Flight of the Star Geese 1-1

Chapter One, Part One

Chapter One

“In the natural, spontaneous course of events, the first political system to arise is monarchy, and this is followed by kingship, but it takes the deliberate correction of the defects of monarchy for it to develop into kingship. Kingship changes into its congenital vice - that is, into tyranny - and then it is the turn of aristocracy, after the dissolution of tyranny, Aristocracy necessarily degenerates into oligarchy, and when the general populace gets impassioned enough to seek redress for the crimes committed by their leaders, democracy is born. And in due course of time, once democracy turns to violating and breaking the law, mob-rule arises and completes the series.” ~ Ancient Earth Philosopher

Panzerkampfmarcher training grounds, Royal Demesne, Novy Moskva Military District

Eden, Edenstar System

Pentagram Cluster, Solar Hegemony in Exile

TWO near identical, shadow draped giants bowed to each other, before drawing and striking in one single smooth and organic motion. Shimmering, singing, high-frequency blades clashed into spark-sputtering bind, casting flickering lights on the otherwise silhouetted giants, hidden in their own shadows, black against the great, blood-red lidless eye of the dawning Edenstar. Each titanic combatant was twelve yards from cap to pie if it was an inch and the armoured plates of each of the two custom Pz.KpfM.112.Ausf.R 'Royal Hippogriff' panzerkampfmarchers - armoured fighting walkers - was enamelled in the bone-white with pink and gold trim of the royal household retinue. The kampfmarcher on the sinister shifted its’ mass forward with a half-step, while pivoting the long blade of its’ two-handed HF great-sword over the top of the bind, moving with the slow deliberateness required to pass a Kajita-Holtzman barrier without resistance. The KH barrier of the threatened kampfmarcher on the dexter slowly became visible to the naked eye due to ripples of air and dust suddenly compressed by the redirected kinetic forces bled away from the passage of the vibrating mono-molecular high-frequency edge. The pilot of the threatened machine engaged his jump-jets in a brief burst backwards while re-chambering his freed blade up into a high roof guard, allowing his opponent's blade to crash down into the dirt, suddenly unopposed.

Swarms of chattering startled local pseudo-birds, launched then from trees and bushes surrounding the practice field, flying past the two titans. Each great war-golem seemed to pause and study his opponent, as if each giant was caught up in the momentary beauty. In form, the giant combatants resembled men-at-arms in full Gothic plate harness, with bladed wings sprouting from each harness's back plate, alluding to the famed winged lancers of ancient Poland, left behind on Old Dirty itself. Both sallet-helm shaped head's single cyclopean sensor-slits glowed in the infra-red spectrum as the war-machine's sensor suites probed on full-active. The pilots of the machines each searching to find the weakness his opponent's defence as, if by unvoiced agreement communicated by minute motions alone, the two kampfmarchen begin to circle each other in gliding, gathering steps, carefully maintaining a supported centre of balance at all times, lest a momentary unbalanced weakness of stance provoke an attack. Faster and faster they circled, until jump-jets kicked in, turning steps into jet assisted leaps, suddenly swerving and closing in at times to exchange a flurry of blows, only to jet-bound apart again nearly as quickly. Thus the fighters began the tell-tale dance of experienced marcherkampfers - walker warriors - testing the rhythm and timing and distance of this particular fight and his opposing fighter.

And then, on the fifth such pass, the kampfmarcher whose holographic heraldry and transponder codes identified it as the mount belonging to the Count of Landing, Lord Ulysses 'Ollie' Williams Walker, sometimes called Red Knife, after his flame red hair and affectation of always carrying a great seax knife of meteoric iron and ancient heritage, failed to concede the pass and withdraw, instead he pressed on, chasing after the other marcher as it attempted to jump away, matching the other machine's backwards hop with a forward leap of his own, launching a spread of short range mini-missiles from a pair of six-cell box launchers mounted on the marcher’s thighs as he came bounding in. The withdrawing kampfmarchen, whose own displayed arms proclaimed it to be the ride of Sir Father-Brother Ignatius, Hieromonk-knight of the Order of the Shield of Saint Benedict Militant brought its’ two large twenty-four inch objective lens pulse-photonguns, mounted over the armpits like the besagew rondels of an ancient knight, and single medium twelve-inch pulse-photongun mounted between the legs, like unto a plate harnesses' cod-piece, into play, running in full missile defence mode. Invisible infra-red beams pulse into the air, creating thundering sounds and lightning flashes against the local atmosphere and leaving wispy dissipating lines of ionised super-heated air in their wake. The beams strobe forth from rapidly gimbaling ball mounted electro-optical lens arrays to stab at the incoming ordinance, splashing four of the twelve incoming threats. The remaining missiles detonate in the air instead of crashing into Father Ignatius’s war-machine, spreading a rapidly expanding cloud of vision and telemetry obscuring smoke.