Folding his arms over his chest, Niccolò disagreed. “We know what worlds the Falcons hold, where they are strongest and weakest. We also know that your father has accepted that Skye cannot stand on its own.”

“Granted,” Jasek said. A tight smile cracked his stern expression. “At least there is that.”

When the Jade Falcon force hit Skye itself, the only reasons the world did not fall were the presence of Tara Campbell’s Highlanders and the intervention of Anastasia Kerensky’s Steel Wolves. Three rival factions coming together in the face of a common threat: how his father have hated that. Would he have rather had his son, and the Stormhammers, by him then?

Or was he just that stubborn, to look the other way even in the face of overwhelming odds?

Was it time to find out?

On the Tri-Vid, the scene cut back once again to the Griffin’s own gun-cam footage. The fog thinned as the BattleMech slogged its way up a gentle slope, rising above the disturbance. A final, upward jog of broken stone lifted it over a thick blanket of cotton, the camera swinging back and forth with the Griffin’s even gait.

The Hasek was lost back in the gloom. Only a limping trio of Purifier infantry remained, scurrying around the Griffin’s feet like feeder fish sticking with their shark.

But this shark was wounded, and hunted by predators stronger than itself. Jasek raised the tumbler to his lips, inhaling the whiskey’s strong scent, then set the glass back on his desk when he saw the first Jade Falcon ’Mech lift itself from the fog bank, rising up on the same open ridge. A bird-legged Vulture, with Elemental infantry scurrying about its feet.

Off to the right side an Eyrie also swam up from the white depths, hauling a Kinnol main battle tank in its wake. The Griffin shifted left, the camera finding a trio of Skadi swift attack VTOLs jumping up on horizontal fans, their heavy-class autocannon swinging in search of targets.

Like true sharks, the Jade Falcon forces circled the trapped Griffin. The screen washed into a gray haze of static. This, Jasek knew from the report, was when his Mech Warrior transmitted the video logs. They had only voice transmissions after that, captured by the DropShip Noble Son before liftoff. He didn’t have the heart to listen to them again. His warrior had gone down swinging, taking the Eyrie and two Skadis with him.

His warrior was dead.

That was what there was to know.

“The Falcons are here to stay,” Niccolò said with certainty. Although he was no military mind, his political acumen and advice had never failed Jasek. “You know this.”

He nodded. “I do. They came back to Ryde, even after the Steel Wolves beat them there. Which means they’ll be reinforcing Kimball. Glengarry, Zebebelgenubi, Summer—they have quite the foothold already, and they’ll be coming back for Skye. These Clanners don’t leave things half done. They’ll be coming back.”

“So what will you do?”

Jasek leaned over one corner of his desk. The polished wood felt cold to the touch. “All that there is left to do. Decide the where and when of the final battle. The Archon’s Shield is ready, and most of the Lyran Rangers are back from the intelligence missions I sent them on, aren’t they?”

Niccolò nodded. “Tamara Duke should make planetfall tomorrow.” The way he said it, it sounded almost like a warning. “With the kommandant’s arrival, I believe Colonel Petrucci’s report will put the Rangers at sixty percent force readiness.”

“Orders will go out over my signature today, drawing up whatever we can of the Tharkan Strikers. If we’re moving, I want everyone with us. Including you, my friend.”

“And where are we going?”

Jasek stared down into his desk’s polished surface, at the darker version of himself that looked back out of the wood grain. Niccolò knew, of course. But Nicco also knew that armies did not march except on the express order of their commander. “Home,” Jasek said with a sharp breath.

“We’re heading back to Skye.”

Cheops

Seventh District, Nusakan

9 September 3134

Hands tight on the control sticks, worried for every step, Kommandant Tamara Duke limped her beloved “Eisenfaust,” her “Iron Fist,” into Cheops. The Wolfhound BattleMech swayed precariously every time she put weight on its right leg. A grinding screech stabbed into her ears, and her atmospheric system labored to pull the acrid smell of stressed metal from the cockpit.

A pair of VV1 Rangers raced ahead, holding up traffic at each intersection and allowing her to pass safely. Horns honked in a near-continuous salute. People gathered on walks, on building rooftops. They waved to the returning Stormhammers, to her, but she could not afford the distraction of waving a massive hand back at them.

Sprawling full length into the middle of the street would be a very undignified way of returning to Jasek.

Tamara gritted her teeth, leaned left in her seat, straining against the five-point safety harness. She tried not to look at the damage schematic displayed on one of her auxiliary screens. It drew a wire frame of the lean machine. Blackened frames outlined a ruined right hip, and a wide swath of destroyed armor slashed across her Eisenfaust’s back. Inside the frame a small icon flashed between black and red, warning her of damage to the massive gyroscopic stabilizer that nested behind and below the BattleMech’s fusion reactor, laboring to keep thirty-five tons of metal and myomer upright. If not for the gyro, her Eisenfaust would have been hauled into Cheops on the back of a flatbed recovery vehicle.

Instead, her sideways list was translated through the bulky neurohelmet she wore, turning her own sense of equilibrium into a regenerative signal. This signal was used to calibrate the BattleMech’s stride and a natural swing in its arms. It adjusted by the smallest amount her weapons’ targeting system in combat. And it formed a continuous feedback loop between neurohelmet and gyro. Shuffle–step… Shuffle–step the gyro’s tortured screech and her ’Mech’s occasional grinding shudder added fuel to the rage she had held deep and quiet since the betrayal.

Her mission had been fairly straightforward. An intelligence-gathering raid against the world of Towne, one of very few worlds left with a functioning HPG station in this second year of the blackout. Go in, download all intel, and leave Jasek’s propaganda message playing on a continuous loop over as many local stations as possible. It was one of several similar missions being conducted by the Stormhammers across several different prefectures, but hers had been handed to her personally by Landgrave Jasek Kelswa-Steiner.

His salute had been textbook formal. His handshake lingered just for a moment. The memory of Jasek’s touch had kept her warm through the dull weeks of travel and the tense ninety-three minutes it had taken to accomplish their goal.

Then she had lost it in the confused terror as her own soldier turned weapons against her, nearly destroying the Wolfhound.

But she would see Jasek again, and she would have justice. The Stormhammers tank crew who had fired on her was dead, its vehicle left burning on the streets of Towne. The man she suspected of organizing the attempt on her life was right under her sights.

Her targeting reticle actually floated over the outline of the VV1 Ranger, in fact, in which Hauptmann Vic Parkins, her exec, rode as a passenger. Parkins, who never stuck a foot out of line but always seemed to be there whenever anything went wrong. Off the field he fraternized with many of the junior officers. On the field, his frequent repeating of her orders down the chain promoted the feeling that he actually ran the Lyran Rangers’ Second Company, not her.