“Are we ready?” the man asked.

“I could ask you the same thing.” And in a way, he had. But the VTOL pilot merely waited with the patience of stone. “We have preliminary approvals for launch. The Patriot’s captain is waiting my ‘go’ to request finals.”

“Good. You will have a lift crane bring aboard my Brightstar, please.”

A very polite order, but an order nonetheless. Erik bristled, but quickly regained control of himself. He looked north, at the city lights of Annemasse glowing against an overcast sky, and wondered about nearby Geneva as well. He was leaving Terra, and he doubted—very much doubted—that he would ever return here to mankind’s birthworld. Aaron had let enough slip from his meeting with Julian Davion, and plans being set into motion with the Swordsworn, that he recognized how quickly things were coming to a head within The Republic. For better or worse. Successful or not. The wheels were in motion.

And to get a jump on his uncle’s plans, maybe steal a march altogether, Erik was leaving now. On the eve of the services for Victor Steiner-Davion. An event he was slightly sorry to be missing.

“You are sure that it will happen tomorrow? No chance of error?”

“Were you able to get the lord governor off St. Andre before the walls fell?” the other man asked. “We do not deal in bad information.”

Fitting, then. Aaron had once left him in the path of an assault sponsored by the lord governor. It had nearly cost Erik his life. Learn or die—that seemed to be one of Aaron’s favorite training tools. Now Erik would see how his uncle’s luck held up.

Also, in the likely chaos of martial law to follow, Erik would be already off planet, in the position to do something. He wasn’t about to lose out on the opportunities.

“After you, then,” Erik said, waving the older man up the ramp.

A flat gaze stared back impassively. He wasn’t turning his back on Erik. Not even for a moment. “I insist,” the man said, nodding Erik ahead.

Erik shrugged his indifference, laughing inside the entire time. They all thought they knew him. They all underestimated him. But Erik recognized when he was safe, and when he tread on dangerous ground. Hard lessons, and ones he would never forget. And when the time came, he’d show them all how much he’d learned. Turning, he walked back up the ramp, hearing his new “friend” following at a careful pace behind him.

He never looked back again at Terra.

Not once.

Conner led his column out of Siegberg just after twilight, on the cusp of dark. His Rifleman set the pace at a steady forty kilometers per hour, swaying back and forth as its long-barreled arms pivoted first left, then right. Always searching for a target, it seemed.

Not so soon, though. Not anywhere within several hours march, and hopefully a great deal further than that.

He dialed the coolant in his vest down to minimum, and spent several kilometers working kinks out of his neck as he loosened up under the weight of his bulky neurohelmet. His short columns crossed the Rhein at Bonn, and were joined by Cray Stansill’s veterans from the Tenth Hastati. In the next hour, through Duren and Aachen, Conner added the Essen Mobile Infantry force and a company of armored vehicles from Senator Vladistock’s Honor Guard.

A full battalion crossed the border into Belgium just before midnight.

Controlling Belgium would be the key to the loyalists’ success. For this and this alone, Michael Riktofven had been an invaluable aid. The man owned most of the politicians and half of the officer corps who routinely trained in the Ardennes. With his help, the remaining senators on planet had shifted men and materiel into the area, hidden from the exarch’s ever-watchful spies.

They hoped.

“Tomorrow they gather to say goodbye to Victor.”

Conner’s whisper was loud in his own ears, trapped by the neurohelmet. He had his voice mic toggled off, but some things were just meant to be whispered.

“All of them, gathered in Paris. Vincent Kurita. Harrison Davion. The exarch!”

The plan was fairly simple. Seize the city, and the Republic Cathedral. Avoid the need to barter hostages back to their own realms. Everyone was in place to air grievances and make long-term decisions. If they would recognize the Senate nobility, see that Exarch Levin was using his power to strip away centuries of noble authority—

They would still be under duress and unlikely to do much more than scatter to the winds at the first opportunity, Conner knew.

But dammit! They had to try. They had to show the excess to which Exarch Levin would move, and the danger of a divided Republic. This was no longer about Geoffrey Mallowes, and whatever dark hole into which Levin had thrown the Skye senator. No longer about the supposed assassination of Victor Davion, or the small cabal of nobles who had tried to support their own cause.

This was not even about Conner’s father. It wasn’t!

It was about leadership, and the just use of power, and who was best suited to hold those reins. Which had been, and always would be, the nobles.

Yes?

Watching the clock count up toward local midnight, Conner knew that now was the wrong time to be questioning their course of action. It was too late. In the next hour, small riots would break out across Belgium, France and Switzerland. Civilian organizations such as the Stone’s Legacy movement and even some remnants of the Kittery Renaissance would provide lots of energetic chaff.

Meanwhile, loyalist forces in the Belgium militia would seize resources and create a military screen under which the stronger military units Conner needed would rendezvous and strike, hard, down into France. The exarch’s Maginot Line of field camps would collapse back into the interior of the country, ready to meet them, but it would be too late. They would be too far out of position. And Conner had some fast-insertion forces prepared to strike ahead of his main line as well.

“This is it, Father. Where else do people go when they can’t trust normal channels to address their grievances? When they believe their government has failed them?”

They take it into their own hands.

For better. Or for worse.

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

1 June 3135

Tara Campbell considered it one of the great injustices of the day (for there would be several) that by some stretch of bureaucratic reasoning, which listed the various political contingents by nationality rather than by name, the Davions and Steiners—the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth–were seated several dozen rows back from the front of the Cathedral’s chapel. About the middle to the back of the forward section, well behind the pews for immediate family.

Also that “Campbell” seated her near the front, next to “Capellan Confederation.”

She’d already had the dubious pleasure of meeting Daoshen Liao at the Exarch’s Grand Ball, and spending time in his presence this morning during the final, preservice viewing. Now, watching him shuffle down the aisle ahead of her, wearing robes the color of arterial blood chased with heavy gold brocade and decorated with a crouched tiger on the back, made her want to chuck something large and heavy in his direction. Like an Atlas. Instead, she slid along to the outside edge of a pew and trained her mind on the magnificent room instead of the malevolent Liao.