than the chief minister himself, within a centimeter or so of average height for an adult Inner Sphere
male. His hair was dark, not long but not particularly short, receding from a widow’s peak. Yet his manner was confident beyond arrogance—beyond even the arrogance of a man who had strolled uninvited into the bedroom of the second most powerful man on Skye. And the black motorcycle leathers he wore were trimmed close to a figure that might have belonged to a professional gymnast, wide across the hips but flat of belly, carrying no slack.
“How did you get in?” Solvaig asked.
“Picked the lock.” He smiled and tipped the shades with the upward-angled half-oval lenses down his nose. His eyes were dark and Asian-shaped.
“And you, Mr. Chief Minister. What might you be doing?”
He waved around at the bedroom. Drawers hung open as if ransacked. Various possessions lay jumbled on the bed.
“Deserting a ship you think might be sinking?” He chuckled and shook his head. “Your pardon, Excellency; I malign you, I know. I should say, rather, that you’re taking advantage of the confusion to depart because your work here is done.”
His smile widened to expose his eyeteeth. “Your real work, that is.”
“Whatever you want,” the minister said, “I can make it worth your while to do nothing more than stand aside and allow me to walk out of here. Very worth your while indeed.”
Then his left hand snapped up from behind him holding a laser pistol. His right still held his socks. He presented the deadly energy gun for a pointblank hip shot as if he knew how to do it.
But the intruder, smiling blandly, was already sliding toward him like oil over water.
Close: too close.
Weston Heights
15 August 3134
Malvina Hazen still clung to life, if barely, when her sibkin, ignoring the shrill warnings of the radiation counter in his cooling vest, tenderly extracted her from the wreckage of her cockpit.
The enemy had already vanished back among the shattered apartment buildings. Aleks’ Zetas had secured the open ground. Lead elements of Turkina Keshik had come up as well; their Solahma and Eyrie infantry had begun probing into the built-up area.
A Turkina’s Beak VTOL touched down to dust the badly injured Galaxy Commander off to the Turkina Keshik landing zone. Aleks stooped to lay his sister gently on the stretcher. The blood that wrapped her body like a net came mostly, he had ascertained, from superficial cuts by flying fragments. But blood ran from her mouth, a bad sign, and herShrike ’s cockpit had been full of toxic gases, products of burning or heat-induced outgassing from internal components.
He knelt beside her, gazing down at her lovely and curiously peaceful face—as if this were the first true ease she had known in years, if not her life. Her pink, fever-flushed forehead already bloomed with
bruise-like petechiae, produced by radiation-sundered capillaries. In themselves, he knew, they signified little: they were temporary, and could be produced by minor exposure not otherwise harmful.
He brushed a stray lock of hair, its near-white pallor sullied by oil and char, from her forehead. Then he stood and signed for the medical techs to take her aboard the helo. It lifted in a swirl of dust.
“Let us go,” Aleks radioed his companions, once back in White Lily’s cockpit. “Time to finish this.”
New London
15 August 3134
“—fighting moved into the western suburbs of New London,” the impersonal news-voice said from the speakers of the burly Harley-Indian-Messerschmitt motorcycle. “Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner has vowed to turn the invaders back before they reach the city proper. ...”
Ten blocks away from the chief minister’s house the average-sized man put down a booted leather-clad leg as he swung the 1800-cc bike to a stop. The streets here were deserted. People were staying home, trusting to their Duke.
More fools they.
The man sat upright in the saddle and pushed his shades down his nose. A chill breeze blew snow in his face, and a choking stink of smoke. To the west a column of brownish-white smoke rose from a base that seemed as wide as a small city in itself. Its lower portion was lit from within by an unhealthy pallid-orange light, with flares like parti-colored lightning adding their hues at random intervals. The battle sounds had grown to a sussurating growl.
“It’s no concern of yours,” he said to himself. “Your job here’s done.”
As if in reply, a column of orange sparks shot into the air like an immense Roman candle. It was clearly closer than the smoke column. The crump and crackle of the serial blasts reached him far sooner than he wanted to hear them.
The news said the roads to the spaceport northeast of town, on the north shore of Thames Bay, were jammed up tight: it was why he had the radio on. So he told himself. If there was transport available off-world it could lift without concern: the JFs had left no ships in space near Skye to intercept them.
Nor were Falcon aerospace fighters a concern, although interlaced contrails and the occasional black smudge where one rocket jock had gotten lucky and another’s luck had all run out scored the sky high to the southwest. The New London spaceport was guarded so densely by heavy weapons and air-defense batteries that not even Falcon fighters cared to test it. Clanners abhorred waste, after all.
Of course, if any bottoms were lifting offworld, passage inboard them would be at a mad premium. But getting onto or off planets despite all obstacles was a specialty of the man on the big Elsie bike, which grumbled on idle as if eager to be off again.
It was far easier than, say, impersonating anaccountant . Even a forensic one. He suspected his superiors were deliberately tormenting him with his latest cover.
Then again, they’d have long since liquidated him, if he weren’t one of their top field operators.
“And much too professional,” he said aloud, “to let personal attachments get in the way.
“And then again,” he said as the raps of more explosions reached his ears, louder and sharper and from close enough by that he got a little after-ring of high-frequency harmonics in his ears, and even thought he felt a puff of dynamic overpressure on his face, “then again, the Falcon invasion threatens the whole Inner Sphere. Let them get their toehold here and their wholeTouman will follow—and how long will it take every holdout Crusader crazy and young glory hound from all the damned Clans to join the march toward the center, after that?
“And then again—” he sighed—“I’ve always been a romantic fool at heart.”
He turned his fat front tire to the west and all the fuss, and kicked the bike to roaring life.
Weston Heights 15 August 3134
Taking control of the advance, Bec Malthus showed no mean skill as a battle commander. He threw his fresh Turkina Keshik against the Highlanders and militia, driving them briskly back through the houses and schools and shops of Weston. Aleks’ troops followed in echelon left, supporting the Keshik and sending out Elemental patrols to mop up bypassed pockets of resistance.
Shocked by their charismatic leader-goddess’ fall, the Gyrfalcons had cracked right across. If there was one thing Malthus knew, it was Jade Falcon character; if he sent Delta Galaxy into battle again it would snap. Its men and women would hurl themselves shrieking on the nearest foe without thought of defense, not stopping until all were slain. Having at the moment no need for suicide attacks he sent the Gyrs off to the north to guard his flank— mainly to lurk in the woods, where they could assuage their raptor egos sniping at Duke Gregory and serve the authentic function of keeping him from aiding Countess Tara Campbell.
Tara Campbell, for her part, fought as good a withdrawal, maybe, as could be fought. She would have credited her troops, the steely skill of her Highlanders and the Seventh Skye Militia’s fury at the violation of their homes. The Garryowens hungered especially for revenge: their comrades had borne the brunt of the Falcon advance. Both the formerly careless and disreputable locals, now in their glory and fighting like tigers, and certain backwoodsmen from Northwind’s northern continent displayed a startling facility for rapidly improvised and savagely lethal booby traps.
Still, a fighting retreat, no matter how brilliant, is nothing more thanlosing slow . Turkina Keshik was proud, fresh and fearless. The defenders gave them as much as human flesh and Clan could stand, and more. When at last
