Flight of the Falcon Page 30
“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 Martínez, 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 trying that.
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 of their 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 Battleship Emerald 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 our desant 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 saw power—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 the Chingis 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 Milán 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 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Victor spent most of his first couple of years of life in Puerto Rico. As a child he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Shortly thereafter his family relocated to Albuquerque, 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, and Albuquerque’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 as The Guardians, and installments in the current Deathlands and Outlanders series (most recently Sun 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 technothriller Red Sands. He’s a charter member of the Wild Cards mafia.
Victor Milán has a public side as well. For more than twenty years, he has served as master of ceremonies for St. 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 through Albuquerque’s scenic North Valley. And, of course, his lifelong passion, reading.
“The Great Broadway Corpse Drive,” the first story of Victor Milán’s darkly humorous contemporary-fantasy cycle Ghost 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 novel The Dinosaur Lords.
He’s a nice guy. Let him entertain you.
Thanks for reading.
Victor Milán
Contents
PART ONE Maskirovka 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
PART TWO Desant 8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
PART THREE Yarak 28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
About the Author