Blood of the Isle Read online

  Off to the right side an Eyrie also swam up from the white depths, hauling a Kinnol main battle tank in its wake. The Griffin shifted left, the camera finding a trio of Skadi swift attack VTOLs jumping up on horizontal fans, their heavy-class autocannon swinging in search of targets.

  Like true sharks, the Jade Falcon forces circled the trapped Griffin. The screen washed into a gray haze of static. This, Jasek knew from the report, was when his Mech Warrior transmitted the video logs. They had only voice transmissions after that, captured by the DropShip Noble Son before liftoff. He didn’t have the heart to listen to them again. His warrior had gone down swinging, taking the Eyrie and two Skadis with him.

  His warrior was dead.

  That was what there was to know.

  “The Falcons are here to stay,” Niccolò said with certainty. Although he was no military mind, his political acumen and advice had never failed Jasek. “You know this.”

  He nodded. “I do. They came back to Ryde, even after the Steel Wolves beat them there. Which means they’ll be reinforcing Kimball. Glengarry, Zebebelgenubi, Summer—they have quite the foothold already, and they’ll be coming back for Skye. These Clanners don’t leave things half done. They’ll be coming back.”

  “So what will you do?”

  Jasek leaned over one corner of his desk. The polished wood felt cold to the touch. “All that there is left to do. Decide the where and when of the final battle. The Archon’s Shield is ready, and most of the Lyran Rangers are back from the intelligence missions I sent them on, aren’t they?”

  Niccolò nodded. “Tamara Duke should make planetfall tomorrow.” The way he said it, it sounded almost like a warning. “With the kommandant’s arrival, I believe Colonel Petrucci’s report will put the Rangers at sixty percent force readiness.”

  “Orders will go out over my signature today, drawing up whatever we can of the Tharkan Strikers. If we’re moving, I want everyone with us. Including you, my friend.”

  “And where are we going?”

  Jasek stared down into his desk’s polished surface, at the darker version of himself that looked back out of the wood grain. Niccolò knew, of course. But Nicco also knew that armies did not march except on the express order of their commander. “Home,” Jasek said with a sharp breath.

  “We’re heading back to Skye.”

  2

  Cheops

  Seventh District, Nusakan

  9 September 3134

  Hands tight on the control sticks, worried for every step, Kommandant Tamara Duke limped her beloved “Eisenfaust,” her “Iron Fist,” into Cheops. The Wolfhound BattleMech swayed precariously every time she put weight on its right leg. A grinding screech stabbed into her ears, and her atmospheric system labored to pull the acrid smell of stressed metal from the cockpit.

  A pair of VV1 Rangers raced ahead, holding up traffic at each intersection and allowing her to pass safely. Horns honked in a near-continuous salute. People gathered on walks, on building rooftops. They waved to the returning Stormhammers, to her, but she could not afford the distraction of waving a massive hand back at them.

  Sprawling full length into the middle of the street would be a very undignified way of returning to Jasek.

  Tamara gritted her teeth, leaned left in her seat, straining against the five-point safety harness. She tried not to look at the damage schematic displayed on one of her auxiliary screens. It drew a wire frame of the lean machine. Blackened frames outlined a ruined right hip, and a wide swath of destroyed armor slashed across her Eisenfaust’s back. Inside the frame a small icon flashed between black and red, warning her of damage to the massive gyroscopic stabilizer that nested behind and below the BattleMech’s fusion reactor, laboring to keep thirty-five tons of metal and myomer upright. If not for the gyro, her Eisenfaust would have been hauled into Cheops on the back of a flatbed recovery vehicle.

  Instead, her sideways list was translated through the bulky neurohelmet she wore, turning her own sense of equilibrium into a regenerative signal. This signal was used to calibrate the BattleMech’s stride and a natural swing in its arms. It adjusted by the smallest amount her weapons’ targeting system in combat. And it formed a continuous feedback loop between neurohelmet and gyro. Shuffle- step . . . Shuffle-step . . . the gyro’s tortured screech and her ’Mech’s occasional grinding shudder added fuel to the rage she had held deep and quiet since the betrayal.

  Her mission had been fairly straightforward. An intelligence-gathering raid against the world of Towne, one of very few worlds left with a functioning HPG station in this second year of the blackout. Go in, download all intel, and leave Jasek’s propaganda message playing on a continuous loop over as many local stations as possible. It was one of several similar missions being conducted by the Stormhammers across several different prefectures, but hers had been handed to her personally by Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.

  His salute had been textbook formal. His handshake lingered just for a moment. The memory of Jasek’s touch had kept her warm through the dull weeks of travel and the tense ninety-three minutes it had taken to accomplish their goal.

  Then she had lost it in the confused terror as her own soldier turned weapons against her, nearly destroying the Wolfhound.

  But she would see Jasek again, and she would have justice. The Stormhammers tank crew who had fired on her was dead, its vehicle left burning on the streets of Towne. The man she suspected of organizing the attempt on her life was right under her sights.

  Her targeting reticle actually floated over the outline of the VV1 Ranger, in fact, in which Hauptmann Vic Parkins, her exec, rode as a passenger. Parkins, who never stuck a foot out of line but always seemed to be there whenever anything went wrong. Off the field he fraternized with many of the junior officers. On the field, his frequent repeating of her orders down the chain promoted the feeling that he actually ran the Lyran Rangers’ Second Company, not her.

  It would have taken only an instant to bring weapons on line and light up the VV1, but the driver might not be complicit. Also, she imagined that Jasek would want to squeeze Parkins himself, rooting out any further treachery in the Stormhammers.

  The two of them together, Jasek and Tamara, would eventually form an unstoppable team. She knew this.

  First Hill was coming up, and Tamara focused even harder on the task of maneuvering her crippled Eisenfaust. The semisteep slope was not an easy climb, forcing her to lope up in a kind of sideways step with her stronger left leg always lower on the hill. The city of Cheops was laid over three sides of a sculpted mountain. Each of the five Rises had been perfectly leveled and squared, each Hill graded exactly the same as every other. The effect was stunning: to anyone arriving at the DropPort to the south, the city looked like an ancient pyramid. Governor Paulo and Legate Lorenzo, the political and military leaders of Nusakan, had estates on Fifth Rise, at the very top. Jasek and the Stormhammer senior officers had been offered residences up there as well, but their leader had declined. The GioAvanti industrial facilities on First Rise had everything the Stormhammers required, from apartments and cafeterias to corporate offices (now in use as administrative and training facilities) to a large set of warehouses (converted into ’Mech bays and vehicle repair shops).

  She angled across an empty parking lot, now the Stormhammers’ parade grounds, and straight for one of those warehouses. Giant doors already stood rolled back, and she needed to duck forward only slightly to get inside the cavernous interior. The building still showed signs of its retrofitting, with the second-story floor ripped out of the middle and a series of catwalks and chain falls dropped down from the ceiling for elevated work, but it served.

  The VV1 Rangers both peeled away, finding parking slots along one wall. A technician in bright orange coveralls waving two glowing wands directed Tamara to an empty berth, helping her maneuver in the tight quarters with a series of semaphore-style signals. Finally, he crossed the wands overhead, indicating a good position.

  Tamara gratefully
banked her fusion reactor and instituted shutdown and security procedures for her Eisenfaust, unplugging from the control systems and peeling herself out of the cockpit command seat. Her cooling vest went into a locker built into the back of her seat. The neurohelmet on an overhead shelf. Grabbing a set of breakaway fatigues, she pulled them on over field boots, shorts, and a tube top, which was all she wore in the hot seat. She snapped the legs shut and fastened the cuffs around her ankles, then unlocked and cracked open the cockpit hatch.

  The mixed scent of welding and grease assailed her. The techs were slow in bringing her a gantry, so Tamara unrolled the chain ladder from the Wolfhound’s head. Scaling it to the ground, she dropped the last meter, landing in a crouch in front of Leutnant-colonel Alexia Wolf.

  “Wolf,” Tamara sighed, straightening up. Belatedly, she added, “Sir.”

  Alexia’s smile was pro forma. “Welcome home, Kommandant.”

  The two women eyed each other carefully. Alexia Wolf stood six centimeters shorter than Tamara, with a soft fall of brown hair and an athletic frame. She never wore makeup, which did not detract from her hard beauty and made the colonel even more intimidating. Tamara reflexively reached up to tousle her own black curls, repairing some of the damage caused by wearing her neurohelmet.

  “Landgrave Kelswa sent me,” the colonel announced, shortening Jasek’s name in the most common manner but awarding him his formal title. “I am to take delivery of the data you brought back.”

  “Are you?” Tamara asked. She felt as if the data wafer, her copy of the intelligence recovered on Towne, were burning in her pocket. The request cut her to the quick and struck her as inappropriate for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that Alexia Wolf was not in her chain of command. “We heard about the assaults by the Jade Falcons. I would think our data would now be of secondary importance.”

  “Intel is never secondary. Information is ammunition, Kommandant.”

  Tamara nodded. She recognized the saying as an old Lyran Commonwealth military adage. “Even so, I would rather deliver it in person. I have an urgent matter to discuss with Jasek—the Landgrave.”

  “You can pass that through me as well,” Alexia offered. “If you want a direct meeting, request it through Colonel Petrucci.”

  Tamara visibly bristled. Alexia Wolf’s promotion to commanding officer of the Tharkan Strikers, the Stormhammers’ third and least-experienced combat group, had caused a great deal of talk. On the face of it, so far as Tamara Duke was concerned, Wolf had no business in command. She wasn’t a member of the former Republic military, as was Tamara and most of the Stormhammers, nor one of the supporters who had rallied to Jasek’s call from nearby worlds of the Lyran Commonwealth.

  Alexia was a freeborn descendant of Clan Wolf exiles, who had trained as a MechWarrior but failed her Trial of Position. In disgrace, she had left the Arc-Royal enclave and traveled through Lyran space to The Republic. Caught in the blackout, by fate or by fortune she had been on Skye when Jasek’s stand against Duke Gregory suddenly opened up a need for warriors.

  Watching Jasek elevate the Archon’s Shield battalion over the Rangers had been hard enough on Tamara. Seeing a woman who could not cut it in a regular-line military suddenly promoted over deserving warriors due only to her exotic flavor was nearly too much to bear.

  Also, Tamara didn’t like the looks that Wolf sent Jasek when she thought no one was watching.

  “This is very sensitive and of the utmost importance. I’d like to see the Landgrave at once.” And let him see her.

  The colonel frowned. “The Landgrave is meeting with Legate Carson Lorenzo. I am not going to interrupt them on your word, Kommandant, no matter how good it has proved in the past. You will have to tell me what this is regarding.”

  Paid a respectful compliment by the woman she saw as a rival, Tamara might have relented, except that Vic Parkins chose that moment to join them. “What what is regarding?” he asked, bluntly stepping into the conversation. His sandy blond hair was ruffled from the open-air drive in the VV1 Ranger. “Towne?” No doubt he thought he should be included in any debrief meeting.

  If Tamara accused him now, she turned over the entire situation to Alexia Wolf. This was hers. This was personal.

  “Kommandant?” Wolf asked.

  Tamara shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Then you can pass along your request for an interview through Colonel Petrucci. Your debrief will happen tomorrow. I cannot spare the time at the moment.”

  Parkins dipped two fingers into his uniform’s breast pocket. “Then you might want this now,” he offered, producing a data wafer. “It’s a copy of the data we recovered. I thought the Landgrave might want to review it early.” He passed it into Alexia’s hand with a smart flourish.

  Biting down on the insides of her cheeks, Tamara tasted blood. She felt a warm flush building along the back of her neck, and she balled her hands into fists. “With our compliments,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “Appreciated,” the leutnant-colonel replied. Her mind was obviously already looking forward. “Well-done, Kommandant. Hauptmann.” She turned on her heel and made for the line of vehicles parked against the wall.

  Parkins watched her walk away with obvious male appreciation. “What did the she-wolf want? Prospecting for the Strikers?”

  Wouldn’t Parkins love that? Shift over to the green-rated unit, pick up another stripe? The man had no loyalty at all. Not to the Rangers. Not to her. Not to Jasek. She waved over two infantrymen, spotting their insignia as the Archon’s Shield. Not her unit, and not Wolf’s. Safe as could be asked.

  “On my authority,” she addressed them formally, “you will arrest Hauptmann Parkins on charges of treason.”

  She wasn’t certain which was more satisfying, the expression of pure shock that washed over Parkins’ face, or his stutter step stride as the infantrymen dragged him off between them. No backbone whatsoever. Glancing around, she saw the stares sent her way and after Parkins. She nodded, satisfied. News of the arrest would travel quickly.

  And that would get Jasek’s attention.

  3

  Sutton Road Memorial Park

  Skye

  12 September 3134

  Rain fell in sheets from a swollen, black sky. Pounding against the temporary roof that spanned the monument’s reception area, it sounded to Tara Campbell like premature applause.

  She stood at the back of a small wooden stage next to Prefect Della Brown, Skye’s senior military officer. A clammy wind swirled beneath the covered area, carrying the fecund smells of churned mud and waterlogged wood. The breeze pulled at a few strands of her platinum hair, which Tara ignored, remaining at a respectful parade rest with hands clasped behind her, shoulders back, and body stretching up to her full 152 centimeters.

  The monument remained covered, waiting for the Lord Governor to finish his remarks and hand the podium over to her. The assembled trio represented three of the four groups who had stood up for Skye against the recent Jade Falcon assault. She stood for her Highlanders. Brown commanded what was left of the prefecture’s standing army. And Gregory Kelswa-Steiner spoke for the civilians who had taken to the field in the defense of their world.

  Missing was a representative of the Steel Wolves, who had gone back into hiding after the battle. Tara still wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not.

  The memorial park sat on a sharp-edged bluff that overlooked Sutton Road and the rain-swollen Thames River and, beyond both, the battlefield where Skye had mounted its desperate defense against Clan Jade Falcon. Reconstruction efforts had not proceeded very far; the land still bore its dark scars. Craters. Blackened earth. A few twisted metal skeletons of ’Mechs and vehicles so badly damaged there was nothing left to salvage. The area would be cleaned up eventually, but right now Tara spent local resources in preparations for the next assault. In fact, if not for the interminable rainfall of a New London winter interrupting one of her more important defensive projects, she
might have pushed back this event as well. But she also recognized that people needed closure.

  So did she. Someday.

  Today, though, was about Skye. Front and center a small contingent of reluctant media representatives recorded the address for later rebroadcast. In the audience wings waited the families of the dead. It was a solemn event, and the polite applause was always—always!—for those who had given up so much. She had been firm about how this would run, and doing it her way had also been required as a means of guaranteeing her presence.

  Duke Gregory was nearly finished, she felt. He extolled the virtue and dedication of those brave people who had come forward to help defend their homeland in the face of the Jade Falcon assault.

  “Citizens all,” he promised, reminding the newsmen and families present that he had awarded Republic citizenship to the family of any resident who had unselfishly joined Tara Campbell’s ad hoc “Forlorn Hope” detachment. His bearded visage stared down the media cameras. “Hard times call for great sacrifices by great people. These sons and daughters of Skye will be forever remembered for how they stood by our world. Never shirking or turning away from the call of duty. Our children.”

  He paused in a respectful silence, and the monument’s veil was pulled away.

  There were no BattleMechs immortalized in the bronze piece. No regular army vehicles or battlesuit troops. A screaming raptor hovered in midflight, one wing dragging at the air and the other folded back, as if it had been brought up short while stooping down. Below, citizens of Skye lifted spears, warding off the raptor, while others carried the wounded and dying away from the grasp of the sharp talons.

  Understated, but respectful. Tara approved.

  “Now,” Duke Gregory said, “I’d like to bring up the woman who helped lead our valiant defense, and has helped ready our world against further attack. Tara Campbell, Countess Northwind.”