Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

  Still, “A public arrest does not help us show cohesiveness.”

  “Landgrave . . . Jasek . . .” She put some strength in her spine, coming to near attention. “I would never do anything to jeopardize the Stormhammers.”

  “No,” he agreed, “you wouldn’t.”

  Tamara’s loyalty could never be questioned—she wore it on her sleeve right where he could see it, which was why she had earned the Towne operation. But someone within her own unit had tried to assassinate her. Had that attempt been personal or political? There was no way to answer that question now.

  “I’m not saying you didn’t have cause. But in situations like this, please leave the public orchestration of events to myself, or Nicco.”

  “I don’t report to GioAvanti,” she said with a frown.

  “No, but you did not report to Colonel Petrucci either,” he reminded her with a touch of steel in his voice. A show of personal displeasure would touch her more deeply than any formal reprimand, he knew. “And the question remains, what do we do with Hauptmann Parkins?”

  “I still don’t trust him,” she said.

  “Neither can I,” Jasek agreed, smiling thinly at her expression of total surprise. “I said we found no evidence of guilt. There is some gray shading between guilt and actual innocence, though. Like how much Vic Parkins suspected he might be influencing your subordinates.”

  “Then why—”

  “We need warriors, Tamara. I can’t afford to throw one away—a good one—on what he might have suspected. Or for being ambitious, so long as those ambitions stop short of treachery.”

  Tamara nodded slowly. “But even if you’d transferred him, it would have undermined his authority. That could turn him toward treachery. Unless you promoted him as well.” Her lip curled in distaste at the thought.

  “Or,” Jasek pointed out, “unless I now transfer you.”

  “And which of the other colonels would give me a fair shake?” she asked, not believing it.

  He shrugged, stopped outside a conference room. Joss Vandel’s deep baritone rumbled on the other side of a partially open door. No sentry here. If an agent of The Republic or Jasek’s father made it this far into the building, past the best security GioAvanti money could buy, one more man wasn’t going to make a difference.

  Then, reconsidering, Jasek nodded at the door where Leutnant-colonel Wolf had entered ahead of them. “Alexia has asked about you,” he admitted. “She needs experienced people in the Tharkan Strikers.”

  He figured the chance of Tamara accepting such a post would be the same as that of his father suddenly supporting the Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth, or the Exarch of The Republic voluntarily restoring the Isle of Skye. But long shots were known to come in now and then.

  Not this time.

  “No.” Tamara shook her head. “I know what I have with Petrucci. And with Parkins too, for that matter. I can make this work.” She paused, then, “You were going to ask me to keep him from the start, weren’t you?”

  Her open incredulity made him laugh, which was good. Recent days had not offered much fuel for laughter. He leaned in close enough to smell the scented soap she used. Her eyes widened at his nearness, and he smiled for her benefit. “Yes, Tamara. I was. But I wanted you to work it through for yourself first.”

  “Why, Jasek?” She almost sounded as if she were purring, basking in his warmth.

  Careful . . . “Because I wanted things right between us before I invited you in on this command-level meeting.”

  “Invite me in? Now?”

  “We’re moving toward Skye right away,” he told her. “After a quick stop on Zebebelgenubi.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Some Highlanders got themselves trapped there,” he said, intentionally answering her question in the most literal way possible, even though he knew what she meant. “We’re hoping to pull them out from under the Falcons’ claws.”

  “I meant, why pull me in? Why now?”

  He saw it play over her face, no matter how guarded she thought she held her expression. Tamara Duke had nothing on Niccolò GioAvanti for a poker face. Jasek read her easily. The afterglow of his nearness. The sudden shock at being included in a command-level meeting, and then the surge of pride.

  And the devotion—the worship—that invariably followed.

  After tearing her down, just a little, it was time to raise her back up again and cement the bonds of loyalty that bound her to him. Niccolò called it “personal time.” Jasek’s father would simply call it leadership.

  He knew what it really was, and felt only slightly the heel for taking advantage of her feelings and expectations as he picked up her hand and held it tightly.

  “For the same reason I sent you to Towne,” he told her. “Because right now, this is where I need you.”

  With her star-filled eyes and open body posture, if she heard anything other than “I need you” out of that, Jasek would be shocked. He dropped her hand as he opened the door, with no desire to rub Alexia’s face in the necessities of command.

  From her hard expression, staring at them from the far side of the conference room table, he knew she considered it obvious enough.

  5

  When newly acquired states have been accustomed to living freely under their own laws, there are three ways to hold them securely: first, by devastating them.

  The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli

  Belletaria

  Venicio County, Kimball II

  16 September 3134

  The Gyrfalcon swayed from side to side in its peculiar, strutting gait as Star Colonel Noritomo Helmer high-stepped it along the rubble-choked boulevard, leading his column through the city that had been Belletaria. He remembered a line from one of the ancient texts he had smuggled into his sibko barracks as a child and hidden inside his mattress. It was a book on mythology.

  And when she opened the box, all the evils of the world were released.

  He and a sibmate had read such books at night, whispered about them while lying next to each other at rifle drill or while making camp on extended maneuvers. The myth of Pandora had been fun to argue. About whether such a curse could have had any other result. About whether or not Pandora had been an attractive woman.

  But one thing they had never discussed was the idea that their Clan would ever visit such a nightmare on an unsuspecting people.

  These were not the warriors Noritomo remembered training alongside.

  Belletaria had been a medium-sized city on Kimball II. One hundred and fifty thousand people. Large portions of the city had been burned—residential areas, mostly—put to the torch by a determined Firestarter. Ash choked the sky, casting a gray pallor over the ruins. A few fires still smoldered, though most had finally burned out or been extinguished in last night’s rainfall.

  But what the fires missed, Malvina Hazen’s handpicked “relief force” had taken apart with ruthless efficiency. Assault ’Mechs leveled the industrial sector, kicking through warehouse walls and wrenching over large cranes used to pull cargo off the barges that plied trade between the river cities. The barges had been sunk. Lifters and trucks were shoved into the river. The assault machines had then joined a couple of modified SalvageMechs and some heavy tanks to raze the downtown area where Noritomo now walked his Gyrfalcon. Apartment buildings had ’Mech-sized holes in them where the sturdier machines had simply walked through. Other buildings were nothing better than piles of rubble and splintered lumber. The commercial center of Belletaria, some forty-eight square blocks, had been leveled by artillery fire and then systematically flattened as the ’Mechs and tanks spread out in a line and marched, stomped, and rolled forward in a juggernaut of destruction.

  All his fault.

  Galaxy Commander Hazen had instructed him to take Kimball II. It was to be the jewel in her crown. A population of nearly two billion and the local headquarters for Ceres Metals, this rich Republic world was one of six targeted by the Jade Falcon desant. Her “gift” of it to N
oritomo was a measure of confidence in one of her senior warriors. But he had made one strategic mistake, and gotten mired in a brutal ground campaign that caused him to miss the rendezvous for the assault on Skye. Malvina Hazen would not soon forgive him that.

  Throttling down, slowing the Gyrfalcon until he paced to an uneasy stop, Noritomo banked the fusion reactor. “I am stepping outside,” he said, the voice-activated mic broadcasting to his battered unit.

  Star Captain Lysle Clees argued. “This area is not secure, Star Colonel Helmer. I don’t recommend it.”

  Her intentional use of a contraction, debasing the language, had its desired effect. Noritomo paused. Then, “There is no one left to worry about, Star Captain. I will descend.”

  No one left. It was a desperate salve against the devastation. The Jade Falcon relief force had announced their intentions from orbit, giving people twelve hours in which to begin their evacuation. Perhaps only a few thousand had actually been killed. Perhaps a few hundred. The assault force had moved on to the next city, ready to visit more destruction if planetary leaders did not capitulate at once. Their warning this time was a mere six hours.

  Noritomo pulled off his neurohelmet and unplugged his cooling vest from the circulation system. The helmet he left on his seat. The vest he wore for its thin layer of ballistic cloth. Lysle’s warning should not be completely ignored.

  It was the work of a moment to unbutton from the cockpit and scale down to the ground. Smoke from last night’s fires lingered, stinging his eyes, leaving a wood smoke taste in his mouth. Two suited Elementals waited for him. Their hulking forms dwarfed Noritomo. He nodded to Lysle, unable to see her eyes through the reflective faceplate.

  Lysle unlocked her helmet, pulled it off, and held it at her side. She was one of the Clans’ genetically bred infantry, tall and heavily muscled. The large woman’s blond dreadlocks uncoiled in a snakelike mane, like another creature of myth Noritomo half remembered from the book.

  “I do not like this, Star Colonel.”

  Noritomo nodded. “I do not like a lot of things, Lysle.” He knew her for one of the more moderate warriors under his command. There were things he could say in front of her that were safe. There were things that were not. He struck out for a large pile of bricks and broken ferrocrete that—he guessed—had been a bank. The two warriors slowly walked around it. “Seven months ago, this seemed like such a straightforward mission.”

  Seven months. When they were still inside the Clan occupation zone, mustering for the long march under the watchful eyes of Galaxy Commanders Beckett Malthus and Aleksandr and Malvina Hazen.

  The Elemental kept pace, taking one long stride for each of his two. “Strike through Lyran space and into The Republic of the Sphere,” she said, nodding. One lip curled up in distaste. “Smash the Steel Wolves if we could find them.”

  “And carve out a foothold for future Jade Falcon operations.”

  That had been the unvoiced mission directive for the desant—what amounted to a large reconnaissance in force. Noritomo had been part of Malvina Hazen’s forces, and close enough to both her and her brother to know that they were the true mission commanders with Malthus in place as the Khan’s faithful watchdog. He had also been close enough to the twins to see the differences in each leader’s style. Aleks believed in traditional Clan practices, bidding forces against the local defense and putting into power a provisional government that would honor the Jade Falcon conquest without the need of a large garrison force.

  Malvina, as she proved on Chaffee, on Ryde, followed a more violent approach. Terrorize the locals, slash at them with the fear of total destruction, and afterward you could take what you wanted and they would never dare rise against you. Before the advance force ever took a single Republic world, in fact, Malvina’s personal affection for the history of the great Mongol khans, for the Chinggis Khan, had bled down into several unit commanders. Restrained for so long by an uneasy truce, held in check inside the Clan occupation zones, their dreams of conquest and glory overrode any sense of moral obligation to the conquered people.

  The people of Kimball II understood that now.

  “One mistake,” he repeated aloud his earlier thought. He crouched down and dug a handful of Republic notes from under a rock. They still had a band around their middle with the bank’s seal on it. He tossed aside the bundle of currency. Ahead, the breeze scattered loose bills across a small blacktop parking lot like autumn leaves. “We should have taken Kimball IV and used it as a staging world.”

  “And still meet the Galaxy Commander’s timeline for the assault on Skye?” Lysle asked. She shrugged. “How many military victories are won in hindsight, Star Colonel?”

  “If we had applied Malvina Hazen’s tactics. If we had struck hard enough to leave the planet reeling.” If Noritomo could have brought himself to use terror as a weapon, throwing off twenty-eight years of traditional Clan military doctrine. “ ‘A new age demands new thinking,” ’ he quoted. “Is that not what Malvina said?”

  “Are you trying to convince me, Noritomo Helmer?” Lysle stopped him with a bulky, armored arm barring his path. “Or yourself?” She nodded forward, where two soot-covered teens, a boy and a girl, scrounged through the rubble of the next building. A market. They dug out canned food, mining it like gold, ignoring the currency that blew uselessly around them.

  The girl spotted them. Likely she had been the lookout. It would be hard to miss the short line of ’Mechs and armored vehicles halted only half a block over. But rather than flee, hunger and shock drove her to her feet. She hurled a can in the direction of the two warriors, as if they could be threatened by canned produce. It clattered and rolled across the ground a full thirty meters short.

  Lysle Clees extended an arm toward the girl. The Elemental suit’s built-in laser would reach across the distance much easier than a thrown can. “Malvina Hazen would kill that one for her show of defiance.”

  Noritomo placed a hand on the weapon barrel. He knew he could never budge Lysle, not even with his full body weight against the myomer strength of the infantry battlesuit. Only his rank let him push aside her arm with ease. “That is not the kind of war I wish to fight,” he said.

  “Nor I, Star Colonel. But Aleksandr Hazen died on Skye. This may be the only kind of war that will be left for us.”

  As if Pandora would have listened to a voice of reason. Someone must have told her, “Do not open the box.” But she did. She made that decision for everyone, whether they wanted it or not. Was she sorry afterward? The myths rarely went so far as to discuss what happened after. What kind of changes were wrought from such actions.

  “Does not matter,” he decided, answering Lysle as well as himself. “We have our orders to return to Glengarry. We will see what Galaxy Commander Hazen has decided. Kimball II is no longer our concern.”

  With the girl staring after them, and the thrown can still lying on the ground between them, he knew this world was going to be somebody’s concern. Noritomo doubted that person was going to have an easy time of it, and all because Malvina Hazen had opened the box. Which begged a question from him.

  Once opened, could it ever be closed again?

  6

  New London

  Skye

  17 September 3134

  New London Tower was the small but powerful realm of Prefect Della Brown. Tara Campbell had felt like an intruder the first dozen times walking into the lobby of the slender, twelve-story high-rise, always under the suspicious scrutiny of the military men and women who were responsible for the readiness and defense of Prefecture IX. These were people who knew each other by first name, by unit, by the academies they graduated from and their class standing, by whether their parents were confirmed citizens or unproven residents, and, for professional officers, by how their families had stood on such topics as secession of the Isle of Skye and formation of The Republic.

  For a building so devoted in its approach to security, there were not many secrets among its occupants.


  She couldn’t say exactly when she began to feel less a stranger in this building. Certainly after being “promoted” from her blue visitor’s badge and the infantryman escort who had followed her to the most innocuous of meetings. Before the end of the campaign to defend Skye from the Jade Falcons. Somewhere along the way, the hard-line military presence had breathed a collective sigh of acceptance, and she no longer felt uncomfortable.

  If there was one place Duke Gregory might feel the least bit intimidated on his capital world, this was it. The Governor’s Palace was his home turf, and he seemed equally comfortable on the Sanglamore Academy grounds, which Tara had taken over as her own offices and the de facto planetary defense headquarters. Which was why she had chosen the Tower for today’s meeting with the Lord Governor and Paladin McKinnon.

  So far, the two strong-willed men had barely agreed to disagree. McKinnon did not like the state of local defenses. Duke Gregory refused to address most problems raised by the Paladin. It placed her in a bind, mediating between naked aggression and blind patriotism.

  Today she hoped to shake things up. To do that, she needed these men uncomfortable, slightly out of their element. But not defensive. To dial back on the atmosphere just one notch, she set up their gathering in the cartography room. It was one of very few rooms in Prefect Brown’s secure building not devoted exclusively to the strategic defense of Skye and the prefecture; the domain of a junior captain who rarely visited and three civilian contractors with their bright orange identification badges hung on lanyards around their necks.

  “Where’s Della?” Duke Gregory asked as Tara cleared the room of civilians.

  Her gold badge had a narrow red border around it, denoting temporary status, but it was enough to back up her orders without having to ask Captain Gereine to do it for her. The captain remained to work any equipment they might need. Tara had him pull up several flat-screen maps of Skye. Inside the room’s central holotank, she asked for a starfield of Prefecture IX and its surrounding space.