“I’m not saying you didn’t have cause. But in situations like this, please leave the public orchestration of events to myself, or Nicco.”

“I don’t report to GioAvanti,” she said with a frown.

“No, but you did not report to Colonel Petrucci either,” he reminded her with a touch of steel in his voice. A show of personal displeasure would touch her more deeply than any formal reprimand, he knew. “And the question remains, what do we do with Hauptmann Parkins?”

“I still don’t trust him,” she said.

“Neither can I,” Jasek agreed, smiling thinly at her expression of total surprise. “I said we found no evidence of guilt. There is some gray shading between guilt and actual innocence, though. Like how much Vic Parkins suspected he might be influencing your subordinates.”

“Then why—”

“We need warriors, Tamara. I can’t afford to throw one away—a good one—on what he might have suspected. Or for being ambitious, so long as those ambitions stop short of treachery.”

Tamara nodded slowly. “But even if you’d transferred him, it would have undermined his authority. That could turn him toward treachery. Unless you promoted him as well.” Her lip curled in distaste at the thought.

“Or,” Jasek pointed out, “unless I now transfer you.”

“And which of the other colonels would give me a fair shake?” she asked, not believing it.

He shrugged, stopped outside a conference room. Joss Vandel’s deep baritone rumbled on the other side of a partially open door. No sentry here. If an agent of The Republic or Jasek’s father made it this far into the building, past the best security GioAvanti money could buy, one more man wasn’t going to make a difference.

Then, reconsidering, Jasek nodded at the door where Leutnant-colonel Wolf had entered ahead of them. “Alexia has asked about you,” he admitted. “She needs experienced people in the Tharkan Strikers.”

He figured the chance of Tamara accepting such a post would be the same as that of his father suddenly supporting the Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth, or the Exarch of The Republic voluntarily restoring the Isle of Skye. But long shots were known to come in now and then.

Not this time.

“No.” Tamara shook her head. “I know what I have with Petrucci. And with Parkins too, for that matter. I can make this work.” She paused, then, “You were going to ask me to keep him from the start, weren’t you?”

Her open incredulity made him laugh, which was good. Recent days had not offered much fuel for laughter. He leaned in close enough to smell the scented soap she used. Her eyes widened at his nearness, and he smiled for her benefit. “Yes, Tamara. I was. But I wanted you to work it through for yourself first.”

“Why, Jasek?” She almost sounded as if she were purring, basking in his warmth.

Careful… “Because I wanted things right between us before I invited you in on this command-level meeting.”

“Invite me in? Now?”

“We’re moving toward Skye right away,” he told her. “After a quick stop on Zebebelgenubi.”

“What? Why?”

“Some Highlanders got themselves trapped there,” he said, intentionally answering her question in the most literal way possible, even though he knew what she meant. “We’re hoping to pull them out from under the Falcons’ claws.”

“I meant, why pull me in? Why now?”

He saw it play over her face, no matter how guarded she thought she held her expression. Tamara Duke had nothing on Niccolò GioAvanti for a poker face. Jasek read her easily. The afterglow of his nearness. The sudden shock at being included in a command-level meeting, and then the surge of pride.

And the devotion—the worship—that invariably followed.

After tearing her down, just a little, it was time to raise her back up again and cement the bonds of loyalty that bound her to him. Niccolò called it “personal time.” Jasek’s father would simply call it leadership.

He knew what it really was, and felt only slightly the heel for taking advantage of her feelings and expectations as he picked up her hand and held it tightly.

“For the same reason I sent you to Towne,” he told her. “Because right now, this is where I need you.”

With her star-filled eyes and open body posture, if she heard anything other than “I need you” out of that, Jasek would be shocked. He dropped her hand as he opened the door, with no desire to rub Alexia’s face in the necessities of command.

From her hard expression, staring at them from the far side of the conference room table, he knew she considered it obvious enough.

5

Belletaria

Venicio County, Kimball II

16 September 3134

The Gyrfalcon swayed from side to side in its peculiar, strutting gait as Star Colonel Noritomo Helmer high-stepped it along the rubble-choked boulevard, leading his column through the city that had been Belletaria. He remembered a line from one of the ancient texts he had smuggled into his sibko barracks as a child and hidden inside his mattress. It was a book on mythology.

And when she opened the box, all the evils of the world were released.

He and a sibmate had read such books at night, whispered about them while lying next to each other at rifle drill or while making camp on extended maneuvers. The myth of Pandora had been fun to argue. About whether such a curse could have had any other result. About whether or not Pandora had been an attractive woman.

But one thing they had never discussed was the idea that their Clan would ever visit such a nightmare on an unsuspecting people.

These were not the warriors Noritomo remembered training alongside.

Belletaria had been a medium-sized city on Kimball II. One hundred and fifty thousand people. Large portions of the city had been burned—residential areas, mostly—put to the torch by a determined Firestarter. Ash choked the sky, casting a gray pallor over the ruins. A few fires still smoldered, though most had finally burned out or been extinguished in last night’s rainfall.

But what the fires missed, Malvina Hazen’s handpicked “relief force” had taken apart with ruthless efficiency. Assault ’Mechs leveled the industrial sector, kicking through warehouse walls and wrenching over large cranes used to pull cargo off the barges that plied trade between the river cities. The barges had been sunk. Lifters and trucks were shoved into the river. The assault machines had then joined a couple of modified SalvageMechs and some heavy tanks to raze the downtown area where Noritomo now walked his Gyrfalcon. Apartment buildings had ’Mech-sized holes in them where the sturdier machines had simply walked through. Other buildings were nothing better than piles of rubble and splintered lumber. The commercial center of Belletaria, some forty-eight square blocks, had been leveled by artillery fire and then systematically flattened as the ’Mechs and tanks spread out in a line and marched, stomped, and rolled forward in a juggernaut of destruction.

All his fault.

Galaxy Commander Hazen had instructed him to take Kimball II. It was to be the jewel in her crown. A population of nearly two billion and the local headquarters for Ceres Metals, this rich Republic world was one of six targeted by the Jade Falcon desant. Her “gift” of it to Noritomo was a measure of confidence in one of her senior warriors. But he had made one strategic mistake, and gotten mired in a brutal ground campaign that caused him to miss the rendezvous for the assault on Skye. Malvina Hazen would not soon forgive him that.