The names blurred through Raul’s mind. Even after the chaos here on Achernar, he had trouble picturing the kind of confused warfare Tassa described. Combine supporters and Commonwealth troops? The Sea Fox merchants?

“By luck more than anything I hooked up with your Exarch. He never told me why he was there, though I am sure it was an attempt at damage control at first. He made me an offer, asked me to help him regain possession of the local spaceport, and I accepted. Then I left.”

Raul shook his head, as if trying to clear away a thought he couldn’t understand. “You left?” He’d been sitting on the edge of his chair, waiting for some kind of glorious finale. Their food arrived, but Raul suddenly wasn’t hungry. “You abandoned the Exarch?”

“He is not my Exarch. Anyway, he seemed competent.” High praise indeed. “By the time I shipped through Northwind, I heard that he had made it safely back to Terra.” She looked at him askance. “What? Dieron wasn’t my fight, what reason did I have to stay?”

Rocking back into his chair, Raul tried to reason it out. Failed. “And Achernar?” he asked. “Is this your fight?”

“It’s closer,” Tassa admitted, her brow creasing in a light scowl.

“Closer to what?”

“To what I am looking for.”

Raul leaned forward again, the security agent in him defaulting into interrogation mode. She was holding something back, something big, and he wanted it. “And what are you looking for?”

Tassa Kay settled back calmly, cradling her drink in one hand. She offered him half a shrug. “Whatever that is,” she said, “I think it left this table. You and I are done talking for a while, Lieutenant.” She rose to leave.

Raul couldn’t help asking, “Are you going to walk away from Achernar too, Tassa?”

Staring down at him, something closer to a predator’s grin than any true smile crept over her mouth. “Lieutenant. Don’t you trust me anymore?”

“I don’t know you.” He had never really known her, which was part of the damnable attraction he felt, and what she was capitalizing on.

Tassa bent forward at the waist, leaning down until her face was only inches from his. For a moment, Raul thought she meant to kiss him. “You know me,” she said. With a slight smirk, she straightened and then brushed by him. Back over her shoulder she said, “I’m just like you.”

Taibek Mining

Achernar

24 February 3133

The Taibek Hills stared up at Erik Sandoval-Groell with vacant eye sockets as his personal VTOL thundered low over the eastern mines. Ore carts trundled out of dark tunnels, pushed or pulled by small, overworked tractors now that the MiningMechs from this site were all downchecked for military conversion. His labor force milled about the three active tunnels or worked the loading area where ore was transferred from carts to open-box rail cars. To a man they avoided the northwest quarry where rifle-toting infantry guarded Erik’s local staging ground and his primary maintenance facility.

Gray wisps of rock dust bled from the mine entrances and hung over the loading platform in a large cloud. As Erik’s military-class Warrior H-9 banked across the complex, the downdraft of its rotors swept the air clean. For the moment. The thirty-ton craft extended landing gear and settled to the ground next to a smaller Ferret light scout copter. Erik jumped out as soon as the skids touched earth and met the elder man waiting for him with an outstretched hand.

“Legate Stempres,” Erik smiled a mostly-sincere greeting. “Always a pleasure to see you.”

“Truly? That is why you are nearly an hour late for our meeting?”

At forty-eight and wearing a conservative gray suit, Brion Stempres still looked the part of a warrior. He kept his silver hair cut short in a flattop and his face had a younger man’s blue steel shadow where his thick beard kept trying to grow in. He had served a distinguished career with the Standing Republic Guard on Caselton, coming to the attention of Duke Aaron’s father and then later to Aaron Sandoval himself. His transfer to Achernar and into semiretirement had come four years before after the death of his wife. Blind fortune for Erik that the man was available when it came time to shop for a new military leader of Achernar.

Erik did not take the man’s gruff nature personally. “I received a report that the Steel Wolves had launched a major strike toward River’s End. I had my pilot swing out over the Agave Dales to check it out.”

A slender eyebrow rose over one of Stempres’ muddy-brown eyes. “You take chances, Lord Sandoval.”

“To endeavor without risk is to win without victory,” Eric quoted, calling on his studies in martial history. “General Gregory Cox.” Not that Erik worried. Star Colonel Torrent had held off his OmniFighters for the better part of a week, now, relying on conventional aircraft. Erik’s VTOL had likely been in little danger.

“And what did you see?”

“Another probing attack,” Erik told the old general. “Perhaps a bit stronger than recent assaults, but hardly a threat to River’s End. The Republic Guard called out reinforcements, just to be safe.” He shook his head. “Someone needs to convince that sheep in wolf’s skin to make a real push one of these days.”

Legate Stempres assumed an air of innocence. “Someone does, eh? Well, until that happens, might be you should think about this.” He pulled a digital verifax from his jacket pocket, thumbed his own DNA imprint over the security device, and then passed it over to Erik.

The young noble paged through the document quickly, skipping over most of the introduction. It notified Stempres that Knight-Errant Kyle Powers would arrive in a few days, a fact Erik already knew through his network of supporters and spies among the regular militia, and the list of briefings he requested. Then Erik hit the meat of the verifax, skipped back to the top and read through it all again. Carefully.

“This is a serious offer?” he asked Stempres, looking up from the reader when finished.

“It is. Sir Powers has asked me to feel you out on a formal alliance for the defense of Achernar. His proposal establishes you as ‘a legitimate foreign-auxiliary commander.’ That’s the designation used when competing branches of military service—or foreign militaries—work together on a joint mission.”

It wasn’t formal recognition by Exarch Redburn, Erik noted, but damn close. It elevated his Swordsworn to a politically supported entity at the very least, and the fact that Powers even proposed such an alliance meant only one thing. “The Republic is in bad shape,” he whispered aloud. A political push here, some military action there—how much could the Sphere government stand up under? His uncle had been right all along. Best to salvage what they could. Drawing a reference from the Unfinished Book—or was it the original New Testament?—it was time to render therefore unto Caesar the things which were Caesar’s.

Or, more to the point, they would take back unto Sandoval those worlds which were Sandoval.

“Legate Stempres,” Erik finally said. “Have a message ready to send Powers as soon as his JumpShip arrives in system. You discussed the matter with me but have been unable to secure my official cooperation. Yet. Please attend to that right away.”

“You sound as if you’re in a hurry to be off, Lord Sandoval.”

“I am.” Erik nodded toward his northwest quarry. Visible over a rocky outcropping of pale stone, one could catch the profile of his Hatchetman’s elongated head. “If I push, I can be over the Taibeks with a small force and coming to the aid of the Republic before their own reinforcements arrive.” Engaging lightly, ready to draw back as needed, Erik could seem to be the rescuer and still put very little of his own assets at risk. “It will do well for Powers to see me contributing even without his official sanction. Then, when he sends you to try again, I can—reluctantly–agree.”