when the Falcon fleet entered Skye orbit.”
Tara rubbed her face briefly. “Quite right.” She struggled to recall the woman’s name. She was even shorter than Tara and dark-haired. “And thank you, Kathy.”
“There’s more, Countess. The Falcons communicated with us to confirm that they will land to fight us tomorrow morning. But one of their DropShips has entered atmosphere ahead of schedule, on course for the North Pole.”
North Continent
Inside the Arctic Circle
Skye
14 August 3134
A great armored ovoid descended through a sky of perfect arctic blue. Five hundred meters above a frozen lake two kilometers wide by seven long, it slowed to a hover on its blue drive pencils. Bays opened in its flanks. Six BattleMechs emerged and descended toward the ice surface.
Contrails drew white traceries in the dome of the sky overhead as Falcon aerospace fighters contended with Skye craft sent to intercept the DropShip. Because this landing played no part in the agreed-upon combat terms, the locals were treating it as open season.
Four ’Mechs came down at the points of a square two kilometers on a side: Malvina Hazen’s aide-de-camp Star Captain Matthias Pryde in hisUller, Star Colonel Folke Jorgensson in hisPlack Hawk, Star Colonel Rianna Buhallin in herMad Cat, and Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus in his black and silverVulture : the Circle of Equals for Aleks’ Trial of Refusal. The three BattleMechs without jump jets temporarily repaired that lack with strap-on booster kits.
Malvina’s ninety-five-tonShrike and Aleks’ fifty-five-tonGyrfalcon touched down facing each other across a thousand yards of blue-white ice, drifted with gritty decayed snow that eddied in a wind that knew no rest.
Being seasoned battle commanders, the principals realized that if the intercepting fighters should take down the DropShip, they would at a stroke decapitate thedesant . Being Clan, they accepted that risk. Some things were just important. Besides, the site was remote; the defenders were unlikely to commit too much of their aerospace strength defending a howling waste. The Falcons’ fighter coverage was excellent, and the DropShip itself a formidable opponent.
It hovered, now, overhead, like a great dull-gleaming cloud.
“Galaxy Commander.”
“Speak, Star Colonel Rianna Buhallin.”
“I am troubled.” “Why so?”
“Why do you permit this? There should be two MechWarriors vindicating the Will of the Falcon. The senior Clan champion should have chosen the field. Yet here is one who has claimed Refusal, and was adjudged wrong by a margin of two to one, facing but a single champion—and on ground of his choosing.”
“So the Clan champion willed it, Rianna”
“But it is wrong! The ritual—”
“Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen has seen fit to alter ritual to suit her. She claims to represent the forces of evolution. I propose to see if she is right.”
“Can we so disrupt our ways, with our greatest battle impending?”
“If your honor will not permit you to serve in the Circle of Equals, Star Colonel, I will replace you. Only speak quickly. Battle, as you say, impends.”
“Beckett Malthus, I will serve.”
“I knew you would, Rianna, child.”
Standing on the snow-clad shore, Bec Malthus’Vulture, Turkina’s Crow, raised its right arm. Its two extended-range medium lasers pierced the sky with cyan lances. It was the order to begin.
Ornamental wings folded, the two ’Mechs sprinted toward each other. At long range, Aleks fired a burst from Lily’s right-hand autocannon that kicked up a string of white explosions right in front of Malvina, then cut into a clockwise run around Black Rose.
Malvina slowed. Her sibkin’s tactics perplexed her. TheGyrfalcon ’s weapons outranged hers. It was much faster than herShrike, especially if Aleks triggered his myomer accelerator signal circuitry. He could, in theory, use his speed advantage to stay out of her reach forever and pick the Rose to pieces. Naturally, it was not so easy: Aleks must stay within the one-kilometer Circle or forfeit, limiting his scope of motion. His lasers and autocannon did not shootthat much farther than hers, nor her missiles. Solid hits from her battery would quickly disable his lightly armored Lily, especially if she could lock her targeting computer onto a limb.
And then, Aleks had never beaten her ’Mech to ’Mech. No one had.
Yet here he was throwing away his sole advantage, spiraling toward her. Malvina was not so caught up by her own Mongol rhetoric to believe her brother’s head had grown soft, no matter the state of his heart.
She triggered her medium lasers. The cyan beams, just visible in the sun-glare from sky and ice, missed just behind theGyrfalcon . One tip of the middle “feathef’ of its right wing sparked white and gave off pale-gray smoke; no more.
Malvina stared in startled frustration. Then the battle computer in her mind told her: her diabolic brother, concentrating on moving without even trying to shoot since his opening barrage, was already so close that
he orbited her faster than she could track theShrike ’s massive torso on its waist-swivel.
She would have to move her feet to keep him in front of her weapons. She could still move her arms faster than she could traverse the torso; she aimed the big double autocannon across her body and fired an Ultra burst.
Leading the running ’Mech was a trivial solution—she thought. Yet even as she fired Aleks stamped a sharp- edged claw hard into the ice for traction and changed direction. Malvina’s 10-centimeter shells missed, to raise sequential geysers of pulverized ice several hundred meters beyond.
Aleks pivoted the Lily’s upper body and returned fire with the 5-centimeter guns mounted in either arm. Malvina jumped. Inexplicably, the spray of projectiles fell just short, smashing holes in the ice and throwing up ice shrapnel that clattered harmlessly off her rising BattleMech. He followed with a short ruby flare of his large lasers that melted an infinity-sign hole right beneath Black Rose’s taloned feet.
Does he think I’ll fall through into the lake?she wondered. That would be folly: both ’Mechs were airtight and proof against the pressure of water far deeper than the DropShip’s millimeter-wave radar probing of the bottom showed the lake to be. Dumping her into the icy depths would simply cool her cockpit to a level of actual comfort, at most.
She jetted her ’Mech backward before descending on still-solid ice. She turned in flight, swinging past Aleksandr, then let go with her lasers once more.
As if reading her intention, Aleks, still at a dead run, cut a different way again. He ran now with full MASC boost, risking actuator lock for speed over a hundred klicks an hour. Malvina could not lock him up with her targeting computer. She fired her autocannon. A hit blasted a shard of ferro-fibrous armor off the side of his right thigh. The runningGyrfalcon wobbled at the impact, then steadied itself and juked again.
She scowled fiercely. “Am I that predictable?” she raged.
“Only to me,”came back promptly through her neurohelmet.
“Damnyou!” A bone-piercing wind buffeted the BattleMech; it was merely hot inside her cockpit, not baking.
Judging on the fly that he would cut away from her she fired another autocannon burst—and at the same time launched a missile volley from her torso 10-rack aimed to beat the zone he would run through if he
did.
Instead he turnedtoward her. Charging, he blasted on Ultra with both autocannon. Explosions smashed across Black Rose’s chest armor, rocking the hugeShrike back on its rear toes.
The ferro-fibrous plate was where she was hit; Malvina knew in a flash that her sibkin had done no serious damage. Nonetheless she uttered a shrill nasal scream, of outrage rather than alarm.
She triggered her whole battery: missiles, autocannon at double rate, both medium lasersLet him dodge faster than light.
He couldn’t, of course. Far less his fifty-five-ton ’Mech. Instead, he anticipated her again, jagging to her right. The root of Lily’s left right wing arced and sparked. The wing fell off.
