“What are you talking about?” And now he asked: “Who are you?” “Your time has gone and now you haunt my dream for some reason.” “I’m aware that you did, but that’s over now.” The redhead looked older for a moment – hair leached of colour by years of responsibility. “I’m not sure that I’m the one to explain this, but it’s a very long time since you’ve looked down on NAMA from Castle Davion.” “I’ve looked at this view a thousand times and I think I’d notice additions like this.” “After my time? I may have graduated but I’m not that far away.” He pointed ahead to their destination. It’s a little after your time, your highness.” He saw understanding dawn – and recognition.
“Why would a military academy have a full college of chemistry?” “Well that’s what it is.” A crease of a smile. “The College of Chemistry?” he asked.Ī shake of his head as frustration rose. “That’s what I mean, where did that come from?” As if someone had expanded the academy greatly but the brief glimpses of students he saw weren’t wearing the uniforms of cadets. Tall, elegantly sculpted buildings in a style he didn’t quite recognise.
Mount Davion overlooked the vast and fertile plains that had been the foundation stone of the first colony here and enjoyed the fine weather that made the world a breadbasket.Īs they walked, he saw new anomalies. Why the Steiners had chosen their frigid home or the Camerons the rain-soaked Pacific coast had never made sense to the prince. Blue and clear, a lovely summer day – one of the merits of Avalon City over some of the other great capitals of the Inner Sphere. Quite a walk but – the prince looked up at the sky. Some instinct for men told the prince that the uniform was no deceit. There were lines around the blue eyes of the field marshal and unfeigned sympathy. Innocent days without the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. “Yes.” Before Joseph died and Uncle Richard declared me his heir. “There are worse traditions.” A hand was offered to the prince. “It’s begun to be one.” And perhaps a symptom of problems – there was an alternative, after all. My father and his brother, my cousin and now my own son.”Ī smile from the other man. “I did.” The redheaded man rose and walked around the fountain. The same rank the prince wore.īut the prince knew all the Field Marshals of his army – not the most stringent of tests of memory – and this redheaded man, though he held himself with the presence of one who had earned such rank – was not one of them.īut he did not ask that. The single epaulette held the silver sunbursts that marked the wearer as a Field Marshal. Broad shoulders filled a dark-green uniform tunic well, the gleaming half-breastplate Sunburst vest marking it as that of the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns’ full dress uniform. Pausing at a fountain he found himself facing another man across the splashing water. And yet there was something subtly wrong, glimpses of collegiate constructions that were not, had never been, part of the military academy he remembered. The prince walked between buildings familiar to him from his younger days, ghosts of his past academia greeting him.
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