BattleTech: Without Question: ✷ ✷ ✷ by Without Question

Author:Without Question [Question, Without]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

JADE FALCON HEADQUARTERS

HAMMARR

SUDETEN

JADE FALCON OCCUPATION ZONE

22 MAY 3152, 0230 HOURS

Hammarr burned, and Khan Jiyi Chistu was helpless to do anything but watch from the safety of his balcony, a gilded perch on which to view the destruction of his city, his life, and his Clan.

Buildings crumbled.

Curls of smoke rose high into the sky from the smoldering wreckage of a hundred BattleMechs.

His MechWarriors—his fellow Jade Falcons—tried to fly on clipped wings, and perished into the flames without a cry. At least he hoped they were honored to have died for their Clan and their cause.

The civilians who looked to him to protect them cried and wailed, reaching up to him with bloodied fingers.

And amid their crying came a voice.

An icy voice that held no warmth or comfort. Bereft of any feeling.

“You allowed this,” a voice said with all the venom of a Falconer upbraiding a fledgling in need of a scolding.

Even though he had only ever heard that voice twice in person, Jiyi knew it. On an instinctual level. Every cell in his body knew that voice belonged to Malvina Hazen.

A DropShip appeared in the sky, shattering the atmosphere like an approaching comet.

“I am going to finish the job you started, and I will burn the rest of the city to the ground, you dezgra fool, because you could not even do that right.”

Sprinting through the streets of Hammar, Jiyi tried to outrun the destruction. Buildings exploded and crumbled all around him, a Gyrfalcon entered the street in front of him, chased by a Shrike painted black. The Shrike lanced the Gyrfalcon with its lasers, coring into its torso and melting the fusion engine into useless. The smaller ’Mech took another half-step forward before being enveloped by a mushroom cloud.

Jiyi wiped the sweat from his brow, listening to the shrieking cackle of Malvina Hazen’s disembodied laughter, punctuated with a buzzing klaxon he couldn’t place.

An alarm?

He turned around, hoping to find the source of the noise, and saw the alarm controls right there in front of him. At the top of the console was an analog clock with ornate hands made of wrought iron and bearing a hand-painted Jade Falcon logo. Standing on the other side of that clock was his predecessor, staring at him with cold, dead eyes. “We are going to take things back to the way they are supposed to be.”

She cranked the giant clock hands backward, wrenching them back in time. “This is our rede, Chistu. Never forget it. I am coming back. To take back what you have stolen from me.”

But when she finally arrived, she was dead.

Still dead.

Her throat had been cut. Blood poured down the front of her neck and into her uniform, but the Mongol black just soaked the blood up and hid it.

Just like it did with all her weaknesses.

Still, that obnoxious alarm insisted something or someone was coming for Jiyi.

He had no idea how long he’d been backing away from the specter of his predecessor, from the mess she had made and destruction she’d wrought, before he realized the alarm was real.

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