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 first 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.”
The Seventh’s commander had gone with Jasek and his followers—and a sigh of relief, if scuttlebutt were to be credited. He was a hard-core, Lyran-loving hardass. Whereas the Seventh’s grunts were overwhelmingly Anglophones.
Tara nodded to the woman’s request. “If you’ll call me Tara,” she said.
“But how the devil will you know which one I mean?”
“Tone of voice,” Tara Bishop said. “We’re used to it; we’ll know. Or just call me TB, ma’am.”
The colonel shrugged.
With a final stomp of broad metal feet that rang on the pavement and rattled Tara’s teeth, Ballantrae brought theCougar to a halt ten meters from his Countess. He raised the ’Mech’s right arm in the stiff-armed Highlander salute.
“Countess Campbell, ma’am!” boomed from the ’Mech’s loudspeakers. “Colonel Robert Ballantrae and Task Force Bruce reporting as ordered,ma’am !”
TF Bruce was a scratch company of First Kearnies and Fusiliers, with nearly an equal number of Republican Guard newbies recruited on Terra after the Steel Wolves’ defeat. Tara wondered how glad the latter would be to be restored to the presence of Master Sergeant McCorkle, who had been the bane of their existence until crash- dispatched with his Countess and her aide and a bare-bones staff to Skye to begin shoring the defenses remaining after the defection of Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.
She returned the Highlander Colonel’s salute smartly. “Welcome to Skye. The strength of our arms is The Republic’s!”
The Highlanders gave back the slogan with the enthusiasm of men and women who had fought to make it real.
Behind her back, though, Tara thought she heard snickers from the assembled Seventh troopers.
It did not betide particularly well. But it was small surprise. The Seventh Skye Militia was not only the planet Skye’s largest intact military formation. It was also legendarily the largest collection of sad sacks and screw-ups in the planetary armed forces. And a hotbed of Free Skye subversion, to boot.
Alkaid
Prefecture VIII
The Republic of the Sphere
14 June 3134
The rotary-wing VTOL seemed to stumble in air as a double-speed burst from the Ultra autocannon in the left arm of Aleksandr Hazen’sGyrfalcon caught it full in the nose. Its fuselage vanished into a comet of yellow flame that continued to streak against the merciless white desert sky trailing black flame, its rotor still spinning above it, until a plane-topped column of wind-graven sandstone halted its careen.
“The defenders of Alkaid are brave,” he said over his general frequency channel. “But we outmatch them.”
This time he had issued a batchall. And more: it had been accepted.
Reviewing Alkaid’s history, reports from Jade Falcon intelligence and intercepts of radio traffic from the surface on their seven-day transit from the pirate point whose coordinates had been provided by Jade Falcon merchants, Aleks and his analysts had calculated their strategy carefully. Alkaid possessed a small but proficient defense force. More to the point, it possessed a history of successful guerrilla resistance against the brutal fanatics of the Blakist Jihad, who had seized the spaceports and beaten down its conventional defenders.
Aleks wanted no rerun of Chaffee. Nor did he believe thedesant could afford it—nor the grand long-term plans he had had such a hand in shaping. It was imperative to subdue Alkaid as expeditiously and yet as completely as possible. Aleks faced a fight for a far more populous world after this one, as well as a tight timetable leading to the three-pronged attack on Skye itself. And his Clan needed Alkaid for a base and more. Unlike Chaffee, Alkaid, also hot, also dry and even higher-gravity, possessed strategically significant resources in the form of vast chemical extraction and processing operations. All qualms or compassion aside, the Jade Falcon plan required Alkaid be subdued with minimal disruption, either of the physical plant or the workers who made it run.
With a full Galaxy at his command, Aleks could have seized the world in a coup de main, simply dropping ships to seize the spaceports at the industrial center of Moravska Ostrava and the planetary capital Verstigrad in the far north, and Nobadi on the southern supercontinent of Inahalia. Such an expedient would have put the bulk of Alkaid’s slightly more than one hundred million population under his guns.
Aleks instead chose a plan he deemed less liable to produce unnecessary destruction. Even before his DropShip fleet shaped Alkaid orbit, he was blanketing the planet with a challenge to Governor Chandler Neville and Legate Renee Zollern to block his entrance to Moravska Ostrava from a landing spot forty kilometers into the desert with a militia battalion, which he promised would enjoy at least a two-to-one numerical advantage over the attackers. He assured the authorities—for the consumption of the populace, to whom the powerful communications gear inboardRed Heart helpfully beamed the whole negotiation—that he had no intent of disrupting Alkaid’s normal way of life or imposing Clan values. All he asked was submission, with all resistance ceased, should he win the battle.
The local authorities went for his deal. They weren’t eager to get smashed flat by the preponderant force
Aleks could bring to bear. The cost of losing would be tolerable. And the local militia might actually win—the old overwhelming Clan superiority was history, whereas the old overbearing Clan arrogance was not. Who knew;
