Blood of the Isle

by Loren L. Coleman

  The station’s corpse continued to bleed air into the cold vacuum of space. A nimbus of scrap metal and bodies tumbled about, caught only in the WarShip’s massive spotlights. When Malvina ordered the lights extinguished a moment later, nothing could be seen of the once graceful station except where its mangled bulk excluded the starlight.

  Gondola Station was dead.

  “I congratulate you,” Beckett Malthus said when she joined him on one of the Emerald Talon’s secure administrative decks. The two of them entered her shipboard office. “My aides inform me that you allowed one lifeboat and a half dozen escape pods to clear the kill zone. Skye must know all about the attack by now.”

  Malvina shrugged. Now that it was over, she saw very little point in reliving the moment. It had been vaguely unsatisfying. Not personal enough for her.

  “As it was on Chaffee,” she said, taking a seat at her desk, leaving Malthus to stand or accept one of the room’s inferior chairs. “The survivors are carriers. They will spread their fear to everyone with whom they come into contact. Skye will know what is in store for it.”

  “And they will have a week to stew while we travel in-system.” The WarShip’s massive drives burned hot and silent several dozen decks below, pushing the Nightlord into Skye’s system at just over one standard gravity of acceleration. “Quite an efficient use of terror as a weapon, I would say.”

  “As an object lesson it will serve its purpose.”

  “I wonder,” Malthus said, taking a seat and leaning forward as if sharing a secret with Malvina. “How will Skye react, do you think, once the Emerald Talon’s lasers start probing down from orbit?”

  Meaning, what were her exact plans for the WarShip once they reached the world of Skye? Whatever Malthus thought personally of her tactics, he hid behind inscrutable green eyes, but Malvina was no fool. Beckett Malthus cared less for the local reaction than he did for how Malvina planned to further Jade Falcon goals inside The Republic. All the better to position himself as well.

  She spread her hands over her spotless desktop, feeling the cold metal burn against her left palm. Against her right, she felt nothing. “We will not use the Emerald Talon’s weapons in an orbital bombardment of Skye, except as a final resort. The WarShip will be used only to interdict the world, making sure none escape the Jade Falcons’ will.”

  Malthus ran blunt fingers through his hair, tugged at his deep widow’s peak. “You wish to mitigate the damage to Skye itself? Does that not run counter to your plans to instill fear and use it to hold the populace in thrall?”

  “This has nothing to do with mitigating the damage. This is about victory and honor. I want this world, Beckett Malthus, and I will have it by my own hand.”

  She raised her right arm, with its false, ebony sheen, and stared at the replacement hand. It was stronger than a true limb. It could crush bone, shatter someone’s skull with a backhand slap. But it wasn’t real.

  “I am no Star admiral. I am a MechWarrior. Skye must and will fall to me through my own prowess if I am to fulfill my role as the Chinggis Khan. People will tremble at the sound of a ’Mech footfall. My Shrike will be my avatar.”

  “And the people will have a face to put to their nightmares. You are most cunning in your foresight . . . my Khan.”

  Yes. Enough to see how much she had come to rely on the machinations and resources of Beckett Malthus. More so than she had ever relied on Aleksandr for his counsel and his aid, and with her brother she had always been assured of his ultimate loyalty. Not that he would not oppose her—he had—but Aleksandr could be counted on to work by the light of day where she could watch him, always wary.

  Beckett Malthus suffered no such personal constraints. And the Emerald Talon, for all its implied power, was his. Given to him by the Jade Falcon Khan Jana Pryde, as her way of setting her stamp of approval on the undertaking. No matter how Malvina orchestrated events, with or without Malthus’ help, some of her prestige would always bleed back to Pryde if she was not careful, and if she continued to rely on the Jade Falcon flagship.

  “I . . . understand,” he said.

  If he had followed her reasoning through, he just might. The man could not read minds, but Malthus had an uncanny gift for intrigue. She knew she must watch him. Malvina needed him in the here and now. But not forever.

  Just long enough to take Skye.

  24

  Maria’s Elegy, Hesperus II

  Lyran Commonwealth

  25 November 3134

  Jasek’s reception on Hesperus II was everything he could have hoped for. And more than he wanted.

  For two days he was toured around Maria’s Elegy and the ’Mech factories under Defiance Peak. The city reminded him vaguely of Cheops back on Nusakan, sculpted into the side of several terraced mountains. But Cheops was a poor comparison. The Rises in Maria’s Elegy were steeper, grander, than anything on Nusakan. And the heavy reliance on domed construction gave the entire city a glittering, jewellike presence. As if half the buildings were constructed of faceted crystal, throwing around bright spots of color and more than a few rainbows.

  He and Joss Vandel were feasted with local fare, which tasted a bit too much of iron for Jasek’s palate. Sturdy livestock and hardy plants, he imagined. Wines and delicacies were all brought in from off-world by the ruling Brewster family. Not one item came out of The Republic, or Skye. Not even as a courtesy.

  Two days.

  Jasek wearied of the constant attention and the ultrapolite refusal of anyone in Duke Vedet Brewster’s family to talk business. He never saw Trillian Steiner. His requests for an audience with her went unanswered.

  Perhaps his distant cousin felt so far removed from the Kelswa offshoot that she would rather leave him in the generous—if careful—hands of the local nobility.

  Caroline Brewster escorted Jasek this evening to what he was certain would be yet another formal dinner engagement, fully scripted right down to the afterdinner conversation, which in no way would touch on events taking place inside the old Isle of Skye. Caroline’s skin was ebony black and her eyes had an exotic fold just at the outer edge. She wore pristine white gloves and a gold-colored cocktail dress. A striking debutant, no doubt meant to distract him from his agenda. Perhaps he was being maneuvered into some noble matchmaking as well, a game not unknown in the Lyran Commonwealth, where marriages for social alliances were even more commonplace than the Inner Sphere norm. He resolved to be on his best behavior, and on his guard.

  So when Trillian Steiner opened the door herself, with Colonel Vandel standing behind her and Vedet Brewster grazing a nearby table of appetizers, it took Jasek a moment to regain his political feet.

  “Cousin,” she greeted him warmly, as if they had seen each other quite recently. Trillian leaned in to give him a chaste peck on the cheek. She embraced Caroline with far more familiarity, bussing her cheeks with a leaning hug. “And Caroline. Good eve.”

  Trillian practically glowed, with long golden hair braided behind each shoulder, and alabaster skin that forced her, here on Hesperus II, to extreme precautions to protect that paleness. Though five years younger than Jasek, she carried herself with a graceful confidence common to only the most experienced politicians. This was a young scion of House Steiner who had embraced everything that Jasek had refused in his own heritage. Position. Privilege. She was her family’s direct representative here on Hesperus II, able to charm the local nobility, or stand up to them if the needs of the ruling House diverged from that of the Brewsters.

  “You both know Joss Vandel,” she said with just the right timbre of expectation. If she had been a Clansman, Jasek would have expected her to follow up with the rhetorical “Quaiff?” “Joss is an old friend.”

  Jasek’s colonel for the Archon’s Shield battalion of the Stormhammers looked perfectly at ease in full Lyran dress, light blue woolen jacket and white stirrup pants, showing off a row of medals won in Lyran service as well as the rank awarded by Jasek. Vandel smiled and half bowed to his commande
r.

  “I was aware that you knew each other,” Jasek said. “I didn’t realize how well.”

  Trillian offered her arm to Vandel and allowed the officer to lead her back into the room. There were several guests whom Jasek did not recognize invited to this predinner rendezvous. The most important ones, he felt certain, were within arm’s reach.

  “Joss Vandel taught a civics class at Tharkad University. Between assignments.”

  Military assignments, or Lohengrin? Jasek doubted that the intelligence service made available a list of agents, but he was equally confident that very little had been withheld from Trillian Steiner. She was being intentionally vague, playing the old game of “What do you know?”

  “Indeed.” Jasek plucked a heavy crystal goblet of dark wine from a bed of ice. “I’m sure Colonel Vandel has served the Commonwealth in many useful matters.”

  Not the least of which was his current role as leader of a Stormhammer unit and a champion of returning Skye to Lyran rule. An assignment he felt certain Trillian would rather be kept concealed from their hosts.

  Duke Vedet Brewster shared his niece’s dark skin but not her exotic eyes. The man had a plain, honest face that was surely a shield for the plans he harbored within. Balancing a small plate of appetizers in one hand, he walked around the end of the table and joined the conversation. “Interesting, don’t you think, that we all find ourselves in the same place just now? Hardly a coincidence, though.”

  “Hardly,” Jasek agreed. Was he supposed to open a dialogue here and now? He sipped his wine, found it delightfully sweet. “I came here for a very specific reason, Duke Vedet.”

  It was a Skye tradition to apply the noble title to a first name rather than the family name, creating a more intimate manner of address. Vedet Brewster did not correct his usage. “Hopefully not the same reason that brought you to Chaffee,” he said with a touch of steel.

  If the duke felt the action on Chaffee had offered the prospect of Republic annexation, he had not been following events inside the Sphere of late. Then again, with Hesperus II suffering under the same blackout as so many other worlds, his wondering what plans were being bandied about in the dark did not count as a major strike against him.

  “Chaffee was a gift. To get your attention. I presume I have it.”

  Trillian preempted the duke with a casual glance in his direction. “It took us the past week to get independent confirmation of the status of Chaffee. Some of us wondered if The Republic was going to claim dominion.” She directed a dark gaze at Joss Vandel, who wore a consciously blank look. “After all, it was not the Commonwealth who went to their aid.”

  “Chaffee is not an old Skye world,” Jasek said, putting the emphasis where it belonged, “though certainly we have shared interests several times over the centuries. It was hurt badly when the Falcons used their blistering agent on the population, but at its core the world is Lyran. It belongs with the Commonwealth. Any lingering feelings of abandonment will fade with time and freedom.”

  He was not referring only to Chaffee, or to the Falcons. Duke Vedet raised an eyebrow as he absorbed Jasek’s meaning, and nodded. “I have guests I should greet. Allow me to introduce you.”

  If Jasek thought that business was finished for the evening, Duke Vedet quickly disabused him of that notion as he introduced senior officers in the Lyran Commonwealth’s standing army and several civilian officials. All of them were interested in what Jasek had seen and done on Chaffee, what was going on among the old Isle of Skye worlds, and his take on the Jade Falcon incursion.

  “We never believed the Jade Falcon ambassador who claimed their forces were merely on a long-strike expedition to hunt down and destroy the Steel Wolves.” Jerome Boxleitner was a senior aide to the planetary administrator, specializing in interworld relations. “But what were we to do? The Falcons’ army dwarfed the entirety of what we had in the region, and not even fifty-odd years of relative peace have been enough to make us forget the damaging losses our military saw in the decades of violence between 3050 and 3080.”

  Jasek nodded in acknowledgment. “But what if the Clanners chose to bypass The Republic and strike here at Hesperus? What if next time they decide to wipe their feet on you as they strike for Terra?”

  “ ‘What if’ is a dangerous game,” Boxleitner said with a pinched expression. “For example, what if they had actually held to their word and rid your Republic of the Wolves?”

  “But they didn’t. Far from it. Instead, they struck Porrima, an ancestral holding of House Steiner.” Jasek’s raised voice drew a few nearby military officers into the discussion. Joss Vandel nodded surreptitiously. “And on Chaffee, your citizens were abused with a blistering agent. Who knows what horror they will visit on the next world they attack? Does it matter if that world is Republic, and not Lyran?”

  “Shouldn’t it matter?” a young leutnant-general asked.

  From his decorations, Jasek saw that he was a sharpshooter and had received several unit citations on his way up the chain of command. Which was interesting, as the man had no campaign ribbons and—Jasek noted—bore no callus on his hands that would indicate he held a weapon regularly. Or at all. Another social general.

  “It didn’t matter to me,” was all Jasek said. He caught several people nodding, swayed, if not convinced. Yet.

  Trillian tapped Jasek on the elbow, extracting him from the small crowd. “I’d like you to try the Sarpsborg shrimp. They just set some out.” Her casual approach lasted until they were out of earshot of the crowd. “You’re very good when you know what you want.” She used a long skewer to place three tiny pieces of curled, pink meat on his plate. “But do you understand what it is you are asking?” She shook her head.

  The shrimp tasted bitter. No doubt an acquired taste. “If Duke Vedet thought it would soften the blow for the no to come from family,” Jasek told her, sensing a refusal of his appeal, “you should remind him that our relationship is quite distant.”

  Her blue eyes were the color of a summer sky, and hard as diamonds. “You’ve made many good points. Likening the Commonwealth to a doormat was an ingenious metaphor.”

  “If the muddy boot fits,” he said with a forced smile. “Look. The Isle of Skye was a thorn in the side of the Commonwealth for centuries. I know that. But you must still feel some obligation to its people, or we wouldn’t be talking.”

  “Let us say that Duke Brewster agrees to help you. He might, you know. With the resources at his disposal, and the general level of military downsizing since Devlin Stone’s Terran Accords, Hesperus has never been better defended. We can afford to be generous. And sitting here on our hands while the Jade Falcons tramp among our worlds does not sit well with anyone.”

  Jasek did not miss that his cousin had shifted from talking of Duke Vedet to saying “we” and “our.” He felt a surge of hope.

  “However”—she raised a hand—“if Skye is successfully defended, with or without our help, it may drive the Jade Falcons back into Lyran space. Would you have us go to war in place of The Republic?”

  “I wouldn’t ask that of you unless Skye was willing to stand apart from The Republic, and at your side.”

  “Then how can you ask for the one, while not guaranteeing the other?”

  Now Jasek did smile. They were getting close to a bargain, and even as an expatriate Lyran he enjoyed a good negotiation. “If that is truly your concern, Trillian Steiner, I believe I can set your fears at ease. If I accomplish what I have planned, the Jade Falcons will not be able to turn their eye on the Lyran state for some time.”

  “You are saying we’d be risking very little?”

  “No, I’m going to ask you to risk quite a lot. But it comes with an insurance policy. Win, lose, or draw, the Falcons will not be coming back into the Lyran Commonwealth.”

  “How can you promise that?”

  Jasek Kelswa-Steiner picked up another glass of wine, took a healthy swig, and told her.

  25

  Sutton Road<
br />
  Skye

  30 November 3134

  The floor of Tara Campbell’s New London command post was a poured slab, raked rough and not quite level. Hasty construction. Capped wires stuck out of electrical conduits where power outlets had not been installed. Cinder block walls sweated condensation from a lack of proper heating. The smell of fresh cement mixed with the ozone scent of warm electronics; that, and a low ceiling, made the large, long room feel smaller than it was.

  Tara Campbell rocked back on her heels, as if testing the floor’s slight tilt, but kept her gaze fastened on the workstation monitor where a sensor technician framed the Jade Falcons’ DropShip insertion. An amber band marked the hazy boundary between stratosphere and space. Seventeen red-glowing icons trailed dashed lines to mark the DropShips’ progress. Seventeen! Half of them now edged into the amber band.

  Conversation in the room was hushed, mostly an exchange of tense, clipped sentences. The weight of the Jade Falcon arrival over Skye sat heavily on the shoulders of every military person in the room. More than a few glanced upward, as if able to see through steel, ferrocrete, and several meters of dirt, and the hundreds of kilometers of atmosphere.

  Tara resisted the urge.

  “Have we confirmed their targets yet?” she asked the officer on vector mechanics.

  Possessed of sallow skin and bloodshot eyes, Leutnant Nicole Barringer obviously spent too much time in dimly lit rooms, staring at computer monitors. But she was the best Skye had, which was why Tara had pulled her for duty. She performed only half of the mathematics by computer, the other half in her head.

  “Twelve of the seventeen DropShips have reduced their deceleration burn and are pulling ahead of the pack.” She used a stylus to draw a lopsided diamond around their icons, then sketched a golden arc up off the screen, approximating their average insertion angle. Another arc trailed from the bottom tip of the diamond down through the amber band and into one of the color-coded boxes that sat at the lower edge of the screen. Each box represented an insertion path for one of ten high-priority targets.