Tara waved him farther down the file. “They and the Ducal Guard have been folded into the Seventh Skye Militia.” She smiled thinly. “It’s a motley assortment, but we can wield them as a much larger unit if we keep them together.”
An interesting idea. Jasek wasn’t certain he agreed, but wasn’t about to argue the local politics. “The question is, then, what do we know about the Jade Falcons’ remaining strength?”
“They came in with two Galaxies,” Prefect Brown stated. She met his gaze evenly, showing no shame to the man who had beat her out for the loyalty of her own soldiers. “We believe the arrayed forces are roughly the equivalent of a mixed regiment. No more than that.”
“I think it might be a bit stronger,” Paladin McKinnon offered. He was the only one to refuse a seat at the table, standing over the back of his chair, gnarled hands clamped on to the backrest. His eyes were diamond cutter sharp. “Maybe by as much as half.”
Tara nodded. She thanked her aide, who hobbled to the back wall and rested there, staring over Tara’s shoulder directly at Jasek.
“Obviously they hit Skye without their full strength last time. The Steel Wolves stated that a large unit had failed to rendezvous from Kimball II. We can hope they were destroyed.”
“They weren’t,” Colonel Petrucci told them. “We put forces on the ground on Ryde right behind the Steel Wolves, gathering intel. We learned that a Star Colonel Helmer saved the majority of his assault force, and that Malvina Hazen sent in a relief force to free him up. Kimball II is under Falcon control now.” He waved down the beginning of several outbursts. “But it may be that their hold is tenuous.”
“Still.” Jasek rubbed his jaw with one hand. A few missed whiskers pricked at his skin. “We have to assume a regiment and a half of troops spread over seven worlds.”
“Six,” Della Brown corrected him. Her gray blue eyes looked inward, counting them again. “Four in Prefecture IX. Two others in VIII.”
Tara sat next to the Prefect. She placed a hand on Brown’s arm. “I believe Jasek is counting Chaffee. The Falcons’ staging world inside the Lyran Commonwealth.”
“Not our problem,” McKinnon declared. Then he reconsidered slightly. “Except that it spreads the Clanners a bit thinner. We might be able to use that.”
Jasek thought so as well. If the unstable coalition being formed on Skye could move fast enough. But as the morning wore on into afternoon, with arguments over every assumption, every plan, it began to look less likely that an accord could ever be reached. “Look,” he finally said, slamming one hand down flat on the table. “We don’t need to put every Falcon warrior and his machine in an exact spot. Generalities are good enough for now.”
“I agree,” Tara said, the constant friction wearing on her as well. She didn’t look nearly as polished as she had appeared this morning, Jasek noted. But he was willing to bet that she’d clean up nicely before any press cameras got within fifty feet of her. Alexia Wolf thumped his knee under the table.
Tara missed the quiet byplay entirely. “I’m more worried about our exact force accounting. Even with the mercenaries we hired off Galatea—and I’m not completely confident about their usefulness—I don’t believe we have enough strength. Not for a protracted campaign.”
Niccolò broke his silence to agree. “Any ruler who keeps his state dependent upon mercenaries will never have real peace or security.”
“We had enough military force last time,” Jasek’s father reminded them. “The people of Skye will never surrender to Clan occupation. In fact, in four Succession Wars and the Jihad, Skye has fallen only once into enemy hands, and then not for long.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “With the kind of damage visited on the Steel Wolves in the first assault, the… the…” He couldn’t bring himself to call the Stormhammers by name. “Jasek’s people are a stronger, battle-ready unit.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that if I could find the Steel Wolves, I’d swallow my pride and ask them to stand with us again.” Even that admission had seemed a hard one for Tara to make. Her skin flushed with embarrassment or anger, Jasek couldn’t say which.
“Even then…” She shrugged. “Several things worked in our favor last time. The Falcons rushed themselves. They fell for several traps, which they will be wary of doing when they return.” Her voice took a melancholy turn. “And they were momentarily stunned by the suicide charge of our Forlorn Hope task force. Which they will prepare against, which is why I think we should not attempt to try that again. It would be a terrifying slaughter, and for little gain.”
Jasek agreed. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Niccolò nodding as well. Actually, having reviewed media coverage of the event, he knew that his friend felt the slaughter gained very little the first time. A high cost for a diversion.
But that’s what commanders do. They gamble with lives.
Jasek had felt stung by the oversimplification. I do not gamble.
No. You are quite the Lyran. You assign a value to each life, and spend them with a miser’s reluctance.
He still was not certain if his friend had paid him a compliment with that comment.
“Why do you think that the same tactics will not work the next time?” Colonel Vandel asked.
Jasek took the question for her. “When the Falcons come back, it won’t be with the gut punch strategy they tried before. They will strip every occupied world to its minimum garrison. They will land, plant their flag, and stand by it until the end. They will not retreat, and they’ll make every victory a costly one for the people of this world. So much so that the population will welcome any end to the fighting.”
His father hedged, no doubt imagining his world so hard struck. “What makes you so certain?” he asked.
Tara looked at Jasek. Jasek stared back. Barely perceptibly, she nodded. “Because that is what we would do,” she answered for him.
Jasek leaned back in his chair, staring down into the table’s dark surface. His exhale was long and weary. “That is how you take Skye.”
12
New London
Skye
9 October 3134
Jasek had always enjoyed roaming the capital house library as a child and as a young man, losing himself in the labyrinth of corridors and galleries and great rooms lined floor to ceiling with books. The scent of old paper and new print. The feel of leather as he ran a hand down one long shelf of texts after another. The awe-inspiring silence, broken by soft footfalls and scuffs against tight-knit carpet.
Here he read and he studied. He explored with Niccolò GioAvanti and other friends, and together he and Niccolò discovered two secret passages that, by all evidence, had been forgotten even by state security. And standing in just the right archway or corridor, he eavesdropped on whispered conversations and learned as much about ruling and The Republic as he had been formally taught by his father.
Good memories. Happier times.
Still, the musty, paper smell that permeated every room was a welcome, warm embrace and not the melancholy reminder he had feared when Niccolò suggested taking the library as a personal residence and the Stormhammers’ command post.
It was a strong political move as well. Under the auspices of previous lord governors, the mansion residence attached to the library was the home of Skye’s Steward—an appointed aide who served as liaison to the world governor on behalf of the prefecture’s ruler. With strong lord governors, in fact, legislation passed through the offices of the Steward first and to the world governor second. There was no small amount of prestige attached to the local mansion, and the man who resided within. And it had been available. Duke Gregory was one of the rare Republic leaders to hold both world and prefecture leadership positions at the same time, which was a measure of the duke’s—and the family’s—powerful support within the Isle of Skye region. When Jasek’s father had need to appoint a Steward, mostly during times when he traveled off-world, that appointee took up temporary residence at the Governor’s Mansion in New Gloucester, which was otherwise treated as the duke’s summer offices.