by Victor Milán
Anastasia rose and smiled. “Why, to carry out a Trial of Annihilation,” she said.
“Against whom?” demanded Star Captain Maynar Carns.
“Against us,” Anastasia said, “of course.”
Sanglamore Academy
New London
Skye
28 June 3134
“Excuse me, please,” a man’s deep voice said from the break-room door.
Tara Campbell’s head snapped up. She blinked. She realized her chin had been trending down toward her clavicle, into the open collar of the man’s white shirt she wore. She had taken to wearing masculine dress when liable to be seen, to counteract the Skyean perception of her as, candidly, a bimbo.
The initial panic over the Chaffee horror had subsided quickly, once people realized no Clan invasion fleet followed hard upon the heels of that news. Still mysterious was why the reaction should have been so vehement—and so immediate. Duke Gregory’s thaw toward Tara had proven temporary; he was again as frostily remote and his staff as stiffly uncooperative as before. It did not appear he blamed Tara for the situation in any way, but his anger had boiled over again. He was mad at the universe.
Tara’s aide had jumped up and turned to face the door. Her attitude bespoke protectiveness, like a dog guarding her mistress. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked with a diplomacy that made the Countess proud—and which the young captain’s ready-to-rumble body language eloquently belied.
The man smiled, half-shy, bobbed his head, and entered. “I apologize for intruding. I’m looking for Countess Tara Campbell.”
So is half the planet. Although Tara Bishop did not say it, Tara Campbell heard it through the mists of her drowsiness, too slowly dissipating from behind her eyes. Some wanted to interview her, others to marry her, and a sizable majority to ride her offworld on a rail—if anything so nice. . . .
“I’m sorry, sir.” Tara Bishop was shaking her head, giving her protestation the lie again. “The Countess is extremely busy now. You’ll have to get in touch with her staff and make an appointment.”
Tara C. got a better look at the man past her friend, who was now in full Valkyrie mode, ready to slay dragons. The Countess had a vague memory, just before the man’s voice intruded, of her aide’s voice asking if she were all right? TB had been nagging her to sleep more, to rest more, and Tara knew she was right. But it was hard to tear her mind away, sometimes, from a threat that, although this world was not hers, seemed to dwarf the menace the Steel Wolves had posed to Northwind.
The intruder smiled. He was a plain man, Asian looking, dark eyes on a bit of a bias, a head of slightly receding dark hair. He had a medium height and build, although the cut of his subdued business garb suggested an attempt to hide some softening around the middle. On the whole he looked not much different from anyone who might happen to stand next to him in any city on any world of The Republic. Until he smiled.
“I have important business with the Countess,” he said apologetically.
Tara Bishop started to go into attack mode. Despite herself Tara was intrigued. “At ease, TB,” she said lightly. “He’s gotten this far, so he’s either resourceful or determined. What is your business, exactly, Mr. . . . ?”
“Laveau. Paul Laveau.” He blinked and grinned a little wider. “I’m a spy.”
Both women stared. Tara Bishop’s left hand began to stray behind her back—toward the hideout laser pistol riding beneath her battle-dress blouse, behind her left hip.
The intruder laughed. “I hope I didn’t alarm you.” He raised his left hand from his side, deliberately, just slowly enough so the women—and his attention seemed for the moment centered upon the captain—could see his hand was cupped, not holding a weapon.
He revealed in his palm a badge displaying the seal of The Republic of the Sphere and his likeness. “I’m on your side.”
Captain Bishop stepped forward to peer at the badge. “ ‘Systems and resource auditor,” ’ she read, raising her head to study him with new scrutiny. “ ‘Office of the Exarch’?”
“Real spies aren’t usually very glamorous,” he admitted. “I’m what you might call a forensic accountant.”
“You’ve come to check our books?” Tara Campbell demanded.
“In the midst of a Clan invasion?” asked Tara B. She took the badge holder from him, studied it, then unceremoniously tossed it to Tara Campbell, who fielded it as if the move was the most natural thing in the world and peered at it herself, brow furrowing so that her snub nose tipped up slightly.
Paul Laveau grinned again. It seemed a natural expression for him. Not precisely what she would expect of an accountant, even one who appeared to include a cloak and maybe even a dagger among the tools of his trade.
“What better time to ensure that The Republic of the Sphere’s resources are being properly employed, Countess? Don’t worry; you are not the object of my investigation.”
“Who is?” Tara Bishop asked with characteristic bluntness.
The Asian eyes appraised her calmly. “Captain Bishop—I hope I’ve not made a terrific gaffe and got your name wrong?”
“I’m Captain Tara Bishop.”
He nodded. “Captain Bishop, that information is confidential and need-to-know—apologies for the security mumbo-jumbo.
“However”—he looked at Tara Campbell—“I can tell you that my mission concerns events that preceded our learning about the Falcon war fleet, as well as your presence on Skye. Not much real mystery there.”
“I see,” Tara Campbell said. She did: Jasek’s defection with the heart and spine of the Republican Skye Militia.
Without preamble she flipped the badge holder at him. He fumbled it, dropped it, picked it up grinning apologetically. TB’s stern face cracked in a smile.
But she wasn’t ready to let go. “Look, Mr. Systems and Resource Auditor Laveau—”
“Paul, please. Or if you must, Mr. Laveau. The rest is too awful to say aloud.”
“Paul. All respect, but aren’t you a little light in the pay grade for a job this big?”
Paul shrugged. “Of course you’re right, Captain,” he said. “An investigation of such magnitude would normally be handled by a Knight of the Sphere. But as I’m sure you already suspect, The Republic has a good many more emergencies on its hands right now than it has Knights to attend them. I was what was available; the next planet to tumble into crisis is liable to get a stockroom clerk.”
“What exactly is the nature of your business with the Countess?” Tara Bishop demanded. “I have a need to know that, I think you’ll concede.”
“Your manner suggests I damned well better, Captain,” he said. “Good for you. A person needs loyal friends, as a public person requires zealous assistants. The answer: simply, I have come to ask a favor of your boss.”
“A favor?” Tara Bishop echoed.
“Ask,” said Tara Campbell. “I’ve got to warn you, Exarch’s combat accountant or not, there’s not much I can spare you.”
“Your kind cooperation is all I need. I am unfamiliar with Skye. For that matter, I don’t know anything truly about you: I am not so encumbered with a bureaucrat’s soul as to believe a dossier can tell me anything truly vital about anything so complex as a world—much less a person.”
Tara Bishop whistled admiringly. “The Republic diplomatic corps took a major hit when you opted for chartered accountancy, Mr. Laveau. You could preach pacifism on Sudeten with a delivery like that.”
Laveau laughed delightedly. “You truly think so? My great-grandmother always tells me I’m too glib for my own good. I am most appreciative, Captain Tara Bishop, although I think you do me too much credit. The truth is, a field accountant needs quite an array of talents, many of them unlooked for.”
“Since you’ve done your homework you know I’m a bit preoccupied here,” Tara said. “But I can spare you a little time, I suppose. Your work’s important to The Republic too.”
“Far from the same level as yours, Countess. Still
—might I take up a fraction more of your time now, please?”
Tara sighed, considered. “Why not? Shall we sit down?”
“Why not ride?” he asked.
“Ride?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “There are excellent riding stables not far from this gloomy pile, with most appealing bridle paths through the woods. If the brochures are to be trusted, of course, although the evidence of my eyes tends to bear them out. You do ride, Countess, and well, as you do everything you turn your hand to; I trust the mass media that far at least.”
She shook her head. The short pelt of platinum hair, not currently spiked, shifted as to a breeze. “I don’t know—”
All this time Tara Bishop had been studying Paul Laveau with a penetrating eye.
“She accepts,” she said abruptly.
“But—” Tara started.
“Go.” Her aide made shooing motions.
“My duty—”
Tara Bishop snorted. “Your duty is to take better damned care of yourself! There’s only so much you can do, you need to rely more on your staff, and you won’t do anyone a bloody bit of good if you’ve fatigued yourself into a coma or psychosis when the Falcons finally blow into town. The best thing you can do for Skye right now is get some fresh air, exercise, and then about fourteen hours’ sleep. Ma’am.”
She braced to attention and fixed her eyes above the top of the break room door. “You can now bust me back to private and assign me to waste-burning detail in perpetuity for rank insubordination, Countess Campbell, ma’am.”
Tara was shaking her head. Laughing. But tears glittered in her eyes.
“I had no idea you felt so strongly, Tara,” she said. “I hardly know how to respond.”
Paul Laveau cleared his throat discreetly. “Might I be allowed to suggest: with humble pride at inspiring such devotion in a warrior the caliber of our Captain Bishop? And also, by accepting my invitation, of course.”
And he turned his side to her and offered his crooked elbow.
To her entire amazement, Tara Campbell slipped her arm through his, and allowed him to squire her out the door.
19
Chaffee
Lyran Commonwealth
The Republic of the Sphere
1 July 3134
With the shortest distance to travel and only one combat objective before the climactic confrontation on Skye, Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus and his Turkina Keshik spent several weeks solidifying the Clan’s grip on Chaffee before advancing to their intermediate destination, Glengarry.
It was a grindingly frustrating time for Bec Malthus. Malvina Hazen’s destruction of the city of Hamilton had put an end to organized resistance to Clan occupation on the planet. Yet the majority of the planet’s widely scattered citizenry continued simply to ignore the Jade Falcon writ—as, the invaders’ collaborators reluctantly revealed, it had ignored the indigenous government. The settlers were far too dispersed to be rounded up by the few Falcons Malthus had at his disposal. Raids by VTOL-borne commandos tended to turn up empty homesteads. But they did lose troops, to snipers and booby traps.
Malthus responded by rounding up more civilians in the cities and executing them publicly in retribution. But the hinterlanders, it developed, were none too fond of city folk. The net result was increased unrest, uncooperation and sabotage in the cities themselves.
Meanwhile, the fractious minded discovered that while direct attacks on Clanners or Clan assets brought immediate smashing vengeance—no matter how seldom it managed to land on actual perpetrators—native collaborators, including the civilian police and military, bound by the surrender terms to serve the Falcons, offered far more available targets. Neither Malthus nor his subcommanders was going to burn scarce Expedition resources because some local cop with a hastily manufactured cloth falcon-and-katana brassard wrapped around his arm got his brains splashed on some alley wall, or a bush ranger or ten got smoked in a back-country ambush.
Attempts to set up native-run centers in the back country for Chaffeeans to turn in their now-proscribed personal arms produced nearly one hundred percent casualties among the staff sent to run them inside three days. When indigenous rank-and-file enforcers simply refused to accept the duty, Malthus had to back down—unless he wanted to try policing the whole planet with the handful of Solahma retreads he could afford to leave behind as occupiers. Forcing the quisling commander of planetary police to actually announce the climbdown, and then sending her to the wall, made Malthus feel somewhat better, but produced no discernible improvement in either civilian compliance or law-enforcement morale.
Nor would any conceivable hostage-and-retribution scheme render Chaffee’s indigenous wildlife any more submissive. Creatures prowled forest and shore that could peel an Elemental power-armor suit like a can of processed meat product—and treat the occupant accordingly.
In sum, everything on Chaffee hated the Falcons.
It was with undiluted, if not exactly public, relief that Malthus lifted his DropShips from the surface per the invasion schedule, leaving a Solahma garrison under the command of a dezgra Star Colonel with a handful of vehicles, mostly loot of Porrima, to keep the peace and introduce Chaffee to the enlightened Clan way of life.
Malthus was intrigued by the Mongol doctrines espoused, and put into horrific effect upon Chaffee, by the wild, mercurial Malvina Hazen. Even though he understood, as even her sibkin—whose intelligence and acumen Malthus had never made the mistake of underestimating—failed to, that at the root of her unorthodox methods lay blackest heresy.
Despite Malvina Hazen’s far-from-secret stance as focal point of the Mongol movement, just a few words from Malthus—words already chosen—would still see her broken from Galaxy Commander and condemned by a Trial of Abjuration. Or worse, no matter her accomplishments. Which made him well pleased with his subordinate and protégé.
For Beckett Malthus loved none so well as those with strings for him to hold. Even if they themselves did not know they had them.
20
Sanglamore Military Academy
New London
Skye
2 July 3134
Rotating a finger’s breadth above the table in the darkened briefing room, the holovid bust seemed fully as substantial as meat and cloth and hair: a broad head with long reddish hair sweeping back from a widow’s peak almost to the collar of a black and green tunic. Russet beard fringed a broad jaw; the long upper lip was shaved clean. The eyes were sleepy looking slits in which murky green could be glimpsed, like concealed pools. The nose was broad. Something about the image radiated a sense of the certitude of power.
“Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus, now Supreme Commander of the Jade Falcon expeditionary force,” the woman said. She was tall and rangy, with a knife scar down the right side of her long, unhandsome face, slanted blue eyes flanking an oft-broken nose. Her graying blond hair was shaved to a scalp lock. In the dimness, the badges on her spacer’s jumpsuit, of a senior member of the merchant caste on one side and of Clan Sea Fox on the other, were vague circular blurs.
Tara Campbell’s eyes kept straying from the holographic image of the Jade Falcon commander to the actual Clanswoman. Her emotions were a roil.
“How is it you come to know all this, Master Merchant Senna?” asked Planetary Legate Eckard. The very emotional desiccation of his words robbed them of any taste of challenge.
“We trade in the Jade Falcon OZ,” the woman said bluntly. “We don’t like them; they don’t like us.” Like many Sea Fox merchants, she showed no compunction about using contractions. Yet Tara was chillingly aware that she was alien, poured from a bottle in lieu of birth like the most fanatically mystic Nova Cat or rabid Wolf.
And while her manner was one of rough camaraderie, the Countess also knew that could be no more than a trade-convenient pose: she dare not assume that this woman or any Clanner’s agenda was the same as hers, far less The Republic’s. Yet one thing she did rely upon: Clan Sea Fox hated the Falcons�
�trade rivals as well as blood enemies—as bitterly as she herself detested Anastasia Kerensky and her Steel Wolves.
One side of the Clanswoman’s mouth quirked up. “But they can’t afford to not trade with us, any more than we can afford to not trade with them. You know how it goes: everybody trades with everybody. Or did until the HPG went out.”
She shrugged wide shoulders. “Sense tells us we should trade now more than ever, all of us, since JumpShips are the only thing now that pass between most stars any faster than light. But leave that. The point is, we don’t have to love the Falcons to trade with them, nor the other way ’round. And even among Clanners, trade means talk.”
“What ought we know about this Malthus, Master Merchant?” It was easy for Tara to keep her voice genial: all it took was a lifetime’s schooling and practice in the rigors of diplomacy, and the exercise of a will which enabled a tiny slip of feminine body to make itself an interstellar unarmed-combat champion. Not much at all.
Those strange slanted eyes appraised her for a long moment before the Clanswoman spoke. “He’s a snake. A conniver and contriver.”
“They have those in the Jade Falcons?” asked Colonel Robert Ballantrae with both surprise and a sneer. “Outside the merchant caste, of course.”
“Go easy, Robert,” Tara murmured.
The knife-damaged face showed no reaction. It struck Tara that this woman was probably little less skilled at her own brand of diplomacy than Tara herself. She tried to imagine what that would cost a Clanswoman bred. Even among the Sea Foxes, who honored merchants scarcely less than warriors—if indeed, they recognized such a distinction.
Outside experts, self-proclaimed, debated that latter point. Although they were the most ubiquitous of the true Clanners—the wild true breed, not Republicans of Clan descent—in the Inner Sphere, the Foxes were in many ways the least known. Where most Clans were notable for their braggadocio, they were extremely private, holding their daily lives and culture as closely as their treasure.
