[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.If the leader of the Stormhammers ever returned from Chaffee.“Where is Jasek, anyway?” she asked, forcing the conversation over to practical matters.Kerensky pursed her lips.“He sent us ahead almost as soon as he accepted the Jade Falcons’ formal surrender.We had to repair and refit en route.By the time we jumped from Chaffee, he was repairing what units he could from the salvage and stores left behind by the garrison, and after our share.” She shrugged.“Quite honestly, I expected him only a few days behind us.He must have been caught up with something.”“And Star Colonel Helmer? What of him?”Now it was Kerensky’s turn to frown.No doubt she thought that her report, transmitted ahead of her arrival, had covered that.“Helmer jumped out of the Chaffee system three hours ahead of us.I would assume to return to Glengarry.”Tara let Kerensky stew in her assumption a moment.It was a petty revenge, perhaps, for her earlier goading about Jasek, but it would also serve to put the other woman on the defensive, turning her strategic thinking toward the larger problems at hand.“You would assume that.So would I, in fact.But we have intelligence out of the Glengarry system that is less than a week old, and as far as we can tell no retreating forces from Chaffee have arrived there.” She leaned back against her Shandra.“So the big question is, where did they go?”If one thing could be said about Anastasia Kerensky, it was that no one put her on the defensive for very long.She waved a hand at Tara.“That’s still a little question,” she said dismissively.All right.“So what is the big question, then?”Anastasia Kerensky’s smile widened into a predator’s grin, showing the teeth behind.The question, when she asked it, sent a chill through Tara Campbell.The Countess knew that the Steel Wolf leader had the right of it.She also knew, without a doubt, that they were fortunate to have her back on Skye.Tassa Kay blew on her fingertips, flexed the hand like a gunfighter preparing for a speed draw.“When will they be here?”22DropShip HimmelstorOver Hesperus IILyran Commonwealth22 November 3134Refusing with a sharp shake of his head to leave the bridge of the Himmelstor, Jasek weathered Kaptain Goran’s pointed stare and belted himself into the chair normally reserved for the ship’s executive officer.The DropShip’s command center was a beehive of activity as they approached atmospheric insertion over Hesperus II, with crewmen manning the different stations, calling out time checks, attitude adjustments, and range to target on a contact that Jasek would feel better forgetting was even there.“And I can’t convince you to go below,” the kaptain said, his voice rough and gravelly from decades of calling out orders.Thick-necked and heavy-browed, Eduard Goran was a fourth-generation spacer with family ties back to the Lyran Commonwealth.Jasek gripped the arms of the command-style chair.“I will if you will,” he said easily.The Stormhammers’ leader had had enough of “below” after four days under a high-gravity burn, ramping up and holding at the equivalent of 2.5 Gs.Except for short low-gravity periods where a skeleton crew made their rounds and everyone was allowed to eat or take care of personal ablutions, Jasek had been confined to quarters and strapped into bed, feeling as if his spine were threatening to snap in half.Hammered until his joints ached and every muscle felt bruised.A “suicide sled” run, that’s what Goran had called it when Hesperus authorities approved Jasek’s request for a fast insertion lane.A Lyran Scout jumped the Himmelstor to a special Lagrange point in-system, near Hesperus III.Then the trial began.After barely an hour of the rough treatment, Jasek could think of it only as a necessary evil.Even with his personal JumpShip fitted out with lithium-fusion batteries, able to make the double-jump transfer from Chaffee’s Lagrange point to the Hesperus system in less than a day, this was the only way he hoped to get in and out fast enough to do Skye any good.Using a closer set of nonstandard jump coordinates was out of the question.Jasek had been willing to risk it—anything to save himself the eighteen-day insertion time—but Goran had flat refused.There were things worse than a deep gravity well protecting Hesperus II from unwanted trespassers.And thinking of which… “She’s going to come down our port ventral side,” the ship’s sensor officer called out, and if it was possible to ratchet tension on the bridge up another few degrees, that did it.Goran grunted.“Roll five degrees starboard.Bring her up on the main screen.”There was no ferroglass viewport on an Overlord bridge.No “weather deck” bulkheads at all, in fact.The command center was nestled safely and securely in the DropShip’s centerline spaces where only a naval-class missile might hope to penetrate.And if there hadn’t currently been a half dozen launchers capable of throwing such a missile at the Himmelstor already locked on to them, Jasek might have felt fairly safe.The screen, which had been filled with black space and bright stars a moment before, switched camera angles and found the fast-approaching world of Hesperus II.Duncolored with streaks of dark brown, the planetary surface had a craggy, unfinished look about it with very little vegetation to soften the knife-edged mountains that divided the main continents.Jasek knew that with mean equatorial temperatures up to eighty degrees Celsius, the world was habitable only in the far northern reaches, and most of the population preferred to live under atmospherically controlled domes.He knew a lot, in fact, about this world he had never visited.Hesperus II was a storied world in the Lyran Commonwealth.One of perhaps twelve worlds about which legend had it that if you knew their history you knew nearly everything important to know about the Inner Sphere.It was here that House Steiner learned of BattleMech designs when an ancient ancestor of Jasek’s, Simon Kelswa, raided the Terran Hegemony world in 2445.Hesperus II eventually became a Lyran holding, and was attacked more than fifteen times in major assaults by Houses Kurita, Marik, even Davion.But the world never gave up its allegiance or its secrets again.The ’Mech factories, so important during the Succession Wars and the Jihad, were built beneath the Myoo Mountains and essentially impenetrable to an outside force.Even in this time of downsized militaries coming off a golden age of peace, the factories at Hesperus II continued to turn out ’Mechs at a pace that most other worlds considered reckless.And this was one of the reasons for Jasek’s hastily planned visit.“The Myoos,” Kaptain Goran said, using a laser pointer to scribe a fast circle around a particularly wrinkled range of mountains in the northwest section of the planet’s northernmost continent.With a practiced spacer’s eye, he found the gray stain that was the only city on the planet large enough to be recognized as such from space.“Maria’s Elegy.Put Defiance Peak about here, then.” He speared a large mountain with the pointer, seemingly at random.Defiance Peak.Home of the local Defiance Industries factories.Duke Vedet Brewster, the world’s hereditary ruler, would have his capital at Maria’s Elegy, which was also where House Steiner’s personal ambassador would reside.Yes, Jasek was interested in those landmarks.Then a gray-black veil swept over the planet, hazy in its eclipse
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]