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.Jasek left the Himmelstor on the morning following his arrival in a small caravan of two Force Avanti armored stretch sedans, a single VV1 Ranger leading the way, and a pair of hoverbikes trailing.Alexia Wolf and Niccolò GioAvanti rode with him in one sedan.Colonels Petrucci and Vandel, newly arrived this morning, shared the second.They charged down the DropShip ramp, bumped onto the tarmac, and then sped across the wet-black ferrocrete toward a guarded gate on the north side.Opening a breakfast drink, Jasek toasted the guards from behind tinted glass.It was a thirty-minute drive to the lord governor’s palace, given normal morning traffic.Still time enough to chase away the last of the jump-lag left over from a ten-hour shift in his schedule traveling from Nusakan to Skye.He preferred the banana-citrus combination, teasing his taste buds with something that tasted healthy while the hidden caffeine stirred his system awake.“You really should try morning calisthenics,” Alexia said.She’d pulled her soft brown hair back into a severe ponytail.Her face glowed a disturbingly healthy pink.“It really is a better way to start your day.”“If that’s your excuse for crawling out of a warm bed at five this morning, you stick to it.” Jasek took a long pull at the fruity beverage.And he almost forgot to swallow as his short caravan charged through a very narrow gap between news trucks and two dozen film crews for the planetary media networks.Flashes strobed and camera lenses swung around to follow the lead sedan.Jasek saw several fingers pointed his way, even though no one outside could possibly see through the reflective tint.“How do they know?” Alexia asked, putting voice to the same question running through Jasek’s mind.Jasek turned a suspicious eye on his best friend.“You’re big news,” Niccolò said with a ghost of a smile.He admitted nothing more.Jasek swallowed, the fruit taste suddenly losing its appeal.“So it seems,” he said, deadpan.Immediately north of the DropPort, a small industrial center quickly gave way to New London’s largest commercial district.Cafés and clubs nestled between malls, museums, and monuments.Two news trucks managed to slip ahead of the caravan, blocking both northbound lanes.Holovid cameras pointed back with dark, unblinking eyes.Jasek looked behind him.Four or five more vehicles followed, weaving around as drivers fought for the best position to let their cameramen shoot out through the forward windshield or while leaning out the side windows.He saw one of the shoulder-mounted recorders swing out toward the side of the street.People on the sidewalk cheered and waved as he passed.More flooded out from the local businesses as news traveled faster than the caravan along the main thruway.Before long the intersections were becoming choked off by spectators, and another ten or twelve civilian vehicles had joined the procession, their occupants honking horns and holding defiant fists in the air.His father’s people had also tuned in on the news, apparently.Roadblocks cordoned off the street that ran by the lord governor’s palatial mansion, holding back the press of onlookers as well as separating Jasek’s sedans from his military vehicles.Niccolò glanced a warning at him, but Jasek simply nodded, letting them go.Alexia looked back through the rear window, at the crowd that thronged up to the roadblocks.“I never knew you were so popular.People did not act this way on Nusakan.”“Nusakan has a fairer press corps,” Niccolò told her.“The Herrmanns AG media group owns many news outlets on Skye, and they are unabashedly pro-Lyran.”“Be nice, Nicco.” Jasek’s glance was warm, but stern.To Alexia he said, “He’s just bitter because the GioAvanti family lost their minority interest in a local news network in a forced buyout.”“Not bitter.Just jealous.There is a difference.” Niccolò’s pout was exaggerated.Slightly.It was good for a quick laugh.Still, as the sedans pulled down into a covered garage, Jasek worried that the media attention would not help put his father in a receptive mood.The duke had yet to accept (and certainly he would never forgive) his son’s difference in opinion and allegiance.Jasek had tried to make his father see, but a lifetime of blind devotion to a single man—including three years just to the memory of that man—was hard to fight.Even when Jasek proved he had the right of it, when seventy percent of the prefecture’s armed forces followed him into forming the Stormhammers, the duke refused to recognize his position.I do not like to see Skye divided, or improperly defended.Jasek had sent his father this message by courier.Between them, Skye was more than one planet.It was a symbol for the entire region.It invites disaster.I also would not hold you hostage to the situation you find yourself in.If you cannot accept that Skye should stand proudly with the Lyran Commonwealth, at least grant that Skye cannot stand alone in the waning shadow of Devlin Stone’s Republic.Call, and we will answer as allies of Skye.The duke’s reply took three weeks to return by courier.Skye seeks no alliance or accord with those who hold their citizenship or their heritage so cheap.Do not answer.We will never call.And he hadn’t.Not even in the darkest time when the horror-struck refugees from Chaffee taxed Skye’s morale, or when the Falcons actually attacked Prefecture worlds.Jasek had watched, and waited, and waited.No more, he promised himself in the elevator and during the short walk down grand, marble-tiled halls.The echoes of their footsteps rang back like distant gunshots.“Skye must survive, even if first it has to die.”“What was that?” Colonel Vandel asked.A frown piled up on his forehead like a building avalanche.“Making predictions?”“A resolution,” he answered with a sharp glance at Niccolò.He hoped his friend was wrong, but planned for him to be right.The formal meeting between Jasek’s Stormhammers and Skye’s defenders took place in the palace’s east-wing gallery, where portraits of former Skye leaders stared at each other across a wide divide of rust brown carpet and a long, mahogany table.The paintings of Ryan Steiner and Robert Kelswa-Steiner, ancestors of the current line, held places of minor importance on either side of closed terrace doors.Duchess Margaret Aten, another leader from pre-Republic times, had the grand location over the fireplace mantel.Her dark, smooth skin and indigo eyes looked very familiar.They should, since Jasek saw them often enough in the mirror.His mother, the duke’s second and last wife, had called Margaret Aten her grandmother.Facing off against them were the five past lord governors of Prefecture IX: Skye’s entire history under Devlin Stone’s auspices, not counting Jasek’s father, who had—in a rare demonstration of humility—decided that his own portrait would not be added until after he died or was voted from office.A pity.With his ties to the Atens as well as his position as the dynasty heir of the Kelswa-Steiners, a portrait of Duke Gregory would have balanced out the room.Or perhaps not.“The ‘Salvation of Skye’ has arrived,” his father proclaimed, holding up the folded newsfax so that Jasek (and everyone else) could see the headline.It must have been warm still from the printer.A holographic picture of Jasek’s caravan leaving the spaceport this morning ran just beneath the bold type.The Duke slapped the sheaf of paper down on the table.Next to him, Tara Campbell frowned at the dramatics.An aide handed the lord governor another
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