of hoverbike troops maintaining a loose moving perimeter about him—while staying themselves out of eye- and earshot—and the lance of attack VTOL keeping similarly discreet watch from somewhere above the treetops. Before the HPG collapse he would never have countenanced such a thing. Now, with civil unrest on the rise and shadowy menaces moving, unseen, in a universe grown dark with the end of instantaneous interstellar communications, he still did not welcome such nursemaiding. Hence the bodyguards’ extreme diligence to avoid actually making their presence manifest to their charge. He would still not have accepted it, certainly not ordered it, had his chief minister not insisted.
Ah, Solvaig,hethought with a certain guarded warmth—which was generally the only kind of warmth he allowed himself to feel, especially since... .How lost would I and Skye be without you?
At last he stripped the riding glove from his hand and took out the communicator, which had maintained its ungentle insistence all along. “Yes?” he said in a clipped tone that served to reinforce what the party at the other end must well have known:this better be important .
“Your Grace,” said the professionally anonymous voice. “We have just received a double communication from the zenith proximity point. A JumpShip has emerged, outbound from Terra; we have word of its arrival from our observation station, as well as a communication from the vessel herself.”
Duke Gregory’s brows beetled. He had wonderful brows for the gesture: as he had grown older they had become bushier, shot with fierce, longer black strands. Now the shorter hairs were brushed with gray as was his beard, leading to a most striking effect.
“What does the JumpShip captain say?”
“She brings with her Tara Campbell, Countess of Northwind and Prefect of Prefecture III, your Grace. The Countess herself transmitted a coded signal containing the appropriate courtesies. She has also informed us that she, her staff, and elements of her Highlander regiments are inbound for Skye with an estimated arrival time of forty-seven hours, and in The Republic’s name begs leave to be allowed to make planetfall at the New London spaceport soonest.”
Now the Duke’s splendid brows rose. The Exarch’s pet poster girl herself sees fit to grace my world with her presence, he thought.On some business she dares not even entrust to Prefectural-level encryption.
She was sending an unmistakably clear message, however: the transit time from Skye’s jump points to planetary orbit was four days, relatively trivial as such things went; Alkaid in Duke Gregory’s own Prefecture had a transit time of 124 days. The Countess’ projected arrival indicated her DropShip was burning insystem at two gees, the maximum acceleration considered safe and twice the normal. That she would subject self, staff, troops, and the DropShip crew to the brutal discomfort of two full days at twice normal weight to shave a trifling two days off her transit time spoke volumes.
It also, he thought with an amused quirk of his bearded lips, indicated her intentions were pacific toward the planet of Skye. So taxing was it on the human system to sustain higher-than-standard gees that it was a rare and rash commander who used them on an invasion drop. Two days of their hearts pumping blood against twice the normal resistance would leave the ship’s occupants as drained as if they had run multiple marathons, even if all they did was lie on couches, which unless they were foolswas what they were doing.
“Return the appropriate acknowledgment and permissions,” he commanded. “Add that I am most eager to receive the Countess so soon as she may have recovered from the rigors of her journey.”
The subtext of the tri-vids would seem to bejustified, he thought with certain scornFluff-headed glamour girl! She’ll no doubt be more than two days recovering abed, mere slip that she is.
He gazed around him at the glory of the trees and their gilt-edged leaves in the golden-yellow glow of the Sol-like sun, then sighed, filling the lungs in his substantial chest with a last free draught of autumn air like the finest vintage wine. He had an intimation that this was his last unencumbered breath of wild air for a long time. If he once again smelled the smell of woods before the year’s turning, he suspected, it would be in the field—and not on maneuvers.
“There is a clearing some three hundred meters to the northwest of my position,” he said, and spoke coordinates from the map-display on the datapad strapped to his thick, hairy wrist. It kept track of his position by a combination of inertial tracking and analysis of known patterns of geomagnetism; it would not do, in today’s unsettled environment, to have the Duke of Skye constantly broadcasting his location to anyone with the nominal equipment and only slightly less nominal know-how required to crack the satellite positioning system. “Order a cargo VTOL to pick up me and my horse. I return to the Prefectural compound at once.”
“Sir?” the voice said. “Might I remind your Grace that the Countess is not due for another—”
“You have,” he said crisply but not harshly. He had no desire to surround himself with toadies, preferring forthright subordinates who exercised initiative. It did not guarantee them immunity from outbursts of his famous temper; but no one had actually suffered harm to career, much less person, from the competent discharge of duty. Indeed, no few had benefited from ducal repentance of hasty words, although it was not the Lord Governor’s way to apologize in words.
Now, strangely, the blackness of his prior mood had lifted. He was faced with a puzzle. And while it would undoubtedly complicate the Duke’s life still further, something about it quickened his hunter’s blood.
“Whatever tidings the Countess is bringing us, I suspect two days will be no more than enough to prepare to hear them,” he told his communicator. “The Duke out.”
He snapped the small device shut and reholstered it. Then he leaned forward to slap the neck of his horse, now halted and stretching to crop maroon bunch grass, and murmur a few endearments.
He would make quickly for the clearing and his rendezvous with the VTOL; the aircraft was standing by in New London a few minutes’ flight time away against just such contingencies.
But first he would visit a stream he knew nearby to let Iago drink of cold waters, down from the mountains already capped with snow. It was the least he could do, for having pushed the animal so.
10
Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon
Jump Point
Whittington
Lyran Commonwealth
30 April 3134
Malvina Hazen launched herself toward her brother in a blinding-fast spring. A slim twenty-centimeter leaf of razor-honed Endo steel glinted in her hand.
Aleks’ dark mass of hair formed a flash halo about his head as he pivoted right. The dagger missed his cheek by a centimeter. His big left hand swept out, seemed no more than to brush his sister’s back.
She flew forward. But tucking chin to clavicle she turned uncontrolled flight into a half-roll, ending with the bare soles of her feet planted against the grav-deck exercise compartment’s padded bulkhead.
Instantly she sprang away, turning in midair to come down in a crouch facing Aleks, her dagger held reversed, blade flat along her slim pallid forearm. “Why did you not cut me?” she demanded. “You had clear opportunity.”
He laughed and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Time enough.”
She straightened, scowling ferociously. It just made him laugh again. “You always look like an angry child when you scrunch your face like that.”
Her expression mellowed as she walked toward him. She wore white trunks and a sports halter. He made do with trunks alone. Jade Falcon regulations for live-blade knife practice specified goggles and belly-protectors: attrition to their extreme-Darwinian customs was severe enough without every realistic practice session ending in the death or long-term incapacitation for duty of one or more warriors.
As was not at all unusual for them, both sibkin ignored the regulation. Such hardly pertained to Galaxy Commanders, or were even intended to. And besides, they’d ignored the regulations they disliked all their lives—and answered each and every one of the frequent challenges arising therefrom on the duelling grounds.
Upon which, famously, Aleks had never allowed a foe to die. Nor Malvina, one to live.
