Her Highlanders, companions and kin, were bleeding and dying in Prefecture IX. Her home world of Northwind was still recovering from the Steel Wolf assault, and now a pro-Kurita voice was rallying new trouble back home and she had not resources with which to meet it. And the man Tara had pledged herself to, regardless of choosing to turn down a paladinship, had vacated the office, leaving her basing this decision on the bare bones of a friendship she’d started with one of the more outspoken paladins. A man with whose politics she didn’t necessarily agree.

But could she help? It wasn’t much to ask, was it, circumventing the usual protocols and acting outside of her chain of command as well as all social formalities?

Tara sighed, having made her decision the moment she boarded a DropShip to answer the exarch’s summons.

“I didn’t come all this way to stand back and watch,” she assured him.

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

27 March 3135

At barely more than idle, Tara Campbell’s chauffeured sedan crawled through the hordes swarming Magnum Park and the surrounding streets. Hardly a stretch of grass was to be seen among the thousands of protestors who spread blankets and opened up camping chairs, or even swung sitting hammocks from lower branches of the famous Trees of Every World. Curbs were long, low benches and refuse cans were filled to overflowing. Not even the luxury sedan’s formidable air conditioning could strip the air of its taint of sticky sweat and garbage.

“Two parts civil disobedience and one part street fair,” the countess said to Paladin Gareth Sinclair.

Sinclair shared the leather bench seat with her in the rear of the car, constantly twisting in his seat to keep an eye in every direction. She wished he’d relax.

She wished more that Heather GioAvanti had been available, knowing the veteran paladin to be a woman of great resources. But after the action on Marduk, Heather had been sidetracked by growing unrest in Prefecture III. All thanks to the rabble-rousing and outright call-to-arms of Katana Tormark, who seemed determined to throw to the winds everything the two women had once seemed to share—loyalty and dedication to The Republic being first among them.

“We’re slowly building up the military presence inside the Hall of Government,” Gareth told her. “To contain any violence.”

Tara nodded. “Hopefully, we’ll head that off before it begins.”

There were no signs of a burgeoning riot. Not the kind Geneva saw only a few months before with the Kittery Renaissance putting armed soldiers in the street. The nobles had either learned from that lesson, or simply believed in more subtle methods. People power, for example.

Quite a bit of it, in fact.

Outside the car, under a strong spring sun, there were the usual people wearing sandwich boards or waving placards overhead. A hundred different slogans, although a simple red-on-whiteNOBLE VICTORY! dominated among those Tara bothered to read.

Talented and not-so-talented troupes staged skits and performance art. Her favorites, in a sour sense of humor, were the men and women dressed up as paladins—white jumpsuits with gold braiding that fairly approximated the uniform Gareth wore—who led around others in noblelike robes by chains clipped to their noses. The paladin impersonators were often walking caricatures of the real people. Crippled old men with blinders on to represent David McKinnon and his like. Strident women with a great deal of leather and spiked collars, giving off an attack-dog air. Dwarves with Napolean hats and whips: small taskmasters, meant to be a walking insult to the memory of Victor Steiner-Davion.

Those were the cruelest of the lot, in Tara’s opinion. Free speech be damned.

Especially in the shadow of Geneva’s Hall of Government, where the exarch and the paladins had worked so hard over so many decades to maintain peace throughout The Republic. Now, if the exarch cared to look down from his formal office, he’d see his capital under siege from an instant tent city.

Only up close could one see the organization behind the brute-force affront. Well-supplied vendors hawking hotdogs and kabobs, nutrition bars and fresh fruit at megamart prices. Some people had brought their own portable grills, and were busy charring burgers over open flames to feed long lines as quickly as possible, for free. And in any direction one cared to look, crates of bottled water were hand-carried and given out for free.

“It’s a mess,” Gareth declared, looking only at the surface.

“A very deliberate, very well-organized mess.” Tara pointed out the water delivery. Also the men and women carrying loudspeakers who managed to disappear into a crowd at any sign of a uniformed policeman or soldier. “No wonder it’s been so hard to meet with Conner Rhys-Monroe. This must have taken weeks to organize.”

Easily. Gareth had already told Tara about the large demonstration he had arranged on the Senate mall. The logistics it had required, and the thousands of man-hours. But if that effort had been the military equivalent of a tactical strike, what Conner and his Senate friends pulled together amounted to a full-on invasion.

By the hundreds and thousands people converged on Geneva. By DropShip and ballistic shuttle, carrier planes, trains, bus and car. There wasn’t a spare hotel room, campsite or apartment for a hundred kilometers. The paltry thousand-count mob Gareth had whipped together in support of Heather GioAvanti’s plan to bring the senators to heel was swept aside like sand before the tide.

Of course, Tara had tried to meet with the rogue knight. After several attempts, she had abandoned her formal requests and instead spent time visiting the few nearby military bases, currently suffering a crisis of confidence. Public outcry was one thing, but when service members of high and low rank began to openly debate policy, trouble followed. Putting out fires and reinforcing her base of popular support in order to strengthen the exarch’s position had become her first and second priorities.

Especially since Conner’s “legend” as a maverick was both well known and well loved by the people of Terra.

“There are the news vans,” Gareth said. He pointed out a small line of paneled hovervans behind a row of canteen vehicles. “We’re close.”

“Around that line and into the midst of the hounds, then,” Tara told her driver. “Gareth, stay in the vehicle.”

“Why?”

“You and Conner have history. Good and bad, now. I don’t need that in my way.”

Gareth’s natural urge may have been to argue, but the paladin obviously knew good sense when he heard it. He nodded a quick affirmative to her plan. Just in time, as the sedan rocked to a halt in front of a recording news crew. He leaned back, evading the camera angle as Tara popped open her own door, and she was loose among the pack.

Her sedan couldn’t help attracting the attention of anyone with an eye for news. The flag of Northwind fluttered over the left fender, a privilege of rank for any noble of that world, and the three gold sunbursts stitched along the flag’s lower edge promised a person of count’s rank. Over the right fender flew the ensign of The Republic, marked below with a single star. A general’s star. Her equivalent rank as commander of the Highlanders.

It got her noticed.

Strobes flashed and lenses swung her direction even before she exited the car. As if attending a gala event, Tara hung on the door for an extra second. There were no waves to invisible friends or side-turn poses to show off her couture. Today, she wore a simple Highlander’s uniform that merely modified The Republic’s standard with a red braid around the right shoulder and a swatch of Clan Campbell tartan from left shoulder to right hip.