And if there hadn’t currently been a half dozen launchers capable of throwing such a missile at the Himmelstor already locked on to them, Jasek might have felt fairly safe.

The screen, which had been filled with black space and bright stars a moment before, switched camera angles and found the fast-approaching world of Hesperus II. Duncolored with streaks of dark brown, the planetary surface had a craggy, unfinished look about it with very little vegetation to soften the knife-edged mountains that divided the main continents. Jasek knew that with mean equatorial temperatures up to eighty degrees Celsius, the world was habitable only in the far northern reaches, and most of the population preferred to live under atmospherically controlled domes.

He knew a lot, in fact, about this world he had never visited. Hesperus II was a storied world in the Lyran Commonwealth. One of perhaps twelve worlds about which legend had it that if you knew their history you knew nearly everything important to know about the Inner Sphere. It was here that House Steiner learned of BattleMech designs when an ancient ancestor of Jasek’s, Simon Kelswa, raided the Terran Hegemony world in 2445. Hesperus II eventually became a Lyran holding, and was attacked more than fifteen times in major assaults by Houses Kurita, Marik, even Davion. But the world never gave up its allegiance or its secrets again. The ’Mech factories, so important during the Succession Wars and the Jihad, were built beneath the Myoo Mountains and essentially impenetrable to an outside force. Even in this time of downsized militaries coming off a golden age of peace, the factories at Hesperus II continued to turn out ’Mechs at a pace that most other worlds considered reckless.

And this was one of the reasons for Jasek’s hastily planned visit.

“The Myoos,” Kaptain Goran said, using a laser pointer to scribe a fast circle around a particularly wrinkled range of mountains in the northwest section of the planet’s northernmost continent. With a practiced spacer’s eye, he found the gray stain that was the only city on the planet large enough to be recognized as such from space. “Maria’s Elegy. Put Defiance Peak about here, then.” He speared a large mountain with the pointer, seemingly at random.

Defiance Peak. Home of the local Defiance Industries factories. Duke Vedet Brewster, the world’s hereditary ruler, would have his capital at Maria’s Elegy, which was also where House Steiner’s personal ambassador would reside.

Yes, Jasek was interested in those landmarks.

Then a gray-black veil swept over the planet, hazy in its eclipse. Jasek felt a sharp thrill run through him as Goran ordered his technicians, “Scale back. Bring her into focus.”

Coming down the Himmelstor’s port ventral side. That’s what the sensor officer had said. But no one had adjusted the camera’s eye—configured to take in space travel distances that usually ran to hundreds of thousands of kilometers—for close-up viewing.

Now he did, and the gray veil hardened into an angular wall. It dropped back to show a DropShip docking collar and a pair of heavy naval particle cannons guarding the approach. Another level of magnification removed, and the thick-waist profile of a Lyran battle cruiser cut across the planet’s profile.

“The Yggdrasil,” Goran said with an appropriate touch of awe.

Mjolnir–class. Displacing more than 1,200,000 tons, it was one of the valiant Lyran WarShips to survive the Word of Blake Jihad. Thought lost several times over its active life, it was placed in orbit around Hesperus II in 3084, underscoring how important the local factories were to House Steiner, even if Devlin Stone had wanted to pick the world up in his grab for a new Hegemony.

“Never been moved again,” Goran said, as if sensing Jasek’s thoughts. “Some say it can’t be taken out of system. Burned out its KF drive in the last jump it made to arrive here.”

“You believe that?” Jasek asked. He shifted in his chair, easing tired muscles, and tried to distract himself by counting the weapon bays visible as dimpled shells and long-barreled turrets on the Mjolnir’s side. At least nine naval-class autocannon in its overlapping broadside arcs, he saw. Several particle cannon. And, yep, there were the AR10 launchers. Each one with a set of Killer Whale missiles that could crack the Himmelstor like an egg.

Goran cocked his head in what might have been a shrug, or only a pause to think. “What I believe and what I’m careful about ain’t always the same thing, Landgrave.”

“Good advice,” Jasek decided. “And speaking of being careful, you’d better call Colonel Vandel up here.”

“More mud sloggers cluttering up my bridge for no reason,” the kaptain groused.

“You may be right,” Jasek acknowledged. “The Brewsters have never been enemies of Skye or the Kelswas, after all, and I believe Trillian Steiner will give us an audience and vouchsafe us regardless of the local duke’s attitude.” He shrugged. “But she knows Joss Vandel. And that monster of a ship will be holding position above Hesperus II, which means we have to come back up past it. How careful do you want to be today?”

Goran picked up his all-hands mic and dialed for shipboard announcement, calling Joss Vandel to the bridge.

Jasek was careful not to let the crotchety spacer see his smile.

23

The Emerald Talon

Zenith JumpPoint, Skye System

Republic of the Sphere

24 November 3134

The universe had compacted down to a single pinpoint. A glowing pearl, hovering in Malvina Hazen’s mind’s eye. Cold and bright, it pulsed in time to her heartbeat.

Then the jump was over, and her Nightlord–class WarShip reentered real space at the zenith jump point above the plane of Skye’s solar system. The glowing gem exploded around her in a riot of sound and color, rebuilding the universe in broad strokes around her consciousness. Her body, imperfect but strong once again. The Emerald Talon’s bridge with several dozen crewmen still bent to their prejump tasks, now taking their next breaths and their next thoughts. And outside the large ferroglass wall—the ultimate hubris in locating the main bridge of a WarShip against hard vacuum—a galaxy of bright stars unfolded once again against the dark blanket of space.

“Fleet status!” she ordered at once, turning her bionic eye on Star Admiral Binetti. The cold replacement stared, unblinkingly fixed on the elder man’s back.

Technically, Khan Pryde had put the Jade Falcon flagship under the command of Beckett Malthus. Her blessing on the undertaking, and a way to exude her own measure of contribution to the task of invading The Republic of the Sphere. But like most warriors who now answered to Malvina as if she were the Khan herself, Dolphus Binetti knew how to sail with the solar winds. He bowed respectfully and set to his task.

It took a few seconds of sensor readings being relayed up through the chain of command, but within the moment he said, “Seven emerging JumpShips. Fleet present and accounted for, Galaxy Commander.” He paused. “We also have four JumpShips, two merchant and two military, in holding positions nearby.”

Malvina could care less for the local JumpShip resources. They would run within moments. “Has the local recharge station identified us?”

“They would have to be sensor-blind not to notice our arrival,” the Star admiral assured her.

On an auxiliary monitor, a senior technician brought up an image of the local station. An Olympus, with its tadpole design and the immense solar sail drifting out behind it to capture solar radiation from Skye’s sun and convert it to useful power, stored in helium-cooled superconductor rings and held in reserve to beam-charge JumpShip engines. Such stations were not uncommon, placed at the zenith and sometimes a system’s nadir jump point as well. Most were very old, bordering on ancient, and replacing them was expensive, as the expertise and technology was now limited to very few shipyards within the Inner Sphere.