"Conal is already hedging his bets."
"How so?"
Ulric straightened up again. "He is suggesting that the bandits are not Clan renegades, as we all have assumed up until now. He says they are actually a group of mercenaries financed secretly by Ryan Steiner. He says the raids are staged to make the people of the border regions believe they are not safe and that the Davions have no intention of defending them. He suggests that our helping hunt the bandits jeopardizes the peace and might even show that I have been tricked into helping stabilize the Inner Sphere so they can oppose us when the truce runs its course."
"And I am the person who is tricking you, quiaff? With me as Conal's liaison officer, if he gets the bandits, he succeeded despite all I did to stop him, and if he fails, I prevented him from succeeding?" Phelan pressed his hands together. "It is Conal's loss that the Clans have no politician caste."
"It is indeed." Ulric walked over to the desk next to the wall and held up a holodisk in its protective sleeve. "I have here orders for you to head out immediately. You will link up with the Kell Hounds in Federated Commonwealth space."
Phelan stood up. "Why not just meet them at my mother's funeral?"
"There will not be a funeral just yet, or so I am given to understand." Ulric tapped the holodisk against the fingers of his left hand. "Your father decided to have your mother's body shipped to Arc-Royal and kept until the Kell Hounds can all be present. As nearly as ComStar knows, the Hounds are heading out from Arc-Royal now."
"Business before mourning." The young Khan took the disk. "The Owl's Nest is the DropShip I want to use—I cannot see depriving the unit of the larger ones."
"I concur."
"And the Nest will carry a Trinary each of Elementals, aerospace fighters, and BattleMechs. It should not travel empty."
"True." Ulric half-closed his eyes. "However, any troops you bring with you will feel disgraced because they are off to hunt bandits."
Phelan countered easily. "Hardly. I am a Khan. I am due an honor guard, quiaff?"
"Aff, but even I do not travel with three Trinaries." Ulric lifted his head. "You may travel with a Point each of Elementals and fighters, and with a full Star of 'Mechs."
"If the Khan of the Wolf Clan is allowed to travel with so few warriors by his side, the Jade Falcons will never let us cross their space. At least two Stars of each. That would total six Stars, the number I am entitled to wear as a Khan."
"But you are the junior Khan, do not forget. Perhaps if you had your Star of 'Mechs and a Star of Elementals to accompany your Point of fighters, the Jade Falcons would find you acceptable."
"They would find me dead if I only had two fighters to act as outriders. At least accord me a full Star of each branch."
"So be it."
Ulric would have ended the bargaining there, but Phelan held up his hand. "As this is an honor guard and a liaison unit, I should have with me personnel who know how to act properly and who have some experience with people of the Inner Sphere. Star Captains Evantha Fetladral and Ranna should come with me. Evantha can command the Elemental Star. I would also like Star Captain Carew to command the fighter Star."
"Carew is unblooded. The command of that wing should go to someone who is a Bloodnamed."
"Or someone who is guaranteed of being offered a place in the next Trial of Bloodright for the Nygren line."
Phelan watched the ilKhan carefully as he pushed his request. "The ilKhan should be able to exert some influence in that area."
Ulric nodded slowly. "He should. Have you other requests?"
"I do." Phelan clasped his hands behind his back. "I also want Ragnar with me. We have already adopted him into the warrior caste because of his actions on Arc-Royal. I want to assign him to a 'Mech in my honor guard despite his not having tested out yet. I also want Lajos in my Star."
"That is four. Do you want Vlad to make your fifth?"
Nicely done, Ulric. Phelan suppressed his reaction to the ilKhan's suggestion that his archrival be made to serve beneath him. "I think not, ilKhan. Delta Galaxy lost a great deal when Conal Ward was sent to the Thirty-first Wolf Solahma. Star Captain Vlad has enough to do just bringing his Trinary up to the levels of performance it knew on Tukayyid. I thought the ilKhan could suggest someone who would be suitable."
"You will take Alita of the Fourth Wolf Guards. She is of the Winson bloodline and would do well to learn about the Inner Sphere."
That suggestion struck Phelan as interesting. Of Alita he knew little beyond the fact that she had been wounded at Tukayyid. That Ulric chose her meant he expected her to be influential in the future. It also meant he expected her to win her Bloodname fairly soon. Phelan seemed to recall that she had not competed for the Winson Blood-name after Tukayyid because her wounds had not yet healed.
"Thank you, ilKhan. An excellent suggestion."
"Good. I grant what you request, but only because I have something to ask in return." Ulric's face hardened. "Phrased that way it sounds like a request, but it is, ultimately, why I am sending you and not Natasha."
"And that reason is?"
"These bandits threaten the ComStar truce. They make the people of the Inner Sphere feel vulnerable and they give the Jade Falcons an opportunity to point out the Inner Sphere's weakness. The fact that these bandits are doing so much damage has breathed new life into the Crusaders' attempt to repudiate the truce and continue the advance toward Terra."
"But hitting and running is much easier than a war of conquest."
"Agreed, which is what I have used to hold them back." The ilKhan rested his hands on Phelan's shoulders. "Preserving this truce is your paramount mission. Do whatever it takes. If it means chasing the bandits back to the Clan homeworld of Strana Mechty, so be it."
Phelan nodded. "And if it means stopping Conal from committing another atrocity?"
"Whatever it takes."
23
Recharge Station, Thuban
Federated Commonwealth
26 June 3055
When Carl Ashe left the DropShip Columbus at the Thuban recharging station it was to await a shuttle that would take him down to Thuban. Ashe went directly to the First Orbital Mercantile Bank, where he was allowed into the vault of safety deposit drawers after being identified by a retinal scanner.
From his drawer he withdrew new identification documents and a magnetic keycard. Then he stuffed his old identification papers into it, and closed it up. He gave the drawer back to the clerk and left the bank.
Though space is at a premium on any space station, a premium price can save someone a piece of it. A corporate bank account paid the rent on a small suite of rooms in the Corona Hotel. It was purportedly for the use of executives passing through the system, but it had only been used once in the last year. That happened to have been when Carlos Negron first visited the station and Carl Ashe last left it.
Reversing the process he had used eight months earlier, the assassin went to his room without speaking to the clerk at registration. Using the keycard, he opened the door and stepped inside, then closed the door behind him. Everything looked as it had when last he'd departed, save for a light coat of dust over the room, but the assassin checked things carefully and did not touch anything until certain the room had not been disturbed in his absence.
Satisfied, he immediately stripped off all his clothes and walked into the bathroom. From a toiletries kit he took a bottle of what appeared to be allergy capsules and ate two of them. Returning to the main room, he set the alarm chronometer in the headboard for one hour, then lay down to nap. When the alarm went off, he got up and went back to the bathroom and turned on the sunlamp.
The capsules had contained a drug that stimulated his skin to produce melanin, and the sunlamp helped him darken up quickly. His pasty gray skin took on a healthy olive tone. Using hair dye he blackened the hair on his head and body. That job finished, he returned to the main room and dressed in the trousers and workshirt a merchant marine like Negron would wear.
It took less than four hours to complete the total transformation from Carl Ashe to Carlos Negron.
Carlos Negron, shouldering the duffel bag he'd left in the room eight months before, headed back out to the Merchant Marine Union Hall near the docks at the base of the station. He mixed in with a crowd of workmen like himself who had recently come in from a planetary shuttle, then entered the Hall and presented his dues card. The man at the door logged him in and waved him on through the door.
The assassin knew that the quick scan of the dues card would put him in line for an upcoming outbound job. Because Carlos' history showed him to be competent with loading equipment and even light construction 'Mechs, he would be chosen for jobs that involved such machinery. It also showed that he had done a fair amount of work on the Marik border, which meant he would be heading down and away from Tharkad, and that would take him eventually to his goal.
He left his duffel with an apprentice and headed into the bar. There, despite regulations, smoke filled the darkness. The crowd looked sparse, which pleased him for two reasons. The first was that it lowered the chances of his bumping into anyone who might remember him from his earlier visit. Second, and far more important, it meant that ships were harvesting crew at a quick rate, a good sign that he might be leaving Thuban for another world in short order.
He settled at the bar and ordered a beer. The bartender delivered it with more head than liquid and slopped half of that on the bar itself. Carlos frowned and rapped his fist against the bar. "What's this?"
The bartender looked at what he had done, then shook his head and whisked the glass away. "Sorry, mate. The holovid's showing the disk of the Archon's funeral. I missed it the first time they ran it through the system. Here, this one's full and on the house. Drink it in the Archon's memory."
Carlos respectfully raised the glass. "To the Archon and her place at God's table."
A number of others in the bar joined his toast. A man in the back followed it immediately with another. "And God rot that scrawny bastard who calls himself her son."
That toast got more drinkers than the one he had offered, confusing the assassin. "What has Victor done?"
The bartender's expression became almost a snarl. "Not what he's done, but what he hasn't. Do you remember when his father died? Old Man Hanse lay in state for thirty-one days, a month and a day! What did his mother get? Two days! Even Jesus got three!"
"You can be sure Victor didn't offer her that much for fear she'd rise from the dead!" quipped the man in the back.
The bartender leaned forward. "The way we hear it, he sent a message to Katrina and told her, 'bury the bitch!' Gave her an order, he did. He was coming in as fast as he could from the Dragon's border—will make it a week from now, I've been told by those what know—but couldn't have the funeral wait. Mind you, the other children came on a command circuit from New Avalon—over twice the distance Victor had to go—and they made it. Can you imagine that? Prince Victor didn't even want to attend his mother's funeral?"
Up on the holovid screen affixed in the corner of the bar, the assassin saw the camera focus in on a tall, slender woman dressed head to toe in black. Beside her on the left stood a tall man with blond hair, who the assassin recognized as Ryan Steiner. "That the Archon's daughter?"
"Spitting image of her grandmother—was named for her, too. Victor made her preside over the funeral. Those are her brothers Peter and Arthur, and the girl there is Melissa's youngest, Yvonne." The bartender shook his head as he wiped away a moisture ring on the bar. "Katrina's been defending Victor, pointing out that he's got a government to run. Most of the people feel sorry for her so they accept it, but deep down we know the truth."
Carlos nodded and drank some beer. "Been nothing but trouble since Melissa married Hanse."
The man from the back of the bar came over and plopped himself down on the seat beside Carlos. "You know it, brother. But you also know why Katrina gave Melissa to Hanse, eh?"
Carlos shook his head. "Why?"
"Hanse told her that if she didn't, he was going to make an alliance with the Dragons. He would have married Constance Kurita. He would have forced his half-sister Marie to divorce Michael Hasek-Davion and would have married her off to Theodore. If he'd 'a done that, right now we'd all be drinking rice wine and speaking Dragon."
The assassin, who was fluent in Japanese, decided it was no time to reveal his prowess with that tongue. "I didn't know that."
The man from the back nodded emphatically. "Yes, part of the Davion plan, you know. You can see Victor keeping it up, too, the way he carries on with Omi Kurita. Why do you think the Tenth Lyran is stationed on the Drac border?"
"Hearing you tell it like that, it all begins to make sense."
"Damned straight it does." The man's eyes narrowed. "I can even tell you who did it, who set the bomb and why."
The assassin made Carlos lean in closer. "Who?"
The man glanced around the room, then lowered his voice. "Victor had it done. Being so tight with Omi, he had some of her assassins, the nekogami, do the job. The thing is this—they missed the real target. The bomb wasn't meant to get Melissa."
"No?"
"No. See, it was meant to get Ryan Steiner. Victor pledged to his father on his deathbed that he would kill Ryan. See, Ryan was supposed to be there. He was the one who was supposed to introduce the Archon that night, not Morgan Kell. It was meant to get him, it was."
The assassin wanted to be cautious, but he knew Carlos would have pressed the point. "But wasn't the explosive powerful? Didn't everyone on the dais die?"
The man shrugged. "The Kurita character for 'enough' translates as 'overkill,' you know. Besides, not everyone died. Morgan Kell lived, though he probably wasn't meant to. Now, there's a patriotic family for you—they're waiting his wife's funeral so the Hounds can kill off bandits."
"Patriotic?" Carlos indicated that the bartender should draw two more beers. "I mean, I know what the Hounds have done and all, and I appreciate that, but isn't Morgan's son a Khan of the Wolf Clan?"
"Aye, that's true, mate." The man beside him drained off a third of the beer. "But you have to understand something. The son of my wife's cousin went to the Nagelring at the same time as bonny Prince Victor and this Phelan. He told me that Phelan wanted nothing to do with his high and mighty cousin. Makes him okay in my book, even if he was brainwashed by the Clans. And, here, look, Phelan came all the way back for his father's retirement, didn't he? You can bet that he'd have been there for the funeral if it was his father had died. And he will be there for his mother's."
Carlos nodded as another man entered the bar. He had a clipboard propped against his belly. "Anderson, Capetti, Chung, Negron, Watterman— Woman Scorned is heading out in six hours. Lamon is the destination, with stops at Chukchi, Ciotat, and Trant. Standard compensation plus a twenty-five kilo freight allowance."
Carlos drained his beer and slapped his companion on the shoulder. "Thanks for catching me up, brother. I always enjoy talking with someone who's no fool and knows how the universe really works."
24
Nadir Recharge Station, Tharkad
Federated Commonwealth
27 June 3055
Victor Steiner-Davion pounded his fist against the bulkhead of his cabin on the Barbarossa. "What do you mean it will be five days before planetfall?" He spitted the station master with a vicious stare. "Why we were given clearance to come in here as opposed to the pirate point near Tharkad, I don't know, but five days to reach the planet?"
"Highness, please, try to understand. Even if you traveled at three gravities of acceleration, you would only shave a day off the time." The man clutched his hands together. "One and a half gravities is a much safer speed."
"I don't care about safety, dammit." Victor pointed at the porthole and the planet hanging like a jewel just beyond it. "That is my home. My mother died there and was buried there. I want to be there."
"Highness, there are government procedures ...
"
"I don't care about the procedures!" Viptor's fist slammed into the bulkhead again. "Damn you, I am the government. Recharge this JumpShip and we'll jump in closer."
"I can't."
"And I say you can!" Victor wanted to launch himself at the man, but he held back. He could see the image of Phelan in his mind, grinning at him and shaking his head. Before he could do something to spite that image of his cousin, Galen returned to the cabin accompanied by an older man with steely eyes and a face that looked chiseled from ice.
The ice man tapped the station master on the shoulder. "Go."
Victor nearly ripped into the new man, but he saw Galen shake his head slightly. The Prince held back as the station master left the cabin and the ice man closed the hatch. Taking his own time, the ice man made certain it was secure, then glanced at a boxy apparatus on his wrist. He punched two buttons, punched them again, then looked up.
"I am with the Intelligence Secretariat."
Victor leaned back against the bulkhead. "You're very welcome because I've seen damned little intelligence recently. "
The man ignored Victor's remark. "You're here and you're going in at 1.5 gees because of security concerns."
"I'm ordering this ship to recharge and jump in close so I can make Tharkad by tonight."
The ice man shook his head. "You're not."
Victor waved his denial away. "I am. I'm not concerned about an attempt on my life."
"Neither was your mother."
That hurt! Victor's hands knotted into fists. "You son of a bitch, who do you think you are?"
"I know who I am." The man's eyes sparked cold blue fire. "I'm the person assigned to make sure the maggots and vipers don't do to you what they did to the Archon. I'm part of the machine that is trying to find the animal who killed her. Right now, along with Kommandant Cox here and maybe your brothers and sisters, I'm the only person in this system who cares if you make it to Tharkad at all."
The man's directness and bloodlessness poured in through the hole in Victor's anger that the earlier remark had opened. The Prince bit back his desire to snap at the man and crossed to his desk. He sat down and pointed both Galen and this security man to chairs. "Fine, so you're doing your job. Does that include briefing me?"
Natural Selection Page 18
