by Victor Milán
When Aleks knelt in turn over Magnus Icaza, his friend still lived. Somehow. The one remaining blue eye opened and recognized Aleks, the scorched and shredded lips smiled; and the one lung still extant, fully exposed in the seared and excavated cavern of rib cage, provided air for the Elemental to speak.
“Have a . . . care, my friend,” he croaked. “It is not the fighting that kills you, but the downtime. . . .”
Pink froth bubbled from his lips. He died.
Aleks rose. A single tear cut a track through dust and cinders on a cheek that was frozen like a slab of fired clay.
“Let them learn what befalls those who treacherously murder a warrior of Clan Jade Falcon,” he said in a voice like a raven’s croak. “Destroy the district. Leave no building intact, nor anything living within.”
PART TWO
Desant
“. . . (1) n. Descent; esp., an airmobile landing operation, generally to attack strategic targets deep in an enemy’s rear areas. Russ. From Soviet Military Art, Terra. Archaic.”
—New Avalon Institute of Science Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Edition CCCV, New Avalon, Federated Suns, 3032
8
Central Government Complex
Geneva, Terra
Prefecture X
The Republic of the Sphere
3 April 3134
The hush between the briefing room’s powder blue walls was almost palpable as Tara Campbell, Countess Northwind and Prefect of Prefecture III, and her aide-de-camp, Captain Tara Bishop, were solemnly ushered within by an aide. Exarch Damien Redburn did not rise from his central position on the far side of the long, truncated-oval table.
The ruler of The Republic of the Sphere and successor to Devlin Stone nodded his narrow, brown-haired head. “Countess Campbell,” he said, “it is good of you to come on such short notice.”
“The Secretary’s message indicated it was a matter of grave concern to The Republic,” Tara Campbell said. The Countess’ gaze did not quiver by a micron from his, but she could feel the pressure of her aide’s eyes like heat upon her cheek. The lack of any discernible quantum of irony in Redburn’s voice only emphasized the seriousness of the matter that had caused the two to be summoned here. Because, in truth, the Countess Northwind and the Exarch, duly elected ruler of The Republic to which she had sworn her life to serve, cordially detested one another.
The two women settled themselves into seats across the table from the Exarch. Various other high officials were present. They acknowledged the women from Northwind with muted mutters of greeting.
Exarch Redburn placed his hands interlaced on the table before him. “At 0533 this morning, local time, we received a communication from our HPG net. It came within the scope of our restored coverage at Imbros III in Prefecture I. Prior to that, the information was carried via a virtual command circuit—passed on from JumpShips entering systems to the next ship jumping out in the direction of the Core.”
He looked to the end of the table at an aide with the flashes of Republic Military Intelligence on her tunic. “Major Kiyosaki, if you will provide particulars.”
“Yes, Exarch.” The woman rose. Her hair hung across her forehead in a coppery bang. Her eyes were almond shaped and dark.
“Some weeks ago a Clan Sea Fox merchant JumpShip was preparing to depart from the zenith point of Kandersteg, in the Lyran Commonwealth, not far from the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone. Just before it jumped for New Exford, it detected a transmission from the observation station located at the system’s apex proximity point. It was a panicky broadcast, intended for planetary authorities. It included video images.”
The room darkened. The space behind Major Kiyosaki evidently contained a large tri-vid set, because that end of the room abruptly filled with stars. The viewpoint dove dizzily toward a central cluster of light-points seeming brighter than the rest. Unlike the stars, these grew in apparent size, became disks.
“JumpShip light sails,” Captain Bishop murmured. Then, in surprise: “A good half dozen of them!”
As she said this Tara Campbell’s eyes began to resolve the image painted on the sunward surface. She knew it before she could make out any detail, just by general outline. “Jade Falcon?” she asked in wonder.
As if there was any other possibility, she chided herself at once. Her stomach, which had begun to feel as if it was sinking through some extraspatial dimension at the mention of the words Jade Falcon Occupation Zone went into full reentry free fall.
“A Jade Falcon fleet,” the Major intoned, “apparently out of the Falcon Zone. Yet that was not the most unsettling thing.”
The circular sails continued to grow. Then the stars swam as the display centered upon one particular sail. It expanded until the JumpShip itself, tiny by comparison, appeared like a seed pod, attached to the sail by invisible cords.
“But that can’t be—” Tara Campbell said.
Kiyosaki nodded. “A WarShip.”
Tara shook her head, not in refutation of the intel major’s words, but in denial of what her eyes were telling her. “Not just a WarShip, but a battleship,” she said. “I’ve seen them in books. An actual battleship.”
“Nightlord class, we believe,” the Exarch said, so as not to be excluded.
“Yes, sir,” Major Kiyosaki said. “From its outline our archivists have tentatively identified it as the Jade Falcon Naval Reserve Emerald Talon. It took part in the invasion of 3049. After the Smoke Jaguars’ genocidal bombardment from orbit of the city of Edo on Turtle Bay produced a surge of revulsion among the Clanners themselves, Clan Wolf took the lead in ostentatiously bidding away all naval assets in all future actions. The other Clans had to follow suit or lose face. All WarShips were recalled to the home worlds. The Talon went with them.”
“And now she’s back,” Tara Campbell said. The fingers of her right hand played a quick arpeggio on the table. She frowned. “The Falcons are invading the Commonwealth, then?”
The virtual model of the battleship behind Kiyosaki was replaced by a stylized star map of the outward reaches of Steinerspace, where they fetched up against the Falcon zone. “As you can see, Countess Northwind, the fleet would have had to have made one jump into the Lyran Commonwealth already, via Graceland, to reach Kandersteg. A JumpShip arriving at the nadir jump point from Graceland shortly before the Jade Falcon emergence brought no mention of any Clan attack. Apparently the Falcons escaped detection in the Graceland system altogether.”
Tara’s diplomatic-corps upbringing allowed her to mask her surprise. Kandersteg certainly seemed to be receiving a substantial amount of JumpShip traffic despite the HPG collapse. Her own home on Northwind seldom saw JumpShips these days.
“Countess,” Captain Bishop said in a low voice.
“Speak up, Captain,” Tara Campbell said.
“In the past, whenever the Clans have come to call, they’ve killed people and broken things at every step along the way. Does that accord with what your archivists have to say, Major, ma’am?”
“It does.”
“So it certainly appears that whatever they’re up to, the Falcons aren’t invading Steinerspace. Or at least they’re sure not going about it in their classic manner.”
Tara Campbell’s eyes narrowed as she studied the star map. “But they brought a battleship—not to mention that many JumpShips—for something. How did this tidbit happen to fall into our command circuit?”
“Apparently the Sea Foxes hastily recalculated their jump and went to Grunwald instead,” the Exarch said, “heading for the Inner Sphere. They passed the data along to a Lyran trader at Arcturus, in Wolf territory.”
Tara felt the skin contract on her face as if the room’s carefully conditioned air had suddenly become dry as the lunar surface. She did not like or trust any Clanner. Dislike and distrust were paltry euphemisms for the feelings she harbored for the Wolves.
“The Wolves trade with everybody,” said General Cordesman, who sat to the Exarch’s left. “Everyone doe
s, and has for generations. Including the Falcons.”
“Even had Clan Wolf learned somehow of the message the Sea Foxes carried,” Major Kiyosaki said, “we believe it unlikely they would have tried to prevent it reaching The Republic of the Sphere. It’s a tossup as to who hates the Falcons more, the Wolves or the Foxes.”
“Why did the Sea Foxes assume the Falcons were headed for The Republic?” Captain Bishop asked, not bothering to petition for the floor this time. “For that matter, why do we? A line drawn from Graceland through Kandersteg heads them right into the middle of the Commonwealth.”
“But, just as you pointed out,” Tara said, “their behavior is inconsistent with an invasion of Steinerspace. It’s as if—”
She turned to the Exarch. “—as if they don’t want to be slowed down on their way to their real goal. And what target would they want badly enough to commit so large a portion of their total military resources, so deep in the Commonwealth?”
Redburn looked around the table. “A decapitation strike at Tharkad?” Cordesman suggested. He had a heavy, deeply lined face and bristling eyebrows. “Perhaps they feel they can conquer the Commonwealth by destroying the Archon and her government at a stroke.”
“They haven’t learned from their mistakes if they think that,” Captain Bishop said. “I know the Clans disdain any history but their own, but even they have to’ve noticed that taking out Inner Sphere leaders doesn’t stop their subjects from fighting Clan conquest tooth and nail. The Clanners can be mighty thick-headed at times, but few of them are actually stupid. Ahh. General. Sir.”
Everybody had turned to stare at the junior officer with the temerity to speak right out among so many stars and important civilians.
“They’re headed here,” Tara Campbell said quietly but firmly across the silence.
Redburn sat a moment, gazing at her with eyes sunk deep in his skull. He glanced at the high-ranking officers who flanked him. “We dare not operate on any other assumption,” he said in a voice as papery as a dried corn husk.
Tara turned back to the display. The circuits in her head were working madly. “They won’t come near to following the path the Foxes took,” she said, “because for the Falcons to take a WarShip into Wolf space would mean instant, all-out war between them. Raids’re one thing; a battleship is quite another.”
She paused, then shook her head. What a bother! To have to think of people who hate Clan Wolf as much as I do as enemies!
Aloud, she went on: “So, if we stipulate that their target is The Republic—and I agree with you, Exarch”—with effort, she forbore from adding, for once, out loud, anyway—“that we dare not assume anything else—they will probably enter our territory in Prefecture IX.”
“Which, Countess Northwind,” the Exarch said, flattening his palms on the table before him, “is why I have decided to dispatch you at once to Skye, the Prefectural capital, to begin organizing a defense against a possible invasion of The Republic of the Sphere. Which honesty compels me to warn you will be a most desperate undertaking indeed.”
She stared at him. It was as if the air had solidified within the column of her throat.
“What about the Triarii Protectors IX?” she asked. “The Principes Guards and Hastati Sentinels?”
“It is this peace,” Cordesman said, not bothering to conceal leaden distaste. “The golden age: the universal draw-down of forces, the pressure from the Senate and the civilians to keep spending less and less on the military.”
He sighed. He did not acknowledge either the Exarch’s look of mild alarm or Tara’s narrow-eyed anger at his criticism of policies which sprang from Devlin Stone himself.
“In sum, Countess, the three Republican regular combined-arms regiments charged with defending Prefecture IX are paper tigers—as they were even before the HPG went down and Jasek Kelswa-Steiner seduced the lion’s share of their remnants into his Stormhammer regiment, gutting Skye’s militia into the bargain. Aside from whatever planetary forces may remain, Prefecture IX lies open to the Falcon fleet.”
9
The Forest Primeval
Near New London, Skye
Prefecture IX
The Republic of the Sphere
30 April 3134
Overhead a virago screeched outrage at the intrusion. Much occupied by his thoughts, Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner, Governor of Skye and Lord Governor of Prefecture IX (and only the second to hold both titles), continued to ride, oblivious to the possibility the jaylike local bird-analogue might dislodge a hard, baby fist–sized seed pod from the lofty branches and drop it with remarkable accuracy on his head. He almost wished it would; it would give him a chance to vent some of the anger simmering within him by blasting the creature with the pulse-laser pistol in its flapped holster on the belt of his leather riding breeches.
His horse Iago’s dark chestnut coat was sheened with sweat and the beast breathed hard despite the morning’s early-autumn cool. The animal was a gelding. The Duke was a man’s man, a qualified Mech Warrior who had fought in The Republic’s armed forces against the first Capellan invasion before resuming civilian life, and secure enough in that fact not to burden himself with an uncut stallion.
Which occurred to him in a most unflattering way in his almost-ritual daily thinking about his son, Jasek, and possible omissions he had made in the boy’s upbringing.
Duke Gregory should have been a man at peace: a big, fit, middle-aged man in robust health, with most of his hair, and that seal brown going to distinguished silver at the temples. A crisp morning ride in beautiful woods outside the Prefectural capital of New London, with mountains close enough on one hand to break into view at times above the trees to the north, and Thames Bay close enough on the other to smell salt-sea breeze as well as sun-warmed leaves. The great trees were upon the cusp of turning, and late-season field insects sang sawing yet melodious tunes without awareness of the impending arrival of first frost to still their voices.
His domain enjoyed relative peace and order, unlike the Prefectures on the other side of The Republic, wracked by rebellion and factional warfare, or even Terra itself, which had suffered invasion by the Steel Wolves some months before—a poignant thing for the Duke, as for most Skyians, since Clan Wolf had played a key role in freeing Skye of the brutal violence of the Blakist Jihad decades before. It was part of his collective memory, as it had happened before his birth. Skye shared no boundaries with any Clan zone. Its only neighbor not of The Republic was the Lyran Commonwealth, of which Skye itself had once been part; and House Steiner still maintained, at least publicly, its cautious bourgeois approval of The Republic, and disavowed any interest in reclaiming the territory it had ceded to Devlin Stone. The Draconis Combine, an ancient enemy, lay dangerously near, it was true, as did the perilously disordered fragments of the Free Worlds League. Yet planet and Prefecture generally prospered.
He had, Duke Gregory knew, fortuitous placement between the core Prefecture X and the trade-minded Commonwealth to thank in large part for that fact, as for the relative rapidity with which Skye had recovered from the Jihad. Interstellar traffic had dropped sharply in the wake of the HPG collapse. Yet it had also rebounded, if not to pre-collapse levels. Without question, trade was facilitated by faster-than-light communications, yet it did not depend upon them. The nations of pre–space flight Terra had enjoyed substantial, even global trade long before they possessed means of communicating faster than a good ship could sail with favorable winds.
They had also seized, held and administered empires. That latter thought was not so comforting.
Which was only tangentially why the Duke scowled as he rode through the beautiful morning.
The main reason was none other than his son and, as soon as he got around to it, erstwhile heir: the Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.
The problem was, the boy longed to be a hero. Which would not have been so bad. Except he had the stuff for it.
The Lord Governor bore no animosity toward the Lyrans nor their ruling
family, House Steiner; best not, inasmuch as he had not found the latter half of his surname in a box of breakfast food.
Yet he was two things, and these deeply: a Skye patriot, glad in his heart that his home planet and most of the former Skye Protectorate had at last gained independence after centuries in the grasp of the iron Steiner fist. More even than that, he was a patriot of The Republic of the Sphere, and believed in it and in the transcendent vision of its vanished founder Devlin Stone.
Though no one had invaded Skye yet, nor seemed likely to anytime soon, all was not placid perfection. Below the surface tensions bubbled. And boiled over with increasing frequency into disputes, demonstrations, and of late even communal violence.
Most of the population felt as he did, though generally less fervently with regard to The Republic. But some among the English speakers, primarily of Scottish or Irish descent, longed for a time before the Steiners ruled Skye, when the planet was seat of its own vest-pocket empire, the Protectorate. These felt they had exchanged a foreign master on Tharkad for another on Terra. They viewed The Republic’s diminished influence as a result of the HPG loss as an opportunity to seek true independence. If not more; a prospect the Duke knew annoyed and worried other planets of Skye’s erstwhile dominion.
On the other hand, an extremely vocal minority among the German speakers cried out for reannexation by the Lyran Commonwealth: Anschluss. The planet’s most visible, and audible, agitator for resorption under Steiner rule was Arminius Herrmann. Freiherr von Herrmann, as he had recently if dubiously taken to styling himself, was the tall, stout, choleric scion of the family which owned controlling interest in Skye’s, and indeed the Prefecture’s, largest media corporation, Herrmanns AG.
