The Falcon

[SothuTheUnfetterdOne.]

First off the falcon is an idea I've been working on for a while,
most of my posts will chapters or segments of chapters from the Falcon.
Happy reading The Falcon
Chapter 1
He couldn't believe everything was going so well. The Heads Up Display showed all security monitors. He was on three, but luckily he hacked The Company's system to show all was normal. But he knew better. The way he had hacked it, his H.U.D showed him all the security monitors he showed up on, and the two behind and in front. There would be no surprises. Stealing a prized object was always difficult, but he had done it before; he could do it again. “This is Mockingbird calling the Falcon. Do you read?”
“This is Falcon. I read.”
“Okay, Falcon. How close are you to the objective?”
“I'm 30 meters down and 600 hundred away.”
“All right, I'm seeing through The Company's security system that you have two hostiles waiting for you at the Case.”
The Falcon muttered a curse, “Are they from The Company?”
“No, Falcon, they are not from The Company.”
“So they're Ravens.” There was a short silence over the com.
“Yes, they are definitely on his payroll.” The Falcon hesitated before asking his next question.
“What level?” There was another silence.
“Six.” The Falcon cursed again. Things were starting to look bleak.
“Okay, what do they have?”
“They are each armed with two phase-disrupter-type blasters with rifle attachments.
I can see they both have bolt-type scatter guns and two ion-powered belt shields.
And to top it off, they have my best pair of hover shoes.” There was silence on the Falcon's end of the com. “So it's the Red Wing and the Hawk?”
“You guessed it.” He said sarcastically.
“Mockingbird, do you think we should abort?”
“No,” came the reply. “We've come too close to give up. Did you bring the grapple?”
“Yes,” said the Falcon, confidence returning. “Yes, I did.”
“Good. Then you can use it once you get directly below the Item.”
“What!?”
“Get below the Item and set the grapple to full power, then shoot it straight up into the Case. Then, once you're inside, take the Item and run.”
“I see. It would take Red Wing and Hawk a while to get inside the Case.”
“Falcon!”
“I see 'em!” Two guards came in on his H.U.D. They were less than 20 meters away.
Quickly the Falcon ran to the wall, pressed himself up next to it, and began stalking toward them.
“Falcon, what do you plan to do?”
“Take them out,” came the reply. The Falcon pulled a flash-bang from his pack. They were specially modified by Tom (otherwise known as Mockingbird) to not only incapacitate but also send out an E.M.P. And shut down any coms or stun guns they had. He placed the flash-bang on the floor and slid it at the guards. BANG! Both guards fell. The Falcon ran to them and dragged them one at a time
to the wall. “Nice work, Falcon.” said Mockingbird. “I thought for a second there, we were toast.”
“Now, when have I let you down?”
“Well, there was the time you let Crow get away.”
“You still blame me for that? For the last time, it wasn't my fault.”
“I know. Can't you take a joke?” In truth, he knew Tom was joking. The Crow had gotten away because the Falcon's Net Blaster had malfunctioned, because Tom had failed to wire it right. Not long before that the Crow, The Red Wing, The Raven, The Vulture and The Hawk had still been with them. Running quickly now, the Falcon had made it to the grapple point. He took the G.G.(Grapple gun) out of its holster, aimed carefully and fired. There was the sickly grind of metal on metal, then a whirring sound, and then a thunk. The grapple was safely in place. Now there was the issue of getting through thirty meters of god-knows-what. ”Mockingbird how do I get up there?”
“Working on it,” came the reply.
“Do me a favor; work on it faster.”
“Falcon, did you bring a sleeve of detonations?”
“Yes.”
“Use them.” The Falcon pulled a sleeve of Detonations from his pack. Then, using his cable attachments, latched the tiny yet powerful bombs onto the fire- and explosion-proof cable of the G.G.
Then with the detonations securely in place, he detonated them. BALOOM! The detonations exploded in a fiery rush. Climbing as quickly as he could, the Falcon reached the Case. He grabbed the small, shining object and put it into his pack. The Falcon turned and saw The Hawk standing in front of his escape route. “Hi, Falco'.” Said The Hawk in a mock-Spanish accent. “What are you doing here?”
“You know bloody well, Senor.” Here The Falcon adopted a fake British accent.
“I am sorry, Falco,' but I cannot allow you to take that with you.”
“And I can't let you take it. Otherwise, I won't get paid.”
“Then we,” he paused and and began lowering his hand towards his blaster, “it seems, are at an impasse!” He pulled his Blaster, fired once, and shot straight up into the air.
The Falcon dove left, pulling his own blaster and firing twice. Then rolling forward, the Falcon found himself falling down the hole he just made. “FALCON!” came the shout from above,
“THAT WASN'T VERY NICE!” With a thud and a roll, The Falcon hit the ground. He got up and ran as fast as he could.
“Mockingbird here. How did he do that?”
“Do what?” answered The Falcon.
“He just disappeared off my monitor all of a sudden!”
“And then he was inside the Case, shooting and talking in that fake Spanish accent.” There was a whistle, and an ion phase bolt disintegrated a hole in the wall beside him.
“Holy-!” Mockingbird cut him off.
“There is a window 72 meters to your left, so take the next hall.”
The Falcon turned at the next hall, ran toward the window and stopped.
Standing in front of him, The Hawk was laughing.
“Hello again, Falco'.” Here he stopped laughing and adopted a more serious tone. “So nice to see you.”
“Mockingbird, we have a problem.”
“You think?!”
Here the Hawk spoke again, “Ah, so the crippled Mockingbird is here. So nice. The Raven will be pleased that I was able to kill you all.” Tom had been crippled the day Crow decided to leave, and Hawk, Raven and Crow were sure to bring it up at every encounter.
“Now Falco',” said Hawk seeing the look on his face. “There is no need to be angry, is there?
No, there is not.”
“Didn't you just try to kill me?”
“Yes.” He said in a matter-of-fact way. “I did.”
“So I need not be angry... because?”
“Because you are going to die someday. Why not today, hm?”
“Because in two minutes, Tom will be right outside that window.”
“You're lying!” spat the Hawk, “Mockingbird is inside this complex.” Then the Hawk pulled his Blaster, firing wildly. With a crash, the window shattered and the Hawk flew forward into the wall.

[SothuTheUnfetterdOne.]

The Falcon chapter 2
“Well, I see that went well,” said General Raven. “Not only did you let the Falcon get away, but you didn't even get the Item. I would say I'm disappointed but that would be an UNDERSTATEMENT!!.
“This is not what I pay you for!” General Raven was angry, not just because the Hawk had failed; but also the Falcon had shown him up again. “Now then, Hawk, can we salvage anything from this wreck?”
“Permission to speak, Sir?” asked the Hawk.
“Granted.”
“Sir, in my defense: Red wing did absolutely nothing! Check the footage from my head cam and you'll see he didn't do anything.”
Screaming now the Raven said, “I did not ask for excuses! Can we get anything good out of this?”
“Yes sir.” Said the Hawk, getting angrier. “If you check the footage from my H.C. You will see
that Tom-”
“Mockingbird!” Interrupted General Raven, irritated.
“Mockingbird,” grunted Hawk. “Mockingbird was in a hover-craft and the Falcon has acquired some new tech'.” The Hawk paused momentarily.
“Please elaborate.” After a pause, the Hawk said.
“They seem to have acquired sub-vocalizing equipment.” General Raven -- the same General that had walked countless battlefields, faced the wrath of planets and laughed, faced death many times and spit
in its face -- paled.“It's impossible,” he said. “If they have that, then-” He let his thought trail off into nothing. The Hawk knew what would have come next, anyway. They had all known that if Tom ever broke through to that stage of invention, then he was not far from discovering the truth: the truth about who the Falcon really was. “ Commander Hawk.”
“Sir?”
“Have my ship made ready. I'm going to Valborness.” This command surprised the Hawk. He didn't think it had gone that far; but as it turned out, it had.

* * * * *
“Ah, to be safe and in a hyper-jump,” thought the Falcon. The last job had been a difficult one, but most were. Heck, he wouldn't have been called if it was something any old john could pull off.
That's why people paid him to be the best. But how had the Hawk and Red Wing been there?
Hawk had just disappeared and reappeared right in front of him. From that alone, he knew that they had figured out what Tom had been working on for years: a portable molecule transporter.
Ordinary M.T.'s were all over the galaxy, but the idea of a portable wouldn't even be listened to --
by anyone but Tom. When Tom had realized it, he went to his quarters and began working late into the night. So now safe in his room he began to call up old birth records on his computer.
The Falcon's real name was Brandon; he never did find out what his last name was.
Having been found in a escape-pod with only a blanket on him the people at the department of Childcare never knew what his last name was. They decided to call him Brandon because that was the name inscribed on the blanket. He had been only nine months old when his pod had appeared on the radar of the ESS Falcon Diver, a widely known space-craft of the Union of Planets navy. The other children called him the Falcon because of the ship he was found by. Although he was never adopted, he had always aspired to get a post on the ESS Falcon Diver. Sadly, the ship was lost to the reaches of space. Still, he joined the Union of Planets' navy and quickly rose through the ranks. There he met a bright Head Engineer named Tom Beckenfield, He and Tom became fast friends, and when they both finished their terms in the UOP's navy, they started a mercenary group called The Birds.
The Birds was very successful, and they became quite famous. After their rise to fame, more and more ex-naval officers joined. They gave them earth-bird code-names and put the new ones or 'news'
through a series of tests to ensure their ability as mercenaries. Most couldn't make it, but 5 very good
ones did. They chose their code names and they were Hawk, Vulture, Raven, Red Wing, and Crow.
For five years their business thrived. Then one day during a hyper jump, Hawk, Raven, Crow, Red Wing and Vulture disappeared. Three days later they turned up on a remote (not unknown but unnamed) desert planet. They were barely alive, but somehow they had managed to activate the homing beacon. Two months afterwards they led a mutiny against the Falcon and Mockingbird. Many of The Birds were killed. (By this time they numbered about 500.) The few who survived quit their posts and took other less dangerous jobs. With these thoughts going through his mind, Brandon searched the birth records of of two planets: Dorge and Vray. Ten minutes later the same result he had seen a thousand times came up.

NO MATCHES FOUND

Angrily, he shut off the stupid machine and was about to utter the one curse he considered an actual bad word, when Strisen, Tom's assistant on all things technical, came crawling through the maintenance hatch. “Tom's been trying to call you for half an hour.”
“Right.” said Brandon. What had Tom found?
“You better hurry; he's really giddy. I haven't seen him like this since he figured sub-vocal tech'.”
Brandon hurried out the door and to the tech-lab. There he found Tom bobbing up and down in his hover-chair. “Brandon! Brandon!” he shouted excitedly. “I've finally found the answer!”
“Okay. What?”
“I got it! I got it! I got their secret! Their M.T.'s operate on a completely different power supply! It's
amazing! The molecules are not like anything I've ever seen.”
“So they've been on an uncharted planet?”
“Well, yes and no. A charted-but-forbidden planet.” Tom hurried to his computer terminal and palmed it to life. “They got the gel -- because that is what their power source is by the way -- from Valborness.”
Brandon froze, his memory sparked. “Tom, I don't know why, but the name is familiar to me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Strange. I don't recall ever mentioning it. Then again maybe I have. Do you want to know why they keep the place on F-status?”
“Sure.”
“Well, Brandon my friend, I'll tell you. Valborness was discovered in 294588 and was deemed forbidden three years later in 294591, after a seventeen-month study. The study revealed three things:
1) that there was only a primitive culture of your basic barbarians, who fought each other for control of what our researchers believed to be nothing more than superstitious “Items of Power.” (Now let's take a moment to say that if you looked at Earth's early history you would find basically the same sort of thing.)
“2) The planet had your usual set of elements: carbon, hydrogen, iron, oxygen... your basic sources for energy. But in light of their society, the world was deemed forbidden.
3) Each person on Valborness looked and acted human. They were curious as to how “Cloud-Walkers” came to them and had what surely must have been objects given by the gods. Clearly their society was not ready for the aspects and ideas of space travel. That, Brandon, is what you'll find if you look up any information regarding Valborness.
“That information was given three hundred twenty-one years ago.”
“Well,” said Brandon, “thank you for the history lesson.” He was angry -- not angry at Tom, but angry at the Raven. He of all people had sunk to the level of treason. No it wasn't like he hadn't done anything illegal, but -- treason! But he now knew where he was getting his new tech from.
“Tom?” said Brandon.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Has the Counsel of Worlds checked on Valborness in the recent years?”
“Not that I know of. Here, let me check.” In a few short seconds he had glided back to his terminal and was checking on any recent activity in the Valborness region of space.
“Here we are. There has been... ” He paused and the results flashed up on the screen


INFORMATION CLASSIFIED

“Well, there you have it,” said Tom. Brandon swore.
“So. I guess we are going to have to start asking for higher clearance.”
“No doubt.” Just then an alarm went off. “That, Brandon, means that we have arrived.”
“Already? I thought that it would take at least ten minutes more.”
“I said we arrived. But I did not say where.”
“What!? Oh, come on! You really need to stop making course adjustments without telling me.”
“Oh, come off it. There is no reason to be angry. Besides, it was only a minor one.
We were already heading towards the Shelvern system. I just altered course a little.”
“So. Where are we?”
“Exactly seventy-five Micro-parsecs away from Valborness.”