She wasn’t certain which was more satisfying, the expression of pure shock that washed over Parkins’ face, or his stutter step stride as the infantrymen dragged him off between them. No backbone whatsoever. Glancing around, she saw the stares sent her way and after Parkins. She nodded, satisfied. News of the arrest would travel quickly.
And that would get Jasek’s attention.
3
Sutton Road Memorial Park
Skye
12 September 3134
Rain fell in sheets from a swollen, black sky. Pounding against the temporary roof that spanned the monument’s reception area, it sounded to Tara Campbell like premature applause.
She stood at the back of a small wooden stage next to Prefect Della Brown, Skye’s senior military officer. A clammy wind swirled beneath the covered area, carrying the fecund smells of churned mud and waterlogged wood. The breeze pulled at a few strands of her platinum hair, which Tara ignored, remaining at a respectful parade rest with hands clasped behind her, shoulders back, and body stretching up to her full 152 centimeters.
The monument remained covered, waiting for the Lord Governor to finish his remarks and hand the podium over to her. The assembled trio represented three of the four groups who had stood up for Skye against the recent Jade Falcon assault. She stood for her Highlanders. Brown commanded what was left of the prefecture’s standing army. And Gregory Kelswa-Steiner spoke for the civilians who had taken to the field in the defense of their world.
Missing was a representative of the Steel Wolves, who had gone back into hiding after the battle. Tara still wasn’t certain if that was a good thing or not.
The memorial park sat on a sharp-edged bluff that overlooked Sutton Road and the rain-swollen Thames River and, beyond both, the battlefield where Skye had mounted its desperate defense against Clan Jade Falcon. Reconstruction efforts had not proceeded very far; the land still bore its dark scars. Craters. Blackened earth. A few twisted metal skeletons of ’Mechs and vehicles so badly damaged there was nothing left to salvage. The area would be cleaned up eventually, but right now Tara spent local resources in preparations for the next assault. In fact, if not for the interminable rainfall of a New London winter interrupting one of her more important defensive projects, she might have pushed back this event as well. But she also recognized that people needed closure.
So did she. Someday.
Today, though, was about Skye. Front and center a small contingent of reluctant media representatives recorded the address for later rebroadcast. In the audience wings waited the families of the dead. It was a solemn event, and the polite applause was always—always!—for those who had given up so much. She had been firm about how this would run, and doing it her way had also been required as a means of guaranteeing her presence.
Duke Gregory was nearly finished, she felt. He extolled the virtue and dedication of those brave people who had come forward to help defend their homeland in the face of the Jade Falcon assault.
“Citizens all,” he promised, reminding the newsmen and families present that he had awarded Republic citizenship to the family of any resident who had unselfishly joined Tara Campbell’s ad hoc “Forlorn Hope” detachment. His bearded visage stared down the media cameras. “Hard times call for great sacrifices by great people. These sons and daughters of Skye will be forever remembered for how they stood by our world. Never shirking or turning away from the call of duty. Our children.”
He paused in a respectful silence, and the monument’s veil was pulled away.
There were no BattleMechs immortalized in the bronze piece. No regular army vehicles or battlesuit troops. A screaming raptor hovered in midflight, one wing dragging at the air and the other folded back, as if it had been brought up short while stooping down. Below, citizens of Skye lifted spears, warding off the raptor, while others carried the wounded and dying away from the grasp of the sharp talons.
Understated, but respectful. Tara approved.
“Now,” Duke Gregory said, “I’d like to bring up the woman who helped lead our valiant defense, and has helped ready our world against further attack. Tara Campbell, Countess Northwind.”
Only the driving rain applauded, for which Tara was thankful. She also could have done without the honoraries and titles, but she accepted them, moving forward with a brisk military step and waiting a moment while a few reporters flashed stills of her. Part and parcel of her role as The Republic’s media darling, she knew.
“I will be brief,” she promised, swallowing against the cotton taste of nerves, “because today should be a day of reflection. When I came to Skye, I nearly despaired. Faced with an impossible choice, I asked for volunteers to fill out the ranks of the Himmelsfahrtkommando. These I received.”
These she had watched charge a military line in cars and old jeeps and battered trucks, mounting the smallest of weapons or packing along shoulder-weight short-range-missile launchers. The slaughter had been horrendous, but their action bought the military defenders the time they needed.
“Your Exarch can ask nothing more of you, and neither can I. I hope to say that Skye will ask nothing more from you as well.”
She scanned the collection of faces. Doubtful journalists and sorrowful relatives stared back. And one that did not belong: hard eyes in an aged, weathered face. “While this remains to be seen,” she continued, “we can thank the sacrifice of your fellow citizens for the freedoms you still enjoy today.”
He stood several ranks back, in the break between families and media. Elderly, but with squared shoulders and a gaze that could score ferrosteel. Tara guessed his age at eighty. Perhaps older. He stood just behind a still-camera journalist, whom she saw tear the wrapper off a new disk for his camera.
The journalist tossed the wrapper to the ground.
“It was my honor,” she said in closing, cutting her remarks short, “to serve with these brave men and women.”
She took no questions and the media did not seem interested`in asking any. They would take their video and their stills and sound bites back to the office and decide what to make of the news today. Better than average, she was willing to bet. The Republic was still getting a fair shake in light of Skye’s defense. The calm, temporary eye inside a hurricane.
Duke Gregory thanked the families for attending while Tara stepped down from the stage and approached the man she had spotted in the crowd. A few mourners pressed forward to offer her their hands and take her condolences.
The photojournalist took her proximity as his chance to slip in one cheap shot.
“Countess. Do you find it appropriate to politicize such events as this memorial service?”
Staring over the journalist’s shoulder, she met the gaze of the older man. He had dark eyes and snow-white hair cut very close to his skull. Something familiar nagged at her memory, but she felt certain that she had never met him. He wore a simple, fleece-lined poncho. Warm, and totally appropriate for the wet, winter weather.
“Countess?”
More cameras swung her way, anticipating a reply. Tara had dealt with Skye’s media divisions often enough to know that little good could come from answering. But the man’s crude manners begged a response.
“That is an interesting question,” she said, dragging her gaze back to the journalist, “coming from the man who just littered on the graves of so many citizens of Skye.”
The journalist paled as cameras now turned on him, as well as the basilisk stares of nearby parents, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives—all of whom had lost someone in the battle. Tara leaned forward ever so slightly. The muscles in her shoulders tightened with new tension.
“Pick it up,” she ordered him softly.
He set his chin, and stared blankly ahead. For a moment she thought the man might actually defy her for the sake of his brethren of the press. And he might have, except that the hard-eyed man moved to stand behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Avuncular. Supportive. Then he leaned in to whisper something that Tara did not catch, his mouth hidden behind the journalist’s neck.