Tara stopped and turned around. Her aide stood poised at her side like a watchdog. “Yes, Prefect Brown?”
“A word with you, if I may.”
“Certainly,” Tara said.
The Prefect came up with them. She loomed over the tiny Countess: a handsome woman in middle age, light-skinned black, with a cap of coiled dark red hair dusted with gray and large amber eyes. She had clearly once been willowy, possibly athletic; but from the spread of hips and thighs it was obvious she had spent most of her recent career piloting a desk rather than a BattleMech.
She looked meaningfully at Tara Bishop.
The captain looked back, smiling tightly, refusing to budge from her superior’s side. The Prefect focused her out.
“I must suggest you keep a tighter rein on your emotions, Countess Campbell,” the Prefect said in a tone somewhere between reproof and condescension. “You risk acting in an unprofessional manner when you allow yourself to be drawn into arguments with influential civilians.”
“You mean Minister Solvaig?”
“I do.”
Tara Campbell felt her aide stiffen. Despite the fact that her eyes stung at the patent unfairness of the Prefect’s reproach, she touched Tara Bishop covertly on the arm, signaling restraint.
“I appreciate your concern, Prefect Brown,” she said. “Should that concern extend to wondering whether the publicity that tends to accompany me goes to my head, I can only request that you please accept my assurance that it does not.
“Moreover”—she allowed steel to touch her voice—“I beg to remind the Prefect that despite my appearance I amnot a child, not even an adolescent; and that I am, in fact, myself the Prefect of Prefecture III, and not some actress engaged to play the role.”
The big liquid eyes blinked twice rapidly. “Northwind is a long way from here, Countess,” she said huffily.
“Let us all hope it’s not too far for my soldiers to get here before the Falcons do.”
With a grim “Good day,” Prefect Brown strode off down the hall on her long legs. Tara Campbell stared after her with a gaze like icicles.
“Well,” she said, when she and the other Tara had the corridor to themselves, “I’d say I handled that pretty badly.” “You didn’t punch her,” TB said brightly. “If you made a mistake, ma’am, I’d say it was not lettingme do it.”
15
Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmeraldTalon
Jump Point
Chaffee
Lyran Commonwealth 20 May 3134
“Nestlings of Turkina,” Beckett Malthus’ voice intoned in the darkness, “attend me.”
It was the briefing theater inboard theEmerald Talon . The auditorium, like half a bowl, was full of expeditionary force officers. Malthus stood at a podium with Aleksandr and Malvina Hazen seated flanking him. They were all but unseen in the dark: all eyes were fixed above and behind them, upon the holovid tank displaying a giant map of Prefectures VIII and IX of The Republic of the Sphere and the Lyran Commonwealth frontier, in which Chaffee was highlighted, a glowing green orb bigger and brighter than the rest.
“The time has come,” the Supreme Commander said, “to drop all pretense. Themaskirovka has served its purpose. Now the time has come for the Jade Falcon to swoop in a mightydesant ”
Shrill falcon screams pierced the dark, and cries of “Seyla/"
“In the first wave, Zeta Galaxy shall jump first to Laiaka” A red line descended from Chaffee and to the left, away from Terra and into Prefecture VIII. It touched a star which glowed yellow. “From that staging point, Turkina’s Beak shall have the honor of striking Alkaid”
The line took a short jog down and right to a star that suddenly expanded into a red giant, as if going nova. The Zeta contingent cheered lustily. The Turkina Keshik officers looked bored and restive, and the Gyrs openly hostile, at the scantling Zetas being named first.
“The Gyrfalcon Galaxy”—the Deltas uttered falcon screams—“jumping through Zebeneschamali and Carnwath systems, shall strike at Ryde” A white line zigzagged to the right.
“Finally,” Malthus said, as a third, green line radiated a short distance down and right from Chaffee, “the Turkina Keshik will seize and hold the world of Glengarry.” The Keshik officers maintained an aloof silence, as if to signify to their rivals and inferiors—to be redundant—that they were professionals, and had done this sort of thing before.
“In the second phase, the Keshik will consolidate its hold upon Glengarry and begin its reconstruction according to the Founder’s precepts, as has commenced on Chaffee. Zeta Galaxy will take Summer.”
The red line looped beneath and past Skye, through Alcor and Mizar, then hooked up and right, almost to the border of Prefecture X, The Republic’s core.
The white line forked like lightning. One line stabbed almost straight down, through a system called Unukalahi, and then to a system right next door to Skye, virtually on a line between it and Terra. The other white line thrust a short jump up and right.
“The Gyrfalcons will split at Ryde. One element will take Zebebelgenubi, near our final objective. The other will strike at Kimball II.”
He paused. The cheering, which had devolved into a lusty exchange of insults between the Gyrs and the Zetas, dwindled to silence.
“And then,” Malthus said, “ten weeks from this very day, we rendezvous in Skye system. The Falcon shall spread her wings above Skye itself as all three forces converge. Skye shall fall. The road to Terra will lie open before us, and then Khan Jana Pryde will not withhold the Jade FalconTouman . They will surely join us in our triumph. Our ancient Crusade will be victorious at last: General Kerensky shall have truly returned home!”
“Seyla/ ’’the Falcon’s brood thundered in a voice of one.
“I knew I would find you here.”
The tall, broad-shouldered shape brooding over the railing that overlooked a shuttle deck, which was a cavern of darkness whose floor was grown with little mushrooms of light between dark, gleaming masses, looked up and around.
She saw the flash of his teeth in the dimness of the gallery, the darkness of his face. “I am surprised you would seek me out.”
The command council following thekurultai had quickly curdled into rancor. Malvina pressed her case for harsh action: Chaffee had been subdued by her destruction of Hamilton. It could provide their model for conquest:appliedifrightfulness . The Mongol way.
Her sibkin had argued that conquest by terror was repugnant to Clan ways. That while harsh measures might be necessary in response to extreme provocation, the Falcons could not rely on them too greatly without overturning what they stood for, what they had returned to the Inner Sphere for: to free and safeguard the people there, not destroy them.
Sentiment clearly ran against him. The officers of Beckett Malthus’ Turkina Keshik had supported Malvina almost as enthusiastically as her own Gyrs. Only among his own commanders had Aleks found support; and even some of them seemed dubious.
Despite the fact the consensus was going away from Aleks, Bec Malthus ordained compromise: each Galaxy Commander might conduct his and her campaign as they wished; and when the fleets rejoined, at the zenith jump point four days out from Skye orbit, they would see what had been seen.
Pale face and silver hair appeared to float in air, vaguely agleam as if from within. The rest of her was cloaked in deep-space black with token green, itself scarcely other than black. The difference could not be seen in the dim amber footlights.
“It seems a waft of the air of home blows through,” he said, his voice a gentle rumble, “banishing for a moment the smell of hot metal, lubricants and ozone.”
“The soap with which I washed my hair and body,” she answered artlessly. “Made of Sudeten herbs. Home, if you would call it that.”
His smile was crooked. “We Clanners,” he said. “We dote upon nature, even though we ourselves are but little products of it. We so love to retreat into it during training and brief respites from duty. And to smugg
le its smells and sometimes stolen scenery into the steel wombs into which we were born from glass ones.”
She was close enough that he could see the arch of her brow. “You find fault with our Clan ways?”
“I am amused by some of them, right enough.” He turned back to the rail, folded his big arms onto it, leaned there gazing out across the hangar deck. Above and beyond the shuttles being made ready for departure to the other JumpShips in the fleet, two great oblongs of starfield shone, silver upon black, one on either side of the central launch-lock. So arrogant had Clan Snow Raven been in their technology and might that they built huge crystal viewports on the battleship’s hangar deck, as if the shuttles were mettlesome steeds and needed to be able to see the starry realm to which they would soon or late return. In times when danger impended, armor shutters heavy as aBroadsword -class DropShip descended before each like closing eyelids.
“Our ways have changed since the first return to the Inner Sphere. Some out of need, others ... just changed. Some changes were for the best. Others I would see made right again. And others are not yet made, that need to be.”
She stood close beside him. She seemed clenched, and at the same time aglow with something like fury. It was as if she had something to say but could not.
He turned and looked at her in wonder. There were few things she could not do, if she chose.
“You have right,” she said at last. “But we might differ as to what should be changed, and how.”
“It is true.”
He turned, reached a broad square hand to her. It stopped midair. It seemed as if some sort of membrane, invisible, insensible to touch, but real nevertheless, had descended between them.
His eyes met hers. He dropped the hand.
“Change comes,” he said. “Changes greater than any of us expect.”
“Not greater than I expect.”
“We shall change the Inner Sphere as drastically as did our predecessors of the First Crusade, win or lose,” he said. “What upheavals will the Inner Sphere inflict on us—win or lose?”
“Exalt us,” she said. “Or destroy us. Better that than slide deeper into decadence.”
She laughed. It was brittle music, like tiny icicles shattering in a cold Sudeten dawn.
“You disappoint me, brother,” she said. “I had come here hoping you might give me answers. Instead all you have in your mouth is more questions.”
She turned from him. “What answers we find, we shall find in action. And so our ways part. For now.”
New London Spaceport
Skye
15 May 3134
Though the day was warm, especially here with the primary sun—so much like Terra’s own Sol—bouncing its heat off the blacktop of the spaceport into the faces of Tara and her escorts, the breezes blowing down from the Sanglamore Mountains west of New London were bladed with chill. They carried the scent of great splayed leaves turning all gold and tan and russet and orange, and the smell of the rich black soil they sprang from, and from heights greater still lordly evergreens twice taller than any ’Mech.
“Here she comes!” the shout went up from the troops around them. A point of blue-white brilliance had appeared above, burning laser-like through the white horsetails of clouds brushed across a sky as achingly blue as Northwind’s own. The powerful defensive emplacements, which like the ones guarding New Glasgow’s spaceport boasted powerful weapons remounted from DropShips as well as conventional anti-aircraft armaments, moved automatically to track its descent.
“About bloody time,” said Command Master Sergeant Angus McCorkle, standing a respectful distance behind his commander and her taller, brown-haired aide. He wore full Northwind regimentals, including a kilt and sash of the blue and black Campbell tartan, though he wore a tartan-banded cap instead of a bearskin-covered helmet. The two Taras wore conventional dress uniform, khaki with trousers. Although neither tradition nor regulation forbade a woman of the Highlanders wearing the kilt, and although she was in factthe Campbell, with better claim upon the sett—the traditional plaid pattern—than any, Countess Tara seldom wore it. She had enough trouble overcoming her pretty-girl image without appearing at solemn public functions wearing what was in reality a short skirt.Especially on a day as breezy as today.
And far lessregimental, she reflected Although it would almost be worth it, to hear that fat fool Herrmann howl .
With a roar of drive jets the DropShipBlue Bayou settled toward the designated blast pit. It lay well away from the spaceport’s main buildings, beyond any number of invitingly vacant landing spots. Tara suspected the remote location was another half-subtle dig from her hosts. It did sport a boggy fen of tall, feather-headed grasses gone gray in the long summer heat across the wire to discourage the protesters who still dogged Tara’s steps.
There seemed no guile behind the smile of Lieutenant Colonel Brigid Hanratty, commander of the planet’s largest remaining military formation as well as today’s escorts and security detail—no more Ducal Guards for Tara. Hanratty was a big, rawboned woman with a face like a prizefighter and a great mass of curly, metallic red hair bound, unlikely enough, into pigtails. Despite the fact she looked like the cliche image of an Irish washerwoman, she had shown herself, in the few days Tara had been liaising with her, to be at the least a competent officer with a solid grasp of military matters.
She also professed a high regard for Tara Campbell’s military accomplishments, from Sadalbari onward.
Far from resenting the petite and beautiful Countess, she seemed vastly tickled that such a redoubtable battle leader should appear to her in the guise of what she termed a “wee porcelain doll.” So hearty were her expressions of admiration that Tara had not even felt the usual stab of resentment—champion martial artist that she was, as well as much-bloodied MechWarrior and proven battlefield commander—that being referred to as a “porcelain doll” normally inflicted.
Hanratty seemed legitimately delighted to have Tara Campbell on Skye and working with her, under whatever plan. Well, she’s the only one, Tara thought as the ship’s landing jacks extended and it settled onto the ferrocrete rim of the pit with a vast roaring and grinding.
That statement was not altogether true. The Skye mass media were as adulatory as the media on Terra had been—except for those owned by the powerful Herrmanns AG, who portrayed her as a demon incarnate. Yet her official reception had little warmed: Planetary Legate Eckard was so introverted as to be a cipher, Prefect Brown was aloof and disapproving, Minister Solvaig openly hostile. In general the Duke himself seemed to find her as welcome as a cold sore; yet he had shown no reticence about intervening in her behalf, either at the first unfortunate meeting with Prefecture officials or subsequently when Tara had been reluctantly compelled to call instances of bureaucratic obstruction and noncooperation, quite frequent at first, to his attention. It was as if he was torn between resentment and relief at her presence—and blamed her for both.
Whatever the case, she knew full well she could not be running incessantly to the Lord Governor for help. Not without sacrificing any credibility and authority she might have, not to mention that self-esteem which she was only now becoming able to permit herself to feel.
Seeming to read her mind, as she had more and more in the weeks since the victory on Terra, Tara Bishop leaned her mouth close to the smaller woman’s ear and murmured, “At least we’ll have some troops now. That should get us treated a little more seriously.”
Tara nodded.
With a hiss of equalizing atmospheric pressure, the main locks opened and flower-petaled into ramps. “Sar’nt Major!” rapped Hanratty. Her own top kick, an immense, square, slab-faced man named McDougall who looked remarkably like an ancient North American Plains Indian warrior from Terra and wore a uniform with kilt and sash of a plaid unknown to Tara, barked orders. The regimental band of the Seventh Skye Militia enthusiastically if not expertly began skirling out “The Campbells Are Coming,” which they had also played for Tara on her firs
t visit to the regiment’s cantonment outside New London several days before. It seemed that Hanratty’s easy grin tightened a bit at that, and her eyes narrowed. Then she relaxed again as if accepting something inevitable.
Tara’s eyes, a cool green today, flicked up and aside to her aide. A corner of the taller woman’s mouth quirked up. “I’d rather fight Nasty Kerensky in herRyoken II naked with a sidearm on the steppes in September,” Captain Bishop muttered, “than listen to bad bagpipes.”
“Are there any other kind?” grumbled McCorkle. His own Northwind-Scot upbringing did not extend to an appreciation for the culture’s traditional music.
Led by their commander, Colonel Robert Ballantrae, riding in aCougar BattleMech taken as spoils from the Steel Wolves on the Belgorod plain, Tara’s Highlanders stepped and drove forth into the bright sunlight in smart style. They formed a column of infantry with shouldered arms, flanked by armored vehicles and with theCougar striding in the fore, and marched toward their waiting commander, her immediate entourage, and the militia platoon behind. The band finished off their tune, mercifully, only to
begin another: a lively, driving air that they played with such panache as to almost make up for their lack of skill.
Tara found herself nodding her spike-haired head in time. “What’s that tune, Colonel? It sounds familiar.”
Hanratty’s homely face split into a gap-toothed grin. “That’s the ‘Garryowen,’ marm,” she said. “We’ve our unit nickname from it. And might I ask that you call me Brigid, if the Countess pleases; I forget I’m no longer a major, the rank’s that new.”
Flight of the Falcon (battletech - mechwarrior - dark age 10) Page 12
