LE5739 - Falcon Rising, page 1
BIRD OF PREY
Now, in her office, she found herself wearying of all the detail. All she really wanted to do was build the Jade Falcons back up to strength in order to head back to the Inner Sphere and finish off what the Clans had begun with the first invasion. While there, she would not mind asserting Falcon supremacy over the Vipers, who shared their corridor. After all that had happened since she had assumed the role of Khan, she had no desire to share glory with the Vipers.
She leaned back in her desk chair and pressed her fingers against her eyes. The pleasurable dots of light appeared, sliding side to side, blending with each other, looking like galactic clusters in a dark universe.
I will show them all what a Jade Falcon Khan can do. They will grovel at—but is not that arrogance? Very well, I am arrogant. I want them all—Khans, the Inner Sphere, all—at my feet....
BATTLETECH
LE5739
Twilight of the Clans VIII:
FALCON RISING
Robert Thurston
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
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First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton NAL, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.
First Printing, March, 1999 10 9876543
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Series Editor: Donna Ippolito
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Round up all the usual suspects, plus a special thanks to Donna Ippolito, Chris Hartford and Bryan Nystul for their help in working out narrative and background problems for me, and to Annalise for frequently brightening up my day with her e-mails from FASA. As always, thanks to Sir Drokk Darkblade (a.k.a., Eugene McCrohan) for his willingness to brainstorm BattleTech matters with me.
And, of course, to Rosemary and Charlotte.
Prologue
Steel Viper Hall
Hall of the Khans, near Katyusha
Strana Mechty
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
29 December 3059
Natalie Breen often sat in the dark, here in the Hall of the Khans on Strana Mechty. Once she had been one of those Khans that gave this place its name. Now, all that had changed. Eight years had passed since Tukayyid, eight years since she had stepped down in shame after being forced to withdraw from that bloody battle. Yet, here on Strana Mechty, here among her own kind, she felt like an exile.
Khans did not step down. They died in battle, like any good warrior. Once she had commanded the whole of Clan Steel Viper. Now she served as sometime advisor to her successor, Perigard Zalman. Natalie Breen would have preferred being sent off to a cave in the deepest jungle of Arcadia. Instead, Zalman had given her this out-of-the-way office in the Steel Viper wing of the Hall of the Khans.
In the rare times she went out among the Steel Vipers, she was treated with the respect due her former position, but she felt like an outcast anyway. She knew there were enemies among her own Clan who wished to toss her into the refuse heap of some solahma unit. She knew, too, that others in the Clans viewed her as disgraced.
Before shutting off the office lights through voice command, she had been working on her memoirs again. Memoirs were not often written by Clan warriors, but there were some precedents. Usually a memoir analyzed battles, so that readers, usually officers in charge of combat units or cadets seeking to deepen their understanding of Clan ways and history, could learn from past achievements and mistakes.
Breen had abruptly commanded the lights to shut off because again, for the umpteenth time, she had fallen into morbid thoughts about her failures as Khan. Thoughts of how she had been forced to stand by as the Steel Vipers were consigned to reserve status instead of taking their rightful place among the original invading Clans. Of how she and every other Viper warrior had rejoiced when the ilKhan finally activated the Steel Vipers, assigning them a portion of the Jade Falcon invasion corridor. More rejoicing followed when Viper victories placed the Clan at the front of the invasion line. Then came Tukayyid. Flushed with their successes, the Steel Vipers could never have dreamed what awaited them on that cursed world, in the grim terrain known as Devil's Bath.
That had been a dark time, and even darker ones followed. Natalie Breen had resigned, only to wonder too many times to count whether she should have ignored the shame and soldiered on. She had believed her sacrifice would help dispel the cloud of humiliation that hung over the Vipers' forced withdrawal from Tukayyid. And perhaps it had. With a new Khan at the helm, the Clan had gone on to capture several worlds from the Jade Falcons in the aftermath. And in the years that followed they had gobbled up even more.
She shuddered to think what might have happened to the Steel Vipers had she not given the order to withdraw from the bloodbath on Tukayyid. She had preserved her Clan, but it had taken every ounce of warrior spirit she possessed to resign as Khan. Instead of a glorious death, she had ended up consigned to a kind of nothingness. But the Vipers had survived, and that was all that counted. Too late now to re-fight old battles. It was all coolant streams under a 'Mech's toes, or however the old saying went.
There was a knock on her office door.
She stared at the door for a moment. "Come in, Khan Zalman," she said finally.
The door opened and she saw Perigard Zalman in silhouette. Tall and not a gram heavier since his days as a young warrior, he looked like a stick figure in the dim light.
"You knew it was me, Khan Natalie?" He always addressed her by her former title. She did not discourage him.
"It is always you. No one else comes here. You and sometimes your saKhan, who never comes alone. So, when I hear a knock, it is almost certainly you."
He paused in the doorway. "You are sitting in the dark, Khan Natalie?"
"My eyes hurt. Lights . . . on."
The room was suddenly flooded with light. Zalman himself had to squint from the sudden pain. "What brings you here, my Khan?" she asked, thinking he had come to inquire about the military report he wanted her to compile.
"It is the Jade Falcons again," he said, his homely face taking on a look of gloom.
Breen shook her head in disgust. "The Falcons. They are a thorn in our side, have been since long before I was Khan. Their hatred of us goes back to the days of the revered Khan Mercer. That, and the fact that we have defeated them too often in battle."
Zalman drew himself up to his considerable height and clasped his hands behind his back. "Aye, and now the Falcon Khan seems determined to win by politics what she cannot accomplish through honorable combat. Marthe Pryde is once again carping and complaining about sharing the invasion corridor with us." He gave a short laugh. "You would think she would hate us less for not picking her clean while she was busy attacking Coventry."
Breen smiled. She had a broad smile that generally suggested sarcasm. Still, it was the one attractive feature in an otherwise hawklike and heavy-browed face. Her eyes were as pale as her skin, as light as her hair.
"Typical Jade Falcon scheming," she muttered. "For all their heroic airs, they certainly do bitch a lot. But they cannot undo our invasion corridor victories so easily. This new Khan of theirs, this Marthe Pryde, she seems edgy. Too cunning, too arrogant."
"Funny you should say that. They call us arrogant."
"We are, quiaff? One of our main virtues. So, tell me, Perigard, what are the Falcons up to now?"
"They are bragging about their gains in the Harvest Trials. Marthe Pryde has the gall to mock our lesser wins in speeches to the Grand Council, and tries to shame us by claiming that some of our own Viper warriors defected to other Clans to be sure of a place in the new invasion. This, she argues, is cause enough to remove us altogether from the invasion corridor."
Natalie Breen could not hide her surprise. "That is un-Clanlike. I never thought this Marthe Pryde was one to play politics. She portrays herself so much as the warrior-hero. You know, thrust by circumstance into the Khan role."
"She does not seem devious, true, but nevertheless our intelligence reports that she and her Clan continue to plot against us. Our world of Jabuka puts us too close to Terra. That could easily make us the next target of this phony new Star League, now that it has driven the Jaguars out of the Inner Sphere. Until we see what those freebirths are up to, I do not want the Vipers warring with the Falcons over occupied worlds. I seek your advice, Khan Natalie."
"As always, I am at your service."
If only Zalman knew how difficult it was for her to say that, to be courteous to this man who had once been her saKhan, a minion she had at times bossed around mercilessly.
"I need to find an excuse to challenge Marthe Pryde," he said. "To make her fear us, so that she will not dare to attack before we are ready."
"A bold intention," Breen said. "I approve."
"But, in our present state, with the Clans poised to strike once more at the Inner Sphere, challenges are discouraged. I need a reason for the challenge beyond the old bickerings between our two Clans. When the invasion resumes, I do not want the Falcons holding a knife to our back."
Breen nodded. The worlds of the occupation zone were so intermingled that Clan infighting could seriously weaken the Vipers. "Marthe Pryde originated in the same sibko as the famed Jade Falcon hero, Aidan Pryde, quiaff?"
"Aff."
"An over-rated warrior, if there ever was one. Hero of the Battle of Tukayyid, indeed. I was there, and I know what a bloodbath that operation was."
Perigard nodded, and Breen wondered if he were thinking the same thing she was. She and Aidan Pryde had both fought valiantly at Tukayyid, but Aidan had been acclaimed a hero while Natalie had ended up resigning in shame. He had died, and Natalie Breen often wondered why she had been denied the same death. But, if Zalman was thinking such thoughts, she knew he would never voice them here.
The one difference between Perigard Zalman and Natalie Breen, whom he had served so loyally, was that he did not mind occasionally dirtying his hands with political maneuvering. Like most Clan warriors, he despised dishonorable behavior. But as Khan of the Steel Vipers, and saKhan before that, he knew that the only thing that mattered was victory. That had ever been the way of the Clans.
"I know something of this Aidan Pryde," Natalie Breen said. "I have studied his history, and a complex and repellent history it is. Did you know, for example, that he failed his Trial of Position as a cadet—was outmaneuvered, in fact, by Marthe Pryde—and that he took a second Trial disguised as someone else?"
"No, I did not know that."
"Perhaps you should," Breen said dryly. "At any rate, Aidan Pryde then posed as a freebirth and fought his second Trial in that guise. He became a warrior, but think what this reveals about the Jade Falcons. It is vile that a trueborn would stoop to pretend to be freeborn, for even a moment.
This hero spent the next years of his life continuing to pose as a freeborn. He took on freebirth assignments, fraternized with freebirths exclusively, and only revealed his trueborn status after some heroic deed or other on a backwater planet. And why reveal it? So he could compete for a bloodname. For a bloodname! Does your stomach not turn at all the implications of this perverted history, Khan Zalman?"
Though she was sure he agreed, Natalie Breen could see that Zalman, always pragmatic, felt no disgust over the oddities of another Clan's history. To him it was probably best to let her, living mostly now in darkness and with the company of few others, have her say.
"He should have been vilified," Zalman commented.
"Oh, he was, I suppose, but the Jade Falcons always manage to justify their demented ways. Still, Aidan Pryde won the bloodname, and others let it happen. I do not deny that some of his acts were valiant, but the freebirth taint permeates his whole history, and the honor that the Jade Falcons gave this warrior is sickening."
Perigard nodded. Again she wondered if he really agreed. After all, any warrior in any of the Clans would have wished to become known as the kind of hero Aidan Pryde was in Jade Falcon annals, even with the freebirth taint.
"Aidan Pryde was rash," Breen continued. "He was given to impulsive risk-taking that only succeeded by sheer luck. But he was known as one willing to risk his life for any win. Now, this Marthe Pryde is from the same sibko and she shows symptoms of the same illness. She is sometimes rash and seems prone to phenomenal risks. You have not heard the latest?"
Zalman shook his head.
"She is allowing a freebirth to compete for a bloodname! Using the justification that the warrior is the spawn of this same Aidan Pryde and some other trueborn who was willing to bear a freeborn child." Natalie Breen took a deep breath in order to control her emotion. "I cannot imagine any true-born, even one who has failed her warrior training and been relegated to another caste, so much as considering the idea of child-bearing. Much less that it would be a freeborn." Zalman grimaced at her words. It was distasteful for a warrior to even think about the state of freeborn pregnancy, much less talk about it. "And now this freebirth bastard could become a bloodnamed warrior in the Jade Falcon Clan! If, as Khan of the Falcons, Marthe Pryde does allow such a travesty to take place, she is taking a foolish risk, emulating this revered Aidan Pryde. That is the weakness you can take advantage of, Perigard. Do you see?"
"Aye," said Zalman.
"Prod Marthe Pryde," Breen said. "In the Grand Council. Whatever you can say, do, or insulate with sarcastic looks that the rest of the Council will see—work on her, get to her core and cause a meltdown. Use this freeborn bloodname issue to bring down scorn on her and her Clan. Get her angry enough to make the challenge herself. Then you will be—politically—in the right and you will have her set up."
Zalman grinned, looking pleased with himself. "I knew you would be able to counsel me in this. That is why I came here, why I always know you will see a way out of any problem."
Natalie Breen stared at him coldly for a moment. "You are saying that when you need someone to be devious you come to me?" she hissed. "Being devious is not the way of a Clan warrior. I know I have fallen from grace, but I have not fallen as far as that."
Perigard Zalman did not even flinch at her tirade. He had gained in confidence, she realized. Soon he would no longer be finding his way to this dark office to consult with her.
After he left, Breen called out again for darkness and sat for a long while, wondering who she had been and who she was now.
PART I
THE HOMEWORLDS
December 3059
1
Jade Falcon Hall
Hall of the Khans, near Katyusha
Strana Mechty
Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space
31 December 3059
"Well, Horse, you are the last person I thought to see tonight," Khan Marthe Pryde said, as Horse opened the door of her office. "Have you come to help me welcome the new year in?" She beckoned for him to approach.
"You said we should talk," Horse said. "I thought you might be less busy tonight."
"True. The holiday occupies many who would normally be demanding my attention. But I have not seen you since your return from Huntress—when was that, three or four months ago?"
"August."
"That long? Well, how have you been occupying yourself?"
Marthe smiled, but Horse saw that her posture was straighter than ever, more than ever the look of command. He glanced around the office, a rather small one for a Khan, and noted its austerity. There was a plain, standard-issue desk and an obviously old, standard-issue desk chair behind it. For that matter, the rest of the room seemed standard-issue, even the bland landscape prints, one on each wall. At Marthe's gesture to sit, he chose a standard-issue chair, the kind in most offices, wooden and stiff-backed with a faded thin cushion screwed to the wooden seat. Marthe pulled up a similar chair and leaned toward Horse as he began to talk.
"As you ordered," he began, "I have brought my Trinary back up to strength. We have replaced 'Mechs, supplies, and personnel lost on Huntress."
"I have read all your reports, Horse. You had a tough situation there. That Galaxy Commander, Russou Howell, must have been mad to play those games with you. But you handled yourself like a true Jade Falcon."
