“Perhaps they have much honor,” Aleks said. “While they strike from ambush like cowards, even as you say, the ones we catch fight until death. The ones we capture commit suicide—or contrive escape.”
She faced him again. Her eyes glittered like silver coins in the moonlight. “Those whose honor is only for themselves have no true honor,” she said. “But you make my case, Aleksandr. They will not honor their leaders’ surrender. They refuse to surrender themselves. What can we do but to hunt them down one by one and kill them, then?”
He spread his great hands in a gesture of helplessness. Something caught Malvina’s eye; she half- turned.
A skull, discolored, partially charred, with blackened wisps of tissue clinging to it, but its smooth dome gleaming with organic oils. A small skull. A child’s skull.
“We can show them what resistance will cost, not just them, but their loved ones,” she asked, “with one single punishment so terrible”—she stepped forward and crushed the tiny skull beneath her bootheel—“that it will be felt in the most remote corners of this burdensome world.”
His upper lip had peeled back from white teeth. “This is where your Mongol-worship leads.”
She took off her helmet, unpinned her hair, shook it free in a cascade like moonlight itself that fell past her shoulders. “This is where the path of true compassion leads. I submit, brother dear, that I have saved lives by what I have done here. Theirs as well as ours.”
The face he turned to her was twisted like a rag. “Is this what is demanded of a warrior, a protector of the lesser and the weak?” he asked, in a voice as if an Elemental’s manipulator were crushing his throat, and flapped a hand like broken wing. “Is thishonor? ”
“Victory for Clan Jade Falcon,” she said, “is honor.” And walked away.
14
Sanglamore Military Academy
New London
Skye
The Republic of the Sphere 2 May 3134
“Really, Countess,” Chief Minister Augustus Solvaig said, “I believe we know how to conduct our own business here on Skye, thank you.”
Tara Campbell felt her cheeks flush hot. She sensed her aide, the other Tara, going tense at her side, and channeled the energy of embarrassment and anger into willing the captain into silence. The small and balding minister with red muttonchop sideburns covering most of his round red cheeks like fuzzy symmetrical birthmarks did not just accidentally happen to be sitting at the strong beringed right hand of Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner.
Tara was past any career considerations of her own: she had laid her life on the line for The Republic time and again. If The Republic—or its rulers—found it impossible to cooperate with her she could always go back to Northwind and serve her ideals by strengthening her home world. Captain Tara Bishop served at Tara Campbell’s discretion, no one else’s. So long as she did as well as she always had, her job was secure, notwithstanding her vivid if sometimes spiky personality.
Yet Tara still cared desperately about The Republic and what it stood for. She knew it lay in dire danger, and that the danger would come through Prefecture IX, if not Skye itself. While she could not be cashiered, Duke Gregory could have her shipped off his planet and out of his Prefecture if he found her—or even her aide—difficult to get along with. So could Prefect Della Brown and Planetary Legate Stanford Eckard, likewise in attendance.
“Mr. Chief Minister,” Eckard said. His voice was dry, but it was the aridity of bloodlessness, not irony. “I fear you do Countess Campbell an injustice. I did not hear her criticize, but rather try to call to our attention the potential seriousness of the situation. In that at least, I concur.”
Glancing aside at Captain Bishop, Tara saw her aide’s compressed lips curve in the shorthand of a smile. She felt the Legate was sticking up for her boss.
More experienced in such matters, Tara Campbell suspected his support was far less substantial than Bishop presumed. Indeed, she had a hunch it amounted to little more than a career military man—a militarybureaucrat , like his superior Brown, but a lifer nonetheless—reflexively defending a fellow professional against civilian impugnation. A tall, narrow Asian man with salt-and-pepper hair wisped up on top, he looked more elderly than his dossier made him. He impressed Tara as being one of those people who, attitudinally, entered middle-age at about the same time they exited puberty.
Solvaig glanced at his own master, who sat silent. That surprised Tara: an expression so thunderous should have been rattling the leaded-glass windows in the long, narrow chamber in the Gothic pile of the once-noted Sanglamore Military Academy in a suburb of New LondonDoes the Duke always look like that, Tara Campbell wondered,or only when I’m around?
“Really, her intent is irrelevant, your Grace,” the Chief Minister said in a petulant whine. “I would submit that we have more pressing concerns than fantasies of some latter-day Clan Crusade against the Inner Sphere. Really, we might as well dread the renascence of the Mongol Horde, if we are going to summon phantoms of the past with which to frighten ourselves.”
He shook his head. “The domestic pressures upon our world are real and pressing—as I would have thought the Countess herself might have noticed upon her arrival yesterday.”
“Oh, I noticed quite well, Mr. Minister,” she said, trying to keep her tone light to defuse the man’s overt hostility or at least the mood it was creating. “I’ve seldom encountered a more enthusiastic reception.”
Solvaig’s red face went scarlet to the wings of his receding hairline. “And what is that supposed to mean? Are you saying that we cannot control our citizenry?”
Tara stared at him, unable to feign diplomatic indifferenceDid I really make that big a botch of defusing tension, she wondered,or is he just out of his mind?
Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner turned to look at his minister. His craggy face softened slightly. “Go easy, my friend. I agree with our... esteemed guest that there exists sufficient evidence of threat to Prefecture IX and to Skye itself to cause concern. The Exarch himself endorses the intelligence, after all. And
indeed, my greatest fear has been that some enemy might seek to take advantage of our weakened condition.”
“Yes, your Grace,” Solvaig murmured, subsiding. The crescent-slit eyes through which he regarded Tara showed no sign of friendliness.
“Please forgive Minister Solvaig, Countess,” the Duke said. “He cares deeply about our world. Sometimes the intensity of his feelings get the better of him. It seldom clouds his judgment, however.”
His brows drew closer together again. “I hope you will understand that I regard this potential threat as primarily an affair of Prefecture IX, and Skye.”
“Surely your Grace agrees The Republic has a vital interest in defending its territories?”
He glared at her a moment. His eyes were gray, currently an icy pale.
I faced the Wolf Bitch Anastasia Kerensky in herRyoken IIwithout ^flinching, and defeated a rogue Paladin of the Sphere ’Mech to ’Mech, she thought.I’m damned if I’ll quail for a mere Duke.
“Surely the Exarch understands we are competent to handle the situation,” Della Brown put in with a trace of asperity.
“No doubt he does, Prefect,” Tara said. She thought it no good sign the Prefect—a Republican official answering directly to Geneva—should side with the local governor in a jurisdictional dispute. Worse was that she or anyone thought there shouldbe a jurisdictional dispute.
Then again, Tara thought, unable to prevent herself feeling bitterness she was too proud to show,it’s not as if Redburn sent me out with any official standing. I might as well be a mercenary like One-Eyed Jack Farrell—or just another highborn meddler . “This is not about command or control. I was sent to offer any and all assistance I was able to.”
“Without troops, what help have you to give?” Solvaig sneered openly.
“The troops are coming,” she said. It was true she and her staff had been bundled into space before even the
