Victor Milan - BattleTech - Mechwarrior - Dark Age 10 - Flight of the Falcon

Mechwarrior - The Dark Ages

10 - Flight of the Falcon (2004)

Synopsis:

PART ONE Maskirovka

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

PART TWO Desant

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9

10

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12

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PART THREE Yarak

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About the Author

10 - Flight of the Falcon (2004)

By Victor Milan

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Synopsis:

In the tenth novel in the popular MechWarrior series, Clan Jade Falcon returns to destroy the Steel

Wolves once and for all. But their true goal is Skye, the capital of the Republic.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s

imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Flight of the Falcon

AROC Book / published by arrangement with the author

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without

permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and

could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street,New York ,New York10014.

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is

http://www.penguinputnam.com

ISBN:0-7865-5114-3

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AROC BOOK®

ROCBooks first published by The ROC Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street,New York ,New York10014.

ROCand the “ROC” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

Electronic edition: August, 2004

For the splendiferous Sauer family: Eric, Jeannie, Frank

and, of course, Michelle.

Just because.

An Enlightened One is an arrow aimed at Hell.

—Japanese proverb

PART ONE Maskirovka

“A means of securing the combat operations and daily activity of forces; a complex of measures

designed to mislead the enemy as to the presence and disposition of forces and various military objects,

their condition, combat readiness and operations and also the plans of the commander.”

—Soviet Military Encyclopaedia, Terra, 1978

1

Lyran Commonwealth Chartered JumpShipFaust von Himmel

Approaching Zenith Jump Point outbound

Summit

LyranCommonwealth

4 March 3134

“Three hundred minutes to jump.”

As the automated warning rang through the bridge of the Lyran Commonwealth-chartered merchant

JumpShipFaust von Himmel, the tall, almost spectrally lean black captain turned and nodded to his

short, square executive officer.

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“Give the order to begin securing for transition,Herr Sánchez. Alert all DropShips to prepare to

departSummit system in five hours.”

“Jawohl, KapitänGrünblum!” The exec gave him a salute like an ax blow, then turned to relay the

command to the helmsman sitting at his station. His square-cut beard, white as the first snow of winter on

the captain’s homeworld ofLudwigshafen , wagged emphatically to the rhythm of his words.

The captain smiled behind his own neat beard, in which he had recently, to his chagrin, found a single

gray hair. In the thirty-second century such repetition of orders, to a crewwoman clearly in earshot and

regarding a procedure the computers would handle by themselves unless a human intervened, might have

seemed a quaint relic.

To an amateur.

Early on in his twenty-three proud years wearing themidnight black of the Lyran Commonwealth

Merchant Marine, Bernhard Grünblum had learned to take nothing of space for granted. It had been

crucial to his earning his Master and Commander rating after a nearly unprecedented eight years. It had

also enabled him to captain theFaust , her crew—including his wife and three children, although the

children were too young to take up shipboard duties yet—and the DropShips they carried like a mother

opossum, safely through hundreds of jumps across the Inner Sphere in the five years since he had taken

command.Redundant, yes; quaint, never.

Because space had a hundred thousand ways to kill you; and even though humankind had largely turned

its back on galactic exploration, one thing humans kept discovering was brand-new ways to die in the

long, cold night among the stars.

Nor had spacefarers merely the mischances and caprices of the universe to fear. Man’s most dangerous

threats, as ever, came from other men. Even though he and all his crew had grown up during the era of

relative peace imposed upon the Inner Sphere by the will of Devlin Stone and The Republic he had called

into being at the core of human-settled space, they still knew what it was to be menaced by human

sharks.

And now that interregnum of relative order and safety had ended. War had returned to human space,

and with it, all its attendant evils.

The void’s chill seemed to seep into the brightly lit bridge, even as the bridge hummed around him like a

finely tuned machine. Of all things he knew,Kapitän Grünblum most hateddisorder . And while the hand

of House Steiner—strong and alone, undiluted by a mad attempt to share power with the Davions, as in

his grandfather’s day—so far held firm within the Lyran Commonwealth, dark days had been seen

already.

He feared his children would see worse.

He shook his head as if to clear it. Ach so,Berni, why cloud your mind with unpleasant thoughts?

The cosmos lies before us, waiting. You have all that any man could desire: a fine ship, prosperous

trade routes, and of course Kimiko and our children, Winfried and Tamiko and Taro. Taro, eldest

son and pride of a loving father’s heart, soon to be old enough to leave the Faustfor his own

midshipman cruise . . . .

Klaxon blare filled the bridge with a pounding pulse of noise. Grünblum scowled.

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“What is it?” he demanded of Leutnant Liu, who had the helm.

Her report was icily professional as always. “Infrared detectors have picked up turbulence indicating an

imminent emergence at the jump point, Captain.” And then the merest shadow flicked across that

carven-ivory countenance. “Several emergences, sir.”

“Ensign Kohl, bring up video from the sail-mounted cameras on the main viewing screen, if you please.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän!”

The sensor station duty officer plied his keyboard. He was a youngster just out of the Merchant Marine

Academy on Tharkad. This was his first cruise as a fully commissioned officer of the merchant fleet,

although he had put in his time as a middie, of course.

The giant screen that dominated the bridge’s forward bulkhead lit with stars. To Grünblum’s eye it was a

reassuring sight; he was as familiar with the constellations lying beyond theSummit jump point as with his

own cabin.

A new star appeared. It brightened perceptibly. A JumpShip deploying her kilometer-wide sail to

recharge her Kearny-Fuchida drive capacitors for the next jump of her route. Nothing unusual or sinister

there.

However: “We’re getting continual preemergence thermal releases, Captain,” Ensign Kohl said. “A half

dozen signatures or more.”

Grünblum frowned. In his long career, happenstance multiple emergences were rare. He could recall

only one or at most two circumstances in which he had observed more than one vessel appearing at a

jump point at nearly the same instant, or even within hours of one another, even before the collapse of the

HPG network and the attendant depression of trade as planets turned their attention inward. Unless the

JumpShips were traveling together in a fleet. And even though the Lyran economy, characteristically, had

begun to rebound more strongly than any other Inner Sphere power’s, why should more than one

merchant JumpShip appear here now?

He hated surprises. The unexpected was disorderly.

“Bring up the visual gain, Ensign, if you please.”

Other novas blossomed: one, two, several, a miniature constellation of sails reflecting the light ofSummit

’s faraway primary. Then all were eclipsed as the bridge computer enlarged the first sail’s image.

“Himmel Herr Gott sei dank!”the white-bearded exec exclaimed, and crossed himself.

“ANightlord ,” Ensign Kohl breathed reverently. “The largest of all Clan WarShips. I never dared hope

to see one!”

“The Clans?” somebody repeated with a stutter of dread.

Captain Grünblum stared, stunned wordless. He himself had no idea whether the youth’s identification

was correct. The Inner Sphere possessed few WarShips at all, and no Clan WarShip had been seen in

the Sphere since the early days of the Invasion eighty years before. Yet this JumpShip was unmistakably

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a ship of war, fantastically huge and bristling with heavy-weapons hardpoints. Upon the inner surface of

her sail glowed the bird-of-prey and katana emblem that in all the universe of Man meant one thing and

one thing only. Clan Jade Falcon had come toSummit , bringing a full-blown fleet of war.

Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon

Summit Jump Point orbit

4 March 3134

“It was an aberration that allowed two sibkin to win Bloodnames,” the giant man said in a voice like

shifting boulders, as comrades helped him shed a tunic that bore the insignia of a screaming jade falcon

with a naked katana clutched in her claws, set against a blue-shadowed planet. “I intend to rectify that

error now, Aleksandr so-called Hazen.”

The man on the opposite surface from the nearly naked mountain of bone and muscle, like him standing

with the flexible magnetic soles of ship slippers binding him to the empty cargo bay’s bulkhead, would, in

comparison to a normal human, be considered extremely tall and imposingly muscled. His physique was

well displayed in the brief trunks, which were all he wore. His skin was olive, tanned rich brown, his hair

a shaggy hank of raven’s-wing black, so coarse that it stood off his forehead of its own accord. His face

was broad-jawed and handsome as a trivid actor’s.

He smiled.

“You are a brave warrior, Star Captain Lopata,” he said, addressing the monster as if it were the huge

man who stood at blatant disadvantage. “I salute your courage and your dedication to upholding the

traditions of Clan Jade Falcon. Yet you display erroneous beliefs concerning the duties incumbent on a

Trueborn warrior. It now becomes my solemn duty to instruct you.”

The Circle of Equals, a few Bloodnamed mingled among the other warriors, kept the chiseled-in-stone

impassivity their ceremonial task required. But the Elemental’s supporters, like him officers of the elite

Turkina Keshik, scowled and murmured hotly to one another at the smaller man’s astonishing

impudence—though in fact he far outranked a Star Captain. The less numerous contingent backing the

commander of Turkina’s Beak, the green Zeta Galaxy, hid smiles behind their fists. All except for a

red-bearded man even larger than Aleks Hazen’s opponent—his guffaw made the metal hull ring like

crystal.

Thinking himself mocked, the Elemental Star Captain bellowed like a wounded ghost bear and launched

himself into the air. Halfway to his opponent he wrapped himself into a giant ball, prepared to turn and

land on his own magnetic-slippered feet.

A smile still faintly visible on his lips, Aleks stood waiting.

Three meters away the Elemental starfished open his limbs. Having noted the slight ripple of tension

among the great muscles of his bare back, Aleks was already moving, gathering himself and springing

away at an angle.

Lopata landed with a thud that seemed to the onlookers to reverberate through the great starship’s

whole fabric.

The bay was a cube with rounded corners and one rounded surface: the WarShip’s hull itself. Its

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cavernous depths seemed to suck up light despite additional floods brought in for the duel. Aleks landed

agilely on all fours at an angle above his opponent, light as a spider.

“Flee all you want, little man,” Lopata said. “Disgrace yourself like thechalcas you are. In the end I will

do the Falcon the great service of crushing you.”

He launched himself. Aleks awaited him, crouched and grinning. Before the hurtling giant reached him,

he leapt again.

“Your knowledge of tactics is flawed, my friend,” Aleks said, standing at an angle to the Elemental with

hands on hips as the giant raised himself. He had come within a hair of scattering some of his own

supporters—thus breaking the sacred Circle and forfeiting the trial.

That was Aleks Hazen, who loved to ride the razor’s edge.

“As is your appreciation of the meaning of our class. Not merely our lives but our holy quest and the

honor of our Clan depend upon our techs. To bully them is foolish—and unworthy of a warrior, who

exists to serve those weaker than he, not the other way around.”

“Lecture me, will you?” With startling speed Lopata crouched and shot himself at the normal-sized man

like a bolt.

Aleks stood unmoving. Time seemed to stretch as the Elemental unfolded his huge limbs to catch him,

bear him down and crush him. Aleks’ warriors shouted for him todo something .

Beyond the last instant, or so it seemed, he did. He stepped aside, grabbing the wrist behind a vast

outstretched right hand with both of his. And yanked.

Had he done no more, Lopata would have struck the hull like a flesh meteor, crushing his skull or

breaking his monstrous neck. It would have been an acceptable outcome—heroic, even, for a mere

MechWarrior facing the apparently impossible odds of bare-handed battle with a mighty Elemental.

But Aleks tucked the arm into his own chest, partially arresting the giant’s momentum.

It was not an untrammeled act of mercy. Lopata bellowed as his shoulder was wrenched from its

socket. Then the WarShip hit him slam in the back.

The Elemental’s agonized cry ended in a voiceless gust as all breath was driven from his body. He

bounced, floated up again, stunned and inert. Aleks reeled him in, encircled his neck with an arm that

looked like a child’s against it and choked out the Star Captain.

He stood up, stepped back and touched a finger to his brow. “I salute you, Star Captain,” he told the

sleeping giant. “Perhaps in future you will treat my technicians with the respect due those without whom

the mightiest warrior would be but a mud man waving sticks at the moon. If not—”

He shrugged his own not-inconsiderable shoulders. Then as his seconds gathered about him like an

asteroid swarm drawn to a giant planet, he threw back his head and laughed, as for the sheer joy of

living.

He was Aleksandr Hazen, Bloodnamed, and he was a hero.

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2

Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon

Jump Point orbit

Summit

4 March 3134

“There is no question possible, Galaxy Commander,” Star Admiral Dolphus Binetti said, gazing up into

the holographic display of space near the emergence point which floated in the middle of theEmerald

Talon ’s semicircular bridge. “The merchantman could not miss us if he were blind and his sensor crew

drunk.”

Binetti was a short man, pompous and somewhat stocky, with a black spade-shaped beard around a

jaw that remained firm in outline, despite his paunch. Age and declining fitness should have made him

unlikely to maintain either high rank or Bloodname, which were generally held as they were won: by

combat. But even before decades of enforced peace and, worse, contact with the soft races of the Inner

Sphere had brought decadence to Clan Jade Falcon—so he and his hearer both believed—the Clans

had realized there were roles even for warriors in which a decline in physical prowess, or indeed its

absence to begin with, could not be allowed to trump knowledge and skill. Piloting a BattleMech or an

aerospace fighter was not a job for an uneducated clod, but it paled beside the technical knowledge

required to run a starship, much less a battlegroup. Binetti would lose his place when his command skills

declined, not when someone wrestled him out of it.

Not that his guest was inclined to criticize on that basis. He himself would have fallen by the wayside

long ago, had he been forced to rely purely upon his prowess in personal combat to maintain his own

exalted place in his Clan. Given decadence, why not enjoy it? And anyway, whatever he had done to

ensure his own survival, career and literal, had kept the Falcon from being robbed of one of her most

able and dedicated servants.

As Khan Jana Pryde, ruler of Clan Jade Falcon, herself said often, “Traditions are worth respecting only

if they further our cause.”

Binetti’s companion smiled and banished such mostly pleasant reveries from the cathedral of his mind.

“Let him look, then, Star Admiral,” said Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus, leader of the proud

Turkina Keshik—and of the expeditionary force as a whole. “There is no way to stop him.”

“We could interdict,” Binetti rapped. “Blast him from space.”

“The Khan has commanded theTalon be used only to awe, not to fight,” Malthus reminded him.

Binetti snapped up a hand in irritation. “Loose our fighters, then. They could use the blooding.”

“We could,” Malthus agreed, nodding and smiling gravely. “But to what end? The plan, remember, is to

avoid conflict with our unwitting Lyran hosts if at all possible.”

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“Best way to do that is to keep them in the dark,” the admiral said.

Malthus shrugged. He was a man of imposing height and breadth of shoulder, not unusual for a

MechWarrior. He had a not insignificant bulge about the middle, which was unusual; but it was hidden by

the artful drape of the robe-like garment he wore, green trimmed with black—the Jade Falcon colors.

Of course, such artifice was itself none too common within the Clans.

Topping all he possessed a great rounded square of head on which russet hair retreated between temple

and crown, leaving a wide arrow-shaped salient down his broad forehead, and a wide, square jaw

fringed with beard. To the extent the Clans, which tended to select against age, had any such thing, he fit

perfectly the archetype of an elder statesman who remained, however, a prime Mech Warrior. Which

was why Khan Jana Pryde had flouted tradition and decreed to him the coveted command of Turkina

Keshik, lead formation of the entire Falcon Touman, and hence the greatdesant into the heart of

decadence in the Inner Sphere, instead of leaving the outcome to a bidding Trial.

That, or Bec Malthus had come out second-best in a game of intrigue, a game in which he held himself

past master among Clan Jade Falcon—but that thought did not bear thinking.

“They will inevitably learn, my friend,” he murmured sonorously. “Indeed, they may know already.

Someone might have observed us on one of our previous jumps through Steiner space, without us

observing them in turn.”

“That is so,” Binetti acknowledged, only somewhat stiffly. Disagreements were best handled

circumspectly, lest they turn into open dispute—in which case the party who came out second best

would be compelled by Clan custom to claim the “right” ofsurkai , the rite of forgiveness for being

divisive. Khan Jana Pryde had specifically enjoined her warriors from intramural dueling, common among

the Clans and incessant among Falcons. So desperate was their undertaking that literally no one could be

spared.

Which made the fight currently taking place in one of the WarShip’s bays that much more remarkable.

Neither Binetti nor Malthusofficially knew of the combat trial taking place between a Star Captain and a

Galaxy Commander, even though it was being carried out with full Clan ceremony.

“The success of ourdesant is of course all,” Malthus intoned. “And however much it might cut against

our warrior grain, old friend, all depends upon avoiding conflict as long as possible. For even given the

superiority of our Clan ways and our Clan warriors—and Jade Falcon’s warriors are supreme without

question in all of human space—those truths notwithstanding, our mission is so supremely ambitious, so

daring, that we must seek every advantage as zealously as a Sea Fox merchant-captain grubbing after the

last possible penny of profit.”

Binetti nodded his square head almost dolorously. “What you say is true, Bec Malthus,” he said. “But I

burn toact . And I am not the only one: already my Naval Reserve warriors grow restive. Patience has

not often been reckoned high among the Falcons’ virtues.”

“How well I know,” Malthus said. He still marveled at the sheer sententiousness of his fellow ranking

Clansmen, and not just cement heads like the Admiral. “Yet sacrificehas been so reckoned, and so we

must sacrifice immediate gratification of our longing for the hot blood of action, no matter how strong that

demand.”

“I suppose,” Binetti said grudgingly.

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Victor Milan - BattleTech - Mechwarrior - Dark Age 10 - Flight of the Falcon

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