“They have connivers everywhere—even in the Spheroid military,” Master Merchant Senna said. Tara Campbell braced herself to hear her say,even among the Paladins of The Republic . The media had trumpeted her own disgrace by traitor Paladin Ezekiel Crow throughout The Republic; there was no way a Sea Fox more than a jump inside a Prefecture, as Skye was, could fail to know of it. Nor was it egotism that assured Tara Campbell this woman knew everything about her which was publicly known, and probably a good deal besides. Sea Fox merchants undertook their caste calling with the same zeal with which other Clans’ warriors attacked theirs, but with considerably more foresight and preparation.
“The key to Beckett Malthus, and the threat that you face, is that Malthus is brilliant, versatile and entirely sociopathic, by Clan or normal human standards.”
Tara looked around at her companions: her aide Tara Bishop at her side, Colonel Ballantrae nearby, Legate Eckard and Prefect Della Brown, each also with an aide. Duke Gregory took the Sea Fox woman and her intelligence seriously, even if he had declined to attend in person.
“He is old for a Clan warrior,” the woman said, “in his fifties—he was born in 3081, the year Devlin Stone proclaimed The Republic. His right arm has been prosthetic since he won his Bloodname: he’s always disdained regeneration. He remains a formidable MechWarrior.”
She chuckled. “Which isnot why he is the most feared being in Clan Jade Falcon, not excepting Khan Jana Pryde.”
She paused and sipped from a mug. It was coffee poured by a Sanglamore cadet pressed into service as an aide; she had fortified it with a shot of something from a silver flask of her own which, by a waft of scent, Tara judged to be brandy.
“He has fought few Trials in his time,” she said, leaning a forearm on the table. “You see, a very long time ago, not long after he won the Malthus Bloodname, a prominent Mech Warrior set about destroying him. He did not immediately call Malthus out, but preferred to belittle him, hoping to provoke the one-armed young warrior to challenge him.
“Instead, through a series of events no one could quite piece together after the fact—and after the fact, perhaps, no one particularly wanted to—Malthus’ rival found himself subjected to a Trial of Annihilation. He was killed, and his whole genotype purged.”
Tara glanced at her aide. Tara Bishop was nodding. Clan warriors, especially those of proud Jade Falcon, feared little, least of all death. But such were Bec Malthus’ gifts that he found something theydid fear.
“Now a Trial of Annihilation is far too potent a weapon for frequent use, although that first luckless warrior isn’t Beckett Malthus’ only rival to suffer it. His enemies, let us say, have a way of ending up dezgra —disgraced. Make no mistake, he’s capable of fighting when he has to—and winning. It’s just been quite a spell since hehad to.”
“Intrigue doesn’t come naturally to Clanners,” Prefect Brown said musingly.
“Nicholas Kerensky tried to breed it out of his bottle babies,” Tara Bishop said. “So now that the Falcons have a master manipulator among their warrior caste, nobody can deal with him. I guess that’s what you call the law of unintended consequences.”
Prefect Brown looked at her sharply. She still had not softened to Tara Campbell, and patently believed officers as junior as Bishop should be seen and not heard. And not much seen.
“Quite astute, young lady,” Stanford Eckard said. Tara Campbell made herself refrain from glancing at him. Was he, then, starting to accept her?
“There is one,” Senna said. “Khan Jana Pryde. He has been her left-hand man throughout her rise to Khanship of the Falcons. She knows the colors of his soul, you can bet your final stone.”
“Which may be why she chose him to command the invasion force,” Tara Campbell said. “I wonder that he never acted to seize the Khanship himself.”
Master Merchant Senna smiled her crooked smile. “One thing Bec Malthus is not is mad, Countess. He’s an altogether functional sociopath—like your playmate Anastasia Kerensky.” Tara stiffened; she felt the other Tara’s touch brief and light upon her arm where the others could not see.
“Unlike the Wolf-bitch,” continued Senna, who had not glanced at Tara Campbell in naming her nemesis, “his sociopathy enables him to become something even rarer, especially among the Clans: a man capable of total objectivity. One of the things his terribly clear vision has shown him is that anything one can be seen to possess is potentialisorla to every other warrior. He decided early on, therefore, that his ambition would be far better served by being the power behind the throne than the occupant thereof. Instrumental as he was in Jana Pryde’s rise to the Khanate, he successfully convinced her that he posed no threat to her position.”
“But now she suspects he’s outlived his usefulness?” Tara Campbell asked.
Senna shrugged. “We understand the Clan mind as, candidly, few other Clanners do. But our analysts aren’t psychic. Let us say the Khan has decided he’d best serve Turkina, and her, a hundred light years from the Clan Occupation Zone.”
Robert Ballantrae shifted in his chair. A big bluff Northwind Highlander of the old style, he had little more love for fancy talk than he did for Clanners. “So this madman’s the main threat to our peace here in the Inner Sphere?”
Tara Campbell noted he did not say, The Republic ; during the second fight for Northwind the Colonel
had made it clear that his primary loyalty was to Northwind itself, and if The Republic would not protect his home world, then it could go hang. Fortunately, his loyalty to planet was inextricably intertwined with loyalty to the person of that planet’s hereditary ruler: Countess Tara Campbell. He would serve The Republic of the Sphere as zealously as did Tara despite his skepticism, because he would serve his Countess as loyally as her own right hand.
Senna laughed softly through the dark. “No, Colonel. Not at all. He’s neither main nor maddest.”
She touched a control surface on the remote she held. The image of Bec Malthus was replaced by that of a woman: strikingly beautiful, with skin like snow, eyes like winter sky, and hair like a frozen waterfall.
“Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen, commanding the Delta or Gyrfalcon Galaxy. The White Virgin, the Ice-Bitch, the Butcher of Wotan. Since leaving her sibko, she has never left an opponent who faced her in single combat alive—not enemies on the field of battle, nor fellow Falcons in Trials. The leading ristar of Clan Jade Falcon, its foremost MechWarrior and battle commander. Excepting only one. It is said you can see a furnace of fanaticism and fury burning through her pale skin, although I wonder if that’s just the light of madness.”
“She murdered Hamilton.” Tara Campbell almost spat the words. She saw no need for diplomatic evasion here.
Senna nodded slowly. “She did. And whether you believe me or not, Countess, I despise the deed as heartily as you. No matter: she has done as much before, and worse. A few years back, laborers mutinied on Wotan against the incompetent administration of a MechWarrior who had caused a famine claiming a thousand lives. That MechWarrior was later broken by the Clan Council, and died Solahma under command of Malvina herself. In spite of that, then-Star Captain Malvina, not yet Bloodnamed, exterminated the population of an entire bloc. Five thousand workers. Children, women, men. By way of example, you see.”
Silence filled the room like sickly fog.
“She is even smaller than you, Countess Campbell,” Senna said. “The confrontation between you will be epic despite your physical statures.”