And a bright white-hot flare, like a tiny sun, drifting along the same entrance vector.

“Coming in awfully close to us.” Julian reached for a switch on the comms panel. “I’m surprised Streng is allowing that.” Riccard Streng, Harrison’s spy master, usually concerned himself with security service demands as well.

Harrison caught his wrist in a large, strong hand. “No need to bother Riccard.” He nodded at the drive flare of bright, eye-searing fusion flame. “That’s ours.”

Julian looked askance at his uncle. “The Ribald Song? Came after us from New Hessen?” Except for a lance of damaged vehicles, the only other thing aboard the Song had been salvage from the Hiritsu left-behinds.

“Not exactly. No. I sent the Song back to New Avalon. That would be the Markeson Pride.”

Julian leaned back, staring at his prince with a certain amount of caution. “That is a DropShip from the First Davion Guards.” Julian’s honorary command.

“Yes. I believe so.”

And it trailed along with the prince through Republic space? With no hint of its presence? Harrison’s calm, confident gaze told Julian that the prince was neither reckless nor witless. But an answer certainly escaped the champion. “Should I know what the Pride is doing here, dropping onto Terra?” he asked carefully.

Harrison simply raised pipe to lips and puffed more cherry-blossom tobacco over his private bridge. “I believe you should,” he said.

Secrets were indeed a game for princes.

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

8 April 3135

Jonah Levin stood in the window alcove behind his massive desk, waiting on the arrival of ComStar’s First Precentor. Hands clasped behind his back. Shoulders braced up. Swallowing dryly as he stared down at the tent city that had claimed Magnum Park for the past two weeks.

Today, one way or another, it ended.

From this height the people were not much larger than ants come to a picnic. A dangerous view; better if he could be down among them. Talking to those he ruled, as he might have tried to do only four months before when he had been a paladin, and not exarch. Perhaps he’d have tried it anyway. Today, even, if not for the new security concerns.

Reaching out, he traced a circle on the cold, smooth glass around a flaw chipped against the outside. In a vehicle windshield, it would have looked like a rock chip. But he knew it for what it was. He’d been standing here two days ago when it happened, after all. And Jonah had seen bullet scores against cockpit shields enough times to recognize this one.

Someone had tried to kill him. Again.

A shot from the trees, half a kilometer away. One hell of a shot, really. The assassin hidden among the press of demonstrators, protected in his escape by the inability of Jonah’s people to secure a perimeter. How did one contain a mob thirty thousand bodies strong?

Very, very carefully.

“Come on. Here I am again.” He looked out over the formerly peaceful expanse. “Take your best shot.”

Nothing. So Jonah relaxed, and watched over the preparations as Geneva’s public security force took their places at several strong positions around the park. Platoon-sized units with their backs against the capitol building, against the Terran Archive Center across the way, against one of the many forested stands making up the park’s famous walk of the Trees from Every World. They wore black riot-squad uniforms and full-body shields. Carried water cannon. Tear gas canisters and rubber-coated billy clubs hung from their belts. It didn’t take much to imagine tomorrow’s headlines.

Exarch’s Stormtroopers.

The Battle for Magnum.

It was all coming apart at the seams. The Republic. Devlin Stone’s dream. A solution had to be found to patch things back together, if it was not already too late.

“It’s not going to be easy,” a powerful, deep voice shattered the silence, “what you have to do.”

Jonah had left the door to his office open, but still the sudden arrival of Brian May startled him. Steeling himself against any show of nerves, the exarch glanced back over his shoulder as if merely checking the time of day.

First Precentor May stood next to Jonah’s chief of staff and all-around majordomo, Héloïse Montgolfier. Two people could not have looked more different, regardless of the difference in sex. Héloïse’s red hair was bobbed just beneath her ears in a sensible cut that needed little attention. Her pale green eyes and milky complexion always left Jonah believing the woman needed more time in the sun. She dressed conservatively in a dark blue pantsuit and red choker scarf, and wore a minimum of jewelry. Gold studs in her ears, and the engagement ring her fiancé had given her just last week. Subtle. Nonconfrontational.

Political.

And for a man who moved so silently, almost eerily so, Brian May made quite the opposite impression. Pushing seventy years of age, there was nothing frail about the second-most powerful member of ComStar’s organization. Two meters tall if a centimeter, he towered over Héloïse. Built like a BattleMech with his broad shoulders and a thick, muscular neck, his dark skin was only a few polishes short of flawless ebony. Iron gray shot through his dark hair, worn long and braided, with the braids pulled back into a thick ponytail. He dressed in the voluminous white robes once so common to ComStar and recently coming back into favor. His were embroidered with a gold brocade that twisted around the hem and up the lapel in arcane mathematical symbols.

First Precentor May stepped further into the office and Héloïse closed the heavy wooden door behind them.

“Not much is easy, these days,” Jonah said by way of greeting.

“There is no other way?” the ComStar representative asked.

Jonah left his window alcove, coming around his desk to shake hands with May. The man had a firm, encompassing grip. “That depends on what news you’ve brought me. Not to put too fanciful a spin on this, Precentor May, but I’m desperately looking for a silver bullet. Something that can kill the monster quickly and completely before it devours The Republic entire.”

Héloïse gestured the first precentor to a seat on the leather-wrapped divan. She continued to stand while the exarch took a seat across from May on one of the office’s two chairs. “The Senate refuses to budge,” she said. “Some on ideological grounds. Others because they sense the opportunity to gather power. Not even the paladins have had any luck bringing pressure to bear.”

“I read a dispatch yester-week. Senator Therese Ptolomeny suffered a no-confidence vote by the people of Park Place.”

Jonah frowned darkly at the reminder. “It was a narrow margin. And the world governor, under direct order from the Senate, has refused to acknowledge it. If I want to make it stick, I’ll have to order the Seventh Hastati Sentinels off the front lines with Liao and send them home.”

Héloïse shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Obviously the exarch does not want to do that.”

“Obviously,” May agreed. “And you cannot arrest Ptolomeny herself.”