Flight of the Falcon

27

Ceres Metals Fab 17 Warsaw Continent, Kimball II Prefecture IX The Republic of the Sphere 7 August 3134

Far away against a bank of slate-colored clouds whose tops were night, an orange flame glared like a second sun at the top of a flare tower burning off unused fractions of petroleum drawn from deep beneath the surface. The real sun had just descended below the horizon of the industrial waste-scape that surrounded the 305th Assault Cluster of the Gyrfalcon Galaxy as far as the eye could see.

It seemed to have dissolved into a pool of burning blood.

In his command post in a reinforced concrete building somewhere in the middle of Ceres Metals’ Fab 17 on the equatorial continent of Warsaw, on the world Kimball II, Star Colonel Noritomo Helmer flinched as a barrage of long-range missiles crunched in among his positions, even though the impacts fell half a klick away at the least.

He was losing it, he knew. To respond that way to mere artillery bombardment, and a distant one at that. The only reason he was not fighting hourly Trials of Position was that none of his subordinates wanted to take over in the face of the Cluster’s current situation.

Powlesscould do that to a warrior.

Snow began to fall again. It looked as if it would continue for a time, whitewashing earlier falls begrimed by industrial effluvia—where it hadn’t gone to muck from the boots and blood of men and women destroying each other without mercy. Not just with ’Mechs and artillery and tanks and hovercraft, nor even rifles and grenades. But also with bayonets and rifle butts, knives and tools and lengths of metal bar stock; boots, fists, teeth. The still air tasted of petroleum and was stale with death.

He turned away from the doorway and ducked into the red-lit depths of the command center.

It was not that he lacked the tools of his warrior’s trade, exactly, although hisPhoenix Hawk IIC

BattleMech had been rendered inoperable two days ago by Gauss-rifle hits from Ml Marksman tanks. It could probably be repaired—if they ever got out of the city-sized factory. But they lacked the appropriate parts.

A man with a sense of irony might have appreciated the poignancy of being caught in the middle of an immense complex devoted entirely to producing parts for engines of war, and being unable to repair one’s own machines for lack of the proper replacements. Star Colonel Noritomo Helmer was not such a man.

What he did appreciate was that he had made a crucial mistake.

There were two habitable worlds in the Kimball system, Kimball II and Kimball IV. Kimball IV was a miserable world, dry, with an unbreathable atmosphere, on which domed colonies were maintained purely to work the hugely productive mines, especially extracting bauxite. It had barely any population to speak of, not a soul more than was necessary to work the mines and keep those who worked the mines supplied with necessities. Kimball II was a glittering prize: a hot, wet, lush world, fabulously rich, with abundant agriculture, mining and heavy industry, and a population just over two and a half billion.

The problem with Kimball II was that it was a rich world with lots of heavy industry and a population of just over two and a half billion.

He should have gone for Kimball IV. It would have been an easy conquest and given him a shot at controlling traffic to and from Kimball II with his DropShips and fighters. At the very least, he would have had what his mission called for: a solid foothold in another Republican system. The Kimball II militia, geared toward defending its home world, would surely not have been able to dislodge him once he got good and dug in.

But it wasn’t the nature of Turkina’s brood to take an easy prize and then dig in. And Helmer was dazzled by the glitter of one of The Republic’s richest worlds.

The blame was not all his: when Khan Jana Pryde insisted on including Kimball among thedesant’s objectives, she surely never had the miserable rock Kimball IV in mind.

The Star Colonel had decided to grab Kimball II’s biggest prize first: Ceres Metals’ colossal Fab 17. From here, certainly, he could compel the surrender of the rest of the world.

Except he had lost a third of his warriors and machines simply gouging out a foothold in the complex. And although Warsaw continent lay remote from population centers, the Kimballites had rapidly reinforced their forces at the Fab in the face of stiff opposition by his aerospace fighters. Who suffered losses in their turn.

Now he was stuck in a grinding fight. And not just any battle, but a battle of attrition, worst nightmare of any Clan commander. It was a battle that for all the might of his machines and prowess of his warriors he could not win—because no matter how many the Kimballites lost, they had made it abundantly clear that they were willing to lose more. As many as it took to eradicate the hated invaders.

He had options. He still hadWhite Fist, the DropShip that had brought him to this cursed place. Indeed, it occupied almost the geometric center of his perimeter, like a gas giant ringed by moons—and like a giant planet seemed inexorably to be sucking his lines closer to it with each day that passed. He could have ordered his Cluster aboard and blasted away.

But that was not the Jade Falcon way. As he understood it, anyway.

He might, likewise, have followed his commander’s lead: sent White Fist aloft to rain destruction upon the people of Kimball II, burn their cities until they broke. But, although he worshipped the White Virgin as blindly as all the other Gyrfalcons, he lacked the heart. Indiscriminate slaughter of noncombatants also was not the Clan way.

Besides, while he was not a particularly reflective man, a truth had nonetheless stamped itself upon his brain: if he outraged the populace sufficiently, the sheer mass of their two and a half billion could simply swamp his puny handful of warriors, ’Mechs, and Elementals as if they’d been dropped in the planet’s abundant oceans.

He was not, needless to say, going to make the rendezvous at Skye.

A warrior rushed in the door of the Tactical Operations Center. “Sir,” she gasped, “we just had a runner from the Third Trinary. They are under heavy assault from the south. Enemies have infiltrated behind them through the sewers and cut their land lines, and are taking them under fire from the rear!” The Kimballites had power-jamming stations working from within the factory itself, making radio communications unreliable at best.

As she spoke, he heard a rise in the thump and crackle of distant battle. He stepped to the mouth of the bunker to see the flares of energy weapons underlighting the clouds, blue and green and scarlet.

The snow came down heavily now. A fat flake landed on his open left eyeball, stinging with cold until he blinked it away.

At least, he thought with grim satisfaction/ did my duty and sent off my JumpShip to inform my Galaxy Commander that we cannot join her for the invasion of Skye.

Even though it means we’re trapped in this Founder-forsaken system.

Heaven’s Gate

Ryde

7 August 3134

Anastasia Kerensky looked sharply out the window of the planetary police headquarters. “Is that Falcon still moving?” she demanded, staring narrow-eyed at a body hanging from one of the ornate cast-iron lampposts in the park outside. “It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

By the glow of the several surviving lights it was possible to tell that the trees were just budding out and the ground beneath was trodden bare. The mesh fence topped with razor-tape coils that had enclosed the makeshift holding pen for hostages, which the park had become under the military government Malvina Hazen had left behind, had been mostly trampled down.

Ian Murchison peered out the window. His expression was pinched, although whether with disapproval or something else Anastasia was hard-pressed to tell .Disapproval’s a part of it, certainly, she decided.

“I believe another citizen just shot at the body,” he said. “Or possibly struck it with a thrown brick. I can’t see whether there’s anyone close enough.”

“Do you object to the way I dealt with the Falcon garrison?” she asked, taking a bite from a local fruit, making a face at its sourness, and then taking another. “Or the way I allowed local justice to take its course with the survivors?”

“Mob action is never pretty.”

She shrugged. “I thought this particular mob action had its own esthetic. I found rolling Star Captain Simon in razor wire a particularly imaginative touch.”

Her personal medico grimaced.

“Ah, well. Each to his own tastes.” She cocked a brow at him. “Although I hardly think you’d have sympathy to waste on the Falcons, given what they did to this world.”

“I must confess I scarcely know how to feel about all this,” Murchison said. “That’shardly a new sensation for me, as you no doubt know.”

She shrugged and daintily spat the pit of the fruit she had just consumed into a metal wastebasket, where it rang.

“Iam disappointed we missed Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen,” she said. “I’m looking forward to making her acquaintance. But at least we know where she’s headed.”

She smiled, well,wolfishly . “And I have to admit it was damned thoughtful of the idiot subordinate she sent haring off to Kimball to provide us with a perfectly serviceableMerchant -class JumpShip. That by itself guarantees this little venture will prove a profitable one for the Steel Wolves.”

“It’s not what you came for.”

She looked at him through the gloom of the office. A fluorescent light winked on and off overhead like a tic in an eyelid. “No,” she said quietly, “it’s not. What I want is blood.”