“All right,” she agreed. Not so much chipping away at her icy exterior as she was smashing it with one blow. “We can talk.”

17

The Acropolis

Tairngoth, Glengarry

3 November 3134

Recalled from Glengarry’s capital of Dunkeld with news of the midnight raids, Malvina Hazen crouched within the Skadi’s small passenger compartment as the VTOL turned above her Acropolis and then thundered over Tairngoth’s rolling hills for another two kilometers before it circled in for a landing. The craft’s landing skids bumped against the ground and a side door rolled back with a metallic grind. Night still clung to the Tairngoth area like a funeral shroud, damp and chill with the promise of coming rains. Malvina Hazen promised herself she’d pull that shroud around several Republic warriors before morning.

Beckett Malthus met her as she jumped down from the VTOL, the tall warrior standing defiantly beneath the still-thrashing blades. Running lights washed his face in amber and emerald, and his stormy eyes showed a hint of anger in them.

At her, or reserved for the attacking Republic troops?

Malvina did not care, and she did not bother with much more than a curt nod as she surveyed the impromptu staging area with a critical eye.

Her Shrike and an accompanying Shadow Hawk IIC stood guard, their three-story profiles backlit by elevated banks of fluorescent lights. A maintenance vehicle lifted two technicians and a half ton of missile reloads up to the back of her ’Mech. Two short columns of vehicles warmed up nearby, stagger-parked against each other like a row of broken chevrons. From the air she had noticed that they pointed more or less in the direction of Glengarry’s false dawn—where Dunkeld’s lights reflected against the heavy cloud cover. And eighty kilometers beyond that, Malvina knew, the sky would cast back a reddish-orange glow as the Argonaut Munitions Depot blazed in a fire too hot for even the toughest firefighters. She imagined the taste of ash and burned gunpowder that would be choking the air around the fire.

Well, she’d be tasting blood before the night was through, if Beckett had readied everything according to her orders.

“You have an Alamo missile standing by?” she asked without greeting.

He frowned at the lack of courtesy, but Malvina was not about to play formality games. Not this night. Beckett had pledged himself to her.

“With reservations,” he admitted, pacing her on the short trip between VTOL and BattleMech. “We have exactly three of the nuclear-tipped missiles. I am not so certain this is the best time to use one.”

Malvina unzipped the wrists on her jumpsuit, then paused to raise one foot and then the other to loosen her ankle zippers as well. “Here or on Skye,” she said with a shrug. “If we can destroy a large number of Republic troops, it will be well spent. I have no intention of letting this pitiful excuse for an assault rob us of honor.”

Malthus nodded, and Malvina decided to accept that as the Galaxy Commander’s full agreement. She felt the night’s clammy touch on her left arm, and also climbing the exposed skin on her left leg. Her right side …nothing. Neither warmth nor chill. Her prosthetic replacements reacted to nerve firings, imitating the function of real limbs with a full range of motion, but the sensory details coming back the other way were limited. She could sense pressure, and would feel simulated, low-grade pain if the replacements took severe damage, but not much more. That was the trade-off for a hasty return to combat status. For not waiting while the scientist caste vat-grew true limbs.

That was the trade-off for getting back to Skye as soon as possible.

Only Skye had come to her this time. Several companies, striking at a wide range of targets meant to harass her local defenders. Summer and Ryde had reported heavy raiding assaults as well over the last week, and the loss of too many standing garrison troops. That would not happen here!

“We push them back to their DropShips,” Malvina told him, waiting for technicians to clear the lowering gantry. “With one Alamo we might bring down a Union, or an Overlord. Cost them a full company or two in mixed forces. Let them take that back home as the cost of such a foolish venture.”

She struggled into the gantry’s cradle, still not as coordinated with her replacement arm as she might wish, but unwilling to wait for the lift to lower completely to the ground. The cradle reversed direction, lifting her toward her cockpit.

“Stand ready,” she ordered Malthus.

If he thought to argue the point any further, he decided to wait until she had fully suited up for battle. Malthus turned for a Tribune mobile HQ that waited at the head of the vehicle column. Malvina Hazen beat him into position by clambering quickly into her cockpit and stripping out of the jumpsuit, pulling it off over her combat boots. The jumpsuit went into a locker built into the back of her command chair, traded for the thin cooling jacket that would keep her body temperature down in the strain of combat. The jacket had abbreviated sleeves, stopping just above her elbows, and was made from black ballistic cloth in case she was forced to eject (again) onto a live battlefield. On each shoulder was stitched an emerald eye, like the false eyes under a cobra’s hood. Aleksandr had had them sewn into the cloth after both of them made the rank of Star colonel.

It was one of the few physical reminders of her lost twin that Malvina kept.

Sliding into the waiting seat, she reached up for her neurohelmet, which rested on an overhead shelf, and settled it over her head with a snug fit, careful that the receptors made good contact with her scalp. She stuck two telemetry pads to the inside of her left thigh and above the left wrist. Her replacement bionics had built-in telemetry. Finally, she threaded a braid of three cables through the loops on the front of her cooling jacket, and connected the single jack into the socket at the neurohelmet’s base.

The technician who had walked the ninety-five-ton Shrike to the staging area had left the fusion engine on hot standby and her computer on. What was left for her was to release weapons and full gyroscope capability, and remove the speed dampeners that locked into place while in maintenance mode.

On the ten-key pad at her left hand, Malvina keyed in her personal cipher. The computer awoke with several new lights flashing for attention. She toggled them all on.

“Identify,” a synthesized and vaguely feminine voice directed her.

“Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen.”

The computer processed that for several long seconds, comparing her voice patterns with those stored on a secure storage device. Finally, the computer prompted, “Proceed with secondary protocol.”

Because the technology existed to fake voiceprints and crack number ciphers, most BattleMechs carried a second authorization key that was necessary to turn over complete control to the MechWarrior. This was a private code that could be known only to the warrior. Malvina had lifted an obscure line from the Jade Falcon Remembrance, the living prose that told the entire history of her Clan back to its founding.

“ ‘Let the Falcon take flight in a new generation,” ’ she quoted. “ ‘Let the stars be its hunting grounds.” ’

As status lights cleared from amber to green, Malvina throttled forward into a ground-hammering stride that pushed her Shrike toward the front of the waiting column. Nothing would slow her now.

This was her generation.

And it was time to hunt.