Natural Selection

by Michael A. Stackpole

  3

  Pasig Pirate Point

  Federated Commonwealth

  15 April 3055

  Nelson Geist felt thankful to be out of the hellhole of a hold in which he had been confined, but, unlike other members of the work detail, he avoided making himself conspicuous. It wasn't that he didn't understand what the others were trying to do. By showing that they were cooperative workers and not troublemakers, his comrades obviously hoped that the bandits would not send them back to the crowded, stinking confinement bay once they'd finished the job of offloading the DropShip Tigress.

  Nelson wrapped his half-hand around the edge of the noteputer and tucked it tightly into his left elbow. Holding the stylus in his right hand he hit the appropriate icons as the crew pulled crates from the DropShip's hold. Despite the very light gravity aboard the nearly motionless JumpShip, the bandits had decided that Nelson's injury made him useless for hauling boxes. And after noticing that a couple of captured reservists treated him with deference, a bandit had made him supervisor of the work party.

  Nelson kept to himself, answering questions and acknowledging comments with only a grunt or a nod so that the rest of the loading crew would not think he was basking in the glory of doing no work. Soon, though, he became absorbed in the job he'd been given as the disturbing nature of the loot attracted all his attention.

  The steel manacle on his right wrist clicked against the plastic case of the noteputer as he continuously punched in the icons. His mutilated hand had almost gotten him shot when the squad of bandit infantry pulled Nelson from the cockpit of his 'Mech because they assumed it would make him useless. But then an order quickly came through that he was to be taken alive, no matter what his condition. The bandits had shoved him and a number of other survivors into a DropShip, which then delivered them to the JumpShip, where they were stripped, deloused, dressed in sleeveless olive jumpsuits, and manacled at the wrists.

  Nelson knew, from the first, that the manacle served no practical purpose, for it had no link for attaching it to a chain. When another of the prisoners suggested that the seamless band of steel might conceal listening and tracking devices, the prisoners began to limit most communication in the holding pen to crude sign language. Nelson half-smiled as he recalled Spider whispering that "the Kommandant has a bit of an accent," because of his mutilated hand.

  Nelson glanced up and saw that the offloading was proceeding very well. Because the JumpShip was moving very slowly, acceleration gave it only a hint of mock-gravity. It was no problem for even the leanest prisoner to move huge boxes of loot, each with a code stenciled in black on the wooden slats. As each box left the DropShip hold, Nelson punched the icon with the appropriate code. Though his screen gave him no totals, he knew very well what they were.

  Munitions, though they were not identified as such, were stored in one area of the DropShip bay. He'd seen enough similar arrangements throughout his career as a MechWarrior. A fair amount of explosives and ammunition had come aboard, but Nelson noted that most seemed suitable for small arms or demolitions. The distinctive and mammoth crates for BattleMech missiles and autocannon ammunition were definitely not part of the boxes being unloaded from this ship.

  By far the most numerous items were foodstuffs. The stenciled codes on those boxes were equally uninformative, but the cardboard cartons were emblazoned with the manufacturer and product names.. The food he had been served while a prisoner was easily recognizable as stuff taken from Kooken's Pleasure Pit.

  It had been easy to figure out the stencil code for miscellaneous items. As rarely as he hit the Miscellaneous icon, Nelson noticed that none of those crates appeared to be the same size or shape or weight. The bandits had apparently struck swiftly and scattered the battalion of Twelfth Deneb Light Cavalry defending an industrial complex. They'd had time to loot the complex before reinforcements arrived, but the high-tech machine tools, computers, lostech, industrial grade gems, and other traditional spoils of such a raid were nowhere to be seen. Instead they'd taken only a smattering of jewelry and art objects, which now dotted the ship's hold. Nothing of value compared to the expense of conducting such an operation.

  With what I'm thinking, I'm praying more treasure or something of real worth comes up.

  Out the corner of his eye Nelson caught the motion of the bandit guards straightening up, but it wasn't until the work party suddenly fell silent that he turned to look. When he did, Nelson was as transfixed as the rest of the prisoners by the sight of the woman standing to his right on the catwalk overlooking the DropShip bay.

  There was no question that she was beautiful. Red hair fell to her shoulders and down her back. With her long limbs and lithe figure, even the bulky cooling vest could not make her look dowdy. Her sharp features made him mindful of a fox, and her violet eyes shone with animal cunning.

  Yet it was more than her physical attributes that drew his attention. It was true that the skintight shorts revealed her legs and the shape of her buttocks to good advantage, but her stance cut off any glimmering of sexual fantasies that might arise. She stood with one elbow cupped in the hand of the other arm, pulling softly on her lower lip with the thumb and index finger of her free hand. Her eyes flicked from man to man in the work crew, evaluating and dismissing each one in an instant. As her gaze wandered from one prisoner to the next down below, each seemed to shrink away, his dreams and hopes dying with her judgment of them.

  Then she looked at Nelson. He felt a jolt as their stares met, an electric ripple that crystallized as fear in his gut. At the same time it ignited in him a lust unlike any he had ever known. He had loved Jon's mother deeply, passionately, but he had never desired her in this way. He felt as if, cell by cell, his DNA screamed for union with this woman's genetic material.

  He waited for her to look away, but she did not. With every second that her gaze continued, Nelson feared she would pass him by, and at the same time, he desperately wanted her to dismiss him as she had the others. Mechanically, he punched icons as crates began to move again from the DropShip.

  She walked toward him. Coming closer, her steady military tread devouring the distance between them, she let her boots click sharply against the catwalk grating. She was as tall as he was and must have been about half his forty-seven years. She did not smile, but the way she eyed him brought self-conscious color to his cheeks.

  "You were the one in the BattleMaster, quiaff?"

  Nelson nodded.

  She took the noteputer from him and set it down. Grabbing his left hand, she forced it open and pressed it against her own right palm. The last two fingers on her hand curled down and around over the scars. Her flesh seemed unnaturally pale against his, and the scars on his hands looked almost like tendrils curling out from her fingers.

  She kept his hand in hers for a bit longer than he felt comfortable, then she released it. "How long?"

  "Almost four years."

  She pursed her lips for a moment, then stared at him like a cobra. "I could get you repaired. You could re-grow those fingers."

  Nelson tried to suppress a reaction, but a thrill shook him. All the things he had lost since his maiming in the Clan invasion, everything he had blamed on the loss of his fingers, flashed before him. He could have his command back. He would be respected again. Even Jon . . .

  He realized his error as her lips peeled back in a cruel smile. "I would have done that, were you a warrior."

  Nelson swallowed hard and straightened up. "Were I a warrior, I'd be dead, quiaff?"

  His use of a Clan word seem to surprise her, but her smile did not change so he could not be sure if that was good or bad. She looked him up and down again, then turned and pointed at the next-nearest prisoner on the bay deck below. "You, replace him."

  In one leap Spider bounded up the ladder to the catwalk. He picked up the noteputer, and Nelson silently passed him the stylus. Spider gave him a wink, the silent prison argot sign for "things are looking up." Nelson nodded, then looked at the Red Corsair and wai
ted.

  She let him wait. She raked him with her gaze, letting it linger on his loins and then his maimed hand, clearly seeking a reaction. He fought to keep his face impassive, and computed mentally the exponential values of 2 to distract his thoughts. His effort, though successful, only seemed to heighten her interest.

  "Follow me." She turned and walked back to the hatchway.

  He trailed behind her, his concentration flagging for an instant as he noticed the sensual sway of her hips as she walked. Two times 32768 is 65536. Two times 65536 is 131072. ... He refocused his eyes on the mass of red hair trailing down to the middle of her back and kept multiplying numbers in his head.

  The Red Corsair stepped through the hatchway, then closed it behind him. She turned to a communications monitor and opened a line to the bridge. The commtech sat straight up in her seat when she saw who it was in the monitor. "Yes, Captain?"

  The Red Corsair tucked a stray hair behind one ear. "ETA for the last DropShip?"

  "One minute, sir."

  "Good. When it attaches, increase our velocity to 1.2 gravities. When we reach the jump point, we will go out."

  "Understood. Helm out."

  Nelson frowned. Increasing the acceleration would make unloading the DropShip far more difficult than it currently was. It made no sense to increase speed unless there was some sort of in-system defense or pursuit.

  "You are concerned for your friends, quiaff?"

  "As you are for your people."

  "Good, some of your spirit returns." She reached out and took his maimed hand in hers, then led him down the corridor to a central core of elevators. The doors opened when she pressed the button on the wall. They both entered the box and she selected a deck.

  The box started to move and Nelson's legs almost collapsed. His weakness surprised him, then he realized the ship had begun its acceleration. Grabbing the elevator handrail, he pulled himself erect. He glanced at the Red Corsair, but saw no reaction, no sign that she had even noticed his problem.

  The elevator stopped at an upper deck and they exited when the doors opened. Nelson followed her to a cabin door, then into the cabin. The door slid shut behind him and she used a wall switch to bring up the lights.

  He felt a moment's surprise when he realized she had brought him to her private stateroom, but that died fast. The instant the lights went on, Nelson felt as though he had wandered into a set designed for a bandit leader in some potboiler holovid. Lurid reds, golds, and purples dominated the room, with the gold coming mostly from chains and lamps and little items that were beautiful but probably chosen at whim while stalking through a shattered enemy's stronghold. Brocaded and embroidered scarves hung from lamps, staining the light with red tones. Crystal bottles half-filled with multi-colored liquors stood racked in a sideboard.

  The room was the Red Corsair and yet it was not. From all that Nelson had observed during his two months with the bandit band, he knew that most of them were Clanners—probably members who had gone rogue. What struck him now, however, was the fact that such gaudy but rich surroundings were totally out of character for someone born of the Clans. Mementoes of battles, trophies from past victories, he could have accepted, but not this self-indulgent and extravagant display. Again he had the same vision of a holovid director creating these quarters to emphasize the romantic side of the Red Corsair for a cheap mini-series.

  Suddenly the truth hit him right between the eyes. All the prisoners had long since agreed that this Red Corsair must have named herself after the legendary pirate who, almost fifty years before, had cut a bloody swath through Free Worlds League planets near the Periphery and the Lyran border. Some had argued that the original Red Corsair could have stayed young by maintaining her ship's travel at a significant percentage of the speed of light, and thus could, in fact, be this Red Corsair.

  But seeing this room, Nelson saw that fanciful idea exploded faster than a back-shot Rifleman. He couldn't prove it, of course, but this room bore too much resemblance to those he'd seen in many a late-night holovid he'd watched while stationed up and down the Federated Commonwealth. Granting that this Red Corsair was Clan, and that the role had been specifically chosen for some reason, it made sense that whoever had put together the sham would use holovids as source material. Where else would a Clanner go for information about the ways of people of the Inner Sphere?

  And that, he decided, was why the picture didn't fit the frame.

  The Red Corsair looked at him. "You think too much."

  "Does it matter what I think?"

  She grabbed him by the right wrist and twisted the manacle until it bit into his flesh. "Do you know what this is?"

  "I had heard that when the Clans take a bondsman, they bind his right wrist with a bondcord."

  "And when a bondsman is accepted into a different caste, the bondcord is cut in a ceremony." She let his hand fall down to his side, and he felt blood begin to rush back into the flesh. "Steel does not cut."

  "Then I am a slave?"

  She shook her head. "You are a prize of war. If I thought you had value, I would ransom you."

  "It appears, then, that I will remain a prize. No one will pay for a maimed warrior."

  The Red Corsair's eyes flashed with a light that might have been amusement. "Oh, I know they would not pay for your hand." She reached out and lightly cuffed his right temple. "On the other hand, they would pay handsomely for your thoughts. Tell me what you have decided about us. Do not lie. I will know if you do."

  "You have more loot in this cabin than was offloaded from Pasig." Nelson glanced away as she began unlacing the cooling vest. "The equipment, the personnel, and the speech of everyone I have met here tell me that you are all Clan. All the slaves in the group with me are from Kooken's Pleasure Pit, so I assume you took no slaves before that. The supplies you bring up from the world are enough to feed the slaves, so I also assume we can be jettisoned into space as situations demand it."

  She shrugged her way out of the cooling vest. Muscles rippled on her stomach and a droplet of sweat coursed down between her breasts. "Your powers of observation are to be commended." She turned away from him—not out of modesty, he was certain—to reach into a closet for a short kimono of amethyst silk. "You have drawn conclusions about us, quiaff?" she asked, pulling the kimono closed and knotting it with a golden sash.

  "I have."

  Her hair rippled down in a veil as she bent to unfasten the clasps of her boots. "Tell me."

  "Your 'Mechs are configured with energy weapons and made to look like those a bandit group would use. Your demands for munitions are low. You are prepared for extended operations in areas where resupply could be a problem."

  She stepped out of the boots and put them in the closet. Reaching under the kimono's hem, she snaked off the thigh-length spandex shorts she had been wearing and tossed them into the closet before closing it. "From this you have decided. . . ?"

  Nelson shook his head. "I know only that you are engaged in raiding."

  The Red Corsair looked hard at him. Then her eyes narrowed as she allowed herself a self-satisfied grin. "Very well. You know too much to be freed, but not enough that I must kill you. I will keep you until I break you."

  Nelson suddenly felt himself the mouse to her cat. "Breaking me will not be hard."

  "You underestimate yourself." She focused distantly for a second, then nodded. "I will begin by having them regrow your fingers, I think."

  Nelson frowned but said nothing.

  "Do you know why? Not so I can take them again, I assure you. If it was at Wotan that you lost them, I might have been the one who did it to you," She smiled broadly at that thought, but Nelson restrained his immediate angry response. "No, I will start the regrowth because it is something you desire and for which you will be grateful, but it is me you will have to thank. But with all the rest I will do to you, that sense of gratitude will strike sparks off your hatred for me until someday it will burn you alive."

  Later, when he returne
d to the holding pen, Nelson flopped down on his bunk. From across the narrow aisle, Spider tapped him on the shoulder and drew a question mark in the dimly lit air.

  Nelson stabbed a thumb into the center of his chest, described a quick circle with a flick of his wrist, then pointed with two fingers at the external hull. He nodded once, confidently, then let his head sink back against the mushy pillow.

  Spider winked at him and nodded twice, letting Nelson know he'd gotten the message, even with the accent problem.

  Nelson stared up at the black bulkhead above him. It's decided. When the opportunity presents itself, I'm out of here.

  4

  Arc-Royal

  Donegal March, Federated Commonwealth

  15 April 3055

  Victor Davion did not take it as a good sign that he arrived at the small meeting room only to find Phelan already seated behind the computer terminal at the far end of the table. Hovering over his shoulder like a ghost was a white-robed ComStar Precentor, who nodded to the Prince. They had not yet met, but Victor knew this was Special Liaison Klaus Hettig, the official representative of Anastasius Focht, Precentor Martial of ComStar. Focht was the one who had issued the actual invitation to the meeting, Victor's true reason for coming to Arc-Royal.

  The Prince stretched, then headed directly for the insulated pitcher of coffee on the table beside the door. He glanced at a sweet pastry while pouring himself a cup, but his stomach flip-flopped at the thought of that much sugar so early in the morning. He was tired, the toll of travel finally catching up with him, but even the promise of an energy boost could not make the idea of food appealing.

  Phelan looked up from the keyboard, his green eyes bright. "Good morning, Highness. I've been reviewing some of the reports from Pasig. Your sources are very thorough. My compliments."

  My sources? Victor frowned. "That information is in files that your father assured me would be secure."

  The Clan Khan smiled far too easily. "And they probably are, from most people. But, remember, I spent most of my youth here." He patted the computer console. "I know ways into this computer system that no one else even dreams exist."