The military landing craft arrived as promised. By that time, Erik had bribed a maintenance woman to take them out to meet it in a pressurized buggy. Halfway there, the buggy stopped. The woman driving the little vehicle activated controls extending a manipulator arm, which reached down and grabbed a recessed tie-down lug in the pavement. “Ship taking off,” she explained, pointing at the liner. “Back blast could blow us away like a leaf if we aren’t careful.”
Erik watched, curious. The landing had been more than a shade terrifying, but, with the pitching and odd acceleration, he wasn’t sure how it had been done. The liner was a winged aerodyne—not normally capable of vertical takeoff or landing. Evidently, St. Michael’s low gravity and lack of atmosphere made some unorthodox maneuvering possible.
The ship lifted off on maneuvering thrusters alone, its full power only slightly more than was necessary to get the ship off the apron. Then the nose began to pitch up; as it did, the ship started sliding forward. He tried to imagine the ship doing something like this in reverse, and was just as happy he’d been blissfully unaware of the landing procedure.
As the ship picked up speed, the main drive ignited. True to the maintenance woman’s prediction, the buggy shuddered violently, and actually seemed to slide sideways on its wire-mesh wheels.
The liner shot upward. Even at low throttle, the local gravity could do little to impede the ship’s fusion drive. Erik watched the ship grow smaller against the black sky. “Bye, Elsa,” he said quietly. “It’s been interesting.”
The continent of Ravensglade was located entirely above St. Andre’s arctic circle. It was relentlessly flat, frozen for six months of the year, plagued with gnats for at least four of the rest. Except for gnat season, the wind ripped constantly across the land like an unseen demon, tearing at anything not tied down.
Though the land was flat, it wasn’t level. The whole continent seemed to tilt, almost imperceptibly, like a table with one leg slightly longer than the others. Near sea level, and occasionally lower in the south, the land rose slowly in the north until it met the ocean in a nearly unbroken line of hundred-and-fifty-meter cliffs. It was along the inlets, bays, and narrow beaches below these cliffs that most of the permanent settlements on the continent were located.
The inland wastes were temporary home to miners, prospectors, and oil workers, who scratched what wealth they could out of the land, hurriedly returned to Georama to spend it, then trudged back to Ravensglade to make more. The towns along the coast offered them a few mild vices, a place to pick up supplies, and were ports for the ships and hovercraft that connected the continent with civilization’s more respectable outposts.
It was also above these cliffs where the old Star League had elected to build a base that still stood, a monument to the quality of its engineering, and a magnet for any power attempting to establish military dominion over the region. The Capellan Confederation, the Blakists, House Davion, Devlin Stone—all had fought over it, or occupied it.
The complex was vast, and distributed in a radially symmetrical arrangement of hardened barracks, hangars, landing pads, shops, command centers, and a hospital. All were connected underground by a network of tunnels—some of them big enough to accommodate armor and ’Mechs. Along the east and north sides, vast runways for aerodyne DropShips bordered the grounds.
In the last fifty years, the base had fallen into disuse. It now stood on the plains like a ghost city—a training center for some of St. Andre’s few remaining elite military units, and home to oil companies and miners who appropriated some of the shops and barracks along its north edge.
It seemed, thought Erik Sandoval-Groell as he strode along the perimeter in a newly requisitioned Hatchetman, that battle was to come to the base once again. The place was empty and desolate—the low, fortified buildings as ugly as they were sturdy. In the distance, clusters of oil derricks jutted, and flames emitted from their tops, making them look like black candles as they burned off waste gases. It didn’t look like anything worth fighting for. It didn’t look like anything worth dying for.
Justin Sortek’s smaller Arbalest trotted into his field of vision on the right. “Not much to look at, is it, Commander?”
“No,” he admitted, “it isn’t.”
“See, that’s the problem. Morale is really low right now. We’re on short rations. Plenty of ammo—we brought that with us—but not even enough spare fuel for training maneuvers. So the troops hang around the barracks all day, looking out at this lovely base, and wondering when House Liao is going to drop in with an overwhelming force. To top it all off, the Duke’s sudden departure has started talk among the men that he’s forsaken us, or he’s secretly negotiating a deal with the enemy.”
Erik again felt a knot in his chest, both at the mention of his uncle, and at the memory of his own brush with betrayal.
“It’s especially hard on my men and women in the Davion Guard. Our entire ethos is built on the idea of the worthy prince—great leaders who can in turn inspire us to greatness. Many of us believed Duke Sandoval could be such a leader, that he could help us fight for the greater glory of Davion.”
“Do you still believe that?”
“From what you’ve told me, the Duke has not forsaken us. I find it interesting, however, that I had to infer that from your reports. You’ve never explicitly said so.”
Erik was quiet for a moment. He steered his ’Mech onto a taxiway running parallel to the north-south runway, and opened up the throttle. There weren’t many places to enjoy the simple pleasure of taking a ’Mech for an all-out sprint. The Hatchetman wasn’t a fast ’Mech, but it could still do well over sixty kilometers an hour in a dead run.
The Arbalest was faster—this was barely above its cruising speed. Sortek had no trouble keeping up, and Erik certainly couldn’t run away from his inquiries.
The smaller ’Mech easily sprinted in front of him. “Look, Commander. People think the Davion Guard is fanatical, but we’re not delusional. The Duke is far from a perfect leader, but he has potential. You know, I’ll let you in on a secret about the nobility. People talk about ‘the divine right of kings.’ That suggests that the nobles are somehow touched by divinity, and therefore are better than the rest of us.”
Erik thought about Aaron’s story about the sword of the First Knight. “Do you believe that?”
He laughed. “Not for a minute. Yet I don’t entirely disbelieve it, either. I know that sounds contradictory, but let’s put it this way: I believe in the divinity part of things—that some people act as conduits to a higher power. It isn’t the frail humans, noble or otherwise, who possess that divine spark. They only carry it, channel it. And being only human, sometimes they lose their way—betray the divinity they carry.
“But that doesn’t mean the light of divinity is gone. It always exists, and we are simply seekers of that light. It’s possible that Duke Sandoval carries it. I think he might.”
“But if he doesn’t?”
“Our allegiances could change, as they did when my father declared his loyalty to Devlin Stone. But our loyalty never changes, Commander. It’s the men and women we follow who sometimes lose their way—or find it.
“You’re a Sandoval, Commander, of noble blood, with your roots deep in House Davion. That means something to these troops. They know, as do I, that the light is always there. It is exclusive to no man, certainly not the Duke. It might flow through you as well. Know that if you are worthy, we will follow.”
“What are you saying?”
“The Duke may return, but he isn’t here today. You are. Liao forces are massing on the north coast of Georama. We know they’re coming. We need you to lead us to victory—or at least to glorious death.”