Highlander salute, had been half melted by particle beams.
Tara likewise turned herHatchetman and opened her canopy. For the first time the two long-time antagonists looked at each other in the flesh.
“And so we meet, little Countess,” Anastasia Kerensky called. “You’re every bit as appealing as the trivids make you out to be, in an underfed, gamine way.”
“And you’re as striking as witnesses report, Anastasia Kerensky,” Tara said, “although one wonders if you can really fight unaugmented.”
The other scowled, then laughed. “I cede the last word to you,” Anastasia said. “It’s little enough.”
“In the name of The Republic of the Sphere,” Tara said in her most neutrally formal voice, “I thank you for your assistance. And—thank you for saving my life.”
Anastasia’s laughter was silver and malice. “Ahh, little Countess—but what if I missed my real target? It will long amuse me to imagine you tormenting yourself with wondering.”
The cockpit of theRyoken II closed and the ’Mech clanked into motion, turning away from Tara’s Hatchetman . “Well, I’m off for a spot of bird hunting.” Kerensky’s words came over Tara’s headset. “Remember that my word’s good if yours is.”
“My word is good,” Tara replied. “But once you’re out of the system—if our paths cross ever again, I’ll kill you.”
“But first you must catch me,” the Wolf Bitch shot back. “And then—we’ll see who kills whom.”
Her BattleMech strode away, leaving Tara standing alone.
Three hours later, the Falcon DropShips lifted from their primary landing zone, trading shots with Steel Wolf ’Mechs and armor as they rose up on pillars of flame through the black bellies of the clouds, which now poured down rain as if to cleanse the burned and blood-soaked soil of Skye. At the same time, Gyrfalcon landing craft took off from their LZ near the still-smoking pit of the Hemphill mine.
The Battle for Skye was over. The great Jade Falcondesant had fallen just short of its last objective.
New London
Skye
16 August 3134
“So she’s really gone?” Captain Tara Bishop sat half-upright in her hospital bed, which was folded up into a sort of recliner. Outside, the yellow morning-after sun of Skye shone on the season’s first fall of snow.
Tara Campbell nodded as she placed the giant bouquet she’d brought in a vase on a shelf across from the bed. “She’s really gone, along with all her little Steel Wolves. They broke orbit twelve hours after the Falcons lifted, headed for the pirate point they used to jump into the system to avoid tipping the Falcons they were here. Not to mention running afoul of the FalconNightlord ”
Tara Bishop shook her head. Her cheeks were gray and sunken and her hair hung lank—the latter an artifact of anesthetic from the surgery to pin together her broken right femur. All told, she had come out surprisingly well from being blasted by a half dozen Falcons: a few broken bones, scorched a bit around the edges. She was alive, unparalyzed and still had all her parts—which made her wounds minor in MechWarrior terms.
Nonetheless, Tara could see there was something wrong. She sensed a sadness in her friend.
“What is it, TB?” she asked gently. “What’s bothering you?”
The captain blinked three times rapidly and turned her face to the wall. “Nothing. Really, Countess.” “Don’t even try to run that past me,” Tara C said.
Tara Bishop shook her head on her pillow. “It’s nothing compared to the victory we won—you won—” “We won.”
“—not to mention the losses we took. Hell, I’m embarrassed to be malingering here when there are beds going begging for people who are really hurt.”
“A broken thighbone isn’t exactly goldbricking, Captain. And everybody’s accommodated: it took some improvisation, but New London’s a big city. And the overflow crit cases we airlifted up the coast to New Glasgow last night. Now: give.”
Tara Bishop sighed. “I can’t make myself stop thinking I’m Dispossessed now.” She spoke a MechWarrior’s greatest nightmare, right behind being burned alive trapped in the cockpit. A BattleMech had always been brutally hard to come by—and after Devlin Stone’s Redemption Program it had become a hundred times harder. “Like I say, I know it’s not much compared to what’s happened to so many people. And I always knew it was a risk, every time I strapped on my poorHunter ” She shrugged, unable to continue.
Tara C restrained a smile. “That’sit? You aren’t Dispossessed.”
Her friend looked at her sharply. “Don’t try to blow smoke up my—don’t try to sweet-talk me, Countess. I’ve spent enough hours in myPack Hunter to know she was dying when I punched out.”
The Countess nodded. “I’m sad to say we couldn’t salvage your BattleMech—”
“Then what—”
“—but we won, remember? There’s plenty of salvage, and nobody’d deny you earned a high spot on the list. You’ll have your pick of a variety of rides, courtesy of Clan Jade Falcon.”
Tara Bishop stared at her. Her eyes were huge; and hardened veteran that she was, she could not speak as they filled with tears. She looked at Tara as if the Countess had given her life itself.
To a MechWarrior, she had.
Tara Bishop gripped her friend and Countess by the hand, and held it tight.
Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner sat in his darkened office, smiling broadly.
It was not because of the great peril from which his planet and people had been delivered, nor yet because of the smashing victory he had taken part in winning against fearful odds—granted, with help from a most unlooked-for quarter. Or rather, they were not the immediate cause of the gleeful expression illuminated on his bearded visage by the light bleeding from the holovid stage.
Rather, it was the scene there reenacted: furious mobs smashing the windows and doors and trashing the ground floor of the New London planetary headquarters of Herrmanns AG Media.
While the rest of Skye’s mass media sang delirious praises of the world’s defenders, especially the ever-so- photogenic young noblewoman who had led them to victory (granted, alongside the equally photogenic young woman who until recently had been her bane and Galactic Enemy Number One), Herrmanns had raised the roof with shrill accusations that Countess Campbell deliberately let the Skye volunteers of the Forlorn Hope be slaughtered to preserve the lives and BattleMechs of her precious Highlanders.
The accusation particularly annoyed the Duke, and had no doubt deeply wounded the Countess, because it wastrue . As far as it went. What that fat simpering fool Arminius was not saying was that she had announced that as her intent from her very first appeals for recruits to theHimmelsfahrtkommando . The planwas to preserve her veterans—in sufficient strength to deliver a decisive blow to the invaders.
Skye’s other media organizations had turned Arminius von Herrmann’s own vitriol back on him, at redoubled pressure and scalding hot. Whether inspired by their denunciations or something else, the people of New London— and New Glasgow as well, 300 kilometers north—had taken matters into their own hands and rioted, attacking Herrmann’s facilities.
Certainly, the Duke’s own intelligence service had nothing to do with the riots. They had their hands full sorting through the aftermath of the invasion. Especially the Solvaig mess....
Sirens and whistles sounded from the holovid track. Down the street a Seventh Skye Militia Demon crept, its loudspeakers calling for order. Files of Garryowen and Ducal Guard infantry trotted alongside it, unarmed but still wearing their stained battle dress. The crowd gave reluctant way. It responded more quickly when a capturedEyrie appeared on the scene to back up the peacekeepers, wings spread to fill the street, barbaric Clan badges painted out and the flags of Skye and The Republic, and the Duke’s personal coat of arms, hastily but not unskillfully daubed onto its front armor.
The Duke was pleased at the several-layered stroke of propaganda, and also by the way his Guard and the Garryowens, who in former times had got along as well as Wolves and Jade Falcons, acted together in perfect unison and apparent comradeship. Still, it was too damned bad they had to intervene,
especially before one or another mob caught Arminius and tossed his fat ass in a blanket for a while. But order must be preserved, even at such cost.
Duke Gregory sat back in his chair, massaged his temples with the tips of his blunt, powerful fingers. The
