“You have right,” she said at last. “But we might differ as to what should be changed, and how.”
“It is true.”
He turned, reached a broad square hand to her. It stopped midair. It seemed as if some sort of membrane, invisible, insensible to touch, but real nevertheless, had descended between them.
His eyes met hers. He dropped the hand.
“Change comes,” he said. “Changes greater than any of us expect.”
“Not greater than I expect.”
“We shall change the Inner Sphere as drastically as did our predecessors of the First Crusade, win or lose,” he said. “What upheavals will the Inner Sphere inflict on us—win or lose?”
“Exalt us,” she said. “Or destroy us. Better that than slide deeper into decadence.”
She laughed. It was brittle music, like tiny icicles shattering in a cold Sudeten dawn.
“You disappoint me, brother,” she said. “I had come here hoping you might give me answers. Instead all you have in your mouth is more questions.”
She turned from him. “What answers we find, we shall find in action. And so our ways part. For now.”
New London Spaceport
Skye
15 May 3134
Though the day was warm, especially here with the primary sun—so much like Terra’s own Sol—bouncing its heat off the blacktop of the spaceport into the faces of Tara and her escorts, the breezes blowing down from the Sanglamore Mountains west of New London were bladed with chill. They carried the scent of great splayed leaves turning all gold and tan and russet and orange, and the smell of the rich black soil they sprang from, and from heights greater still lordly evergreens twice taller than any ’Mech.
“Here she comes!” the shout went up from the troops around them. A point of blue-white brilliance had appeared above, burning laser-like through the white horsetails of clouds brushed across a sky as achingly blue as Northwind’s own. The powerful defensive emplacements, which like the ones guarding New Glasgow’s spaceport boasted powerful weapons remounted from DropShips as well as conventional anti-aircraft armaments, moved automatically to track its descent.
“About bloody time,” said Command Master Sergeant Angus McCorkle, standing a respectful distance behind his commander and her taller, brown-haired aide. He wore full Northwind regimentals, including a kilt and sash of the blue and black Campbell tartan, though he wore a tartan-banded cap instead of a bearskin-covered helmet. The two Taras wore conventional dress uniform, khaki with trousers. Although neither tradition nor regulation forbade a woman of the Highlanders wearing the kilt, and although she was in factthe Campbell, with better claim upon the sett—the traditional plaid pattern—than any, Countess Tara seldom wore it. She had enough trouble overcoming her pretty-girl image without appearing at solemn public functions wearing what was in reality a short skirt.Especially on a day as breezy as today.
And far lessregimental, she reflected Although it would almost be worth it, to hear that fat fool Herrmann howl .
With a roar of drive jets the DropShipBlue Bayou settled toward the designated blast pit. It lay well away from the spaceport’s main buildings, beyond any number of invitingly vacant landing spots. Tara suspected the remote location was another half-subtle dig from her hosts. It did sport a boggy fen of tall, feather-headed grasses gone gray in the long summer heat across the wire to discourage the protesters who still dogged Tara’s steps.
There seemed no guile behind the smile of Lieutenant Colonel Brigid Hanratty, commander of the planet’s largest remaining military formation as well as today’s escorts and security detail—no more Ducal Guards for Tara. Hanratty was a big, rawboned woman with a face like a prizefighter and a great mass of curly, metallic red hair bound, unlikely enough, into pigtails. Despite the fact she looked like the cliche image of an Irish washerwoman, she had shown herself, in the few days Tara had been liaising with her, to be at the least a competent officer with a solid grasp of military matters.
She also professed a high regard for Tara Campbell’s military accomplishments, from Sadalbari onward.
Far from resenting the petite and beautiful Countess, she seemed vastly tickled that such a redoubtable battle leader should appear to her in the guise of what she termed a “wee porcelain doll.” So hearty were her expressions of admiration that Tara had not even felt the usual stab of resentment—champion martial artist that she was, as well as much-bloodied MechWarrior and proven battlefield commander—that being referred to as a “porcelain doll” normally inflicted.
Hanratty seemed legitimately delighted to have Tara Campbell on Skye and working with her, under whatever plan. Well, she’s the only one, Tara thought as the ship’s landing jacks extended and it settled onto the ferrocrete rim of the pit with a vast roaring and grinding.
That statement was not altogether true. The Skye mass media were as adulatory as the media on Terra had been—except for those owned by the powerful Herrmanns AG, who portrayed her as a demon incarnate. Yet her official reception had little warmed: Planetary Legate Eckard was so introverted as to be a cipher, Prefect Brown was aloof and disapproving, Minister Solvaig openly hostile. In general the Duke himself seemed to find her as welcome as a cold sore; yet he had shown no reticence about intervening in her behalf, either at the first unfortunate meeting with Prefecture officials or subsequently when Tara had been reluctantly compelled to call instances of bureaucratic obstruction and noncooperation, quite frequent at first, to his attention. It was as if he was torn between resentment and relief at her presence—and blamed her for both.
Whatever the case, she knew full well she could not be running incessantly to the Lord Governor for help. Not without sacrificing any credibility and authority she might have, not to mention that self-esteem which she was only now becoming able to permit herself to feel.
Seeming to read her mind, as she had more and more in the weeks since the victory on Terra, Tara Bishop leaned her mouth close to the smaller woman’s ear and murmured, “At least we’ll have some troops now. That should get us treated a little more seriously.”
Tara nodded.
With a hiss of equalizing atmospheric pressure, the main locks opened and flower-petaled into ramps. “Sar’nt Major!” rapped Hanratty. Her own top kick, an immense, square, slab-faced man named McDougall who looked remarkably like an ancient North American Plains Indian warrior from Terra and wore a uniform with kilt and sash of a plaid unknown to Tara, barked orders. The regimental band of the Seventh Skye Militia enthusiastically if not expertly began skirling out “The Campbells Are Coming,” which they had also played for Tara on her first visit to the regiment’s cantonment outside New London several days before. It seemed that Hanratty’s easy grin tightened a bit at that, and her eyes narrowed. Then she relaxed again as if accepting something inevitable.
Tara’s eyes, a cool green today, flicked up and aside to her aide. A corner of the taller woman’s mouth quirked up. “I’d rather fight Nasty Kerensky in herRyoken II naked with a sidearm on the steppes in September,” Captain Bishop muttered, “than listen to bad bagpipes.”
“Are there any other kind?” grumbled McCorkle. His own Northwind-Scot upbringing did not extend to an appreciation for the culture’s traditional music.
Led by their commander, Colonel Robert Ballantrae, riding in aCougar BattleMech taken as spoils from the Steel Wolves on the Belgorod plain, Tara’s Highlanders stepped and drove forth into the bright sunlight in smart style. They formed a column of infantry with shouldered arms, flanked by armored vehicles and with theCougar striding in the fore, and marched toward their waiting commander, her immediate entourage, and the militia platoon behind. The band finished off their tune, mercifully, only to