Highlander company which had remained on Terra could be mustered aboard DropShips. They would follow as soon as possible, as would the troops who had returned months before to Northwind. But the majority of her Highlanders were strewn across two Prefectures fighting fires. How many of them could reach Skye before the threat materialized, as she knew in her bone marrow it would?
Duke Gregory glared at her a moment longer. Then he sighed volcanically.
“I am in no position to stand on pride,” he said. He laced his fingers and put his big hands on the table before him. “Suppose you tell us what hope you do propose to tender us, Countess.”
“Countess Campbell.”
The corridor was narrow and, despite the broad daylight outside the dressed stone walls, dim. It gave her a pang of nostalgia for her own Castle Northwind, in which she had spent so much of her childhood, and which she had ordered destroyed to prevent it falling into the hands of the Steel Wolves. Sanglamore Academy had enjoyed a storied career turning out top-rate military professionals for the Federation of Skye, the Lyran Commonwealth, and the short-lived Federated Commonwealth. Like military establishments everywhere after the rise of Stone and his Republic, the Academy, which had already suffered severe losses to its faculty in the FedCom explosion and the subsequent Jihad, had gradually faded to a wisp of its former self, with whole wings mothballed for a generation. In the new Golden Age amilitary academy seemed a barbaric throwback.
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.
