10

New London
Skye
4 October 3134

New London’s DropPort hid inside a curtain of gray fog. A silvery drizzle made sporadic promises to clear the air, but rarely did more than spatter the large concourse windows. The DropShips that currently sat in their ferrocrete nests of blast deflectors and reinforced pads were little more than great, spheroidal ghosts at the very edge of Tara Campbell’s vision. At any moment they might fade from sight.

She didn’t want that. Not until her Highlanders were safe, at least.

Desultory droplets speckled the blue glass, chased each other in long trails down to the bottom sill. Tara stood at one of the concourse windows, looking past her ghostly reflection and the rain, out onto the tarmac. The Himmelstor was one of those DropShips, grounded as close to the main buildings as safety allowed. A large, hulking outline. An Excalibur-class.

She watched as a two-story shuttle bus finally departed the DropShip ramp and made its way slowly across the wide, gray expanse to the lower gate door. Intent on the arriving personnel—wondering who had made it off Zebebelgenubi, who was lost to the Highlander rolls forever—Tara did not notice at first the security agents taking up silent posts around her. She did wonder briefly at the unnatural calm of the DropPort concourse, but was too busy counting familiar faces by then as they climbed the covered stairs toward the nearby door.

“How many?” Duke Gregory Kelswa-Steiner asked, his deep baritone startling her.

The lord governor waited behind her, half a head taller than she was and staring over her spiked, platinum blond hair. Tara saw that he wore a conservative suit—the kind he habitually wore for a day of closed meetings, rather than the stylish wardrobe he kept for ceremonies and public appearances. Shoulders back, chest out, his bearing wasn’t bad for a man who had never subjected himself to military discipline.

He also seemed rather calm, considering.

“Looks like twenty-three men and women,” she answered, completing her count.

The first of her Highlanders came through the door. Some limped in, but most seemed fit for duty. A few DropPort staff and some junior liaisons applauded their arrival, welcoming the Highlanders to Skye. The warriors milled around uncertainly, seeing their commander penned in by local security.

“I really should see to them,” Tara said, anxious for a formal report. The numbers were better than she’d feared, but not so good as she’d hoped. She started to move past Duke Gregory, who caught her arm.

“This is good news, Countess. Good fortune for Skye.” His eyes were alight with fresh resolve. “Please tell your men that we will hold a banquet in their honor.” He hushed her with an upraised hand. “I know, it is hardly adequate, but it is a prime media opportunity and we don’t get many of those. My coming down to meet them alone should be worth a few percentage points in public approval, which will translate into support for our continuing defense.”

The lord governor was far out in front of himself, looking at the political opportunity. Which meant he had not received a full briefing. The loss of Augustus Solvaig reared its head again. “Sir,” Tara said carefully, “I think that might not be an appropriate response.”

“Why not? Are many of your men hurt?” he asked.

“The ones who made it off Zebebelgenubi seem fine,” she said, looking past him at her assembled Highlanders . . . and now also at the man responsible for their rescue. Even though he was clean-shaved and had dark skin, the family resemblance was obvious. As was the warrior’s spirit that shone brightly in his dark eyes. “We lost two DropShips and a JumpShip, which hurts, but we’ll salvage most of our ground-based equipment.”

The duke waved off her concerns. “Transportation is hardly as important as good troops to defend Skye. I’ll take all we can get, at this stage.”

“Glad to hear some sense out of you, Father,” Jasek said, butting into the conversation. Security had flanked him with two agents, but had not held back the duke’s son. Rank still owned its privileges. Jasek glanced at the agents, then smiled at his father’s flabbergasted stare.

“For a change,” he said, adding the caveat like a contract killer might put one extra bullet into the back of his victim’s head.

Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner had inherited his father’s strong chin and angular face. His skin was too dark to be just a healthy tan, and Tara had to believe he’d inherited the bronze color from his mother, along with his dark, piercing eyes and the easy warrior’s grace with which he carried himself.

Certainly his father showed no casual aplomb, the duke’s spine stiffening like it had suddenly turned into titanium.

“You . . . you come back here, now?”

Jasek shrugged as if his father’s reaction was expected. “Good to see you too,” he said. “We’re fine. Oh, and your gratitude for our rescue of the Highlanders is overwhelming.”

“I didn’t know you had done so,” Duke Gregory told him. His face flushed dark, from his pronounced widow’s peak to his beard. He shot Tara an accusing glare.

“I found out thirty minutes ago,” Tara told him. “They kept it quiet coming in.” Now she could see why. Jasek had obviously wanted to arrive in his own way, without a lot of fanfare—or a firing squad, depending on his father’s mood. Safer.

“And now that you know?” Jasek asked.

If he was expecting a warm embrace—and Tara doubted that he was—the lord governor disappointed him. His face clouded up like a brewing storm piling thunderheads on the horizon. “I suppose it was the least you could do for The Republic,” Duke Gregory reluctantly offered. If Tara had not been standing there, she imagined, he would have had a lot more to say.

Jasek bit off a laugh. “I’m not here for The Republic.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To settle our wager. Something about the kind of leadership Skye needed. You seemed fairly certain, once, that it would be found right here.” His glance found Tara hanging on every word. “It appears that you had to go looking, regardless.”

Tara decided to interrupt the reunion before one of these men went a step too far past the line the other was willing to bear in public. Having Jasek Kelswa-Steiner carted away by security would not help Skye. Neither would the lord governor running his son off again, and with him the Stormhammers’ strong military presence.

“We’ve all had to look for new strengths, Landgrave. Everyone,” she said. “The entire Republic.”

“Yes,” he agreed, never backing down an inch. “And I found mine with the Lyran Commonwealth.”

He threw it at her as both a challenge and an entreaty. Tara found herself drawn in by Jasek’s strong will, wanting to understand his position, and that surprised her. She had expected to despise this man when she met him. Especially after learning how badly he hurt The Republic’s local military by gutting it to form his Stormhammers. Of course, most of the information she possessed she had from Duke Gregory, so it was going to be slanted somewhat off center, but she’d assumed not too far.

Certainly she had not expected to empathize.

“Wherever you found it, you are standing on Skye. Which means we may have at least one thing in common in wanting to keep these people free.” And she realized she did want to find common ground.

“Whatever else there is,” she said, looking around at the audience of Highlanders, militia, civilians, “might be better served with a less public discussion.”

Jasek hesitated, then bowed to her in a gesture of respect he had not shown his father. His eyes never left hers as she accepted a warm hand and shook it in agreement. “Whatever else might come between us, Countess,” he said sotto voce, keeping it private between the two of them and his father, “I owe you this much, for standing up for Skye when I was not here.”

There was something hard in his gaze when he said it. Something that said Jasek was not altogether pleased with her intervention. Neither was he upset, though, and the contradiction intrigued her. As did Jasek’s raw magnetism. No wonder so many soldiers had flocked to his banner. This was not something that could be inherited or learned. It could only be something that was.

And Tara immediately set her guard against it.

Whatever else might come of Jasek Kelswa-Steiner’s return to Skye, he would not gain one inch of ground on her for charm’s sake. That much she promised herself.