“You have to ask?” he said. “You say you’ve been watching the battle, you act like you know what’s going on, and you ask me what’s wrong? Good hell, Trillian, how can you not know? How? Are you that far gone?”
Trillian absorbed his words calmly. “Okay. I thought that’s what it was.”
“Did you? Did you, now? How clever you are, Trillian. How goddamned insightful.”
Trillian fanned the fingertips of both hands on her chest. “Me?” she said. “You’re mad at me?”
“You brought me here, didn’t you? You put me in the middle of these two idiots.”
“Do you think I knew this was going to happen?” she shouted back, matching his anger. “Do you think I wanted it to happen?”
“Who the hell knows? Do you even want anything anymore, or do you just do what your damned cousin tells you to?”
“She’s the archon! Of course I do what she tells me to do! Don’t you?”
“Don’t question my loyalty, Trillian. Don’t take a single step in that direction. I let myself be called a Steiner and went wherever I’ve been ordered to. You know I follow orders.”
“Right. We all do. That’s why we’re here. Because we’re trying to follow orders, all of us.”
The anger had already faded. The blackness inside Roderick had spent itself in a short burst. It drained away, and the weariness returned.
“It was a massacre, Trill,” Roderick said, easing himself back down into his chair. “They might as well have just lined them up and executed those troops. They mowed them down before anyone really knew what they were doing.”
As soon as Roderick said those words, he knew it was a lie. He had known what Alaric was doing, Vedet had known and the Silver Hawks for damn sure had known. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t know what was happening—it was that no one could come up with a way to stop Alaric Wolf from doing it.
“I’m controlling it, Roderick. I started controlling it as soon as it happened. To the Inner Sphere, this will just be a battle, one where the Silver Hawk Irregulars were badly outnumbered and paid the price.”
“But that’s not the truth.”
“It will be.”
Roderick shook his head. “What are we doing here, Trillian? Damn it, what in hell are we doing?”
“Pro—” Trillian started.
“And if you say ‘promoting the good of the Commonwealth,’ I swear I’ll shoot myself in the head.”
Trillian didn’t say anything for a time. He could hear her exhaling, trying to force herself to breathe slowly.
“We’re going to win this war,” Roderick said. He leaned back, away from the light, into the shadow. “And in the end, the Commonwealth will have some more territory, and we’ll have to deal with conquered people who don’t particularly like us. Plus, instead of having Marik-Stewart neighbors who hate us, we’ll have a whole new set of neighbors who hate us beyond the former Marik-Stewart borders. And that’s why we’re fighting here, and that’s why Alaric Wolf had to massacre a bunch of Silver Hawk troops. So we could get a victory that makes the archon feel good about herself and lets her get a few new ass-kissing headlines for her clip file. Dulce et decorum est.”
“What?”
“Nothing. An old phrase.”
“I think you’re overthinking this. It’s a war and, like you said, we’re going to win it. That’s not a bad thing.”
“People are dying—our people, their people, and some people who never had anything to do with any of this. Me thinking is not the problem—the problem is that Melissa hasn’t thought about this enough.”
“You’re not being fair,” Trillian said sharply. “Melissa has thought through this plenty, and she feels each death. This is agony for her. Don’t ever assume she takes this lightly.”
“I’m sure it’s tough for her,” Roderick said. “But ask any of the dead soldiers how willing they’d be to trade their agony for hers. And ask her the same thing.”
Trillian stood, her face almost entirely out of the range of the light. “All right. I came to check on you. Looks like you’re fine—nothing’s more fun than staying up all night playing the martyr. I’ll leave you to it.”
Roderick nodded. He was too tired to goad her anymore.
“The good news is, you don’t have to like this war,” Trillian said. “You just have to fight it.”
She left quickly.
Roderick thought about following her out, maybe talking to her about something besides the battle. Or maybe he should just leave and get some sleep.
But the map of Helmdown was still in front of him. He looked down at it, and it would not let him go. Somehow, he thought as he looked at it, there had to have been a way. There had to be a way to make it different.
16
Marik Palace
New Edinburgh, Stewart
Marik-Stewart Commonwealth
12 May 3138
Cole Daggert only appeared to walk slowly.
He was taller than most of the people he passed in the halls of the palace, and most of his height was in his legs. His motions were smooth but his strides were long, and he covered a lot of ground while looking unhurried.
People talked about it all the time, making the kind of small talk people make when all they know about a person is his appearance. They wondered how he could deal with Anson Marik in the middle of a losing war, suffering setback after setback, and remain calm and unhurried.
His reply was always the same. “What you see is my way of hurrying.” People would laugh as if it were a joke, but it was nothing more or less than the direct truth.
He was now hurrying to a briefing with the captain-general and most of the ranking military officers on the planet. He was going to be late to the meeting, delayed by a conversation with someone who had just arrived on-planet. The assembled commanders, especially the captain-general, would not be happy at his late arrival, but they would understand once he told them what he was doing. Then they would be even unhappier.
The palace on Stewart was an architectural mishmash, an uninspired appropriation of the major design movements of the Stewart Commonality and the early days of the Free Worlds League. This particular hallway mimicked the New Braddockism of the late twenty-third century, with its emphasis on nontraditional geometric forms. Designed as a black hexagon with ridges along its top three sides, its walls bowed outward, which, as far as Daggert was concerned, did nothing but waste space and make it difficult to design the adjacent rooms. The fact that those rooms tended to ape styles like Diaspora Revivalism and Crooked Classicism made the whole building look thrown together, a Frankenstein ensemble with no attempt to stitch the parts together.
He hadn’t worried about the appearance of the building much, of course, since he had arrived on Stewart. One possible benefit of the current situation was that Daggert had too much on his mind to worry about niceties like architecture.
The black floor of the hallway was dark and shiny, and he could see his dim reflection moving underneath him. That was when he realized he had been walking with his head down.
He lifted it just in time to pass the first security checkpoint. Then the second. Then he went through the third and was in the situation room.
It didn’t seem to matter what building they were in; situation rooms throughout the Inner Sphere—at least the ones Daggert had been in—all looked about the same. A large, austere table, chairs you could never quite get comfortable in, and displays. Lots and lots of displays, on the walls, set into the table, occasionally suspended from the ceiling. Troop statistics, news feeds and maps, maps, maps. Daggert found it a little sad that walking into a room like this felt more like coming home than walking into his own quarters or even his house.
Anson was already there, and he was sitting. That was strange. Anson did not have a lot of patience for discussion or deliberation. He preferred to arrive at meetings like this late, then storm in, bully the cabinet into making decisions and stomp out. It was part of his…well,
Daggert supposed the best word for it would be “aura.” It was what the captain-general did, how he took control of a situation. So to see him at a meeting on time, already seated—it was unnerving.
“Siddown, Daggert,” Anson growled. “The sooner this is done, the better.”
At least his greetings are normal, Daggert thought, and sat down in his chair.
Director of Planetary Defense Callie Ferguson walked in practically on Daggert’s heels, and the table was full.
“Let’s make this brief,” said Pavel Krist, Anson’s chief of staff. “The captain-general has a very full schedule. Force Commander Cameran-Witherspoon, you can go first.”
Force Commander Ian Cameran-Witherspoon, commander of the Silver Hawk Irregulars, leaned forward like he was about to pounce across the table. “We’ve almost doubled the number of Silver Hawk units on-planet in the past week. That means we’ve left most of the Lyran front bare, but that doesn’t matter, since all the Lyrans will likely be coming here.” He paused. “We also have what will probably be the last DropShip with troops from Helm. There won’t be…I don’t think any of them will be in a condition to fight when the Lyrans arrive.” Cameran-Witherspoon glanced at Daggert. “I believe your tactical adviser has debriefed some of those troops.”
Daggert nodded but didn’t speak. Anson’s meetings did not invite anyone to speak out of turn.
“Fine,” Anson said. “What do the numbers look like?”
“With the functional units that just landed, we now have a total of—”
Anson cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Never mind. Tell it to Daggert, he likes that sort of thing. You two and Ferguson plan the details.”
“Yes, sir,” Cameran-Witherspoon said.
“General Ferguson, how is the militia training and recruiting going?” Krist asked.
The pattern continued. Ferguson gave a bare-bones report, Anson asked for more details, then changed his mind and cut Ferguson off, deciding he wasn’t interested. They went through the air force, infantry and ’Mech commanders as well, and then it was Daggert’s turn.
“Mr. Daggert, anything to add at this point?”
He did, in fact, have plenty to say, but nothing that Anson would be interested in hearing. “There are some matters of troop movement and deployment that I’d like to discuss with the various commanders, but I’m sure we can do that in a separate meeting.”
“Good. Fine. Do it.” Then Anson asked the question Daggert had been dreading. “You’ve been debriefing the stragglers from Helm. What the hell happened there? We knew we were going to lose, but what we lost compared to what they lost is a goddamned joke. Was this your screwup or someone’s in the field?”
Daggert knew better than to try to dance around the question. “It was a breakdown in command, sir,” he said. “Their initial path out of the city was cut off, and they lost several ranking officers early on. Once enough officers were lost, discipline failed. It appears that some officers made an offer of surrender.”
Anson slammed a fist on the table. “Surrender? Since when was that any part of their orders?” He glared at Cameran-Witherspoon. “They shouldn’t have even thought the word ‘surrender’! The Silver Hawk Irregulars do not surrender! What the hell happened?”
“Sir, permit me to point out that the majority of units did not surrender,” Cameran-Witherspoon said. “Many of them fell before the surrender offer was made, while others attempted a late breakthrough even when some of the other soldiers were surrendering. For the most part, discipline held.”
“I don’t care that some of your people fought the battle right!” Anson said. “I asked why some of them failed! What happened out there?”
Cameran-Witherspoon leaned even farther forward, until he was almost leaning over the table. “Sir, stalemates tend to have a negative effect on morale. I can’t, from this distance, be sure exactly what happened, but it seems probable that the stress of the prolonged standoff combined with overwhelming odds and the loss of their COs broke the troops’ spirits. It was a unique set of conditions—I don’t think we’ll see another breakdown from the Irregulars.”
“You ‘don’t think’?” Anson bellowed. “What kind of shit is that? You need to do better. You should damned well know that it won’t be repeated, or it’s your ass. Do you understand? I’ll bring the next failure all the way up to you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Anson held on to the table, looking like he could easily snap a piece off the end. “So now the Lyrans have some of our people. We should get them back. What do we have to offer them in exchange?”
“I’m afraid it won’t work like that,” Daggert said, his voice low.
“Get the hell out of here. You mean we don’t have a single damned thing we can trade them? Good hell, can’t some of these troops get the upper hand at least once and capture something for us that would be useful?”
“I’m afraid you’re misunderstanding the problem,” Daggert said. “From the information we’ve gathered, the Lyrans did not take any of our people captive.”
“They didn’t? Then what happened to them? Where in hell are they?”
“They are dead,” Daggert said flatly. “I can’t say exactly what happened or why at the moment, but the surrendering forces were massacred.”
Once he was done talking, Daggert sat and waited. He knew when to expect torrents of fury from Anson Marik, and he was prepared to sit through a long burst right now. He almost looked forward to it—the news of the massacre of some of the Silver Hawks left behind on Helm had left a hollow feeling in his gut. Since Daggert was generally not given to emotional displays, he could use Anson’s anger as a suitable replacement and live vicariously through the inevitable diatribe.
Everyone else in the situation room was waiting for it as well. Anson’s face was red, his hands and arms looked ready to push on the table and launch him to his feet and he was inhaling long and slow, getting the air he would need for the invective he was about to spew.
Then the air came out, without much of a sound. Anson remained seated, arms still, eyes focused on some spot near the middle of the long table. He didn’t say a word.
Krist looked around at everyone else in the room, then at Anson, then back at everyone else. He made a small, helpless shrug. It was as if the tantrum had been planned into the meeting’s agenda and no one knew what to do when it didn’t happen.
Finally, Krist spoke.
“I, ah…I imagine there are more details you have learned about what happened on Helm.”
“Yes,” Daggert said. “If the captain-general would like, I can give him a more detailed account of what I know later in the day.”
Krist looked at Anson. The captain-general had not moved a muscle, and his eyes still glared at the table.
“Yes,” Krist said, looking back at Daggert. “That, um, that would be good. I’m sure the captain-general would be happy to talk with you shortly.”
Again, Krist paused, giving Anson a chance to talk. Anson remained silent.
“I…I suppose that’s it,” Krist said. “Thank you all for your work on behalf of the Commonwealth, and may your efforts turn aside those who assail us.”
Anson was on his feet before Krist finished speaking. The others in the room, believing this was the outburst come at last, leaned forward in their chairs. But Anson still did not speak. He abruptly walked away from the table and toward the door.
Everyone scrambled to stand up as fast as possible once Anson was on the move, but the captain-general paid them no attention. He moved quickly out of the situation room and was gone.
Daggert looked briefly at the rest of the faces in the room. They looked surprised, but mostly they were just tired. War is exhausting in the best of circumstances, but a losing war eats away at those who command it, body and soul. Anson’s bluster could be annoying and time-wasting, but you could not listen to him for long without feeling at least a touch of his outrage, and that anger had been fueling his military commande
rs for much of this war. Now they were left empty, and they slowly shuffled out the door to their duties.
Daggert returned to the black hexagonal hallway. His bearing was exactly the same when he left the meeting as it was when he arrived. He carried all his burdens in his long, deceptively fast stride.
* * *
“Is he in a meeting with someone else?” Daggert asked.
Carol, Anson’s appointment secretary, sat very still behind her immense desk. She looked like a small duck floating behind a barge. “No,” she said. “There’s no one else in there.”
“Then I can just go in.” Daggert tried to make it clear that this was not a question.
“No. No, I’m sorry, you can’t,” Carol said. Her brown hair was pulled back so tight that the corners of her eyes seemed stretched. “I can’t let anyone in until he says it’s okay for them to come in. The captain-general has made himself very clear on that matter.”
Daggert, in a chair opposite Carol’s desk, uncrossed his legs, then crossed them the other way while trying not to yell at her. She was only doing her job.
He breathed deeply a few times and remained calm, mainly because that was what he did when he waited. The chair was comfortable enough, with its brown leather cushions, though it had those annoying round armrests that never allowed you to get your arms set in the right place. If Anson required him to wait, he could wait.
There was a low murmur in the room. Daggert had heard it when he walked in, but had thought it was just the sound of his blood pumping in his ears. He had been sitting for a while now, however, and his heart rate should have dropped. This had to be something else.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
Carol looked up, startled. Daggert wondered if she had always been that way, or if years spent in close proximity to Anson Marik had conditioned her to be skittish. “Hear what?” she said.
The Last Charge Page 15
