3

Sutton Road Memorial Park
Skye
12 September 3134

Rain fell in sheets from a swollen, black sky. Pounding against the temporary roof that spanned the monument’s reception area, it sounded to Tara Campbell like premature applause.

She stood at the back of a small wooden stage next to Prefect Della Brown, Skye’s senior military officer. A clammy wind swirled beneath the covered area, carrying the fecund smells of churned mud and waterlogged wood. The breeze pulled at a few strands of her platinum hair, which Tara ignored, remaining at a respectful parade rest with hands clasped behind her, shoulders back, and body stretching up to her full 152 centimeters.

The monument remained covered, waiting for the Lord Governor to finish his remarks and hand the podium over to her. The assembled trio represented three of the four groups who had stood up for Skye against the recent Jade Falcon assault. She stood for her Highlanders. Brown commanded what was left of the prefecture’s standing army. And Gregory Kelswa-Steiner spoke for the civilians who had taken to the field in the defense of their world.

Missing was a representative of the Steel Wolves, who had gone back into hiding after the battle. Tara still wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not.

The memorial park sat on a sharp-edged bluff that overlooked Sutton Road and the rain-swollen Thames River and, beyond both, the battlefield where Skye had mounted its desperate defense against Clan Jade Falcon. Reconstruction efforts had not proceeded very far; the land still bore its dark scars. Craters. Blackened earth. A few twisted metal skeletons of ’Mechs and vehicles so badly damaged there was nothing left to salvage. The area would be cleaned up eventually, but right now Tara spent local resources in preparations for the next assault. In fact, if not for the interminable rainfall of a New London winter interrupting one of her more important defensive projects, she might have pushed back this event as well. But she also recognized that people needed closure.

So did she. Someday.

Today, though, was about Skye. Front and center a small contingent of reluctant media representatives recorded the address for later rebroadcast. In the audience wings waited the families of the dead. It was a solemn event, and the polite applause was always—always!—for those who had given up so much. She had been firm about how this would run, and doing it her way had also been required as a means of guaranteeing her presence.

Duke Gregory was nearly finished, she felt. He extolled the virtue and dedication of those brave people who had come forward to help defend their homeland in the face of the Jade Falcon assault.

“Citizens all,” he promised, reminding the newsmen and families present that he had awarded Republic citizenship to the family of any resident who had unselfishly joined Tara Campbell’s ad hoc “Forlorn Hope” detachment. His bearded visage stared down the media cameras. “Hard times call for great sacrifices by great people. These sons and daughters of Skye will be forever remembered for how they stood by our world. Never shirking or turning away from the call of duty. Our children.”

He paused in a respectful silence, and the monument’s veil was pulled away.

There were no BattleMechs immortalized in the bronze piece. No regular army vehicles or battlesuit troops. A screaming raptor hovered in midflight, one wing dragging at the air and the other folded back, as if it had been brought up short while stooping down. Below, citizens of Skye lifted spears, warding off the raptor, while others carried the wounded and dying away from the grasp of the sharp talons.

Understated, but respectful. Tara approved.

“Now,” Duke Gregory said, “I’d like to bring up the woman who helped lead our valiant defense, and has helped ready our world against further attack. Tara Campbell, Countess Northwind.”

Only the driving rain applauded, for which Tara was thankful. She also could have done without the honoraries and titles, but she accepted them, moving forward with a brisk military step and waiting a moment while a few reporters flashed stills of her. Part and parcel of her role as The Republic’s media darling, she knew.

“I will be brief,” she promised, swallowing against the cotton taste of nerves, “because today should be a day of reflection. When I came to Skye, I nearly despaired. Faced with an impossible choice, I asked for volunteers to fill out the ranks of the Himmelsfahrtkommando. These I received.”

These she had watched charge a military line in cars and old jeeps and battered trucks, mounting the smallest of weapons or packing along shoulder-weight short-range-missile launchers. The slaughter had been horrendous, but their action bought the military defenders the time they needed.

“Your Exarch can ask nothing more of you, and neither can I. I hope to say that Skye will ask nothing more from you as well.”

She scanned the collection of faces. Doubtful journalists and sorrowful relatives stared back. And one that did not belong: hard eyes in an aged, weathered face. “While this remains to be seen,” she continued, “we can thank the sacrifice of your fellow citizens for the freedoms you still enjoy today.”

He stood several ranks back, in the break between families and media. Elderly, but with squared shoulders and a gaze that could score ferrosteel. Tara guessed his age at eighty. Perhaps older. He stood just behind a still-camera journalist, whom she saw tear the wrapper off a new disk for his camera.

The journalist tossed the wrapper to the ground.

“It was my honor,” she said in closing, cutting her remarks short, “to serve with these brave men and women.”

She took no questions and the media did not seem interested in asking any. They would take their video and their stills and sound bites back to the office and decide what to make of the news today. Better than average, she was willing to bet. The Republic was still getting a fair shake in light of Skye’s defense. The calm, temporary eye inside a hurricane.

Duke Gregory thanked the families for attending while Tara stepped down from the stage and approached the man she had spotted in the crowd. A few mourners pressed forward to offer her their hands and take her condolences.

The photojournalist took her proximity as his chance to slip in one cheap shot.

“Countess. Do you find it appropriate to politicize such events as this memorial service?”

Staring over the journalist’s shoulder, she met the gaze of the older man. He had dark eyes and snow-white hair cut very close to his skull. Something familiar nagged at her memory, but she felt certain that she had never met him. He wore a simple, fleece-lined poncho. Warm, and totally appropriate for the wet, winter weather.

“Countess?”

More cameras swung her way, anticipating a reply. Tara had dealt with Skye’s media divisions often enough to know that little good could come from answering. But the man’s crude manners begged a response.

“That is an interesting question,” she said, dragging her gaze back to the journalist, “coming from the man who just littered on the graves of so many citizens of Skye.”

The journalist paled as cameras now turned on him, as well as the basilisk stares of nearby parents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives—all of whom had lost someone in the battle. Tara leaned forward ever so slightly. The muscles in her shoulders tightened with new tension.

“Pick it up,” she ordered him softly.

He set his chin, and stared blankly ahead. For a moment she thought the man might actually defy her for the sake of his brethren of the press. And he might have, except that the hard-eyed man moved to stand behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Avuncular. Supportive. Then he leaned in to whisper something that Tara did not catch, his mouth hidden behind the journalist’s neck.

The journalist winced, nodded once. When the stranger removed his hand, the reporter bent down to pick up his discarded wrapper, tucked it into his pocket, and quickly walked away, rubbing his shoulder.

No confrontation, no story. The media drifted back to the main event, and Tara’s ally tipped her a slow wink. “That was well-done,” he said. His voice wasn’t exactly warm, but there was energy to it that most men his age had already lost. “I see where you get your reputation.”

“Media,” she said, dismissing the recent event and her own sensational reputation all at once. “Once you’ve dealt with Herrmanns, you’ve had your fill.”

“Herrmanns AG is the media conglomerate that controls a decent portion of Skye’s press, and has been giving Duke Gregory, and you, a hard time until late. Very pro-Lyran. I’m surprised you’ve managed a cease-fire with them at all, quite frankly.”

Something told her that this man was not a local, but he clearly was well versed in local politics and the corporate media even so. “Have we met?” she asked, still feeling a sense of familiarity.

“No.” He offered her a withered hand full of surprising strength. “David McKinnon. At your service, Countess.”

McKinnon! Tara recognized at once the name of one of The Republic’s oldest active-duty Paladins, and now saw his rank in his time-weathered face as well. Only four years younger than Sire Victor Steiner-Davion, this man was almost as large a living legend. She froze in midclasp. “Sire McKinnon.” Her throat felt tight, and she swallowed dryly. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

Keeping her hand, McKinnon tucked it into the crook of his elbow and pulled her farther away from the news junkies and crowds. “None of that if we’re going to be working together,” he admonished her.

“Working together? You’re staying on Skye?” Coming back to her senses, she had assumed that McKinnon had new orders for her from Exarch Damien Redburn. The Paladin stayed one jump ahead of her, though.

“Let’s just say that you’re still getting heavy press coverage back on Terra.”

She blew out an exasperated sigh. “Exarch Redburn doesn’t trust me,” she said.

“You turned down a paladinship,” McKinnon reminded her, speaking more freely as they approached one edge of the small covered park. The smell of rain-churned mud was stronger here. “Exarch Redburn understood, but you have to realize that there are forces in The Republic who aren’t too happy with your popularity and status as a ‘freewheeling faction leader.” ’ He said this last as if quoting from some source. “Despite,” he added, “any claim of yours to support The Republic. Your Highlanders—”

“My Highlanders,” she interrupted, pulling her hand free, “have bled for Terra. And for Skye and for a dozen other worlds around The Republic these last several months. Impugning their honor is a slap in the face of many good men and women.”

“But will they be enough?” McKinnon asked.

“Enough? Enough for what?”

“Skye. Exarch Redburn asked me to evaluate the chances that Skye can hold. I wanted your word, unvarnished or undistorted by any lines of communication it would have passed through on the way to Terra. Which is why he allowed me to come here and ask you directly.” So he did. “Can we save Skye?”

Tara sighed, her anger spent. Could Skye hold? That was the question.

“At what cost?” she asked. “The Jade Falcons have taken a half dozen worlds already, and it’s only a matter of when, not if, they will return. And we’re not ready.” She let that thought rest with McKinnon for a moment. “My Highlanders continue to trickle in, called from action spots all across Prefectures III, IV, X . . . but they’re bloodied and they’re tired. And we both know what kind of force readiness the local military was at even before the Lord Governor split with his son.”

McKinnon’s face was impassive, not about to comment on the wisdom of an understrength garrison force. Still, he knew. “If you can brace up your people, I might be able to help with materiel readiness. Get some supplies—maybe even a few new vehicles—flowing this way. And Skye has good resources as well.”

“Aerospace, mostly. DropShip yards and fighter craft.” She ran fingers through her hair. Despite her initial reaction of irritation and anger, she was warming to the venerable warrior. With half a year, eight months, we might—”

“Twelve weeks,” McKinnon interrupted. He did not cite his source, and Tara did not ask. “You’ll get no more than twelve weeks.”

People were leaving now, ducking under umbrellas or dashing for their vehicles. Tara waited while a few of them strolled by, including the photojournalist from the encounter earlier. He stopped and snapped another holopic of her standing off to one side with McKinnon. Then hurried off. The two Republic warriors watched him retreat to a news van.

“If three months is the best we have,” she said, “we had better make the most of them. I don’t suppose you brought a BattleMech company with you?” He shook his head. “Well, we’ll get by, I guess. Tell me, what did you say to him?”

For once she left him behind. “Pardon?”

“The journalist.” She nodded after the van. “You seem to have a knack for getting people to go along with you fairly quickly.” Or Tara was simply developing a knack for being handled. “You certainly convinced him to cooperate. What was it you said?”

“Ah. Well. Each circumstance requires its own approach, of course.” The Paladin’s mouth twitched up into a lopsided smile, but his dark eyes remained granite hard. “I explained to him that he would look very silly on the evening news being fed that camera.”

“That would help my relations with the local media,” she said.

McKinnon chuckled dryly, reached out, and patted Tara on the arm in a very reassuring manner. “Ah, my dear, dear Tara,” he said, shaking his head. “I never said that you’d get the privilege of doing it at all.”