She paused, then shook her head. What a bother! To have to think of people who hate Clan Wolf as much as I do as enemies!
Aloud, she went on: “So, if we stipulate that their target is The Republic—and I agree with you,
Exarch”—with effort, she forbore from addingfor once , out loud, anyway—“that we dare not assume anything else—they will probably enter our territory in Prefecture IX.”
“Which, Countess Northwind,” the Exarch said, flattening his palms on the table before him, “is why I have decided to dispatch you at once to Skye, the Prefectural capital, to begin organizing a defense against a possible invasion of The Republic of the Sphere. Which honesty compels me to warn you will be a most desperate undertaking indeed.”
She stared at him. It was as if the air had solidified within the column of her throat.
“What about the Triarii Protectors IX?” she asked. “The Principes Guards and Hastati Sentinels?”
“It is thispeace, ” Cordesman said, not bothering to conceal leaden distaste. “The golden age: the universal draw-down of forces, the pressure from the Senate and the civilians to keep spending less and
less on the military.”
He sighed. He did not acknowledge either the Exarch’s look of mild alarm or Tara’s narrow-eyed anger at his criticism of policies which sprang from Devlin Stone himself.
“In sum, Countess, the three Republican regular combined-arms regiments charged with defending Prefecture IX are paper tigers—as they were even before the HPG went down and Jasek Kelswa-Steiner seduced the lion’s share of their remnants into his Stormhammer regiment, gutting Skye’s militia into the bargain. Aside from whatever planetary forces may remain, Prefecture IX lies open to the Falcon fleet.”
9
The Forest Primeval Near New London, Skye Prefecture IX The Republic of the Sphere 30 April 3134
Overhead a virago screeched outrage at the intrusion. Much occupied by his thoughts, Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner, Governor of Skye and Lord Governor of Prefecture IX (and only the second to hold both titles), continued to ride, oblivious to the possibility the jaylike local bird-analogue might dislodge a hard, baby fist-sized seed pod from the lofty branches and drop it with remarkable accuracy on his head. He almost wished it would; it would give him a chance to vent some of the anger simmering within him by blasting the creature with the pulse-laser pistol in its flapped holster on the belt of his leather riding breeches.
His horse Iago’s dark chestnut coat was sheened with sweat and the beast breathed hard despite the morning’s early-autumn cool. The animal was a gelding. The Duke was a man’s man, a qualified Mech Warrior who had fought in The Republic’s armed forces against the first Capellan invasion before resuming civilian life, and secure enough in that fact not to burden himself with an uncut stallion.
Which occurred to him in a most unflattering way in his almost-ritual daily thinking about his son, Jasek, and possible omissions he had made in the boy’s upbringing.
Duke Gregory should have been a man at peace: a big, fit, middle-aged man in robust health, with most of his hair, and that seal brown going to distinguished silver at the temples. A crisp morning ride in beautiful woods outside the Prefectural capital of New London, with mountains close enough on one hand to break into view at times above the trees to the north, and Thames Bay close enough on the other to smell salt-sea breeze as well as sun-warmed leaves. The great trees were upon the cusp of turning, and late-season field insects sang sawing yet melodious tunes without awareness of the impending arrival of first frost to still their voices.
His domain enjoyed relative peace and order, unlike the Prefectures on the other side of The Republic, wracked by rebellion and factional warfare, or even Terra itself, which had suffered invasion by the Steel Wolves some months before—a poignant thing for the Duke, as for most Skyians, since Clan Wolf had played a key role in freeing Skye of the brutal violence of the Blakist Jihad decades before. It was part of his collective memory, as it had happened before his birth. Skye shared no boundaries with any Clan zone. Its only neighbor not of The Republic was the Lyran Commonwealth, of which Skye itself had once been part; and House Steiner still maintained, at least publicly, its cautious bourgeois approval of The Republic, and disavowed any interest in reclaiming the territory it had ceded to Devlin Stone. The Draconis Combine, an ancient enemy, lay dangerously near, it was true, as did the perilously disordered fragments of the Free Worlds League. Yet planet and Prefecture generally prospered.
He had, Duke Gregory knew, fortuitous placement between the core Prefecture X and the trade-minded Commonwealth to thank in large part for that fact, as for the relative rapidity with which Skye had recovered from the Jihad. Interstellar traffic had dropped sharply in the wake of the HPG collapse. Yet it had also rebounded, if not to pre-collapse levels. Without question, trade was facilitated by faster-than-light communications, yet it did not depend upon them. The nations of pre-space flight Terra had enjoyed substantial, even global trade long before they possessed means of communicating faster than a good ship could sail with favorable winds.
They had also seized, held and administered empires. That latter thought was not so comforting.
Which was only tangentially why the Duke scowled as he rode through the beautiful morning.
The main reason was none other than his son and, as soon as he got around to it, erstwhile heir: the Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.
The problem was, the boy longed to be a hero. Which would not have been so bad. Except he had the stuff for it.
The Lord Governor bore no animosity toward the Lyrans nor their ruling family, House Steiner; best not, inasmuch as he had not found the latter half of his surname in a box of breakfast food.
Yet he was two things, and these deeply: a Skye patriot, glad in his heart that his home planet and most of the former Skye Protectorate had at last gained independence after centuries in the grasp of the iron Steiner fist. More even than that, he was a patriot of The Republic of the Sphere, and believed in it and in the transcendent vision of its vanished founder Devlin Stone.
Though no one had invaded Skye yet, nor seemed likely to anytime soon, all was not placid perfection. Below the surface tensions bubbled. And boiled over with increasing frequency into disputes, demonstrations, and of late even communal violence.
Most of the population felt as he did, though generally less fervently with regard to The Republic. But some among the English speakers, primarily of Scottish or Irish descent, longed for a time before the Steiners ruled Skye, when the planet was seat of its own vest-pocket empire, the Protectorate. These felt they had exchanged a foreign master on Tharkad for another on Terra. They viewed The Republic’s diminished influence as a result of the HPG loss as an opportunity to seek true independence. If not more; a prospect the Duke knew annoyed and worried other planets of Skye’s erstwhile dominion.
On the other hand, an extremely vocal minority among the German speakers cried out for reannexation by the Lyran CommonwealthAnschluss. The planet’s most visible, and audible, agitator for resorption under Steiner rule was Arminius HerrmannFreiherr von Herrmann, as he had recently if dubiously taken to styling himself, was the tall, stout, choleric scion of the family which owned controlling interest in
Skye’s, and indeed the Prefecture’s, largest media corporation, Herrmanns AG.
Herrmann was a bumptious buffoon, a ripe target for caricature by media rivals—who were cheerfully aware of the fact, and egged on besides by Arminius’ propensity to fly into trumpeting rages whenever someone landed a particularly barbed lampoon. Indeed, Duke Gregory believed the man’s very name indicated a certain softness of the head had set into the Herrmann clan at least a generation backDon’t the imbeciles realize “Arminius” and “Herrmann” are the same bloody name?