Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

  All erased in less than five days, since Jasek’s return to Skye. Under his direction the Stormhammers responded much more smoothly, rotating refit units into the field at a much quicker pace.

  It also appeared that he had pulled half of his troops out of the city. Tara had yet to count one vehicle bearing the crest of the Tharkan Strikers. Lyran Rangers were all that appeared to be left.

  Another corner and Duke Gregory’s motorcade—with full military escort, of course—flashed through the gated entrance without so much as a nod to local security. A squad of hoverbikes leading, a pair of VV1 Rangers marking perfect time behind them, and then the black hover-sedan with Tara and Jasek’s father seated in back. A Fox armored car followed, where Legate Eckard had taken the one passenger jump seat.

  Tara saw Jasek standing outside the main factory, attended at the moment by his civilian adviser and a Lyran general. Jasek looked ready to jump into combat at a moment’s notice, wearing the gray utility jumpsuit most MechWarriors pulled on over their battle togs. She shifted uncomfortably on the leather seat of the armored limousine, feeling more than a bit pretentious with her formal arrival. It didn’t help when she saw Jasek shake his head and lean over to whisper something to GioAvanti. She could only imagine.

  “Sometimes I wonder if we would do better without Jasek.” These were the duke’s first words in the last quarter hour. He sat next to her, staring through the tinted glass at his son, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

  “We need his Stormhammers,” Tara reminded him. The blood price they had laid down for Miliano, for Roosevelt Island, argued for itself. Even the lord governor had to admit that by now.

  Apparently he did. “But do we need Jasek?”

  Something in his tone caught her attention. “Why?” She glanced at him sharply. “Is there a reason we would lose him?”

  “Apparently not, if he is able to leave the Commonwealth for our company.” If there had been a suggestion hidden in his words, it had clearly been pulled back. It was simply a tired politician and a disappointed father who sat next to her.

  The motorcade pulled up in perfect parade formation. She was out of the sedan the moment it drifted to a stop, never waiting for the driver to get out and open the door for her. The sun warmed the back of her neck, but her ankles felt the dampness of a frost-touched breeze that blew out from the shaded alley between two buildings. Gooseflesh tingled on her arms, and she wrote that off to the chill in the air.

  And the pleasant warmth in Jasek’s hand clasp. That was just body heat.

  “Good to have you back,” Tara let him know right off.

  She wanted no argument between father and son to interfere with firming up the bridges she had built with the Stormhammers’ leader before Chaffee, before Hesperus II. First, be appreciative. Second, take control.

  She needed to greet the Lyran representative as well, a young leutnant-general with a fresh-pressed field uniform, and preferably before the lord governor insulted the man. Duke Gregory’s comments inside the sedan had been less than complimentary. But Jasek was not so eager to release her hand. He held it in a firm grip, pulling her back around to meet his stormy gaze. Dark blue eyes, so nearly indigo. Why did he distract her so easily?

  “What?” she asked.

  He’d brought his other hand up, and now cradled her hand in both of his. The way he shifted from one foot to the other. His hesitant glance toward his father, and then toward Niccolò GioAvanti. He looked nervous, like a man about to propose.

  Far from it.

  “We got word about two hours ago,” he said calmly as his father and Legate Eckard approached. “Jade Falcons overran your hidden command post outside of New London this morning. An assault Trinary.”

  The facility she had built into the bluff, below the Forlorn Hope memorial. Where she had overseen the response to the Jade Falcons’ landing assaults.

  “We didn’t have more than a lance . . . maybe two . . . of light vehicles left there.”

  And twenty-two personnel, several from the staff of her own Highlanders. Tara Bishop had been sent back there! And Della Brown. Niccolò and the Lyran general refused to meet her eyes, leaving this to Jasek. She swallowed hard. “How many escaped?”

  “An assault Trinary,” he repeated, and let the silence stretch out uncomfortably.

  “No one escaped,” Niccolò GioAvanti finally said. He tugged at the braid lying down the left side of his face. His pale eyes caught each of the new arrivals in turn. “No one was taken prisoner. Prefect Della Brown is dead. The staff is dead.”

  “Well, that tears it,” Duke Gregory said. “We need to take back New London.”

  Jasek shook his head, finally releasing Tara’s hand. “That would be a bad idea.”

  “It might cause some military hardship,” the lord governor snapped, “but it’s a political and a command necessity. We swore—each in our own way—to put the people of Skye and the men and women under our care first and foremost. We’re failing them all, boy.”

  Visibly calming himself when Jasek did not contradict him, Duke Gregory placed a hand on her shoulder. “It was a fair gamble, Countess, letting them occupy New London, but I’m not going to watch while that murdering bitch takes Skye apart one piece at a time.”

  GioAvanti studied his fingernails as if looking for flaws in his manicure. “ ‘Fortune is a woman,” ’ he said, his eyes finding Tara, “ ‘and in order to be mastered she must be jogged and beaten.” ’

  Duke Gregory physically recoiled from the GioAvanti scion. The Lyran officer frowned his disapproval as well. But Tara recognized that far from making a sexist comment, he quoted from an ancient political text. And it did seem to match the Clan philosophy of mating military might with political gain, and of aggression in place of caution. On the face of it, GioAvanti seemed to be agreeing with the lord governor that rash action was needed. But she also knew the context in which that quote was nested.

  “ ‘She runs her course only when she is not contained by proper safeguards.” ’ She nodded, and turned the small group toward the nearby facility.

  “We either trust our original plans or abandon Skye’s fortune to a coin toss. Duke Gregory, I’ve lost as much or more in this recent setback.” She winced as memories of Tara Bishop threatened to flood to the surface—of all her Highlanders to lose . . . “And I still believe that we must hold to our position.”

  “There are not that many positions left to hold,” he twisted her words around. Glancing to his left and right, he studied the light defenses surrounding the Assemblies plant, shook his head.

  Too few vehicles, Tara agreed. Stepping inside the shadowed interior of the facility did not raise hopes. The main floor continued to work on assembling a Kinnol main battle tank, but fewer than half of the converted maintenance bays were busy with repairing allied war machines.

  Again, that feeling of abandonment. Or maybe it was the ghosts of so many Highlanders. Tara shivered, but then, it was cooler inside the building, out of the sun. A few of GioAvanti’s people crewed a beverage table just inside the doors. She accepted an insulated mug of black, black coffee when it was offered, as did the Legate.

  The beverage was bitter and burned-tasting, but at least it was hot.

  Duke Gregory refused the offer. “It appears we are preparing to give up Miliano next,” he said with a frustrated glare toward his son.

  “That will not happen, Lord Governor.”

  Ignored for the last several minutes, the young leutnant-general now stepped forward to introduce himself. He looked more than a little out of place, his Lyran dress uniform standing out against the field dress of the other officers present. His woolen jacket was light blue. Red piping trimmed the cuffs and the outside seam of his white stirrup pants. His shoes were polished to a reception-quality shine.

  “Hiram Brewster, of the Lyran Guards. My forces are set in a picket line just south of Miliano. We can hold against a Jade Falcon push.”

  Tara had her reservations, having
seen battlerom footage of the recent recapture of Norfolk. Also, she had spotted a Zeus being worked on in the facility’s large corner bay. Technicians were busy ripping out a mangled gyro, to be replaced from valuable local stores, no doubt. If the white horse’s head painted on its leg was an indication of ownership, Hiram’s ’Mech was currently sidelined.

  Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, she reminded herself, and shook the offered hand in a quick, neutral clasp. “We appreciate the offer of Lyran assistance.” She had worried about Duke Gregory, but apparently for nothing. He stepped forward with a hand outstretched as well. She breathed easier, for about two seconds.

  “My son may have warned you of my feelings against bringing in the Commonwealth, and he was right.” Tara drew in a sharp breath as the two men shook hands. “But for Skye I welcome you here. So long as we understand each other.”

  “Father,” Jasek warned.

  The leutnant-general did not seem to mind. “I think we do, sir.”

  “I hope so. Because in this manner I do not speak for the Exarch, whoever it turns out to be. Jasek wants you here. Tara Campbell approves. So be it. But the minute I believe your Archon is trying to open the door for an invasion of The Republic, I’ll sic the hounds on your heels.”

  Tara winced. Losing Paladin McKinnon had been a hard enough blow to the defense of Skye. If the Lyrans decided to pick up their toys and go home, whom did that serve?

  Brewster’s face darkened only a touch. “I don’t make or discuss policy, Lord Governor. I enforce the will of the duke of Hesperus. And that will, currently, is to render aid and assistance to Jasek Kelswa-Steiner and to Skye.”

  Good answer. He was a better politician that Tara would have given him credit for, or was a good enough soldier to simply fall back on his orders.

  “I’m sure frustrations are running high on both sides of the border,” she said in an attempt to mollify both men. She warmed her hands on her coffee mug. Her eyes begged Jasek for help, even though she hated herself for the need to do so. “Sniping at each other does nothing to solve our immediate problems.”

  Jasek stood just inside the large doors. He nodded to Niccolò, who invited Legate Eckard to the supervisor’s station, where the most recent estimates on the facility’s repair capability were being discussed. Tara had no doubt that several necessary questions would be answered regarding logistics support.

  Which left Jasek to deal with his father.

  “It remains,” the younger Kelswa-Steiner said, “that Miliano is in no immediate danger. I’ve ordered Kommandant Duke to Norfolk, which sits in the path of any Jade Falcon push out of the New London area. Colonel Petrucci is pushing back a Jade Falcon expeditionary force with half the assets left to the Lyran Rangers.”

  “And the Tharkan Strikers?” Tara asked, noting that he had not volunteered their whereabouts. Duke Gregory glared harder with every use of Lyran rank and mention of the Stormhammer units.

  “What’s left of them pulled out on their own two days ago, moving to the aid of the Steel Wolves. Anastasia Kerensky was in trouble, forced into the coastal lowlands outside of Second Bristol. Between them, they forced a rout of the Falcons’ Seventh Striker Cluster.”

  Jasek’s seizing Norfolk behind the Falcons’ position had had a great deal to do with that as well, Tara guessed. Just like he had pressured the Jade Falcon WarShip by bringing in the Lyrans’ fabled Mjolnir. Both WarShips were circling out near the zenith now, holding each other back from Skye. On the face of it, Jasek seemed to be doing everything in his ability to throw off the Jade Falcon occupation.

  So why did Tara assume he was holding out on her? The voice of experience whispering to her? Or was it the attraction she felt and wanted nothing to do with?

  “The Seventh Striker Cluster.” Duke Gregory glanced sidelong at Tara. “Is that the unit you let walk from Chaffee?” She could have thought of a better way to phrase it. “If you had hit them harder, there wouldn’t have been as many to reinforce the Falcon offensive.”

  “There wouldn’t be as many of my Stormhammers either.” Jasek shrugged. “But I doubt that means as much to you.”

  “They were my subjects before they became your renegades. They are still sons and daughters of Skye. Most of them. Their lives mean as much to me as . . . as . . .”

  “As mine does?” Jasek smiled without humor. “A stunning endorsement, Father.”

  “Against the survival of Skye and the prefecture,” Duke Gregory said coldly, flushing into his beard, “all resources must be measured with a critical eye.”

  “Which brings us right back to where we were.” Tara stomped into the middle of the father-son battle, grabbing the conversation with both hands and wrestling it back on topic. “Deciding what is best for Skye. We’ve lost our best advance post at New London and some very good people. Our forces are stretching thin, gentlemen.” She included Leutnant-general Brewster’s force in the assessment, shooting a pointed glance at his wounded Zeus. He nodded reluctantly. “Jasek has retaken the Shipil Company facilities at Norfolk, and we still hold Cyclops, Incorporated, as well as Miliano. How do we use that?”

  “We reinforce our position,” the lord governor of Skye said at once. “Bring at least half of the Tharkan Strikers back to Miliano. Let the Steel Wolves guard what’s left of Cyclops on Roosevelt. We dig in and hold, and make the Falcons pay for every meter.”

  Hiram Brewster considered, and gave the duke a reluctant nod. “Sounds right,” he said. “Fortune favors the defenders.”

  “Strategy favors the offense,” Jasek replied. “A defensive posture is nothing more than a waiting game. Can we get reinforcements out of Prefecture X before the Falcons draw from their garrisons on Glengarry, on Ryde? Can we use local industry to make up for increased losses—which we will take if we surrender the initiative?”

  Tara sipped at her coffee, letting it warm her. She tore Jasek’s plea apart word by word, analyzing it with a cold eye rather than letting his charisma sway her. “What would you have us do?” she asked.

  “Miliano is the key to the continent’s lower seaboard, but Norfolk is the key to Miliano. Unless the Jade Falcons are willing to risk a nonstop DropShip brigade to tie two remote areas together—and we have better aerospace assets than they do without their WarShip in place—they need to control the ground corridors. We mass our forces at Norfolk. Stormhammers. Highlanders. Militia. Lyran.” He nodded to Brewster. “Everyone. Malvina Hazen will come at us, and we will have our chance to break her.”

  “What’s to stop her from seizing Roosevelt Island or Miliano when our backs are turned?” His father sounded skeptical.

  “If she does, and wants to safeguard New London, she does so without enough force to hold them. Whatever we lose, we can take back.”

  “You’ll turn our most important cities into battlefields. No.” Duke Gregory shook his head. “We play the long game.”

  There it was again. A hard mask slipping over Jasek’s face. Something . . .

  Tara Campbell looked from one leader to the other. Father to son. Politician to faction commander. Jasek’s plan had a strength of audacity behind it, much in keeping with the younger man’s own stunning personality. Tara felt herself drawn to it, convinced, ready to take a stand and defend The Republic as well as avenge her fallen Highlanders, Prefect Brown, the people of Skye.

  But at what final cost? She was not part of the Founder’s Movement. Her charge was the defense of Skye, and to uphold the security of The Republic. A desperate gamble was not in her nature. In the long run, she believed, the side that remained truer to its ideals would win out. And in that, the Lord Governor had the stronger position.

  She remembered her vow. The Republic first, in all things. It was the only way she could continue to do her job, and live the life she’d chosen after Terra. So be it.

  “We hold our lines,” she said. “Norfolk is a tactical strongpoint, but gives us no strategic advantage in the long run. Not like Miliano does.” She saw the disappo
intment flare on Jasek’s face, but quickly buried her feelings. “I’m ordering my Highlanders forward,” she said, “but to secure this city and hold Avanti Assemblies. With some adjustments to our supply routes, we can make this the focus of our logistics network.”

  “Excellent,” Brewster congratulated her. “I’ll rotate in our damaged vehicles as soon as my Zeus is back in prime condition.”

  “Prime condition?” Tara shook her head. “If it can walk and has armor, it’s good enough for the field.” She caught Jasek’s gaze, held it. “You will have to defend Norfolk with what you have. Can I count on you?” She’d meant to say, could she count on his Stormhammers?

  He nodded. His ego had not been caught up in his proposed plans. Jasek folded his hand with grace, and accepted her lead. It made her feel worse instead of better. “We’ll give our best,” he promised. “For the long game.”

  “For Skye,” she reminded them all.

  And felt a pang of loss when Jasek refused to meet her gaze.

  33

  Norfolk

  Skye

  22 December 3134

  Clouds over the Norfolk area were thick, leaden gray, heavy with the promise of rain, though not a drop had fallen. Dry thunder occasionally rolled over the forested wetlands and brush-covered hills, put to shame by the constant, heavy echoes of artillery fire that shook the battlefield from one horizon to the other.

  Jasek Kelswa-Steiner strained at the controls of his Templar, riding the tide of battle that swept him up a long hillside. A single squad of Hauberk infantry followed, losing themselves behind a pile of old snags, waiting for their chance. Farther along, a broken lance of Demons and Pegasus staggered around a bend in the narrow valley below, pulling back to regroup. Getting out from under the Jade Falcons’ heavier weapons.