of Thames Bay, were jammed up tight: it was why he had the radio on. So he told himself. If there was transport available off-world it could lift without concern: the JFs had left no ships in space near Skye to intercept them.

Nor were Falcon aerospace fighters a concern, although interlaced contrails and the occasional black smudge where one rocket jock had gotten lucky and another’s luck had all run out scored the sky high to the southwest. The New London spaceport was guarded so densely by heavy weapons and air-defense batteries that not even Falcon fighters cared to test it. Clanners abhorred waste, after all.

Of course, if any bottoms were lifting offworld, passage inboard them would be at a mad premium. But getting onto or off planets despite all obstacles was a specialty of the man on the big Elsie bike, which grumbled on idle as if eager to be off again.

It was far easier than, say, impersonating anaccountant . Even a forensic one. He suspected his superiors were deliberately tormenting him with his latest cover.

Then again, they’d have long since liquidated him, if he weren’t one of their top field operators.

“And much too professional,” he said aloud, “to let personal attachments get in the way.

“And then again,” he said as the raps of more explosions reached his ears, louder and sharper and from close enough by that he got a little after-ring of high-frequency harmonics in his ears, and even thought he felt a puff of dynamic overpressure on his face, “then again, the Falcon invasion threatens the whole Inner Sphere. Let them get their toehold here and their wholeTouman will follow—and how long will it take every holdout Crusader crazy and young glory hound from all the damned Clans to join the march toward the center, after that?

“And then again—” he sighed—“I’ve always been a romantic fool at heart.”

He turned his fat front tire to the west and all the fuss, and kicked the bike to roaring life.

Weston Heights 15 August 3134

Taking control of the advance, Bec Malthus showed no mean skill as a battle commander. He threw his fresh Turkina Keshik against the Highlanders and militia, driving them briskly back through the houses and schools and shops of Weston. Aleks’ troops followed in echelon left, supporting the Keshik and sending out Elemental patrols to mop up bypassed pockets of resistance.

Shocked by their charismatic leader-goddess’ fall, the Gyrfalcons had cracked right across. If there was one thing Malthus knew, it was Jade Falcon character; if he sent Delta Galaxy into battle again it would snap. Its men and women would hurl themselves shrieking on the nearest foe without thought of defense, not stopping until all were slain. Having at the moment no need for suicide attacks he sent the Gyrs off to the north to guard his flank—mainly to lurk in the woods, where they could assuage their raptor egos sniping at Duke Gregory and serve the authentic function of keeping him from aiding Countess Tara Campbell.

Tara Campbell, for her part, fought as good a withdrawal, maybe, as could be fought. She would have credited her troops, the steely skill of her Highlanders and the Seventh Skye Militia’s fury at the violation of their homes. The Garryowens hungered especially for revenge: their comrades had borne the brunt of the Falcon advance. Both the formerly careless and disreputable locals, now in their glory and fighting like tigers, and certain backwoodsmen from Northwind’s northern continent displayed a startling facility for rapidly improvised and savagely lethal booby traps.

Still, a fighting retreat, no matter how brilliant, is nothing more thanlosing slow . Turkina Keshik was proud, fresh and fearless. The defenders gave them as much as human flesh and Clan could stand, and more. When at last the Republicans broke contact and fell back upon their seminary hill, the Keshik warriors stopped to rest and tend their wounds.

So in the end it fell to Aleks’ once-despised Turkina’s Beak, tired but triumphant, to mount the last advance and seize the prize: the planet Skye.

***

Let Bacchus’ sons be not dismayed,

But join with me, each jovial blade—

Come, booze and sing and lend your aid To help me with the chorus.

The man whose name was not, any longer, Paul Laveau was well and trulyin the wind, riding flat out, leaning over the bars of the HIM cruiser and shouting a song into its teeth:

Instead of spa, we’ll drink brown ale And we’ll pay the reckoning on the nail;

For debt no man shall go to jail From Garryowen in glory!”

Okay, he admitted to himself.! lied to Tara when I said I didn’t know “Garryowen.” It was one of only two I told her.

Of course, the other was alittlemore substantial ....

He was so near the fighting now that a misaimed volley of LRMs brought down the facades of two trim brick houses, one yellow, one red, in the center of a cross-street block to his left as he passed. The racket of explosions and collapse could barely be distinguished for the general din.

Ahead of him, just half a kilometer away, he could see the hill with the seminary building on top of it and the Highland command post on the near slope. Just to his right stood Tara’s distinctiveHatchetman , with a bend in the weird tailfin assembly on its head crest. Five other BattleMechs stood or clanked around, getting set to meet the Falcon onslaught.

Much nearer to his left he saw a big Clan ’Mech striding among houses. His face split in a wide grin as he recognized an old friend among hostile strangers: “APhoenix Hawk IIC, by God!” Though the Falcons had it tarted up with that ridiculous hawk head—the wings it had already—they seemed to be sticking on all their new models and upgrades these days.

He stopped the bike, kicked down the stand, dismounted and opened the big panniers beside the rear tire. He removed certain items which he tucked into zippered pockets of his leather jacket and pants. One particular item he tucked, gingerly and not without a silent unbeliever’s prayer, inside the front of his waistband.

Then he remounted, retracted the kickstand, ripped the engine back to life, and sang:

We are the boys that take delight In smashing the Limerick lamps when lighting, And through the streets like scorchers fighting

Tearing all before us.

He rode full-throttle toward thePhoenix Hawk, just as if he knew what he was doing.

Or not.

“Countess,’”Duke Gregory’s gruff voice said, “we’re sorely pressed up here. Can you send us help?”

Tara straightened herHatchetman ’s legs to shoot its shoulder-mounted medium laser over the brow of the hill at a Bellona tank that had nosed forward between two houses to her right to try to get a shot at the seminary defenders. The shot gouged armor from the turret’s front. The hovertank fired its own large laser back, burning another track across the abused sod a few meters down-slope from where Tara’s machine lurked and sniped. It ducked back amid a blast of debris kicked up by its fans.

“Negative, your Grace,” Tara said, crouching again so that she could just peer over the blades of grass on the hilltop. “I’m sorry. But we’re about to get all we can handle here: looks as if they’re massing for a big push. If something breaks I’ll send you all I can as soon as I can, but beyond that I can’t make any promises.”

“Understood,”the Duke said promptly and without rancor. Under the stress of combat he behaved far more reasonably than most times Tara had dealt with him before, at least up until the very last few days.

Not that it was likely to mean much for long. “Here they come!” she heard somebody shout as the Duke signed off, from her external audio pickups, not over the radio net. And ’Mechs and vehicles and Elementals and infantry swarmed out of the battered houses as Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen mounted his attack on the planet Skye’s last line of defense.

“Give ’em hell, Highlanders!” she shouted. Republican ’Mechs and vehicles rushed forward to the crest to pour desperate fire upon the attackers.

Not Paul Laveau sang as he scaled the Phoenix Hawk:

We’ll break windows, we’ll break doors,

The watch knocked down by threes and fours,

Tonight the doctors work their cures.

And tinker up our bruises.

The light ’Mech stood at the rear of what looked like a supermarket, shooting its torso-mounted autocannon over the loading dock at a pair of Demon wheeled tanks. Its pilot, distracted, had not noticed Paul’s approach. Nor was the MechWarrior likely to even dream anyone would be rash enough to climb the machine’s back with a pair of gripper gloves. Paul wondered, briefly, what the Demon drivers made of the sight.

We’ll beat the bailiffs out offun,

We’ll make the mayor and sheriffs run We are the boys no man dares dun If he regards a whole skin.

It made him smile: that always was his favorite verse. Even if he couldn’t hear himself over the cannon yammer.

He had his rationalizations well in a row by then. It was not in his employers’ interests for the Falcons to get a grip anywhere in the Inner Sphere, Republic or otherwise. So he was permitted to do his chaotic part to spike their nefarious schemes.

When he reached theHawk ’s shoulder he was slightly breathless from the exertion of swarming up the enemy machine. Weeks of sedentary detective work had told on him. It certainly wasn’t trepidation: his illustrious great-grandmother, Cassie Southern, had taught him the fine points of taking on ’Mechs bare-handed as well aspentjak . Even if, unlike her, he was glad to keep his damned trousers on.

One of the Demons exploded. The other reversed hastily out of sight around a corner. Paul didn’t mind; he had been concerned they’d blast him shooting at thePhoenix Hawk . He sang to himself, scarcely voicing:

Our hearts so stout have got us fame,

For soon ’tis known from whence we came—

He planted his feet on thePhoenix Hawk ’s shoulder, hoping it wouldn’t decide to run anywhere, slapping his left hand against the cockpit armor to anchor himself. He bit the non-adhesive back of the right-hand gauntlet to loosen it from his hand, shook it free, let it drop. His freed hand reached for that which he carried in his waistband.

Where’er we go, they dread the name—

Yanking his left hand free, he used it to punch the rescue bar. The cockpit popped open with a hiss of equalizing air pressure.

The Mech Warrior turned with a look of utter astonishment—

Of Garryowen in glory.

Into the ruby flash of a laser pistol.

Tucking the pistol away again—because you just never knew when one of those might come in handy—Paul swung himself into the cockpit with his butt on the instrument panel. He punched the harness release and tumbled the decapitated body out into the now-cold winter air. A woman. It gave him a qualm, but no more than killing a man. He felt no guilt at taking the life of a Clan warrior, any more than he would a trachazoi pouncing with the intent of eating his brain. But he had resolved never to take killing a human being lightly.

He retrieved the neurohelmet set. Inside the cockpit was a mess. But the squeamishness had been trained out of him long ago, by harsher teachers than his great-grandmother.

At eighty tons theIIC mark ofPhoenix Hawk was the classicHawk on steroids. He was familiar with the basic modularized Clan control systems, and he had trained on simulators of just this model. He could drive it, except—

Like all BattleMechs, thePhoenix Hawk was secured by having its neurohelmet keyed solely to its assigned pilot’s brainwave patterns. It would respond to those patterns and only those unless reprogrammed. Overriding that protective system was an exceedingly difficult, tedious prospect.

From a pants pocket he took a device molded of off-white plastic, just smaller than his hand with fingers pressed together. He slid into the pilot’s couch and pressed the device against the inside of the neurohelmet. He pressed a contact pad on the white plastic object. A red light appeared.

’Jacking a BattleMech was highly tediousunless one’s employer provided one an exceedingly specialized, rare and classified piece of equipment. Then it wasn’t much challenge at all.

But it did take time. He forced himself to refamiliarize hands and feet with the analogue controls. It was not the return of the Demon or its friends that troubled him.

It was whether he’d get control of the purloined assault ’Mech in time to do any good. Because he could see from his vantage point that the final assault had begun in earnest. And things didnot look good for the home team.

“Skye Six, this is Skye Prime,”said the command post operator in Tara Campbell’s headset. Despite being crouched down fighting for her life, the Countess felt a stab of pride: the commo tech managed to maintain professional steadiness in her voice, despite the fact that her own existence was now measured by how long it took one of Aleks Hazen’s furiously attacking Zetas to cross the crest of the hill and take a shot at the fat, flimsily armored command crawler. The way things were on the hill, it would not be long. “Message incoming for you.”

For a momentTara ’s eyes were dazzled as some kind of warhead flashed nova right above her cockpit. The windscreen pitted but did not crack.

“I’m a little busy for chat, Skye Prime,” she radioed back, trying to blink away maroon dirigibles of afterimage. Had it been Duke Gregory on the horn he would have come in directly on the exclusive high-command push.

“Sender identifies herself as Galaxy Commander Anastasia Kerensky, commanding the Steel Wolves,”the voice said. It seemed to waver slightly.

WestonHeights

Skye

15 August 3134

The wholeworld seemed to waver around Countess Tara Campbell. “What?” she shouted.

“New London spaceport traffic control reports a force of unidentified DropShips approaching Skye on a trajectory that will bring them into atmosphere moving west above Thames Bay, Six.”

Just when I thought things couldn’tpossiblyget worse, Tara thought. “Put her on, Skye Prime.”

A moment; the white noise background subtly shifted value. Then a low, silken voice: “—Kerensky calling. Have you decided to pull your thumb out of your—”

“This is Countess Tara Campbell,”Tara broke in crisply. “So you’ve come to join in feasting on Skye’s corpse, have you? Are you the Steel Jackals, now, to feast on Falcon leavings? You’ve been skulking long enou—”

“Softly, softly.”The insufferable bitch actuallychuckled . “Is that any way to talk to your prospective savior, Countess, dear?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Kerensky? I don’t have much time—”

“No. You don’t. So listen fast and decide faster. We’re here for one thing: to drink Jade Falcon blood. My terms: amnesty— ”

“Never!”

“Shut up andhearme, little Countess! Amnesty for me and my people while we remain in Skye system. Also what isorlawe can grab from the Falcons. And afterwards—any generosity The Republic might care to extend will be appreciated.”

The Falcons had surged halfway up the slope in a maelstrom of noise and dust and flame: a dozen BattleMechs, untold vehicles riding turf-tearing treads or blasts of driven air, endangering the unpowered Clan infantry running flat out among them, as Elementals bounded in and out of the scrum. In its midst waded Aleks Hazen’s ’Mech, outrun by Zeta warriors who had lunged impatiently in front of him at his command to charge. He withheld his own fire, clearly saving himself for Tara Campbell.

Tara’s own forces were being pushed back.Slaughtered might be the word. She felt craven for cowering still in safety, yet her sole motive was to live long enough to die with her BattleMech’s hatchet buried in the head of Aleksandr Hazen’s ’Mech.

Yet now, the bloodstained claw of the costar of her deepest, darkest nightmares—Paladin Crow was the other—was extended toward her holding....

Hope?

“What do we get in return for that generosity?”

“Salvation. Decide, Countess. Take your time: five seconds.”

Clearly she must consult Duke Gregory before making any decision so momentous. “Yes,” she said. “Your word on the amnesty, Countess. Swear.”

“I swear on my honor as Countess Northwind—amnesty, damn you!”

“Bid well and done, sweet enemy.”

A brain-searing crack split the sky as a loneJagatai aerospace fighter streaked overhead, supersonic out of the east—blasting windows out of a quarter of New London—low enough that Tara’s eyes could actually make out the snarling metal wolf’s head painted on its airfoil undersurfaces. All action stopped on the battlefield as heads raised to stare.

Drive thunder drowned even the din of mechanized carnage. Blazing comets passed overhead, headed west and somewhat south: DropShips, descending rapidly to land. Not even Anastasia Kerensky was reckless enough to risk her ships in a direct duel with the Falcon landing craft. She did seem intent upon landing close enough to threaten them with a quick march of her forces.

The Falcons had to respond.Tara saw battle machines bearing the Turkina Keshik insignia turn away to race back to defend their landing zone. Beckett Malthus would not care to risk his ships.

But Aleksandr Hazen’s Turkina’s Beak warriors turned their faces forward and grimly pressed their advance. Aleks was just the sort of action-trivid hero to consider even his means of escape fair price to pay for victory and a world—or even glory, curse him.Tara did.

“I just sold my soul,” she said to herself, microphone squelched, “to the ravagers of my home world.

And they’ll never get here in time.”

A shadow swept over her from behind, upheld by lightning, so huge Tara cringed within her cockpit, fearing irrationally it was about to crush her. The squashed, vaguely aerodynamic oblong of a Broadsword BattleMech-carrier DropShip, an armored ovoid, overflew the battlefield at less than five hundred meters. It flayed the Falcons with missiles, lasers and particle projectors, as its own antimissile batteries exploded Falcon salvos and its massive armor shrugged off the lashings of energy beams. A single hatch opened in its flat belly. A squat black figure fell from it.

Blue-white jets flamed from the plummeting BattleMech’s sides. It slowed, but was still moving fast when it hit—right through the pitched roof of the seminary structure that had miraculously survived until now.

TheBroadsword swept on, black smoke streaming from smashed hardpoints but not sorely hurt, to pass out of view along the trail its comrades had blazed. Other BattleMechs fell from it, into the houses behind Turkina’s Beak. The near wall of the seminary building bulged, and then aRyoken II BattleMech strode forth in a cascade of bricks. Flashes rippled ’round it as its pilot blasted loose the explosive bolts which had clamped the short-burn-time rocket booster packs to the machine.

“Sorry,” Anastasia Kerensky radioed. “Had to break my fall. Put it on my tab.”

The BattleMech strode straight towardTara ’sHatchetman. Her belly clenched: her body awaited treachery. Instead theRyoken II halted a few meters away.

For a moment the two women warriors stood, confronting one another directly for the first time.

As if to mark the occasion the fighting ceased in the general area of the seminary structure. As intact Republican vehicles and BattleMechs came up to form a line on the hilltop flanking the two women, the Falcons formed a similar line facing them from below.

A hawk-head ’Mech stepped to the fore. Its whole body seemed to lean forward to thrust the autocannon and large lasers which were its arms toward its foe. A scarred and blistered insignia of a steel fist gripping a white lily was recognizable on its chest. The enemies appraised each other.

“Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen,”Tara said, voice booming fiercely through herHatchetman ’ s external speakers. “You and yours have fought superbly. Now spare your Clan further waste of brave warriors. You cannot win now, even if I fall. Agree to end this now, and to depart Skye system at once, and the Falcons may withdraw safely, with all your weapons and gear. My word of honor as field commander of The Republic’s armed forces on Skye.”

An amplified chuckle greeted her. “Your honor I trust as my own, Countess Tara Campbell. But what of the Wolf who stands at your side?”

Reflexively,Tara glanced at the image of the modifiedRyoken II . Her reflex was to say,I will answer for her as well —although her desire was to say,take careof her . Either might provoke her volatile enemy to turn on her, sparking a three-way battle that could see the Steel Wolves in possession of Skye.

Aleks saved her. “In any event, I must decline your offer with thanks, Tara Campbell. When have you known a Clan warrior to count the odds? Let us play out this game.”

“On your head be it,”Tara said. She added in a quick hiss over the radio, “He’s mine.”

“I’d as soon pluck one Falcon as another.”The Countess could almosthear her archrival shrug. “Knock yourself out. I’ve got your back.”

Undeterred by having just received possibly the least-reassuring reassurance in the history of human speech, Tara Campbell keyed her command channel, and cried, “In the name of Devlin Stone—charge”

She obeyed her own command, throttling herHatchetman into a full-speed run right at Aleks Hazen’s unfamiliar ’Mech. A beat, and both battle lines followed. Nasty Kerensky had her speakers on. She was laughing.

Aleks Hazen’s armament was powerful: if he simply stood his ground and fired he could take Tara’s BattleMech apart with his weapons before she could reach him. Instead, he ran to meet Tara, unwilling to stand while his warriors charged. Or that was how intel analysts explained it later, backed by reams of sociocultural analysis by all the best experts.

TheHatchetman shook convulsively to autocannon impacts. Tara’s cockpit filled with red glare as if her foe’s large lasers were shining their hell light right inside, from all the telltales warning her of danger and failures. She kept the ’Mech moving forward first with consummate skill and then purewill as it stumbled, slowed.

But Aleks was not shy about closing with her. Her whole ferro-glass viewscreen seemed to fill with the image of that hawk head, almost lost in the glare of laser beams and muzzle flame. She cocked her huge hatchet back another few degrees and brought it down, falling into the rushing ’Mech as much as striking with it.

She saw blue lightning arc as it sank home in the cockpit’s center. Felt a terrific j ar of impact transmitted up theHatchetman ’s arm. Then another fearsome clangorous impact as the running ’Mechs collided.

Her vision blanked. She was falling—

Approaching up the slope behind the rushing Falcons like a latecomer to the dance, Paul Laveau saw what Tara, her ’Mech lying with its limbs all tangled with its erstwhile foe’s, could not.

At their beloved leader’s fall the Zetas went berserk. But rather than trying to generally engage the Republican battle line, they converged on their beloved commander’s fallen ’Mech. Their only desire now, Paul guessed, was to recover Aleksandr’s body and ward off the disgrace of having it fall into enemy hands—or, infinitely worse, Steel Wolf claws.

But vengeance did not fail to occur to them. A camouflage-painted ZetaShadow Hawk IIC closed quickly upon Tara’s prone ’Mech, preparing to destroy her with its powerful laser battery and advanced tactical missiles. Determination not to defile Aleksandr Hazen’s corpse was likely all that was keeping the Zeta MechWarrior from pummeling her already.

What the Wolf Bitch—There’s a woman who knows how to make an entrance!—might do or not do to save her enemy and ally was moot: she was dueling coolly with a pair of tanks and a light ’Mech of a design unfamiliar to Paul. Though his stolenPhoenix Hawk was an assault ’Mech, Paul did not trust its armament—a pair of 10- centimeter autocannon and a machine gun, useless here—to neutralize the Shadow Hawk before it killed Tara.

He jumped.

“Tara!” he called over his loudspeakers. “Move!”

Tara Campbell felt as if she had been beaten with bats, but her breathing was normal if hurried and no blood seemed to be coming out anywhere but her left nostril. Her vision blocks blinked once and came back on as her external audio pickups relayed a warning in a familiar—if impossible—voice.

“Paul?” she said. She was already responding. Using arm and hip actuators, she rolled herHatchetman right off Aleks’ fallen machine. Unfortunately, the depleted-uranium blade of her hatchet was stuck in the ’Mech’s head. Nor could her ’Mech readily let go. She found herself on her back, stuck tight as a Vulture stopped to take aim. Worse, a big FalconPhoenix Hawk IIC was jumping in its eagerness to be in on the kill. She rolled theHatchetman wildly, trying to bring its torso-mounted weaponry to bear on an attacker. It was hopeless.

ThePhoenix Hawk smashed the long slender “toes” of its feet through the top of the Vulture ’s fuselage, peeling open the cockpit in a death-from-above attack. TheVulture toppled to its right.

TheHawk, knocked off its jump-jet thrust-columns, somersaulted over an astonished Tara in her Hatchetman .

“Watch that last step, Countess!”the inverted ’Mech said to her in Paul Laveau’s voice. Its eighty tons landed on its winged back with a crash that lifted Tara’s fallen ’Mech half a meter off the ground.

The movement worked her hatchet free of the cockpit that served as Aleks Hazen’s tomb. She scrambled her machine to its feet.

Without concern for their own survival, every Turkina’s Beak BattleMech, vehicle, Elemental and foot soldier in view seemed to be converging on their lost leader—and Tara. For the moment, though, the avenging fury of their fire was focused exclusively on the ’Mech that had committed such an inexplicable act of treachery.

ThePhoenix Hawk IIC lay supine, arms outspread, immobile. Then it vanished amid a storm of dirt and sod thrown up by volleys of rockets, short range as well as long. Dazzling beams of colored light stabbed and crackled into the maelstrom.

Rippling flashes illuminated the cloud of dirt and smoke as ammo stored in the fallen BattleMech’s torso lit off. It had a CASE system to vent ammo explosions out the back—but the armored hatches covering the vents were jammed, pinned closed against the soil of Skye by the ’Mech’s eighty tons.

“Paul!” Tara screamed. But he was beyond her help now—and she needed help herself just now, as a Star of enemy ’Mechs, led by aBlack Hawk bearing what looked like Ghost Bear emblems as well as Falcon ones, switched fire to her. HerHatchetman rocked as an Elemental battle suit landed on her right shoulder and clung like a giant stinging insect. It began ripping open her cockpit armor with its manipulator.

A blue beam touched it from behind theHatchetman . The battle armor came apart in a ball of black smoke and red flame, surrounded by a buzzing blue corona. Tara felt her short hair stand on end from her sweat-wet scalp as side current from the particle beam fluxed through her cockpit.

The squat shape of a seventy-five-tonRyoken II materialized at the Countess’ shoulder. A metallic wolfs-head emblem laughed on its side armor. “That should ensure you keep your end of the bargain,” Anastasia Kerensky’s voice said in Tara’s headset. “Not that I trust your nai 've honor any less than that gallant, dead nitwit did.”

Shoulder by shoulder the two women, mortal enemies until mere moments before—and no doubt again, in not much more time—fought the fanatically onrushing Zetas. Step by step they gave ground. Not even Anastasia Kerensky’s Wolf pride mandated she throw her life away for the dead husk of a Falcon hero.

Firing died away on the scarred and smoldering hillside as the Zetas swarmed around Aleksandr Hazen’s ’Mech. ThePhoenix Hawk lay ignored by his side, a smoking, shattered wreck. Looking at it, Tara felt a stinging in her eyes.

Elementals tore open the smashed cockpit with their hand-like manipulators. Gently, they extracted the body of their commander. They gave it into the open right palm of theBlack Hawk with the Ghost Bear insignia, which knelt to receive it. Then they retreated among the houses of Weston Heights, where smoke and explosions indicated their comrades were skirmishing with the Steel Wolves BattleMechs hot-dropped in their rear.

Ever the cagey battle leader, Anastasia Kerensky had ordered only a handful of her troops dropped: just enough to threaten Aleks’ rear and make clear even to stiff-necked Jade Falcons that the battle here was lost. But not enough to weaken her attempt to pirate a few of the valuable Falcon DropShips. She was

content to leave the fighting for the moment to the Steel Wolves, and agree with Tara Campbell’s command to her exhausted Highlanders and Garryowens to cease fire.

When Aleksandr Hazen’s honor guard vanished, she turned her ’Mech to face Tara’s and popped the hatch. TheRyoken II was savagely scarred by beam and blast; its right hand, which Anastasia lifted in mock of the Highlander salute, had been half melted by particle beams.

Tara likewise turned herHatchetman and opened her canopy. For the first time the two long-time antagonists looked at each other in the flesh.

“And so we meet, little Countess,” Anastasia Kerensky called. “You’re every bit as appealing as the trivids make you out to be, in an underfed, gamine way.”

“And you’re as striking as witnesses report, Anastasia Kerensky,” Tara said, “although one wonders if you can really fight unaugmented.”

The other scowled, then laughed. “I cede the last word to you,” Anastasia said. “It’s little enough.”

“In the name of The Republic of the Sphere,” Tara said in her most neutrally formal voice, “I thank you for your assistance. And—thank you for saving my life.”

Anastasia’s laughter was silver and malice. “Ahh, little Countess—but what if I missed my real target? It will long amuse me to imagine you tormenting yourself with wondering.”

The cockpit of theRyoken II closed and the ’Mech clanked into motion, turning away from Tara’s Hatchetman . “Well, I’m off for a spot of bird hunting.” Kerensky’s words came over Tara’s headset. “Remember that my word’s good if yours is.”

“My word is good,” Tara replied. “But once you’re out of the system—if our paths cross ever again, I’ll kill you.”

“But first you must catch me,” the Wolf Bitch shot back. “And then—we’ll see who kills whom.”

Her BattleMech strode away, leaving Tara standing alone.

Three hours later, the Falcon DropShips lifted from their primary landing zone, trading shots with Steel Wolf ’Mechs and armor as they rose up on pillars of flame through the black bellies of the clouds, which now poured down rain as if to cleanse the burned and blood-soaked soil of Skye. At the same time, Gyrfalcon landing craft took off from their LZ near the still-smoking pit of the Hemphill mine.

The Battle for Skye was over. The great Jade Falcondesant had fallen just short of its last objective.

New London

Skye

16 August 3134

“So she’s really gone?” Captain Tara Bishop sat half-upright in her hospital bed, which was folded up into a sort of recliner. Outside, the yellow morning-after sun of Skye shone on the season’s first fall of snow.

Tara Campbell nodded as she placed the giant bouquet she’d brought in a vase on a shelf across from the bed. “She’s really gone, along with all her little Steel Wolves. They broke orbit twelve hours after the Falcons lifted, headed for the pirate point they used to jump into the system to avoid tipping the Falcons they were here. Not to mention running afoul of the FalconNightlord ”

Tara Bishop shook her head. Her cheeks were gray and sunken and her hair hung lank—the latter an artifact of anesthetic from the surgery to pin together her broken right femur. All told, she had come out surprisingly well from being blasted by a half dozen Falcons: a few broken bones, scorched a bit around the edges. She was alive, unparalyzed and still had all her parts—which made her wounds minor in MechWarrior terms.

Nonetheless, Tara could see there was something wrong. She sensed a sadness in her friend.

“What is it, TB?” she asked gently. “What’s bothering you?”

The captain blinked three times rapidly and turned her face to the wall. “Nothing. Really, Countess.” “Don’t even try to run that past me,” Tara C said.

Tara Bishop shook her head on her pillow. “It’s nothing compared to the victory we won—you won—” “We won.”

“—not to mention the losses we took. Hell, I’m embarrassed to be malingering here when there are beds going begging for people who are really hurt.”

“A broken thighbone isn’t exactly goldbricking, Captain. And everybody’s accommodated: it took some improvisation, but New London’s a big city. And the overflow crit cases we airlifted up the coast to New Glasgow last night. Now: give.”

Tara Bishop sighed. “I can’t make myself stop thinking I’m Dispossessed now.” She spoke a MechWarrior’s greatest nightmare, right behind being burned alive trapped in the cockpit. A BattleMech had always been brutally hard to come by—and after Devlin Stone’s Redemption Program it had become a hundred times harder. “Like I say, I know it’s not much compared to what’s happened to so many people. And I always knew it was a risk, every time I strapped on my poorHunter ” She shrugged, unable to continue.

Tara C restrained a smile. “That’sit? You aren’t Dispossessed.”

Her friend looked at her sharply. “Don’t try to blow smoke up my—don’t try to sweet-talk me, Countess. I’ve spent enough hours in myPack Hunter to know she was dying when I punched out.”

The Countess nodded. “I’m sad to say we couldn’t salvage your BattleMech—”

“Then what—”

“—but we won, remember? There’s plenty of salvage, and nobody’d deny you earned a high spot on the list. You’ll have your pick of a variety of rides, courtesy of Clan Jade Falcon.”

Tara Bishop stared at her. Her eyes were huge; and hardened veteran that she was, she could not speak as they filled with tears. She looked at Tara as if the Countess had given her life itself.

To a MechWarrior, she had.

Tara Bishop gripped her friend and Countess by the hand, and held it tight.

Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner sat in his darkened office, smiling broadly.

It was not because of the great peril from which his planet and people had been delivered, nor yet because of the smashing victory he had taken part in winning against fearful odds—granted, with help from a most unlooked-for quarter. Or rather, they were not the immediate cause of the gleeful expression illuminated on his bearded visage by the light bleeding from the holovid stage.

Rather, it was the scene there reenacted: furious mobs smashing the windows and doors and trashing the ground floor of the New London planetary headquarters of Herrmanns AG Media.

While the rest of Skye’s mass media sang delirious praises of the world’s defenders, especially the ever-so-photogenic young noblewoman who had led them to victory (granted, alongside the equally photogenic young woman who until recently had been her bane and Galactic Enemy Number One), Herrmanns had raised the roof with shrill accusations that Countess Campbell deliberately let the Skye volunteers of the Forlorn Hope be slaughtered to preserve the lives and BattleMechs of her precious Highlanders.

The accusation particularly annoyed the Duke, and had no doubt deeply wounded the Countess, because it wastrue . As far as it went. What that fat simpering fool Arminius was not saying was that she had announced that as her intent from her very first appeals for recruits to theHimmelsfahrtkommando . The planwas to preserve her veterans—in sufficient strength to deliver a decisive blow to the invaders.

Skye’s other media organizations had turned Arminius von Herrmann’s own vitriol back on him, at redoubled pressure and scalding hot. Whether inspired by their denunciations or something else, the people of New London—and New Glasgow as well, 300 kilometers north—had taken matters into their own hands and rioted, attacking Herrmann’s facilities.

Certainly, the Duke’s own intelligence service had nothing to do with the riots. They had their hands full sorting through the aftermath of the invasion. Especially the Solvaig mess....

Sirens and whistles sounded from the holovid track. Down the street a Seventh Skye Militia Demon crept, its loudspeakers calling for order. Files of Garryowen and Ducal Guard infantry trotted alongside it, unarmed but still wearing their stained battle dress. The crowd gave reluctant way. It responded more quickly when a capturedEyrie appeared on the scene to back up the peacekeepers, wings spread to fill the street, barbaric Clan badges painted out and the flags of Skye and The Republic, and the Duke’s personal coat of arms, hastily but not unskillfully daubed onto its front armor.

The Duke was pleased at the several-layered stroke of propaganda, and also by the way his Guard and the Garryowens, who in former times had got along as well as Wolves and Jade Falcons, acted together in perfect unison and apparent comradeship. Still, it was too damned bad they had to intervene,

especially before one or another mob caught Arminius and tossed his fat ass in a blanket for a while. But order must be preserved, even at such cost.

Duke Gregory sat back in his chair, massaged his temples with the tips of his blunt, powerful fingers. The chair itself, sensing his muscular tension, began a motorized massage of his shoulders and upper back.

The riot coverage faded, replaced by a bust of Skye’s late chief minister. Apparently, the stress of readying Skye to defend itself against horrible odds had caused the great man to break down, the female newsreader said in a plum-mily regretful voiceover: he had been found dead in his apartment after the battle, an apparent suicide.

The Duke muted the soundAh, Augustus , he thought,at least you were considerate enough to spare the world you betrayed the agony of a public trial. Although it was a damned shame, Duke Gregory felt, to be cheated of the subsequent public execution. The Duke would havepaid for ringside tickets when his former chief minister—and friend—went to the wall.

But Augustus Solvaig had stolen a march on the firing party, vaporizing the upper half of his balding head with a laser pistol.

He had left behind abundant evidence, at his flat and in his palace office, that he was a mole planted in the Duke’s cabinet by the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth branch of SAFE, the former FWL intel service. A dispatch not yet encrypted for sending off-world told how he had done what he could to weaken Skye’s defenses against the Jade Falcons. He believed that a successful Clan invasion of The Republic through Steiner space could greatly aid both resistance against the aggression SAFE knew the Lyrans planned against Marik-Stewart domains, and future Marik-Stewart efforts to reclaim territory from The Republic itself.

Nothing he left gave a clue, however, as to why he’d blown his head off at the very moment his schemes were being consummated. Forensic pathologists judged that he had died sometime around the battle’s height, when a Falcon victory seemed all but certain.

Duke Gregory lowered his hands to his lap. He wore a heavy burgundy robe over a pair of light blue silk pajamas. It was late in the day for him to be lounging about watching videos, and duty would soon enough draw him out of his warm, dark office into the cool light of day. But for now—this was what he paid his staff for, dammit.

Jasek, he thought unbidden. The boy never liked Augustus a damn . The lad had just been entering adolescence, head swimming with lurid tales of the glories of House Steiner, when Augustus Solvaig had appeared from the obscurity of the planetary government’s bureaucracy and begun his rise to prominence—and increasing access to the innermost councils of the Governor of Skye and ruler of Prefecture IX. Jasek thought Solvaig was a rodent, and said so, in that forthright way of his.

He was in many ways a reflection of his old man, Jasek was—and the reflection was not to the father’s discredit. The boy had passion, after all, and the courage of his convictions, and the wherewithal to act upon them. That counted for something, even if he had turned his back on his own father and The Republic which both had sworn to serve.

His defection had left the planet cruelly exposed. No denying it. Yet Skye had pulled through.

Much as the Duke resented Tara Campbell and her Highlanders as interlopers when they first arrived, they saved Skye. In post-battle interviews, Countess Northwind had lavished most of the credit upon

The Republic Skye Militia, and the Duke himself.

Well, if I’m going to admit I was wrong, I might as well make a habit of it,Duke Gregory thought. Within reasonable limits, of course.

He rubbed thoughtfully at his bearded chin. Sometime after the battle, the Countess had mentioned to him in passing that she doubted House Steiner had designs upon either Prefecture IX or Skye. That seemed confirmed by Solvaig’s report to his secret masters: they planned to jump the Mariks. No skin off of any portion of Duke Gregory’s anatomy, withal.

The Stormhammers, the army Jasek had ... extracted from Skye’s armed forces, based themselves upon Nusakan, Terra-wards from Skye—not far from Falcon-held Zebebelgenubi, in fact. Perhaps, the Duke thought, he could get discreet word to the boy, make overtures toward reopening communications.

Falcon captives, holding themselves bondsmen and women, had explained the scheme to grab a foothold in The Republic, in hope of a follow-up by the whole FalconTouman. They may not have Skye, the Duke thought,but they have themselves a foothold, and no mistake . The Falcons still held worlds in Prefectures VIII and IX, and even Chaffee in the Commonwealth.

The Republic had not heard the last of Clan Jade Falcon. When they heard more, it would be well to have Jasek Kelswa-Steiner standing at his father’s shoulder against them.

The Duke made mental note to order that planning for certain contingencies cease at once—and that all evidence of that planning be destroyed.

For some reason his mind went back to the police, and later intelligence, reports from the scene of Augustus Solvaig’s demise. It seemed that, on the bureau in his bedroom, near where the body lay, a single playing card had been discovered. No one had any idea what it meant. No decks of cards were found among the chief minister’s effects. So far as the Duke knew, Solvaig didn’town a pack of cards. He was not given to games of chance. Except, perhaps, the ultimate one.

It was a false note, a loose end, and Duke Gregory vigorously detested both. Still, the universe was full of questions he was never going to learn the answer to, no matter how that vexed him. The card was doubtless of no significance whatever; perhaps it had been left there by some fool of a patrol policeman early on the scene.

He picked up the remote control. Surely, there was time to watch the crowds busting Arminius von Herrmann’s windows once more before duty dragged him back to the weary business of helping his world recover from the invasion.

“Countess Campbell?”

In an airy hospital corridor, well lighted by tall windows along one wall, Tara Campbell, walking with her head down in thought, paused and turned to see Legate Stanford Eckard overtaking her.

“Legate,” she said with a smile. “Good day to you.”

“And to you, Countess. I am pleased to find you here.”

She made an agreeable noise. She was still distracted: thinking about Paul. How he happened to materialize on the battlefield just in time to save her was as big and apparently unsolveable a mystery as

how he happened to know how to pilot a Clan BattleMech—or how he’d got hold of one in the first place.

They had grown close, these last few weeks, very close. He was the first man the Countess had let anywhere near, emotionally since .. . since Northwind. Now he was dead, in saving her, and she mourned for him.

And for what might have been.

She shook off her grief. “How may I help you, Legate?” she asked.

He smiled. “You have helped more than words can possibly express already. I have thanked you before for saving Skye; I do so now, and intend to do yet again.”

His manner grew grave. “I have received a report from Republican intelligence. With matters as up-in-the-air as they are, I am not sure it would reach you through normal channels, although doubtless it is intended to.”

He handed her a flimsy piece of paper, pale yellow. With a quizzical glance at him she held it up and read.

Her eyes skipped quickly over EYES ONLY and TOP SECRET and various routing codes and time/rate stamps, and got right to the meat: a warning that an operative of Loki, the terrorist branch of House Steiner’s intelligence service, might be en route to or have arrived on Skye. His mission was unknown. Threat-assessment was low: House Steiner maintained a neutral-to-friendly stance toward The Republic, blah, blah. But alertness was in order, since Loki had been known to have its own agenda.

Although his actual identity was unknown, this operator was familiar to counterintelligence agencies throughout the Inner Sphere as the Knave of Hearts. Some Republican security experts, the report indicated, doubted his very existence, believing him to be pure Lyran Intelligence Corps disinformation, a bogeyman to frighten the Liao, the Mar-iks and of course the Davies. But several sightings deemed moderately reliable indicated his appearance was that of an ethnic-Asian male in his thirties, medium height and athletic build, no other distinguishing characteristics....

“Countess?” The Legate’s own Asian face mirrored the perplexity in his voice. “Are you quite all right?” She raised her face to his. She blinked her eyes at sudden moisture. But her mouth smiled.

“It’s nothing, Legate Eckard,” she said. “Just emotional aftershocks from yesterday.”

Legate Eckard nodded. “I see,” he said. Plainly he didn’t.

She remembered, of a sudden, forensic reports from Solvaig’s residence, and the unexplained presence of a playing card: a jack of hearts.

Paul, she was thinking.you bastard . Yet the thought lacked heat.

You lied to me.

Still, she knew that—unlike a certain other—he had never betrayed her.

Any more than he had died yesterday on Seminary Hill when his stolenPhoenix Hawk IIC exploded. She felt certain of that now, irrationally perhaps. No body had been found. It had seemed neither surprising nor mysterious at the time: another stone added to the crushing weight of post-battle depression that followed victory as surely as defeat, once adrenaline subsided.

Smiling, she thanked the Legate and handed him back his scrap of paper, now crumpled from her brief fierce grip. Then, head held high, she strode off down the sunlit corridor, leaving the Legate looking curiously after her.

“There you go, Rabbi Martinez,” the travel agent said, handing a chip encased in clear protective plastic to the red-bearded man in the heavy winter coat trimmed with lustrous black direbeast fur from the northern forests of Skye. “Your passage aboard the DropShipGrimalkin day after tomorrow, continuing to Syrma aboard the Gold Star Lines JumpShipIlluminatus Prime ”

He smiled. “Have a safe and pleasant journey home.” It had been centuries since anyone would have found anything remarkable about a rabbi being named Martinez, any more than that he should have red hair. Or eyes of distinctively Asian shape, albeit a piercing jade green in color.

“Thank you kindly, young man,” the rabbi said, with an accent indicating his origin was in the northwest quadrant of Syrma’s northerly continent Amygdala. “I must admit I am eager to return home. I fear I found my sojourn here far more adventurous than I anticipated.”

The agent bobbed his sleek head and laughed. “It’s been that way for all of us, Rabbi.”

Saying a last farewell, the man turned and pushed his way into the bright, cold morning. He walked down the street in the direction of New London’s most discreetly luxurious hotel.

The man who had just displayed credentials establishing his identity beyond question as Rabbi Yitzhak Martinez, of Talwin, Syrma, Prefecture VIII of The Republic of the Sphere was indeed headed home. His home just wasn’t Syrma.

He should, no doubt, have checked a certain cavity behind a certain loose stone in a certain retaining wall beside Thames Bay, to see if a new assignment awaited him. But to Hell with that: he had a vacation coming. What could his superiors do, send him on a suicide mission?

They’d long since tired of tryingthat .

He intended to live as high and handsomely as possible for a month or three. Nor would the comptrollers have a gripe about that: it wasn’t coming out oftheir tight fists, clutched like a drowner’s upon the Archon’s black budget.

He didn’t know precisely where the late and thoroughly unlamented Augustus Solvaig had come by his pile of fine rubies and emeralds from Skye’s mines, worth far more than their mass in gold. He did know the minister wouldn’t be having any further use for them.

He paused to gaze into a display window. A trivid set inside showed a petite, pretty woman with short, platinum-blond hair being interviewed by reporters. He stood a moment, hands in his pockets, watching.

Then he touched the brim of his fedora, turned, and stepped right out with his cane tucked underneath his arm. It was a good day to be alive. He had long ago learned to appreciate each new day he got; “good” was just a bonus.

No passersby thought it strange he was whistling “Garryowen.” It was on everyone’s lips, these days. Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon Zenith Jump Point Orbit Skye

21 August 3134

“Welcome back to the ranks of the living, Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen,” Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus said warmly, coming into the stateroom in his flagship, which had been converted to a convalescence chamber. “I came as soon as our medical technicians announced you had resumed consciousness.”

The room was dark, lit only by discreet butter-colored lights near the floor. Malvina sat upright in the bed, with a white smock hanging loosely on her shoulders, as if she had shrunk. The eyes she turned to him were like ports open to the endless night outside the hull.

“We ride a spaceship,” she said. “By that very fact I know we failed.”

“Not so,” Malthus said. “First, though, I regret I must inform you that your sibkin, Galaxy Commander Aleksandr Hazen, died a death worthy of Clan Jade Falcon and the Bloodname you both shared on Skye.”

She closed her eyes briefly. “I know,” she said. “I saw him die. In a dream.”

He nodded. If he doubted, he was not one to say so. Especially not to this woman at this time.

“How can you say that we have not failed?” she demanded. “Has all life been burned from the face of Skye?”

“Oh, no. We left scarcely a mark. Yet the battle for Skye was an epic one,” he said in honeyed tones, “which will long be sung in the Falcon’s nests. And while ourdesant fell short of conquering Skye, it succeeded in its most significant objectives: Chaffee, Ryde, Zebebelgenubi, Alkaid, Summer, Glengarry: we hold all these worlds yet, with the Kimball II system doubtless soon to fall if it has not done so already. We hold a beachhead in Republic space. Khan Jana Pryde will deem the initiative a success.”

He smiled broadly. “Once she receives the report I am drafting.

“In all candor, Aleks’ death was his last great service, to the Falcon and to us personally. He has given himself to be accountable for our setback upon Skye, as well as a martyr of the first magnitude. Not only was his death, facing two famed enemy MechWarriors, so immaculate as to erase all taint that might accrue to his reputation through defeat, but one of his killers was none other than the Steel Wolf Anastasia Kerensky—than whom no more perfect Jade Falcon hate-object could possibly be devised.”

He started to say more—how glory, acclaim and historical immortality would be the outcome of the Falcon’s Flight, not infamy at all. And how all should accrue to the ristar Malvina Hazen, the Falcon’s remaining Eye, whose very survival would be deemed miraculous in Clan Jade Falcon’s Remembrance....

But when she looked at him with pale fire in her eyes, the words died in his throat. He held himself lucky indeed they were all that died then.

“Do you not see how little that means to me?” she demanded. “I would see them destroyed.”

“Whom?” Bec Malthus asked.

“Skye. You. Us . Clan Jade Falcon. I would see us exterminated and our genetic material poured into the foulest cesspool in existence. I would see the Clans destroyed. I would see the crawling maggots of the Inner Sphere destroyed. I would destroy them all. All!”

She ran her hands up over her face, her fingers back through her hair. “And most of all I would destroy myself”

He stared in horror. “It is the sickness speaking, Galaxy Commander. You cannot mean—”

“I do! I mean it all and more! I would cleanse the universe of the blight of humanity with purifying fire—the fire of suns, if I could. There is only one in all the universe I would have spared. And he died. Trying to save me!

“Is that not a delicious irony?”

She put her face in her hands and wept as if to turn herself inside out.

He stood by, bearded broad face immobile. A normal Clansman would have been shocked, disdainful at such a display of weakness by a heroine so acclaimed.

Bec Malthus sought to hide, not contempt, but exultation. He did not misread her passion for weakness, as his fool Clansfolk would. In this small woman he sawpower —power beyond imagining, could he but channel it.

And he was just the man to do it.

When Malvina’s rage and grief subsided enough to let her hear, he said, “You shall have what you desire,” very softly.

She lowered her hands slowly and looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“All,” he said. “I perceive in you the certainty of infinite clarity. In the purity of your hate, I find redemption. The worlds of Man lie at your feet. You shall trample them.”

She rose, her face too proud to show the pain her body betrayed by its stiffness and slowness. “Have you heard nothing of what I said? I reject Clan customs and titles. I reject all!”

“But you hold within you the key to infinite power, Malvina Hazen. Its light burns within you with a terrible beauty. It has transformed me.

“You have already bound your Gyrfalcons to your will—bound the whole Expeditionary Force, when you spoke heresy against even the Founder and none called for your downfall. You hold the ability in your hand to devastate, and destroy, and master all. Your anger and your hate give you that power. And

when you have conquered you may do as you will.”

“And you will serve me, to gain what I desire?”

“With all my heart. You are, I now see, the destiny of Jade Falcon—of all humanity. Humankind shall be united, once and forever, beneath the banner of theChingis Khan : Emperor of All.”

“I shall master them,” she said in a voice that rang from the bulkheads, “but only to destroy them.”

He folded hands over his breast and bowed his head. “It shall be as you command,” he said.

Inside, his heart sang triumph.

About the Author

First, last, and always, Victor Milan thanks his friends and fans who have loyally supported him for so long.

As a child, Victor fixated on the idea that it was possible to write thrilling action-adventure stories that people didn’t have to turn off their brains to enjoy. He’s spent the last three decades doing his best to prove it by writing novels and stories to excite—not insult—intelligent readers.

Born inTulsa,Oklahoma , Victor spent most of his first couple of years of life inPuerto Rico . As a child he moved toSanta Fe,New Mexico . Shortly thereafter his family relocated toAlbuquerque , where he’s lived, with a few interruptions, happily since.

In 2004, Victor will celebrate thirty years as a professional writer. Other gigs along the road have included cowboy, semipro actor, artist, bouncer, computer techie, andAlbuquerque ’s most popular all-night progressive rock deejay. He’s also trained as a machinist.

Mostly he writes: more than eighty novels published so far, from pseudonymous adventure series, such asThe Guardians , and installments in the currentDeathlands andOutlanders series (most recentlySun Lord [May 2004]) to the award-winning SF novel The Cybernetic Samurai and its sequel, The Cybernetic Shogun. Victor has also written historical novels, westerns,Star Trek and D&D novels, the cult-favorite Black Dragon trilogy of BattleTech novels, and the technothrillerRed Sands . He’s a charter member of the Wild Cards mafia.

Victor Milan has a public side as well. For more than twenty years, he has served as master of ceremonies forSt. Louis science-fiction convention Archon’s Masquerade, proud to play a part in making it the world-class show it is. His inventive interpretive readings of his tales have begun attracting audiences, as has his “You Can Be a Writer” lecture tour.

When he’s not entertaining his growing and much-appreciated cadre of fans, Victor enjoys playing taijiquan , birding, ferrets, guns, and riding his recumbent tadpole tricycle throughAlbuquerque ’s scenicNorthValley .And, of course, his lifelong passion,reading .

“TheGreat Broadway Corpse Drive ,” the first story of Victor Milan’s darkly humorous contemporary-fantasy cycleGhost Hunters, can be read in splendidly illustrated form on his Web site,

www.victormilan.com. Currently he’s hard at play writing his high fantasy novelThe Dinosaur Lords. He’s a nice guy. Let him entertain you.

Thanks for reading.

Victor Milan