Flight of the Falcon

14

Sanglamore Military Academy

New London

Skye

The Republic of the Sphere 2 May 3134

“Really, Countess,” Chief Minister Augustus Solvaig said, “I believe we know how to conduct our own business here on Skye, thank you.”

Tara Campbell felt her cheeks flush hot. She sensed her aide, the other Tara, going tense at her side, and channeled the energy of embarrassment and anger into willing the captain into silence. The small and balding minister with red muttonchop sideburns covering most of his round red cheeks like fuzzy symmetrical birthmarks did not just accidentally happen to be sitting at the strong beringed right hand of Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner.

Tara was past any career considerations of her own: she had laid her life on the line for The Republic time and again. If The Republic—or its rulers—found it impossible to cooperate with her she could always go back to Northwind and serve her ideals by strengthening her home world. Captain Tara Bishop served at Tara Campbell’s discretion, no one else’s. So long as she did as well as she always had, her job was secure, notwithstanding her vivid if sometimes spiky personality.

Yet Tara still cared desperately about The Republic and what it stood for. She knew it lay in dire danger, and that the danger would come through Prefecture IX, if not Skye itself. While she could not be cashiered, Duke Gregory could have her shipped off his planet and out of his Prefecture if he found her—or even her aide—difficult to get along with. So could Prefect Della Brown and Planetary Legate Stanford Eckard, likewise in attendance.

“Mr. Chief Minister,” Eckard said. His voice was dry, but it was the aridity of bloodlessness, not irony. “I fear you do Countess Campbell an injustice. I did not hear her criticize, but rather try to call to our attention the potential seriousness of the situation. In that at least, I concur.”

Glancing aside at Captain Bishop, Tara saw her aide’s compressed lips curve in the shorthand of a smile. She felt the Legate was sticking up for her boss.

More experienced in such matters, Tara Campbell suspected his support was far less substantial than Bishop presumed. Indeed, she had a hunch it amounted to little more than a career military man—a militarybureaucrat , like his superior Brown, but a lifer nonetheless—reflexively defending a fellow professional against civilian impugnation. A tall, narrow Asian man with salt-and-pepper hair wisped up on top, he looked more elderly than his dossier made him. He impressed Tara as being one of those people who, attitudinally, entered middle-age at about the same time they exited puberty.

Solvaig glanced at his own master, who sat silent. That surprised Tara: an expression so thunderous should have been rattling the leaded-glass windows in the long, narrow chamber in the Gothic pile of the once-noted Sanglamore Military Academy in a suburb of New LondonDoes the Duke always look like that, Tara Campbell wondered,or only when I’m around?

“Really, her intent is irrelevant, your Grace,” the Chief Minister said in a petulant whine. “I would submit that we have more pressing concerns than fantasies of some latter-day Clan Crusade against the Inner Sphere. Really, we might as well dread the renascence of the Mongol Horde, if we are going to summon phantoms of the past with which to frighten ourselves.”

He shook his head. “The domestic pressures upon our world are real and pressing—as I would have thought the Countess herself might have noticed upon her arrival yesterday.”

“Oh, I noticed quite well, Mr. Minister,” she said, trying to keep her tone light to defuse the man’s overt hostility or at least the mood it was creating. “I’ve seldom encountered a more enthusiastic reception.”

Solvaig’s red face went scarlet to the wings of his receding hairline. “And what is that supposed to mean? Are you saying that we cannot control our citizenry?”

Tara stared at him, unable to feign diplomatic indifferenceDid I really make that big a botch of defusing tension, she wondered,or is he just out of his mind?

Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner turned to look at his minister. His craggy face softened slightly. “Go easy, my friend. I agree with our... esteemed guest that there exists sufficient evidence of threat to Prefecture IX and to Skye itself to cause concern. The Exarch himself endorses the intelligence, after all. And

indeed, my greatest fear has been that some enemy might seek to take advantage of our weakened condition.”

“Yes, your Grace,” Solvaig murmured, subsiding. The crescent-slit eyes through which he regarded Tara showed no sign of friendliness.

“Please forgive Minister Solvaig, Countess,” the Duke said. “He cares deeply about our world. Sometimes the intensity of his feelings get the better of him. It seldom clouds his judgment, however.”

His brows drew closer together again. “I hope you will understand that I regard this potential threat as primarily an affair of Prefecture IX, and Skye.”

“Surely your Grace agrees The Republic has a vital interest in defending its territories?”

He glared at her a moment. His eyes were gray, currently an icy pale.

I faced the Wolf Bitch Anastasia Kerensky in herRyoken IIwithout ^flinching, and defeated a rogue Paladin of the Sphere ’Mech to ’Mech, she thought.I’m damned if I’ll quail for a mere Duke.

“Surely the Exarch understands we are competent to handle the situation,” Della Brown put in with a trace of asperity.

“No doubt he does, Prefect,” Tara said. She thought it no good sign the Prefect—a Republican official answering directly to Geneva—should side with the local governor in a jurisdictional dispute. Worse was that she or anyone thought there shouldbe a jurisdictional dispute.

Then again, Tara thought, unable to prevent herself feeling bitterness she was too proud to show,it’s not as if Redburn sent me out with any official standing. I might as well be a mercenary like One-Eyed Jack Farrell—or just another highborn meddler . “This is not about command or control. I was sent to offer any and all assistance I was able to.”

“Without troops, what help have you to give?” Solvaig sneered openly.

“The troops are coming,” she said. It was true she and her staff had been bundled into space before even the Highlander company which had remained on Terra could be mustered aboard DropShips. They would follow as soon as possible, as would the troops who had returned months before to Northwind. But the majority of her Highlanders were strewn across two Prefectures fighting fires. How many of them could reach Skye before the threat materialized, as she knew in her bone marrow it would?

Duke Gregory glared at her a moment longer. Then he sighed volcanically.

“I am in no position to stand on pride,” he said. He laced his fingers and put his big hands on the table before him. “Suppose you tell us what hope you do propose to tender us, Countess.”

“Countess Campbell.”

The corridor was narrow and, despite the broad daylight outside the dressed stone walls, dim. It gave her a pang of nostalgia for her own Castle Northwind, in which she had spent so much of her childhood, and which she had ordered destroyed to prevent it falling into the hands of the Steel Wolves. Sanglamore Academy had enjoyed a storied career turning out top-rate military professionals for the Federation of Skye, the Lyran Commonwealth, and the short-lived Federated Commonwealth. Like military establishments everywhere after the rise of Stone and his Republic, the Academy, which had already suffered severe losses to its faculty in the FedCom explosion and the subsequent Jihad, had gradually faded to a wisp of its former self, with whole wings mothballed for a generation. In the new Golden Age amilitary academy seemed a barbaric throwback.

Tara stopped and turned around. Her aide stood poised at her side like a watchdog. “Yes, Prefect Brown?”

“A word with you, if I may.”

“Certainly,” Tara said.

The Prefect came up with them. She loomed over the tiny Countess: a handsome woman in middle age, light-skinned black, with a cap of coiled dark red hair dusted with gray and large amber eyes. She had clearly once been willowy, possibly athletic; but from the spread of hips and thighs it was obvious she had spent most of her recent career piloting a desk rather than a BattleMech.

She looked meaningfully at Tara Bishop.

The captain looked back, smiling tightly, refusing to budge from her superior’s side. The Prefect focused her out.

“I must suggest you keep a tighter rein on your emotions, Countess Campbell,” the Prefect said in a tone somewhere between reproof and condescension. “You risk acting in an unprofessional manner when you allow yourself to be drawn into arguments with influential civilians.”

“You mean Minister Solvaig?”

“I do.”

Tara Campbell felt her aide stiffen. Despite the fact that her eyes stung at the patent unfairness of the Prefect’s reproach, she touched Tara Bishop covertly on the arm, signaling restraint.

“I appreciate your concern, Prefect Brown,” she said. “Should that concern extend to wondering whether the publicity that tends to accompany me goes to my head, I can only request that you please accept my assurance that it does not.

“Moreover”—she allowed steel to touch her voice—“I beg to remind the Prefect that despite my appearance I amnot a child, not even an adolescent; and that I am, in fact, myself the Prefect of Prefecture III, and not some actress engaged to play the role.”

The big liquid eyes blinked twice rapidly. “Northwind is a long way from here, Countess,” she said huffily.

“Let us all hope it’s not too far for my soldiers to get here before the Falcons do.”

With a grim “Good day,” Prefect Brown strode off down the hall on her long legs. Tara Campbell stared after her with a gaze like icicles.

“Well,” she said, when she and the other Tara had the corridor to themselves, “I’d say I handled that pretty badly.” “You didn’t punch her,” TB said brightly. “If you made a mistake, ma’am, I’d say it was not lettingme do it.”