The Ruins of Power

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “Remove any of Tortorelli’s guards who won’t help defend the Palace,” Sergio said. “Don’t kill them. Lock them up in the east-wing cellar. The wine cellar doors are thick and impossible to open without explosives if you lock them.”

  “What? Let them have your good wine, Governor?”

  “It’ll keep them quiet,” Sergio said, liking the way the sergeant thought. “Seize control of the heavy machine guns Tortorelli placed at the doors. If you don’t have enough FCL soldiers to man them all, fall back into the Palace corridors until you can defend junctures in the halls with the troops you do have. I can give you a map, if you need it.”

  “Governor, I been guardin’ you for goin’ on three years. There’s not much of the Palace of Facets me and the rest haven’t explored, just to know where danger might be, mind you.”

  “Don’t worry about destroying the Palace. Keep yourselves safe.”

  “Governor, we’ll keep ourselves safe, you and the Palace, too.” Borodin snapped a salute and hurried off, bellowing orders as he went. Like a Pied Piper, he drew soldiers dressed in the drab green of Tortorelli’s infantry from odd corners along the Great Hall. Sergio recognized them all as having been in the First Cossack Lancers. This part of his plan had worked well.

  Tortorelli had got careless assigning troopers because he thought all those at the Palace were loyal to him. Sergio intended to have made significant progress toward neutralizing him and Lady Elora Rimonova before the Legate realized anything was wrong with his pet prisoner.

  Sergio closed his eyes for a moment and then pushed regrets away. He had ignored Elora and her ambitions and it had almost cost him his world. By the time he realized she intended to wrest Mirach from The Republic, she had grown far too powerful to simply remove. Worse, Sergio had never confirmed whether or not she had forged an alliance with Kal Radick.

  If these so-called Steel Wolves descended on Mirach because of her, Sergio feared nothing would be left but Elora’s ambition. As matters now stood, Lord Governor Sandoval had declared against Tortorelli and Elora, sending his Envoy with a BattleMech to restore order. And Kal Radick had not been heard from at all.

  Sergio knew a show of force by Sandoval’s BattleMech would never succeed, not in and of itself. More had to be done, and he needed to be free of his gilded palace/prison guards now to do it. He had allowed the First Cossack Lancers to be transferred away to free Manfred Leclerc to work with the MBA and watch their ’Mech program closely. The transfer had the added advantage of lulling Elora into a false sense of complacency, thinking he was unprotected and vulnerable.

  But he had lost so much. His older son. Hanna Leong. He had never believed Elora would go to such lengths. Everyone had a blind spot. Misjudging her repeatedly was far too easy a trap for him.

  Sergio dropped into his chair and picked up the Span-net phone Marta Kinsolving had given him, using the most sophisticated encryption equipment AWC had, intending to place the call he had started earlier. He put down the phone when Master Sergeant Borodin rushed back to report.

  “All secure, Baron. We got a dozen from the Home Guard to join us. Me or at least two FCL vouch for them.”

  “That’s good enough for me, Master Sergeant,” Sergio said.

  “You see the newscast she’s putting out?” Borodin spoke as if the words burned his lips.

  Sergio quickly viewed what the Ministry of Information was broadcasting. He sucked in his breath at the sight of the Atlas trapped in downtown Cingulum, surrounded by heavy tanks and badgered by battle-armored troops. The BattleMech strove to contain the Legate’s forces without destroying the buildings—and killing the populace—but Sergio knew that was an impossible mission. Either the horrific fighting machine used its weapons or it would be repeatedly attacked by heavy tanks and battle-armored troops trained to harass and bring down even such a fierce fighting machine.

  Sergio knew he had indirectly hampered the BattleMech’s deployment by insisting that deaths among the civilian populace—and the military—be kept to a minimum, but they were all citizens of Mirach.

  A monitor on his desk flickered as Elora’s face appeared. There was a wild look about her he had never seen before, reminding him how dangerous it was to corner a rat. Trying to escape, the rat might fight more ferociously than anyone expected. He had to allow her a chance to back away and stop the carnage.

  “Surrender, Sergio. You cannot possibly win. Save lives,” Elora said. Sergio heard the bluff in her voice.

  “There must be some reason you want me to surrender, Elora,” he said. “If all went your way, you’d ignore me. Or kill me. What’s wrong? Is there a chance the BattleMech will break free and come to the Palace to stand guard? That would show the people of Mirach that the Lord Governor still supports me.”

  “I’m trying to save your miserable life, Baron,” Elora raged.

  “I won’t give up,” Sergio said. “I’ve ordered my personal guard to defend the Palace and the sovereignty of my office. My only regret is not understanding the depth of your ambition earlier. So many have died needlessly.”

  “Too little, too late,” she sneered. “If I know you, you probably ordered the soldiers not to shoot, to try to bore my soldiers to death.”

  “Yours?” Sergio asked mildly.

  “Are you going to give up, Baron?”

  “No.”

  “The Legate’s best tank battalion will reduce the Palace of Facets to a hundred-meter-high pile of debris.”

  He glanced over at Borodin. The master sergeant looked grim as he listened to a radio report. He silently mouthed, “They’re bringing up the Behemoths. South of the Palace.”

  “This is your only chance, Baron. All you have to defend yourself is a few traitors with rifles.”

  “There might be more,” Sergio said. “The Atlas is on its way to the Palace.”

  “The BattleMech is trapped,” Elora said, sneering. “So are you. And both of you will be destroyed completely!”

  The line went dead.

  Sergio swallowed hard as he stared at the news broadcast. Elora was right about the BattleMech. The Atlas tried to elude the Condor tanks pecking away tenaciously at it—and it couldn’t. Even if the MechWarrior put the ’Mech into full power and headed for the Palace, it could never arrive before the Behemoth moving up inexorably from the south opened fire.

  “Master Sergeant Borodin,” Sergio said, “prepare to evacuate the Palace.”

  “Evacuate, sir? No! We’re here to protect it—and you.”

  “Unless you want to face a tank with hardly more than a rifle, you’ll do as you are ordered. Leave. Now. Retreat.”

  Borodin’s sputtering reply was cut off as a shell from the leading Behemoth slammed into the outer façade of the southern entrance. The resulting concussive blast shook the huge Palace and destroyed most of its communications equipment.

  Sergio Ortega leaned back in his chair, watching an external camera’s view of the tanks advancing, firing as they came. They would get the range soon enough and the end would come.

  So be it. He would die before surrendering the government of Mirach to Elora.

  33

  Ministry of Information, Cingulum

  Mirach

  9 May 3133

  Lady Elora felt flushed, her translucent skin ruddy now with the rush of excitement. She sat on the edge of her chair, leaning forward intently as if she played some gigantic musical instrument. Her desk had come alive with lights, indicators flashing warnings and OKs, a dozen views of the city and the skirmishes being fought.

  Is this what it feels like to have power, real power? she wondered. Her fingers flew like jeweled birds across the array as she guided one unit after another into battle and supplied tactical intelligence to Tortorelli’s forces.

  She positioned a Behemoth II Tank and ordered it to fire on an APC carrying former FCL troopers to the Palace. The heavy laser lashed directly into the side of the armored personnel carrier and snuffed out the lives of a dozen figh
ters.

  The enemy, she gloated.

  “I say, how’s it going? You are deploying according to the battle plan I gave you?” Calvilena Tortorelli turned from his position in front of her office window. Elora had left the tranquil city view on the screen and this pleased the Legate, although it had no bearing on the death and destruction actually stalking Cingulum. The thought flashed through her mind that the citizens were much like him. Give them pretty pictures and they would sit for hours, content and willing to be guided in whatever direction she chose.

  It was time for The Republic to lose Mirach. Kal Radick would provide far better rule. And he would receive it because of her.

  “Everything is going well, Calvy,” she said. “Do you want to see?” With almost savage glee, she transformed the cityscape into the transmission from a camera mounted at the corner of a building in downtown Cingulum. Tortorelli rocked back as a dozen missiles burst in front of his face with hellacious force.

  Elora had to switch to another camera because the one she had activated had been destroyed. From farther down the street she focused on the advancing Atlas.

  “The BattleMech,” Tortorelli said with a hint of fear. “Parsons should have placed that in my command. But such a slight doesn’t matter, not really. My soldiers have been trained to bring it down, and it’s not giving a bit of trouble to them. Why, it’s not even fighting back!”

  “Its pilot doesn’t want to destroy any more of the city and its people than necessary.”

  She didn’t add that it was too late for the BattleMech to save itself. With careful movement she had ringed it with heavy artillery and tanks. A few Condor tanks made swift attacks, only to dart back before the BattleMech’s heavy lasers could take them out. But the Atlas was doubly limited. It couldn’t use the incredible power of its Gauss rifle, nor did it have jump jet capability. Stuck to plodding along at ground level, it was hindered by the closeness of urban buildings its pilot had been ordered not to destroy.

  Elora had practically ignored Tortorelli’s strategic plans in favor of her own. She was no fool. The ebb and flow of battle was laid out in front of her as clearly as could be. What was needed and what was impossible were obvious in a flash, thanks to her constant flow of intelligence about the battle, the enemy, and the position of the Legate’s forces.

  “I’m keeping up the propaganda barrage. Kinsolving’s techs aren’t able to jam my transmission. If she had succeeded in activating the relay stations on the four moons, it might have been a different story. But on the ground, the Ministry of Information has the technological muscle to make the people believe anything we want them to!”

  Tortorelli looked at her strangely. Elora realized her voice had risen to a screech, and she was acting erratically.

  “We are so close, Calvy. You are such a brilliant tactician.”

  “Strategist,” he said absently. “The overall battle plan is strategy. How it’s accomplished is tactics.”

  Lady Elora ignored him. Her mind raced ahead to the eventual success over the BattleMech. Should she try Parsons as a traitor and execute him, or would it be better to send him packing back to Aaron Sandoval? Definitely the latter. The message would be clearer that way. Mirach, under the guidance of Kal Radick, had destroyed a BattleMech. The planet was off-limits from now on to Republic forces if they didn’t want to face the same punishment.

  Possibly the battle itself would make the decision for her. Jerome Parsons might be killed, either in combat or by Marta Kinsolving’s sycophants.

  A new river of intrigue flowed around Elora as she considered the benefits of announcing how Kinsolving and the MBA had murdered Sandoval’s Envoy. She had already broadcast how Sergio Ortega had again destroyed Mirach’s HPG station. It hardly mattered if many believed the wild claim, as long as some did. All this might be enough to wrest control of Mirach’s industrial sector from the triumvirate that now ran it. Elora could control not only the military and civil authority, but the mining, manufacturing, and agricultural might of the planet.

  Authority, power, and wealth!

  “You don’t want to do that,” said Tortorelli.

  “Why not?” Elora’s fierce green eyes fixed on him.

  How did he know what I was thinking?

  “You’ll box in the tanks. They’d either have to waste ammunition blowing their way through Havoc or swing far around and fritter away valuable time doing an end run. If they did that, the BattleMech could get free and establish a defensive position at the Palace.”

  “The Atlas could fight there without fear of destroying any of the populace,” she said slowly, considering the merits of what the Legate said. Elora relaxed when she realized Tortorelli had been commenting on the skirmish raging in the city and not on her political engineering.

  “It could certainly defend the Governor until battle armor could be brought in, should that be Parsons’ intent.” Tortorelli paused, then continued. “Ask him to surrender.”

  “Parsons?”

  “No, no, my dear. Ask Sergio to surrender. He would do it to prevent more bloodshed. You know how squeamish he gets. I do think he really believes all that pacifistic nonsense he spouts. Tell him to hand over the government immediately or there will be even more bloodshed.”

  “Only he can stop it,” Elora said, keying in exactly to what Tortorelli meant. This was the Governor’s Achilles’ heel. He might have been a fierce fighter in the days of Devlin Stone, but he had lost the will to fight and he believed anything could be negotiated.

  She would show him how politics really worked. Words were fine, but a barrage of missiles or a laser blast produced more dependable results.

  “No, wait—he won’t surrender,” Tortorelli said, as if this was a major revelation for him. “He will see his own martyrdom as a stronger statement that will unite the people against us. The Baron might be right; yes, he just might be right. But I don’t think so.”

  He reached past Elora and got a command line to his battalion commander.

  “Captain Mugabe, full attack. Hit the Palace with all you have.”

  “Sir!” came the reply. “Repeat your order, please.”

  “Destroy the Palace of Facets,” Tortorelli said decisively. “Take no prisoners.”

  “Understood, sir,” came the reluctant reply. But Tortorelli saw Mugabe obeyed. She was his top tank commander. She moved into position rapidly and her Behemoth fired a Gauss round that crashed into the Palace’s facade with horrific results.

  “He won’t surrender,” Tortorelli repeated. “Did I do right, Elora? Should I have ordered the Palace and everyone in it reduced to rubble?”

  “I can announce that he has already surrendered,” Elora said, more to herself than to the Legate. This appealed to her. When she moved in with her cameras, any fight on the Governor’s part would then appear to be violation of a truce.

  “Yes, that is splendid. There isn’t much time left for him, so do make it sound sincere,” Tortorelli said. Elora fixed him with her cold stare. Was he being sarcastic? She couldn’t tell because he turned and went to the screen so he could watch the destruction moving like a tsunami across Cingulum. Tanks sniped at the Atlas, and battle-armored soldiers continued their persistent attack, in spite of increasingly heavy losses from the BattleMech’s crushing feet and sweeping arms as it tried to escape.

  But nothing matched Elora’s feeling of accomplishment when fifteen minutes later, her news anchor interrupted the live-action fighting to read the report of Governor Sergio Ortega’s unconditional surrender.

  The stage was now set for victory. If the Baron fought, he would be seen as treacherous. If he didn’t, he died.

  34

  Governor’s Park, Cingulum

  Mirach

  9 May 3133

  Here goes nothing, Austin Ortega thought. He had worked steadily for five days and had programmed the neurohelmet to respond to his brain waves, then had set access codes to permit him to fully power up the BattleMech. He had brought ammo
from a warehouse and, using a small, motorized carrier, had struggled to load LRMs stored in an underground bunker. Several technicians would have done such work, but Austin had relied on his own training and a considerable amount of innate talent.

  And he had invested more physical exertion than he cared to think about, every muscle in his body aching. It had been a hectic, strenuous five days.

  Sergeant Death had gone from an inert tower of metal to a reborn fighting machine in less than a week under his careful ministrations.

  It just goes to show what a sturdy ’Mech the Centurion is, he thought with a sense of accomplishment. Then a moment of grief washed over him. Dale had been wrong about the old BattleMech.

  “This is for you, big brother,” Austin declared. He fastened his neurohelmet, strapped himself in, and gripped the joysticks. His feet pressed into the pedals and Sergeant Death came alive. A heavy metal foot moved forward and crushed down, destroying the marble floor in the rotunda. As the BattleMech swung about, an electrical junction box at floor level exploded amid a shower of sparks and loud whistles and electronic screeches. Austin piloted the Centurion forward, crashing through the western wall of the museum without breaking stride. Lath and bricks fell all around, creating small clicking sounds against the metal hull.

  Visual observation vanished amid the dust cloud he created. Austin switched to instrumentation. He was pleased to see that the targeting and ranging equipment was operational. When he powered up the Corean Transband-J9, he was disappointed to hear only static. Austin had hoped to contact the Atlas, coordinate an attack, and establish an unbreakable defense around the Palace.

  Adjusting the targeting radar, he saw that the Atlas was more than twenty klicks away in the city. Small flares around the other BattleMech showed how furiously Tortorelli’s medium tanks engaged it. The Atlas MechWarrior depended on surgical shots at the Condors and ignored what Austin saw as the real goal: the Governor.