There was a gloomy, extended silence. Finally, Lexa said, “Maybe we won’t have to fight.”
“Do you really think that?” Will asked.
Lexa shook her head. “No. Just because we got lucky and beat the Wolf-Bitch to Terra doesn’t mean that she isn’t coming.”
“Maybe she won’t show up until after the ground’s dried out again,” Jock said.
“Forget it,” Lexa told him. “Nobody ever gets that lucky. Will’s right. We’re going to end up fighting for honor, glory, and the dream of Devlin Stone in mud that comes up to our armpits.”
“Your armpits, maybe,” said Jock.
“Don’t laugh,” she told him. “You’ll just stick up higher and make a bigger target.”
Jock said, “Why are we camped out here in the middle of nowhere, anyway? What’s going on?”
“Who knows?” Will said. “What I heard was that the Exarch summoned the Countess straight to Geneva as soon as he found out that our ships were in-system. And we’re damned lucky they let us set down here instead of making us stay penned up on the DropShips somewhere in orbit.”
“Makes me feel all unloved and untrusted, it does,” said Lexa.
“Aye,” said Jock. “We’re the ones who did the bleeding and the dying back on Northwind, and we’re the ones who’ve come here to do it all over again.”
“So you’d think we’d at least get a hug and a smile,” Lexa said, “instead of being treated like everybody expects us to steal all of their silver spoons.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Will advised her. “We’re not doing this for anybody’s gratitude—”
“Damn good thing, since we’re seeing so little of it.”
“We’re doing it because this is what we do.” He paused. “And while you’re at it—pray for a late spring.”
20
Office of the Exarch
Geneva, Terra
Prefecture X
March 3134; local winter
Tara Campbell took the shuttle-hop from Belgorod DropPort as soon as the ships from Northwind touched down, only taking enough time to put on her dress uniform in place of the fatigues she had worn on shipboard. She spent the brief journey from Belgorod to Geneva in a state of tightly restrained impatience that only her years of diplomatic training enabled her to hide.
She had found the reception of her message from space, sent while en route from the Terran jump point, to be galling beyond belief. The Exarch had all but denied her the permission to land her forces. If she hadn’t demanded to know outright whether the Terran defense forces were planning to treat her as an enemy or as a friend, she suspected that she might actually have been denied permission.
It was bad enough that the Exarch and the Knights of the Sphere, with the Senate’s agreement and backing, had required the Highlanders to make their camp out on the godforsaken plains of old Russia, and not at one of Terra’s regular military bases. It was bad enough that she herself had been issued a peremptory summons to a conference with the Exarch, as if she were a truant schoolgirl called into the headmaster’s office for a reprimand. But the worst thing… she’d believed during the journey from Northwind that the worst possible thing that could happen would be arriving too late, so that she found Geneva and Paris and London dealt with as the city of Tara had been dealt with, and Anastasia Kerensky in charge of it all.
She’d been wrong. This was worse: Arriving ahead of the bad news and having to fight to be believed.
Tara caught herself. That was nothing but her own ego talking. An upset and embarrassed Prefect—or even a Countess—was nothing at all by comparison with what the Steel Wolves had already done on Northwind, and what they stood poised to do all over again right here if nobody tried to stop them.
On the other hand, she thought bitterly, if I can’t get the Exarch and the Senate to listen to me, and to believe, what happens next will be worse than getting here too late. Because then I’ll have to watch, and know that I could have been able to stop it.
She took a hoverlimo from the Geneva shuttle port to the building where Damien Redburn had his working office. The building wasn’t a famous landmark or an architectural prizewinner, just a many-storied box of steel and glass that housed the administrative personnel for a number of The Republic’s bureaucracies. In the days before the collapse of the HPG network—when travel to Geneva had been much simpler and more common than now—Tara had often heard it referred to jokingly as the Paperwork Palace.
One thing her rank was still good for—when she got out of the hoverlimo at the Palace’s front entrance, she was recognized and admitted at once. She took the elevator straight up to Redburn’s office. The office occupied a suite of rooms on a floor only accessible by means of a key-card, and the palace doorman summoned a member of the service staff to work the key and escort her upward as soon as she walked through the door.
The administrative assistant in Redburn’s outer office passed her through without a word. That was a bad sign, if the woman wasn’t trying even a little to ingratiate herself. It was still better than if Tara had been put on hold in the waiting area and left to contemplate her sins for long enough to feel properly insignificant.
Not yet cast into the outer darkness, Tara thought. I suppose that’s something.
Redburn was at his desk when she came in. He’d been working—she saw paper and folders and a data pad—but the work had all been laid aside before she entered. He gestured her to a seat in the room’s other chair, and she sat down.
“You’re prompt,” he said.
“The message said, ‘at my earliest convenience.’ So I came at once.”
Redburn regarded her across the desk, looking even more like the headmaster getting ready to ask who put the fluorescent purple dye in all the washing machines in the south wing.
It wasn’t me, honest, she thought, with a touch of silent hysteria. And I’ve got the purple underwear to prove it.
“Tell me about the situation on Northwind,” Redburn said. “I know that, with Paladin Crow’s help, you repulsed the Steel Wolves when they attacked last summer—”
“Yes.” She wanted to protest that the credit for the Steel Wolves’ earlier defeat belonged more to General Michael Griffin than to Ezekiel Crow. Taking on Anastasia Kerensky ’Mech-to– ’Mech, as Crow had done, was the sort of spectacular action that news reporters loved, but Michael Griffin had held Red Ledge Pass for thirty-six hours with nothing but untried infantry—and as a soldier she knew which feat counted for more in the scales of battle. Instead, she forced herself to concentrate on the issue at hand. “The documents that I’ve provided you with deal with events that occurred during the Wolves’ second, more recent attack.”
The Exarch regarded her, stone-faced. “No such documents have come to this office.”
“But—” She stopped and began again. “I sent a messenger. Because I knew that assembling a relief force would take time. And the warning was important.”
Redburn shook his head. “There has been no messenger. And Paladin Ezekiel Crow tells a story far different from the one you told us in your message from the DropShip.”
Tara felt a slow, rolling queasiness in the pit of her stomach. This was bad. This was worse than bad. She had been betrayed not once, it looked like, but twice.
“What, exactly, did he say?”
Redburn’s expression was grave, almost sorrowful. “According to Paladin Crow, you were defeated by Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves, and sued for peace.”