A long moment passed as Jesup struggled within for the answer he knew to be there; he had been Petr’s aide far to long to believe a reason did not exist. The slow light of understanding began to blossom. “You have information.”

“Of course I have information. Of what?”

“That a world ahead of us is the key to this region. You bypass these worlds because they will only become important later. Once the real prize has been taken.”

Petr applauded silently, as though rewarding a first-year cadet who’d answered correctly. “Now you begin to understand. And as much as I believe only I hold this information, I cannot discount the possibility others may have obtained it and are already on their way. I curse this ship for not having a lithium-fusion battery to double our speed. We make good time, nonetheless.”

He turned and began walking again—the deliberate, careful steps natural to those accustomed to microgravity and magnetic slips—with Jesup close behind. “The feeding ground is near Jesup. Very near.”

The river of castemen closed and swallowed them into their current without a ripple.

Clan Sea Fox DropShip Ocean of Stars

Atmosphere, Adhafera

Prefecture VIII, The Republic

15 July 3134

The demilitarized Clan-built Overlord-C–class DropShip shook lightly as it made interface with the upper atmosphere of Adhafera. From this altitude, the blue-green ocean spread below like a living mat—a sponge deceptively beckoning for an incoming DropShip to land on its benevolent surface. Of course, the ship’s captain ignored the siren song that would end in death as surely as being ensnared by a randall’s rose. Began the long lateral trek across the ocean, toward the continent of Vanderfox, the waiting city of Halifax and the world’s only DropPort.

The ship raced the sun as it dropped lower and began to make final preparations for landing. Those up this early on Vanderfox witnessed a false dawn as the drive plume of the Ocean of Stars pumped out plasma in a miniature star that kept the 11,550-ton vessel aloft and descending at a manageable velocity.

Star Captain Jotok sat in his command chair as though astride a throne, viewing his miniature kingdom and its industrious citizens: the labor and technician castemen who crewed the vessel and kept it in top operating shape.

OvKhan Petr sat strapped into a jumpseat in a forgotten niche of the bridge as it hummed with the activity necessary for a landing vessel. Incoming transmissions were already verified, the appropriate landing codes transmitted and authorization received. Acknowledged.

Petr was Star Captain Jotok’s superior, but even in the rigid hierarchy of the Clans a man did not lightly intrude upon the domain of another’s vessel. He waited. The captain would deign to tell him soon enough.

Time bled away like the velocity the ship sloughed off, and finally the captain nodded once, firmly. He turned to Petr and gave him his attention for the first time in almost an hour.

“We will be grounded in fifteen minutes, ovKhan.”

“I see that,” Petr responded. No impatience shaded his tone—a victory.

The man leaned away slightly, a speculative look in his eyes—perhaps not such a victory after all.

Petr continued. “The local governor will be meeting us at the DropPort, quiaff?”

“Aff. It would appear that way. I note that they referred to the man as first governor.”

Petr shrugged. “We have seen more drastic changes since the collapse of the HPG network. If that is the only change, we will be lucky, quiaff?”

“Aff, my ovKhan.” The man’s eyes returned to the activities of his crew and for just a moment Petr lost the battle with his patience, though he managed not to speak aloud. I granted you your due before, but now your attention needs to be focused on one thing, and one thing alone.

Jotok looked again at Petr and cleared his throat at his ovKhan’s expression. “They also wanted to know why, if the ovKhan of Delta Aimag of Spina Khanate actually orbited their world, he did not accompany the DropShip downside.”

Petr smiled. Already it had begun. “They did not ask straight out, quineg?”

Jotok laughed, a good-natured sound that filled the bridge. “Neg, ovKhan. None have ever been so bold, in my experience. The day they are, is the day I have found a spheroid worthy of my respect. For now, I answered their question as indirectly as they asked it.”

Petr nodded. “We have a world as open as a Jade Falcon heart is cruel. It is time to get to work.”

Petr unstrapped himself, nodded once to acknowledge the man, moved off of the bridge and began to make his way toward the only remaining ’Mech bay on the vessel.

Yes, time indeed to get to work.

The crowd of nobles stood several hundred meters back from the blast pit as the DropShip made its final thunderous entrance into their lives. The hiss and crack of cooling metal filled the air with its gentle rhythm after the brutal onslaught of the mammoth plasma drives.

Like peacocks come to market, the nobles were decked out in their finest. Silks, heavy clothes brocaded and festooned, capes and feathers and jewel-encrusted hats: a jarring eyesore. They moved among one another, nervous of the new element arrived on Adhafera, yet to take its measure. For more than a year now, not a single vessel had made planetfall; for all they knew, the rest of The Republic had ceased to exist, sucked into an astronomical maelstrom. Many of these nobles, including the first governor who quietly seized power, would just as soon it remained that way.

The abrupt shaking of feathers and tinkling of dangling jewels marked the flocks’ increased agitation as the screech of metal and massive whine of hydraulics broke across them like an incoming wave.

A wave that would drown them—they just didn’t know it yet.

The group grew even more agitated as the main DropShip ramp descended to clang onto the ferrocrete, looking for all the world like the opening of a mouth into the black maw of some metal beast who’d come down from the stars to tear away at the power base they’d built.

Not a warrior among them, they did not immediately recognize the slow, rhythmic pounding and the whine of servo actuators that echoed out of the ghastly hole. Only once it emerged into the full light did a woman scream and most of the nobles take several steps back, panic written large on their pallid visages.

The Tiburon–a Sea Fox–designed BattleMech—stood at the top of the ramp and raised its arms, as though stretching after a long slumber, luxuriating in the warmth of the new dawn sun. The move further terrified the nobles, and only the first governor’s steely grip on the situation kept the flock of birds from taking flight.

Of course, the Tiburon only weighed thirty-five tons and its mere nine-meter height marked it as a light BattleMech—a good design, but it could not stand up to a heavy or assault BattleMech. To the shivering flock of nobles, however, it might as well have been a metal god, they had so little experience with BattleMechs. Even the legate of this world (who had “accidentally” been left off of the list of those notified of the incoming vessel) did not ride a ’Mech, but instead commanded the local militia from the open hatch of a vehicle.

The ’Mechs began to move down the ramp, its thundering steps echoing across the landing field. Once more, the steel grip of the first governor stayed the flock, though his control became more tenuous as the monstrous machine towered closer and closer: the thudding of the reaper come to claim his due. Unnoticed, a small hoverjeep moved along in the ’Mech’s shadow, a puppy at the foot of its master.