Steel Wolves—and Paladin Ezekiel Crow, Northwind’s betrayer, with a mortal lock on the ear of Exarch Damien Redburn.
Paladin Jonah Levin had helpedTara expose the truth: that Crow was a serial traitor, not just on Northwind but as the famed Betrayer of Liao, who sold that world to a brutal massacre by Capellan Confederation invaders in 3111. Barely in time,the Northwinders had been rehabilitated to play the key role in turning back the Steel Wolf invasion.
Longtime media darling Tara Campbell became a more-hyped heroine than ever before: the Savior of Terra, she was labeled on all the newscasts. She protested, loudly, sincerely and truthfully, that she was only one among many who had saved the planet; naturally, she was ignored. And Exarch Damien Redburn had to smile and nod approvingly as the Terran media piled acclaim upon the diminutive young woman he had publicly dismissed as a hysterical weakling.
It was not something the proud ruler of an interstellar superpower enjoyed.
“I know I stepped on the Exarch’s cape,” she said now, sitting up and clasping her knees. “But we’re supposed to be The Republic’s fire brigade. Why doesn’t he send us to fight the Capellans?” The bulk of her Northwind troopswas still on Terra, though in more comfortable billets than the frigid internment camp-cum-bivouac outsideBelgorod they had been confined to upon their initial arrival.
Her aide frowned. “It may be that the Exarch fears you might just be too successful. You’re already walking away the single-most popular human being in The Republic, if not the whole Inner Sphere. Maybe he’s afraid you’ll get some Roman notions about the best solution to the current cascade o’ crises.”
“Then he’s a bigger ass than I thought he was!”Tara flared. “Serving The Republic is my wholelife . I’ve never done anything else—never wanted anything else. It’s not power—it’s principles: the ideals of Devlin Stone.”
“Strange how having a lot of power seems to change a person’s perspective. I’m just a poor little soldier girl, but I have a feeling Exarch Redburn is pretty suspicious of professions of idealism.”
“But it’strue . What do I have to do to prove myself?”
Seeing the gleam of moisture in her boss’ hazel eyes, the captain decided to lighten the mood. “Face it, TC: you do look good on recruiting posters. For women, you’re an inspiring role model: Countess Tara, fearless lady warrior who still has keen fashion sense. For the men, well—”
The Countess said a vulgar word. “I was a poster girl as achild , TB. I’m an adult, I’m thirty years old. I’ve fought battles. I’vewon battles. Besides—” She shook her head. “My people are scattered across a dozen planets. Fighting now. Some will die today. Maybe right now, as we speak. And my place is with them. Notshopping ”
4
Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon Jump Point Summit
4 March 3134
Alone in his dark cabin with his dark thoughts, Bec Malthus sipped cognac.
By now the Jade Falcon trade factors upon Tharkad would have delivered their ultimatum to House Steinerhands off or else! He did not doubt the manner of it would be gauche and brutal. We are a gauche and brutal people, by and large.
It was not a judgment on his part, but a sober assessment of fact, and not at all condemnatory in his mind. The thing upon which he prided himself most, the one thing which in his mind justified and redeemed the entirety of his existence and his acts by means of the service he rendered his Clan, was his capacity for total, ruthless objectivity.
He took another mouthful, almost daintily, rolled it about on his tongue, savoring the smoky piquancy. Although by the standards of the soft and self-indulgent Inner Sphere, he knew, he would be held something of a prude, by Clan precepts he was a raging hedonist. He concealed most of his pleasures from the scrutiny of his fellows as scrupulously as he did his political machinations. Yet the one weakness he permitted to be seen was his love of fine food and drink.
He might have justified his indulgences to himself by observing that, after all, none served the Falcon better now, and few had ever served Her as well, as he. He didn’t bother. Frankly, he did not give a pinch of Turkina’s holy poop for such nonsense. He felt neither guilt nor shame; what he hid, he hid because others’ awareness of it could cause them to act in ways adverse to his interests.
His table was a tame enough vice, indeed, a somewhat reassuring one, inasmuch as it was known and unlikely to bring harm or discredit upon the Falcon or her get. The Clan rhetoric, particularly Jade Falcon rhetoric, about iron will and self-denial contained, as he well knew, an element of willful self-deception. Few adults of the warrior class failed of having at least one vice—as defined by the Spartan Clan ethos, that was; to Spheroids, it was the Clans’ self-definedvirtues that were terrifying.
He smiled And now I and a pair of warrior children lead an army of naifs to liberate people whose closest approach to a unifying passion is a desire notto be subjected to the harsh will of the Clans.
When they plannedthis initiative months ago onSudeten , the two Hazen ristars had given it a curious name:desant . In Russian, the native language of Nicholas Kerensky, Founder of the Clans, it meant what it sounded like in English,descent . But in the ancient Soviet military art from before the age of space flight, it had another meaning. It referred to a drop of air-mobile troops—generally a very daring one, striking at key targets deep in enemy territory.
Both Aleks and Malvina were keen students of military history. That itself represented a departure from pure Clan tradition and was one of the Inner Sphere encroachments that Bec Malthus at once resented and embraced. For the Clans had been designed to spite the past. By forgetting about it.
That had failed. Ever objective, Malthus would acknowledge that, at least to himself.
He smiled, sipped.In order to preserve Jade Falcon ways, he thought/ am willing to destroy them. He held up the goblet to the dim ocher shine of a potted-down lamp beside his chair, in a toast to himself. That in itself was true to the spirit of rough-and-tumble Clan ways.
Yet there was another word from the same lexicon that applied to this mission equally well. More specifically, to that of the emissaries on Tharkad. That word wasmaskirovka . While it had been appropriated by House Liao for its intelligence service, neither of the hotblooded young ristars was reluctant to reclaim its use per the original meaning.
The word meantmasquerade . It had been used by the Soviets to signify a ruse concocted to cover intelligence or military operations.
Thedesant meant to see the Steel Wolves eradicated, no doubt about it. Every Jade Falcon did. And every woman and man of the expeditionary force down through the techs to the lowliest laborers burned with the desire to be part of that holy extermination.
But it was not the real objective.
That was: to conquer a bridgehead in the Inner Sphere, centered upon the world of Skye, the capital of Prefecture IX. And if they could win and hold that bridgehead convincingly enough, the full strength of Clan Jade Falcon might, Khan Jana Pryde willing, eventually join them in one great final Crusade to liberate Terra and all of the decadent Republic.
5
Jade Falcon Naval Reserve BattleshipEmerald Talon Jump Point
Crevedia
25 March 3134
“We cannot do it!” burst Aleks, starting from his chair in Malthus’ elegant stateroom. He jumped up with such force that the rubberized magnets on his boot soles broke contact with the carpet and he floated to the overhead,
