27

New London

Skye

5 December 3134

White stone steps led up to the columned portico of New London’s Capital House. Noritomo Helmer’s polished boots clipped a steady, staccato rhythm against them as he drew a straight line toward the magnificent entryway from the Shandra scout vehicle that had brought him and his command staff from the local spaceport. Lysle Clees followed one step behind him and to his right. Bogart two steps back on his left.

Elementals in full gear guarded the street-level plaza as well as the upper courtyard. Their emerald carapaces shone brilliantly under the cheerful spring sun that scrolled across Skye’s fathomless blue. Lysle first noticed the stain of fresh blood on the infantrymen’s mechanical claws, drawing Noritomo’s attention to it by catching his eye in the plaza and flexing her hand into a rigid talon. No carbon scoring marred their armor and there was no exhaust residue brushing the backpack missile launchers that rode over their shoulders. Which meant these troopers had not yet seen any real fighting on Skye.

Civilian blood. More of Malvina Hazen’s terror tactics, meant to cow the locals into unquestioning obedience.

More darkness unleashed from Pandora’s box.

Standing between the widely spaced portico columns, Noritomo paused to survey what he could see of New London’s administrative district. He found mostly empty streets and only a few sullen government staff workers traipsing in, late, many of them under guard. What little traffic there was kept tangling up at intersections, where traffic lights hung dark and useless thanks to Malvina’s electromagnetic pulse. He could only imagine the chaos it had caused on that first day, with widespread power outages and fire-gutted electronics.

“They got off lucky,” Lysle said, keeping her deep voice pitched low. She shook her blond dreadlocks back over both shoulders.

Star Captain Bogart looked askance at the two of them. “How’s this any kind of luck?” he asked, using the lazy speech patterns with which he’d grown up. “For them, that is?”

Noritomo glanced up into the sky, where only a few spring gray clouds drifted. The high-atmosphere storm was long past, but he had seen video capture of the detonation.

“Galaxy Commander Hazen could have dropped the Alamo into the heart of New London,” he answered the freeborn armor commander. “The blast would have shattered larger buildings like Capital House and set fires throughout most of the city. People would still be dying from radiation poisoning. Burn victims would be clogging up hospitals in all of the nearby cities.” He felt a tightening across his shoulders and shrugged it off. “I half expected to see that anyway.” He turned and led the others into the marble-tiled halls.

“What stopped her?” Lysle asked. By rights, she should have accorded Galaxy Commander Hazen full title of rank, but inside the building it was safer to keep their discussion impersonal.

“New London stopped her. Capital House and the Governor’s Palace stopped her. She needs a capital from which to rule Skye. Why ruin the city you plan to make your personal throne?”

It was a short answer, though Noritomo knew that nothing involving Malvina Hazen was ever so direct and so easy. After learning of the WarShip assault against the system’s zenith recharge station, he had been surprised to discover that Malvina had since used the Emerald Talon only in interdiction efforts. The world was blockaded, but it had yet to feel the pounding thunder of an orbital bombardment.

“She wants this fight up close and personal. Her last assault against Skye cost her an arm and a leg, after all.” And a brother. “She could have stood off this time, pounding the cities into submission. She did not.” Instead, she had opted for a heavy landing outside of New London. He could not fault her warrior’s heart. Spoiling for battle, she led the bulk of her forces into the city, ready to meet any opposition.

“And none came,” he whispered aloud. What if they threw a war, and nobody showed up? Wasn’t that a classic joke he remembered from another of the books he’d smuggled into his sibko barracks?

“Whatever else Galaxy Commander Hazen asks of us,” Noritomo said sotto voce to his staff, cautious as they walked the halls among Capital House staffers and Clan administrative personnel, “be ready with options, with force strength estimates, with cut-downs for any bidding that might occur.”

Bogart shrugged his arms out in front of him, as if loosening them up before a fight. A few nearby warriors glanced his way sharply, as if expecting challenge, or attack. “You think we’ll be included in the fighting?” It had been the question on everyone’s mind ever since losing Chaffee.

“I think our leader has someone she is more angry at than us,” he admitted. “I think she wants victory more than anything else.” He felt the tension bleeding through the halls—could almost taste it. Copperish, like the scent of freshly spilled blood.

“I think,” he said, “that things are about to go very badly for Skye.”

How badly, though, Noritomo Helmer was not to find out until Malvina Hazen was through chastising him for losing Chaffee.

The taste of blood was very real now as Noritomo recovered from Malvina’s right cross, his jaw throbbing and his right eye squinting shut against the pain. He had seen the blow coming, of course, but made no move to defend himself. It required steeled concentration not to react and tempt the Galaxy commander into further rage. This was her right, and his surkai–his penance—for disobedience.

Not that it mattered that his newly formed Cluster had been outfought. His orders had been to hold Chaffee for Clan Jade Falcon. By Clan customs, he was expected to fulfill those orders or die trying.

Only the outlander’s offer of hegira mitigated the circumstances and might—if the Galaxy commander eventually concurred—salvage his honor.

“You present yourself well, Star Colonel.” Malvina eyed him coldly, staring at him sidelong with her artificial eye. By most comparisons, it was a perfect match of the other one. Noritomo noticed what it lacked, however. The carbonation, the life that hinted at a soul. This was her dead eye, reserved now for the harshest of judgments.

To their credit, Lysle and Bogart had shown neither surprise nor a reflex to come between their commander and his punishment. They froze into the likeness of statues. Others in the Congressional Hall were not so diplomatic. Civilians recoiled from the sudden violence. Galaxy Commander Malthus stared at him impassively, but more than a few of Malvina’s senior warriors looked on with smug approval, and some began clearing back as if expecting an escalation at any moment.

It did not escape Noritomo’s notice that the hall was really a wide amphitheater, where Skye’s world senators came together in concentric levels, no doubt in the best spirit of The Republic, which doted on such symbolism that could be found in spheres, circles, and round tables. But among the Clans, such a room framed a natural Circle of Equals where Clan justice by combat—might making right—took place. For the same reason he had made his office on Chaffee next to Longview’s central, circular park, Malvina had commandeered Capital House’s Congressional Hall for its obvious connotations.

And if Noritomo allowed his deserved punishment to escalate into a Trial of Grievance, then he would have to lose. Defending a “right to retreat” was no precedent he wished to visit on Clan Jade Falcon. Let such hairs be split by Wolves and Sea Foxes.