Anastasia’s physical incapacitation—itself in large part a result of her incomplete recovery from having her belly laid open in a knife duel with the last of the Kal Radick bitter-enders, Star Colonel Marks—the challenges came almost weekly. Even if they all had the same depressingly predictable outcome: the same one that Star Captain Kimiko Fetladral’s had produced.
Because right over the restive Steel Wolves’ heads hung the rich pleasure planet of La Blon, so ingenuous in its happy hedonism that it believed the horrors of war would never touch it. Indeed they had not, for centuries; even the Word of Blake Jihadists had spared it. Literally beneath the renegades’ feet, on the planet-facing far side of the tidelocked satellite that the locals called Ivanov but which its secret inhabitants named Wolf Moon, lay the prosperous city of Overlook Point, with a big automated spaceport five hundred kilometers away. All were ripe and ready as staked lambs.
Yet Anastasia forbade her raiders to pluck those prizes. She understood too well, as her unruly subordinates would have had they the brains to befit to command, that to take any of those morsels would bring the final retribution of The Republic of the Sphere slamming down like a rogue planet upon their heads.
The Republic was decadent; the Steel Wolves’ defeat upon Terra had been a narrow thing. Yet The Republic was huge and The Republic was mighty, mightier than Anastasia herself had given it credit for being. And it was angry now. She and her Steel Wolves were outlaws, hated by trillions. The next time Republican forces caught up with them would be the last.
Anastasia could hardly have cared less about the Steel Wolves save as means to her own ambitions—which were only banked, far from extinguished. As far as she was concerned, her followers were sheer ersatz, Spheroids themselves, for all they aped Clan ways. But she was not quite ready to yield her own personal adventure,life, to her nemesis: plucky, platinum-haired Tara Campbell, the “pretty little Countess” as Anastasia called her, whom, over the course of their many meetings on the field of war, the Wolf Bitch had grown secretly to like almost as much as she hated.
Her personal communicator buzzed for attention. She flipped it open and held it to her ear. It was one of her electronic intelligence officers in the central pressure-dome, monitoring communications between La Blon and the lively space traffic, both intrasystem and a surprising profusion of interstellar visitors. La Blon was no backwater like Northwind, and even the vanishment of the HPG net had scarcely scratched its trade. Which perversely made it a better place to hide: it was easy for Steel Wolf craft to blend in with all the rest.
Her medico watched with keen eyes as she listened. The others’ attention was more furtive but no less intent.
She snapped her communicator shut and snorted a laugh. “A trader in from Steiner space has caused a sensation with some surprising news,” she announced to the room as a whole, although she was looking at Murchison.
The other Wolves stopped talking and eating and turned to look at her. Although they knew their leader had passed herself off as a Spheroid on more than one occasion—some quite recent—none of them suspected she would bore them with trivia. Which, to them all, mere gossip about Spheroid doings was by definition.
“It seems that there’s a fleet crossing the Lyran Commonwealth,” the commander said. “A war fleet. Out of the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone.”
If the room had been silent a moment before, now it became a vacuum. The warriors stared at their alpha bitch as if trying to draw the rest from her with the suction of their eyes.
“It seems the turd-birds gave an ultimatum to the Archon herself—they have balls if not brains, I give them that. They blithely violate Steiner space, and they demand the Squareheads do not interfere with them, upon pain of war.”
“Crossing Steiner space?” demanded the recently elevated Star Colonel Aretha Vickers. Her voice was crumpled like wastepaper, relic of a forearm blow to the throat during her sibko days. She had disdained surgical correction. “To do what?”
Anastasia rose and smiled. “Why, to carry out a Trial of Annihilation,” she said.
“Against whom?” demanded Star Captain Maynar Carns.
“Against us,” Anastasia said, “of course.”
Sanglamore Academy New London Skye
28 June 3134
“Excuse me, please,” a man’s deep voice said from the break-room door.
Tara Campbell’s head snapped up. She blinked. She realized her chin had been trending down toward her clavicle, into the open collar of the man’s white shirt she wore. She had taken to wearing masculine dress when liable to be seen, to counteract the Skyean perception of her as, candidly, a bimbo.
The initial panic over the Chaffee horror had subsided quickly, once people realized no Clan invasion fleet followed hard upon the heels of that news. Still mysterious was why the reaction should have been so vehement— and so immediate. Duke Gregory’s thaw toward Tara had proven temporary; he was again as frostily remote and his staff as stiffly uncooperative as before. It did not appear he blamed Tara for the situation in any way, but his anger had boiled over again. He was mad at the universe.
Tara’s aide had jumped up and turned to face the door. Her attitude bespoke protectiveness, like a dog guarding her mistress. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked with a diplomacy that made the Countess proud—and which the young captain’s ready-to-rumble body language eloquently belied.
The man smiled, half-shy, bobbed his head, and entered. “I apologize for intruding. I’m looking for Countess Tara Campbell.”
So is half the planet. Although Tara Bishop did not say it, Tara Campbell heard it through the mists of her drowsiness, too slowly dissipating from behind her eyes. Some wanted to interview her, others to marry her, and a sizable majority to ride her offworld on a rail—if anything so nice. ...
“I’m sorry, sir.” Tara Bishop was shaking her head, giving her protestation the lie again. “The Countess is extremely busy now. You’ll have to get in touch with her staff and make an appointment.”
Tara C. got a better look at the man past her friend, who was now in full Valkyrie mode, ready to slay dragons. The Countess had a vague memory, just before the man’s voice intruded, of her aide’s voice asking if she were all right? TB had been nagging her to sleep more, to rest more, and Tara knew she was right. But it was hard to tear her mind away, sometimes, from a threat that, although this world was not hers, seemed to dwarf the menace the Steel Wolves had posed to Northwind.
The intruder smiled. He was a plain man, Asian looking, dark eyes on a bit of a bias, a head of slightly receding dark hair. He had a medium height and build, although the cut of his subdued business garb suggested an attempt to hide some softening around the middle. On the whole he looked not much different from anyone who might happen to stand next to him in any city on any world of The Republic. Until he smiled.
“I have important business with the Countess,” he said apologetically.
Tara Bishop started to go into attack mode. Despite herself Tara was intrigued. “At ease, TB,” she said lightly. “He’s gotten this far, so he’s either resourceful or determined. What is your business, exactly, Mr.... ?”
“Laveau. Paul Laveau” He blinked and grinned a little wider. “I’m a spy.”
Both women stared. Tara Bishop’s left hand began to stray behind her back—toward the hideout laser pistol riding beneath her battle-dress blouse, behind her left hip.
The intruder laughed. “I hope I didn’t alarm you.” He raised his left hand from his side, deliberately, just slowly enough so the women—and his attention seemed for the moment centered upon the
captain—could see his hand was cupped, not holding a weapon.
He revealed in his palm a badge displaying the seal of The Republic of the Sphere and his likeness. “I’m on your side.”
Captain Bishop stepped forward to peer at the badge. “ ‘Systems and resource auditor,” ’ she read, raising her head to study him with new scrutiny. “ ‘Office of theExarch ’?”
“Real spies aren’t usually very glamorous,” he admitted. “I’m what you might call a forensic accountant.” “You’ve come to check ourbooks ?” Tara Campbell demanded.
“In the midst of a Clan invasion?” asked Tara B. She took the badge holder from him, studied it, then unceremoniously tossed it to Tara Campbell, who fielded it as if the move was the most natural thing in the world and peered at it herself, brow furrowing so that her snub nose tipped up slightly.
Paul Laveau grinned again. It seemed a natural expression for him. Not precisely what she would expect of an accountant, even one who appeared to include a cloak and maybe even a dagger among the tools of his trade.
