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 smuggle 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
