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Ba
Tybalt
Prefecture II
February 3134; local autumn
Ba
“Taken altogether, the BUU arcology made for a casual display of wealth and power that drove Jacob Ba
Jacob Ba
Ba
Earlier this morning, a blinking light on one of the offworld display terminals had alerted Ba
Ba
According to the reports Ba
Opportunities, he thought, to which Northwind was the key. Northwind was at once the gateway to Terra and the guardian of the gate—the base of operations for the Northwind Highlanders, formidable combat troops that anybody looking to become a power in Prefecture III would have to deal with. It was also the home of Countess and Prefect Tara Campbell, who was young and untried, but who possessed large and still mostly untapped reserves of family and personal popularity. If the Countess of Northwind turned against him, BUU could kiss any further expansion into Prefecture III good-bye, and never mind the state of the HPG network.
So… Tara Campbell had to be either crippled or won over to Ba
He’d thought for a while that he’d found the perfect tool for the job. It wasn’t every day that you found a Paladin of the Sphere with a verifiable and blackmail-worthy secret in his past.
While there were Paladins whom Ba
Taking care of a hypocrite like that, Ba
The HPG network had just gone down, with Ba
Anastasia had surprised him, which Ba
According to Ba
Kerensky, though, was different. Trueborn on Arc Royal, she was alien in a way that the Tigress-born Steel Wolves were not. She was also ruthless and ambitious—not a crime, in Ba
Jacob Ba
So… he had three problems: Campbell, Kerensky, Crow.
Campbell could wait, for now. She didn’t have any serious ambitions above the Prefectural level; she didn’t have any interest in pushing into Prefecture IV; and between the Steel Wolves and a duplicitous Paladin, she had problems enough on Northwind to keep her distracted from Ba