Flight of the Falcon

18

Wolf Moon (Backside of Ivanov, moon of LaBlon)

Prefecture IX

The Republic of the Sphere

27 June 3134

In slow motion, the woman dropped toward the commissary floor. The new third eye in the center of her forehead wept a single long red tear up into the air. The shot that placed it there had quit echoing in the confines of the pressure chamber, but its aftereffects still rang in the ears of the Steel Wolf officers standing before their overturned chairs.

Anastasia Kerensky had already returned her right-hand weapon, a Lyran-issue M&M Service automatic, to its holster. She was a woman of arresting beauty, with a cloud of midnight-black hair floating about her head in the low gravity and highlighted red by the overhead illumination. Folding her arms in a gesture of deliberate contempt, she faced the others of her restive pack.

“Who else thinks I’m not fit to lead the Steel Wolves today?” Her use of the contraction cracked challenge like a glove across the face.

Eyes asmolder with sullen anger, the half dozen officers, Bloodnamed MechWarriors all, turned away. Star Captain Kimiko Fetladral finally reached repose on the mat covering the decking of the prefab pressure structure. Her own Nakjama laser pistol landed beyond the tips of her lifeless, outstretched fingers with a soft thud. Ignoring her late challenger, Anastasia sat down, picked up her bowl of soup, raised its pressure-valve to her full lips.

It froze just shy of them. Her blue eyes looked across the covered bowl into the almost white-blue eyes of Ian Murchison. Although as a mere tech he would not normally be suffered to sup with warriors, the grizzled Northwinder was Anastasia Kerensky’s personal medic, as he had been when he was her bondsman. She still insisted on keeping him with her most times.

“What?” she demanded. “You told me to exert myself less.”

Murchison frowned. It was not usually a prudent thing for a member of a lesser caste to disapprove of a warrior’s actions, much less one who also happened to command more than a Galaxy of Clan warriors. But Murchison had never been prudent: though he had started out not just as a Spheroid but as a lifelong civilian as well—contract medico on Balfour-Douglas Petrochemicals Offshore Drilling Station #47 off Northwind’s Oilfields Coast, captured along with it in a covert action led by Anastasia herself—he had

the balls of a Wolf MechWarrior, and not just one of these Steel Wolf posers, either. Which was why he still had his life, his status as adoptee into Clan Wolf, and, yes, his balls.

For her part, keeping him around seemed an uncharacteristically sentimental gesture for the Wolf Bitch.

It was no such thing. He was a skilled medic—and the only living soul in the Steel Wolves she trusted to tend her when she was weakened or incapacitated. Which seemed to be happening a lot lately.

“I won’t counsel you to be more prudent,” he husked in his gravelly voice. “I’m too old to waste the breath. But I will remind you that bullet wounds—not to even mention lasers—are a bit harder to recover from than knife cuts.”

He had even less use for the Clan prejudice against contractions than Anastasia: he had not asked to become a Wolf. Neither had he demurred when Anastasia cut his final bond cord and conferred Clan status upon him. Not that he had much choice—and brave or not he was not a total fool.

Not a fool of any stripe or species. Which was also why Anastasia kept him alive, and at her side.

Slowly the others righted their chairs and sat back down. Hot gazes began to drift, back toward her. She paid them no attention, though she was fully aware of each angry glare.

They were nothing new. Ever since the initial setback on Northwind, she had faced challenges from subordinates. Even once the holdouts from the days when Kal Radick, whom she had challenged and killed in unaugmented combat, led the Steel Wolves had been weeded out, through combat or by failed challenges of their own, plenty had stepped forward to try to wrest command from her.

And now, in the wake of the disastrous invasion of sacred Terra, which ended in defeat and disgrace after Anastasia’s physical incapacitation—itself in large part a result of her incomplete recovery from having her belly laid open in a knife duel with the last of the Kal Radick bitter-enders, Star Colonel Marks—the challenges came almost weekly. Even if they all had the same depressingly predictable outcome: the same one that Star Captain Kimiko Fetladral’s had produced.

Because right over the restive Steel Wolves’ heads hung the rich pleasure planet of La Blon, so ingenuous in its happy hedonism that it believed the horrors of war would never touch it. Indeed they had not, for centuries; even the Word of Blake Jihadists had spared it. Literally beneath the renegades’ feet, on the planet-facing far side of the tidelocked satellite that the locals called Ivanov but which its secret inhabitants named Wolf Moon, lay the prosperous city of Overlook Point, with a big automated spaceport five hundred kilometers away. All were ripe and ready as staked lambs.

Yet Anastasia forbade her raiders to pluck those prizes. She understood too well, as her unruly subordinates would have had they the brains to befit to command, that to take any of those morsels would bring the final retribution of The Republic of the Sphere slamming down like a rogue planet upon their heads.

The Republic was decadent; the Steel Wolves’ defeat upon Terra had been a narrow thing. Yet The Republic was huge and The Republic was mighty, mightier than Anastasia herself had given it credit for being. And it was angry now. She and her Steel Wolves were outlaws, hated by trillions. The next time Republican forces caught up with them would be the last.

Anastasia could hardly have cared less about the Steel Wolves save as means to her own ambitions—which were only banked, far from extinguished. As far as she was concerned, her followers were sheer ersatz, Spheroids themselves, for all they aped Clan ways. But she was not quite ready to yield her own personal adventure,life, to her nemesis: plucky, platinum-haired Tara Campbell, the “pretty little Countess” as Anastasia called her, whom, over the course of their many meetings on the field of war, the Wolf Bitch had grown secretly to like almost as much as she hated.

Her personal communicator buzzed for attention. She flipped it open and held it to her ear. It was one of her electronic intelligence officers in the central pressure-dome, monitoring communications between La Blon and the lively space traffic, both intrasystem and a surprising profusion of interstellar visitors. La Blon was no backwater like Northwind, and even the vanishment of the HPG net had scarcely scratched its trade. Which perversely made it a better place to hide: it was easy for Steel Wolf craft to blend in with all the rest.

Her medico watched with keen eyes as she listened. The others’ attention was more furtive but no less intent.

She snapped her communicator shut and snorted a laugh. “A trader in from Steiner space has caused a sensation with some surprising news,” she announced to the room as a whole, although she was looking at Murchison.

The other Wolves stopped talking and eating and turned to look at her. Although they knew their leader had passed herself off as a Spheroid on more than one occasion—some quite recent—none of them suspected she would bore them with trivia. Which, to them all, mere gossip about Spheroid doings was by definition.

“It seems that there’s a fleet crossing the Lyran Commonwealth,” the commander said. “A war fleet. Out of the Jade Falcon Occupation Zone.”

If the room had been silent a moment before, now it became a vacuum. The warriors stared at their alpha bitch as if trying to draw the rest from her with the suction of their eyes.

“It seems the turd-birds gave an ultimatum to the Archon herself—they have balls if not brains, I give them that. They blithely violate Steiner space, and they demand the Squareheads do not interfere with them, upon pain of war.”

“Crossing Steiner space?” demanded the recently elevated Star Colonel Aretha Vickers. Her voice was crumpled like wastepaper, relic of a forearm blow to the throat during her sibko days. She had disdained surgical correction. “To do what?”

Anastasia rose and smiled. “Why, to carry out a Trial of Annihilation,” she said.

“Against whom?” demanded Star Captain Maynar Carns.

“Against us,” Anastasia said, “of course.”

Sanglamore Academy New London Skye

28 June 3134

“Excuse me, please,” a man’s deep voice said from the break-room door.

Tara Campbell’s head snapped up. She blinked. She realized her chin had been trending down toward her clavicle, into the open collar of the man’s white shirt she wore. She had taken to wearing masculine dress when liable to be seen, to counteract the Skyean perception of her as, candidly, a bimbo.

The initial panic over the Chaffee horror had subsided quickly, once people realized no Clan invasion fleet followed hard upon the heels of that news. Still mysterious was why the reaction should have been so vehement—and so immediate. Duke Gregory’s thaw toward Tara had proven temporary; he was again as frostily remote and his staff as stiffly uncooperative as before. It did not appear he blamed Tara for the situation in any way, but his anger had boiled over again. He was mad at the universe.

Tara’s aide had jumped up and turned to face the door. Her attitude bespoke protectiveness, like a dog guarding her mistress. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked with a diplomacy that made the Countess proud—and which the young captain’s ready-to-rumble body language eloquently belied.

The man smiled, half-shy, bobbed his head, and entered. “I apologize for intruding. I’m looking for Countess Tara Campbell.”

So is half the planet. Although Tara Bishop did not say it, Tara Campbell heard it through the mists of her drowsiness, too slowly dissipating from behind her eyes. Some wanted to interview her, others to marry her, and a sizable majority to ride her offworld on a rail—if anything so nice. ...

“I’m sorry, sir.” Tara Bishop was shaking her head, giving her protestation the lie again. “The Countess is extremely busy now. You’ll have to get in touch with her staff and make an appointment.”

Tara C. got a better look at the man past her friend, who was now in full Valkyrie mode, ready to slay dragons. The Countess had a vague memory, just before the man’s voice intruded, of her aide’s voice asking if she were all right? TB had been nagging her to sleep more, to rest more, and Tara knew she was right. But it was hard to tear her mind away, sometimes, from a threat that, although this world was not hers, seemed to dwarf the menace the Steel Wolves had posed to Northwind.

The intruder smiled. He was a plain man, Asian looking, dark eyes on a bit of a bias, a head of slightly receding dark hair. He had a medium height and build, although the cut of his subdued business garb suggested an attempt to hide some softening around the middle. On the whole he looked not much different from anyone who might happen to stand next to him in any city on any world of The Republic. Until he smiled.

“I have important business with the Countess,” he said apologetically.

Tara Bishop started to go into attack mode. Despite herself Tara was intrigued. “At ease, TB,” she said lightly. “He’s gotten this far, so he’s either resourceful or determined. What is your business, exactly, Mr.... ?”

“Laveau. Paul Laveau” He blinked and grinned a little wider. “I’m a spy.”

Both women stared. Tara Bishop’s left hand began to stray behind her back—toward the hideout laser pistol riding beneath her battle-dress blouse, behind her left hip.

The intruder laughed. “I hope I didn’t alarm you.” He raised his left hand from his side, deliberately, just slowly enough so the women—and his attention seemed for the moment centered upon the

captain—could see his hand was cupped, not holding a weapon.

He revealed in his palm a badge displaying the seal of The Republic of the Sphere and his likeness. “I’m on your side.”

Captain Bishop stepped forward to peer at the badge. “ ‘Systems and resource auditor,” ’ she read, raising her head to study him with new scrutiny. “ ‘Office of theExarch ’?”

“Real spies aren’t usually very glamorous,” he admitted. “I’m what you might call a forensic accountant.” “You’ve come to check ourbooks ?” Tara Campbell demanded.

“In the midst of a Clan invasion?” asked Tara B. She took the badge holder from him, studied it, then unceremoniously tossed it to Tara Campbell, who fielded it as if the move was the most natural thing in the world and peered at it herself, brow furrowing so that her snub nose tipped up slightly.

Paul Laveau grinned again. It seemed a natural expression for him. Not precisely what she would expect of an accountant, even one who appeared to include a cloak and maybe even a dagger among the tools of his trade.

“What better time to ensure that The Republic of the Sphere’s resources are being properly employed, Countess? Don’t worry; you are not the object of my investigation.”

“Who is?” Tara Bishop asked with characteristic bluntness.

The Asian eyes appraised her calmly. “Captain Bishop—I hope I’ve not made a terrific gaffe and got your name wrong?”

“I’m Captain Tara Bishop.”

He nodded. “Captain Bishop, that information is confidential and need-to-know—apologies for the security mumbo-jumbo.

“However^—he looked at Tara Campbell—“Ican tell you that my mission concerns events that preceded our learning about the Falcon war fleet, as well as your presence on Skye. Not much real mystery there.”

“I see,” Tara Campbell said. She did:Jasek’s defection with the heart and spine of the Republican Skye Militia.

Without preamble she flipped the badge holder at him. He fumbled it, dropped it, picked it up grinning apologetically. TB’s stern face cracked in a smile.

But she wasn’t ready to let go. “Look, Mr. Systems and Resource Auditor Laveau—”

“Paul, please. Or if you must, Mr. Laveau. The rest is too awful to say aloud.”

“Paul. All respect, but aren’t you a little light in the pay grade for a job this big?”

Paul shrugged. “Of course you’re right, Captain,” he said. “An investigation of such magnitude would normally be handled by a Knight of the Sphere. But as I’m sure you already suspect, The Republic has a

good many more emergencies on its hands right now than it has Knights to attend them. I was what was available; the next planet to tumble into crisis is liable to get a stockroom clerk.”

“What exactly is the nature of your business with the Countess?” Tara Bishop demanded. “I have a need to knowthat, I think you’ll concede.”

“Your manner suggests I damned well better, Captain,” he said. “Good for you. A person needs loyal friends, as a public person requires zealous assistants. The answer: simply, I have come to ask a favor of your boss.”

“A favor?” Tara Bishop echoed.

“Ask,” said Tara Campbell. “I’ve got to warn you, Exarch’s combat accountant or not, there’s not much I can spare you.”

“Your kind cooperation is all I need. I am unfamiliar with Skye. For that matter, I don’t know anything truly about you: I am not so encumbered with a bureaucrat’s soul as to believe a dossier can tell me anything truly vital about anything so complex as a world—much less a person.”

Tara Bishop whistled admiringly. “The Republic diplomatic corps took a major hit when you opted for chartered accountancy, Mr. Laveau. You could preach pacifism on Sudeten with a delivery like that.”

Laveau laughed delightedly. “You truly think so? My great-grandmother always tells me I’m too glib for my own good. I am most appreciative, Captain Tara Bishop, although I think you do me too much credit. The truth is, a field accountant needs quite an array of talents, many of them unlooked for.”

“Since you’ve done your homework you know I’m a bit preoccupied here,” Tara said. “But I can spare you a little time, I suppose. Your work’s important to The Republic too.”

“Far from the same level as yours, Countess. Still—might I take up a fraction more of your time now, please?”

Tara sighed, considered. “Why not? Shall we sit down?”

“Why not ride?” he asked.

“Ride?”

He nodded enthusiastically. “There are excellent riding stables not far from this gloomy pile, with most appealing bridle paths through the woods. If the brochures are to be trusted, of course, although the evidence of my eyes tends to bear them out. You do ride, Countess, and well, as you do everything you turn your hand to; I trust the mass media that far at least.”

She shook her head. The short pelt of platinum hair, not currently spiked, shifted as to a breeze. “I don’t know—”

All this time Tara Bishop had been studying Paul Laveau with a penetrating eye.

“She accepts,” she said abruptly.

“But—” Tara started.

“Go.” Her aide made shooing motions.

“My duty—”

Tara Bishop snorted. “Yourduty is to take better damnedcare of yourself! There’s only so much you can do, you need to rely more on your staff, and you won’t do anyone a bloodybit of good if you’ve fatigued yourself into a coma or psychosis when the Falcons finally blow into town. The best thing you can do for Skye right now is get some fresh air, exercise, and then about fourteen hours’ sleepMa’am.”

She braced to attention and fixed her eyes above the top of the break room door. “You can now bust me back to private and assign me to waste-burning detail in perpetuity for rank insubordination, Countess Campbell, ma’am.”

Tara was shaking her head. Laughing. But tears glittered in her eyes.

“I had no idea you felt so strongly, Tara,” she said. “I hardly know how to respond.”

Paul Laveau cleared his throat discreetly. “Might I be allowed to suggest: with humble pride at inspiring such devotion in a warrior the caliber of our Captain Bishop? And also, by accepting my invitation, of course.”

And he turned his side to her and offered his crooked elbow.

To her entire amazement, Tara Campbell slipped her arm through his, and allowed him to squire her out the door.