by Andrew Keith
Slowly, deliberately, he nodded his head, and Victor Davion smiled. "Please, Baron von Glengarry, repeat after me. Before these witnesses here assembled I, Grayson Death Carlyle, Baron von Glengarry, do hereby take you, Victor Ian Steiner-Davion, Archon Prince of the Federated Commonwealth, to be my lord of life and limb, and I your man, for my planethold of Glengarry."
"Before these witnesses here assembled I, Grayson Death Carlyle, Baron ..." As he repeated the words, Carlyle couldn't help but notice that it was a revival of an archaic fealty oath. Nobles generally swore fealty to the realm and its legitimate government, but the prince had chosen to emphasize the personal loyalty of master and man. That was somehow typical of Victor Davion.
"Moreover," the prince went on solemnly, "I swear to support and uphold the Federated Commonwealth, in peace and in war, with all the strength of my land, and to adjudge the enemies of the realm as my enemies, for as long as I shall live."
Slowly, Carlyle repeated the formula of defending his liege to the death, still wondering if he was doing the right thing.
Then Prince Victor spoke again. "I, Victor Steiner-Davion, take you, Baron von Glengarry, to be vassal of heart and hand and mind, to support and sustain you, for as long as I bear this Sword of State." The prince handed the ancient weapon back to its custodian and resumed his throne. "Rise, Baron Carlyle of Glengarry, and let citizens of the Federated Commonwealth look upon the rewards of selfless duty and devotion to their nation."
A cheer went up from the assembled court. Though resentment of the Archon Prince would be further fanned by his peculiar combination of the old oath of fealty with many of the traditional titles and forms the hidebound aristocrats of Tharkad would have expected, the act itself was sure to be popular. The Gray Death Legion had been a stalwart bastion of the Commonwealth for years, and both the unit and its commander were well respected.
Grayson felt a new weight of responsibility across his shoulders as he stood and bowed again. Until now his only obligation had been to his people, to the Gray Death Legion. Now he would have to balance their good against his new fealty to Victor Davion. The Archon Prince must have known that Carlyle was a man who would always take his oath seriously, no matter what the personal cost.
5
Dunkeld
Glengarry, Federated Commonwealth
1 April 3056
The magnificent sunrise of Dunkeld was one sight Alex Carlyle never tired of seeing. A brilliant orange ball rising out of the mists of the Firth of Dunkeld, Glengarry's K Class star shed its light over the harbor and across the old, dignified capital city. Despite the emelt's late arrival from the training center the night before, Alex had made a point of rising early enough to watch the sunrise from the balcony of the Residence, the Gray Death's fortified base on Castle Hill. Sudeten, the world where Alex had been born and raised, circled its brilliant sun at a distance of nearly three astronomical units, which made its dawns far less spectacular than here on Glengarry.
Alex leaned against a thick stone parapet and took a sip of blackroot tea as his gaze wandered down onto the streets and colorful rooftops of the Dunkeld's wealthiest residential neighborhood spreading out at the foot of the hill. From here, distance and morning mist obscured the less savory details, and it was possible to imagine the city as it must have been in its prime, before war and neglect had marred its antique beauty.
Dunkeld was nearly as big as any capital city on the major worlds of the Inner Sphere, including even New Avalon or Luthien or Tharkad, but appearances were deceiving. Its population, like that of the whole planet, had been declining steadily for generations. Glengarry had once been a thriving colony, one of Terra's eldest daughters, but it had been hit hard in the early rounds of the Succession Wars. Dunkeld still possessed vestiges of Glengarry's onetime greatness, things like the fine architecture of the Municipal Center in the heart of town or the massive bulk of these old Star League fortifications on Castle Hill northwest of the town, but the city was no bustling metropolis. Many of its buildings were empty and decaying, and still-occupied sections were often shabby, dirty, and run-down.
Alex wondered if the city, the entire planet, would ever return to anything of its original glory. His father had always been outspoken on the subject of humanity's losing struggle against the decline of civilization, but it took the images of Dunkeld, past and present, to bring the truth home. Grayson Carlyle and the Gray Death had been dedicated to holding the line against the forces that were dragging humanity down, but how much could they do in the face of overwhelming odds?
Sudeten, with its numerous industrial centers and burgeoning population, was a thriving planet, seeming impervious to the ravages of war. Like most worlds of the Inner Sphere, it had lost a certain amount of high technology over the three centuries of Succession Wars, but the arrival of the Gray Death Legion had led to a small technological renaissance. With them had come copies of the ancient Star League computer core salvaged on Helm in the last days of the Legion's fight against House Marik. The so-called Gray Death computer core held many lost secrets from the golden era of the Star League, not all of them military, and the dissemination of that information had helped create a genuine economic boom on Sudeten as well as across the rest of the Inner Sphere.
But Glengarry had proved a tougher proposition altogether. The original colony had done well enough for a time, being close to the valuable Terran trade routes. Homegrown products exported to the hungry markets of Terra brought in a healthy revenue to fill the planetary coffers. Unfortunately, Glengarry's first colonists had never seen fit to diversify and build self-sufficient heavy industries. When the Star League collapsed and intersteller trade declined during the First Succession War, the planetary economy suffered a mortal blow. Glengarry was as much a casualty of war as any of the border planets that constantiy changed hands between the warring armies of the Great Houses of the Successor States.
In fact, the world had not seen much fighting in more than a century, at least not the kind that had characterized the Succession Wars overall. The rival leaders of the Inner Sphere had not found sufficient reason to attempt to conquer the world, nor did Glengarry's location make it the target of the constant raiding endemic on worlds closer to the border. There were just no suitable strategic or economic targets worth attacking on Glengarry.
In consequence, the Lyran Commonwealth had not seen fit to garrison the planet with regular military units. Except for an ill-trained planetary militia and the private armies of a handful of ambitious noble landowners, there had been no effective fighting force on the planet for years. Private wars between the aristocrats, and the depredations of homegrown marauders driven to violence by poverty and despair had substituted for the large-scale conflicts that plagued more noteworthy worlds. These local problems had been enough to keep Glengarry from recovering from the down-Ward spiral that had begun with the fall of the Star League. The decision to bolster the strength of Federated Commonwealth forces in this region of space, the so-called Isle of Skye linking the old Federated Suns to the worlds of the Lyran Commonwealth, was what had brought the Gray Death to Glengarry and given the citizenry hope at last.
With the Legion's arrival on Glengarry, the population had looked to the mercenary unit as a panacea for all the planet's ills. Carlyle's troops had easily suppressed the outlaw gangs and defanged the ambitious noblemen, but it would take more to restore Glengarry's lost glory. One mercenary regiment with its dependents wasn't enough of an influx of people to spark a financial boom, and the lost knowledge of the old computer core was worthless without the means of production to turn out the high tech wonders revealed there. The population of Glengarry was too small, too scattered, and too deeply rooted in a subsistence-level agrarian economy. Though Grayson Carlyle had done everything possible to help, he had been unable to do more than slow down the planet's continuing decline.
There was ample room for expansion, if only the colonists could develop their world. Most of Glengarry's population was
concentrated on the smallest of the planet's three major continents, dubbed Scotia by the Scots-descended pioneers who had first settled there. Dalraida and Pictland, two larger land masses in the northern hemisphere, had never attracted much attention, partly because of their harsher climates, but mostly because the original colonists had been drawn to the abundant resources of Scotia. The mountain ranges that dominated much of the continent were rich in a variety of ores, while the open ground of the valleys and lowlands had been judged ideal for farming and ranching. If not for the wars, later colonial expansion might have opened up the other land masses, but as it was, most of Glengarry was still virgin wilderness.
It was too bad the odds were stacked against the locals, Alex thought bitterly. Under different circumstances Glengarry would have been one of the jewels of the Inner Sphere. Instead it was a quiet backwater condemned to a long, slow, ignominious death.
"Sir? Will you have breakfast now or would you prefer to dress first?"
Alex glanced back at the figure standing in the doorway leading into his apartment. Dressed in a kilt of the Dunkeld Servant's Guild, the big-boned man was a local, ruddy-faced and with the light hair and eyes common to the Celtic stock of Glengarry. Alex was still not used to the full-scale VIP treatment, especially after spending so much time as a cadet. Cadets at the Brander training center shared rooms and did without servants, but in Dunkeld, and especially in the Residence, things were different.
On Sudeten this man's duties would have been performed by a host of machines slaved to a household computer system, but on Glengarry personal service was a major source of employment for people who would otherwise have been condemned to abject poverty. As far as the locals were concerned, even the lowest-ranking astech of the Gray Death rated as a VIP entitled to all the comforts of the aristocracy. Back at the Brander center, Carlyle shared a room with Clay, and a bathroom with two other cadets as well, but here at the Residence his, family had a large block of apartments reserved for their personal use, with a staff of retainers to look after their every need. Alex had a four-room suite all to himself, stocked with old but well-cherished furnishings. The luxuries, and the temptations that went with them, made a sad contrast to the unhappy conditions that prevailed among the common folk of Glengarry, and Alex often found it hard to keep things in perspective.
"Thank you, er . . ."
"MacDonald, sir," the man supplied helpfully. There was a note in his voice that was anything but subservient, despite his job. Glengarry's population, mostly descended from Scots, Welsh, and Irish stock from Terra's British Isles, displayed a notable streak of pride and independence. They reminded Alex of old Davis McCall, though they were less prone to slip into the completely unpronounceable dialect McCall was so fond of.
"Thank you, MacDonald, I'll shower and dress first. And I'll only be wanting a light breakfast, please."
The man clucked disapprovingly. "Och, you're all alike, you Carlyles," he said, half to himself. "Best kitchen on the whole planet and all you want is something light." He looked directly at Alex. "Service in the main dining hall in thirty minutes, sir."
Alex handed MacDonald his empty teacup and followed . the servant indoors. The Residence was the largest, grandest building in the warren built on and into Castle Hill. The rest of the complex was given over to fortifications extensive enough to house the whole Gray Death, with plenty of room to spare, but they were now occupied by no more than a single company of the Legion's elite armored infantry plus a larger body of planetary militia. Most of the heavier weaponry originally mounted in the fortress had long since been scrapped, leaving Castle Hill better suited for ceremonial than for military functions. But the Residence itself was still the seat of Glengarry's planetary government, as it had been almost from the birth of the colony. As landholders-contractual, the senior officers of the Gray Death had quarters and offices here, together with officials of the planetary government.
That government was essentially unchanged from the days of the First Succession War. Glengarry had been held by a whole succession of different feudal overlords, mostly Lyran aristocrats but with a sprinkling of corporations and an occasional merc unit like the Legion as House Steiner had seen fit to reassign the planet for short-term political or economic advantages. Through all those regimes, in which most of the titular rulers were not even resident on the world, the local population had been administered by a council of twenty leading citizens who appointed one of their number to the archaic post of Governor General once every five years. The Council of Twenty was a tightly held oligarchy that had remained within the same tiny circle of families for generations. The planet's government was plagued by corruption and petty jealousies, and it was only with the utmost care and caution that Grayson Carlyle could approach reforms. Several long-time members of the council had been forced out soon after the arrival of the Gray Death. The current Governor General, Roger DeVries, was a new man.. Unconnected with past abuses, he had vowed to reorganize the planetary administration and break the power of the oligarchy. He was also Caitlin's father.
Alex mused over the chances of real reform as he went through his morning routine. Roger DeVries struck him as an honest, well-intentioned man, but he was also definitely an individual with his own agenda. He wasn't even a native of Glengarry. DeVries had started out as a small time free trader plying the intersteller space lanes. Eventually settling on Glengarry with the profits of his merchanting career, he'd married a local girl twenty years his junior. Though he had quickly become an important and influential figure on Glengarry, the man's off-world birth had barred him from an active role on the Council of Twenty. On the theory that DeVries was less enmeshed in local politics and ancient feuds, it was Grayson Carlyle who had sponsored the man for the Council, working behind the scenes to secure him the Governor-Generalship. The alliance between the merchant and the mercenary was not always an easy one, however. DeVries held the good of the planet above all else, and resented the drain on resources and manpower represented by the Legion. And although Grayson Carlyle wanted nothing but good for Glengarry, the Gray Death still came first and foremost in his mind. It was a situation that inevitably led to clashes between two strong-minded men, a tension only heightened by the political infighting among nobles who missed the good old days of an absentee overlord and the freedom to resolve their differences by force if they deemed it necessary. Probably the only thing that had kept matters from getting completely out of hand was the inability of the aristocrats to decide who they hated more, the mercenary planetholder who wouldn't let them rearm or the interloping off-worlder Governor General who refused to play politics the way the landowners wanted. Alex finished his shower—a real-water shower, a luxury not often enjoyed at Brander—and dressed in his best uniform. By the time he was seated at the long, empty table in the main dining hall waiting for MacDonald to bring his breakfast, his thoughts were back on the speech he was to give this afternoon. Today was one of the most solemn holidays observed by members of the Gray Death, and Alex would be representing his absent parents at the ceremonies marking the occasion. Like the bungled leadership exercise the day before, this was part of the process of grooming him for the day when he would take command of the Legion. Legionnaires and civilians alike would be listening to his words, making their own estimations of what kind of successor Grayson Carlyle had chosen. What Alex said today could set the tone for the future of Legion and planet alike ...
Above all he wanted to make his parents proud. He only hoped he would.
6
Zenith Jump Point, Skye System
Skye March, Federated Commonwealth
1 April 3656
"Ail is in readiness, Herr General. The last DropShip has docked, and Weltalloberst Glushko reports jump preparations underway around the fleet," reported Hauptmann Johann Albrecht to the commander of the Free Skye Expeditionary Force.
"Excellent." General-Kommandant Wilhelm Freidrich von Bulow studied his aide for a long moment. Sitting aboard t
he command DropShip Asgard, he had the Free Skye fleet's entire sophisticated communications system literally at his fingertips, but von Bulow was essentially an old-fashioned officer. He preferred to let his staff sift through the routine matters and report to him in person. There were some who scoffed that he was an eccentric old fool, but after years as a staff man himself von Bulow regarded his methods as a tried and true alternative to the chaos that generally resulted from micromanagement from the top. "Excellent, Johann. I must remember to commend the Logistics Master for his fast work."
"Yes, sir," Hauptmann Albrecht replied, pausing to enter a notation on his wristcomp. Like the good aide that he was, the officer would no doubt remind von Bulow of the commendation in due course.
Von Bulow continued to regard the man with a cold, expressionless stare. "And what is the opinion of our plan on Deck Four, Johann?" Deck Four of the Command Drop-Ship Asgard housed the junior and mid-level officers of von Bulow's staff, along with the leadership of the Duke of Skye's Own Huscarles, the elite infantry guardsmen pledged to the support of Duke Richard Steiner.
The aide's smile was almost predatory. "Conditions for the strike could not be better, Herr General," he said. "Half of Glengarry's garrison is deployed off-world, while the Gray Death leadership is off attending some court function on Tharkad. The enemy is wide open."
"They have quite a reputation, Johann," von Bulow reminded him, playing devil's advocate.
"Mercenaries," the aide sneered. "Good enough for raiding or set-piece battles, perhaps. But how well will they fight when there's no profit in the conflict? They have no cause, nothing to rally behind—and no one to lead them. How much of a threat can they be?"