“Yes, sire.” Julian braced up to attention. He was never too old to feel properly scolded by his prince, it seemed. “And now it’s my job to carry out those orders. I understand.”

He turned to leave, but Harrison held fast onto his arm. “Not yet, son. But you will. Get used to it. You need to learn how to make it happen. As… a leader.”

Julian felt something cold and heavy settle into his guts. Down deep. Something had passed between Harrison and himself, far more serious than the promise of coming battle. Both of them knew that the prince had stopped one step short of something momentous. Harrison, by the way he suddenly recoiled, as if having moved a step too far, too soon. Julian, when he nearly stumbled away from his prince as Harrison Davion released him.

Harrison retook a seat at the end of the pew. Julian looked past his uncle, and lord. Saw Caleb watching him with a hooded gaze. Saw Sandra Fenlon, watching with a desperate one.

As… a leader.

First, though, as a warrior. Prince’s champion. Julian collected himself, and paced up the aisle toward the Cathedral’s main doors. The gazes of hundreds turned to follow him, just as they also found other officers and knights and paladins making their way from the service. No one asked the question. No one shouted warnings or started a panic.

But Callandre Kell stuck a foot out into the aisle, nearly tripping him.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She had dressed down in a black pants suit with a silver scarf knotted at her throat. Her hair was conservatively coiffed today, without colored highlights or wild styling. But there was nothing soft in her hissed words.

“As it turns out,” he said, “I have a… previous arrangement.” And because there was no one else. And because there was no time to delay. He made it happen. “Guard my back?” he asked.

She smiled. And it was pure Calamity. “You got it.”

He stepped past, and felt her slip from her seat to follow.

Services were over.

Outside, things were just beginning to heat up.

Aerospace fighters streaked overhead in squadrons, tearing down out of the gray canopy, thundering through the skies over Paris. Julian recognized Stingray s, with their distinctive swept-wing design, and following them a squadron of flying wings that had to be either Chippewas or Rievers—assault fighters.

It made the line of VTOLs, crowded along the Rue d’Égalité, so much less appealing. Better, he decided, that the paladins seemed intent on the fragile aircraft.

Most of the regular line officers present were being herded onto APCs by infantry in Cavalier battle armor. Julian and Callandre joined one of the queues, keeping a wary eye on the skies. And were quickly yanked out of line by Countess Tara Campbell.

“Not for you,” she said, pointing Julian toward a Fox armored car instead. “Those APCs are heading for an underground garage.”

“Where you have an armored column waiting?”

“Where those men and women will be safe.” She smiled grimly. “The knights and paladins had to show in person. But do you really think Exarch Levin gutted our officer corps for the services? Those are technicians and administrative personnel, Julian. Now if you’ll excuse me.” She had caught an impatient wave by Paladin Sinclair, who stood next to a VTOL. “Luck,” she said.

Tara jogged away and Julian nodded Callandre toward the Fox. She recoiled in distaste. “That tin can? Are you kidding?” She grabbed him by the arm to drag him over to a nearby pair of grounded hovercycles. Escorts.

Jumping onto the cradle-seat, she scooted forward. Reaching under the lip of a protective cowling, she dug out a small nest of wires, sorted three of them out, and used her teeth to bite through and strip away the thin insulation. She spit the plastic to one side. “Where are we going?” she asked.

Julian hesitated. “There’s more armor on a Fox.”

“And it’s a bigger target. I’ll get us there faster, and probably alive.” Twisting the three wires together, she then thumbed the ignition stud and the cycle’s lift fans howled to life. She whipped the silver scarf off her neck and tied it bandit-style over her hair, letting the ends trail behind. “Where are we going?”

“Meaux,” Julian said, resigned.

He climbed on behind her, and had barely put hands on her waist when she leaned down and applied full acceleration, jumping the cycle forward and slewing down the wide avenue. The hovercraft barely missed a parked Anat APC and skirted dangerously close to a few lifting VTOLs. They pushed through a backwash of thundering sound and flying grit.

“Don’t do that again,” Julian shouted near Calamity’s shoulder.

She looked back for several long seconds, taking her eyes off the road ahead. “No promises.”

Terra

Republic of the Sphere

1 June 3135

Further than Conner Rhys-Monroe thought to get. Not as far as he’d wanted.

The Republic made its first stand as loyalist forces moved south of the Aisne River, near Soissons. A combined column of armored vehicles and two modified AgroMechs slowed his point of the three-prong advance by nearly twenty minutes, sniping at his flanks, pushing him south and east.

They held strong defensive positions inside thick woods, and moved nearly as fast as his people did through open terrain, which at first made him believe that there was a stronger force set against him. It wasn’t until a flyover by two Transgressor aerospace fighters that he found out about the hidden trails cut in obvious preparation of his assault. That he realized how weak the defenders had to be, and sent his skirmishers in to pin them down.

Now he waded his Rifleman in alongside a Pack Hunter and two Scimitar fast-strike hovercraft. One AgroMech was already toppled over, struggling to rise under the Scimitars’ overlapping missile strikes. The second anchored a short line of M1 Marksman and a single Regulator.

The Regulator’s gauss rifle worried Conner most, and he trained both of his rotary autocannon against its low-profile silhouette. Pulling into his triggers, he sent several hundred rounds of hot fifty-caliber metal into the hovercraft, chewing deep into armor and the backside of its crew compartment.

The turret swung over, but late. A single silvery blur and a hard-hitting shove against Conner’s left side as the nickelferrous slug crushed into his BattleMech’s shoulder. He heard the sickening crunch of shattered armor even through the cockpit’s sound suppression.

But one shot was all the Regulator would get.

Conner’s autocannon fire hammered at the fusion reactor’s physical shielding. He held down the triggers too long, and one of his autocannon suddenly fell silent under an ammunition jam. His second RAC, however, managed to finish off the Regulator. Golden fire burst through several deep rents and carved its way through the crew compartment. The fusion reaction expanded, gobbling up all the fuel it could find. Flesh, composite, metal—didn’t matter.

The force of the explosion tore the turret off the tank and flipped it into the side of a Marksman, crushing its missile launcher and cracking wide gaps into the armor plating. A squad of Infiltrators swarmed up the Marksman’s side and thrust arm-mounted lasers into those gaps, filling the inside of the tank with lethal energy.