10 - Flight of the Falcon (2004) Synopsis:
PART ONE Maskirovka 1
Mechwarrior - The Dark Ages
2
3
4
5
6
7
PART TWO Desant
8
9
JO
H
M
13
.14
15
16 H 18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
PART THREE Yarak
28
29 .30 .31 .32 .33 .34 .35
About the Author
10 - Flight of the Falcon (2004)
By Victor Milan
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 All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2004 byWizKids, LLC
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
AROCBOOK®
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
Lyran Commonwealth 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.
“Give the order to begin securing for transition,Herr Sanchez. Alert all DropShips to prepare to departSummit system in five hours.”
“Jawohl, KapitanGrunblum!” 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 Grunblum 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
