"You were not at all what we expected," Roost said.
Nikola did not answer as she moved on to the next tank in formation, an SMI tank destroyer. The comparatively fragile SMI was a risk, but the surface attack force had to be fast and able to traverse both land and water. That meant her Condors, Bellonas, and SMls.
"I'm not rehashing the whole 'Mech-Elemental issue," Roost said to her back. "Though I suppose by piggybacking on your machines we could pass as elementary Elementals."
Nikola turned and looked at the native for a level second. She hated puns, particularly the extremely bad sort the Laiaki seemed to favor. She had learned through painful experience that if she did not let Roost know she had heard—and hated—his sally, he would repeat it until he was sure she'd grasped his intent.
"I meant," Roost pressed blithely on, "we had certain notions of how Clanners would act, and you've disappointed us at every turn."
That brought her up sharply. "Disappointed?"
"Poor choice of words," Roost said hastily at the sight of her expression. "I meant that your behavior has not been what we expected. Believe me, that is a compliment."
Nikola grunted and moved on to the third tank. She had never, prior to Anastasia Kerensky's dissolution of the Steel Wolves, imagined spending so much time conversing with Inner Sphere natives. She did not enjoy the experience. Particularly when they were trying—as she surmised Roost was—to be friendly. She had loosened the teeth of Wolves foolish enough to take the liberties the Laiaki did in the course of what they considered casual conversation. Why they felt it necessary to repeatedly express their surprise that the Wolves were not grunting barbarians, for example, was beyond her.
And the iron discipline to respond civilly—as an employee—was barely within her grasp.
She tugged at the netting lashed to the hull of the Condor, the source of Roost's "elementary Elemental"—quip, she guessed the term was. Lacking environmental suits, the Steel Wolf Corp infantry would be making the attack on the underground tunnel entrances to Yaleston. Foot troops for the surface assault would be two companies of Laiaka Planetary Militia, which would ride into combat clinging to nets secured to hover tanks moving under fire and over rough terrain at one hundred plus kilometers per hour.
Nothing cowardly about the Laiaki, she reminded herself.
In fact she had ordered the Steel Wolf Corps infantry Star commanders to train with the LPM. They had agreed the military-grade hostile-environment suits— flexible exoskeletons with light armor and minimal my- omer augmentation—would be valuable additions to the Steel Wolf Corps materiel. They had also spoken with respect of the militiamen themselves, which was enough to free Nikola of any concern about their performance when battle was joined.
She was vaguely aware of Roost prattling along as she completed her inspection of every vehicle. That was another Laiaki "courtesy"—filling the air with useless chatter—she had difficulty adapting to. Its corollary, that remaining completely silent was rude, also required adaptation. If she was going to lead the Steel Wolf Corps successfully on campaigns through the Inner Sphere, she must master the requisite social skills.
Her chronometer told her Pandot had another thirty- seven minutes in which to complete outfitting all the vehicles before their first live-fire exercise on the surface. Now that she was no longer focused on her job, social protocols required her to make some response to Roost's verbal barrage. Unfortunately, she had not apprehended a word he'd said in the last half hour, which precluded any relevant reply.
The final tank faced the exterior doors. The interior doors of the air lock, big enough to accommodate four of her tanks at once, were open. She crossed the chamber to the massive reinforced panels that opened directly onto the surface and peered out through the narrow fer- roglass viewports.
Though she knew it was local day, the world outside was dark. An oppressive, roiling ceiling of oily clouds hung close to the surface. Lightning traced through what she imagined must be thunderheads.
"Storm brewing," she said, applying carefully deduced small-talk skills.
"That?" Roost peered through the slit. "Storms are coming, but not until winter. This is summer and that's a clear sky."
Nikola gave him her flat look.
"That one wasn't a joke," Roost assured her. "What you're looking at is a mild, early summer midmorning. If there was a storm you'd be able to see maybe a dozen meters through sheets of falling sulfuric acid."
Enlightened, Nikola looked out at the mild summer morning, cataloging the features for future reference.
Small talk.
"How is there enough light for those plants to survive?"
"Light? Oh. Photosynthesis." Roost shook his head. "Wrong sort of ecology. The sun heats the air—or, technically, the vapor and dust in the air. Direct light almost never reaches the surface. Just diffuse sky glow."
"Then how is life possible?" Nikola asked, a bit surprised to be actually curious.
"Chemosynthesis." Roost pointed out the viewport as though it could be seen. "The heat, the sulfuric acid, the carbon dioxide. The whole planet's one giant black smoker."
Nikola didn't recognize the term, but the implication was clear from context. The toxic cauldron beyond the ferroglass—a nightmare from a childhood fable—was as good as this world ever got.
What sort of people colonize hell?
23
Steel Wolf JumpShip Stalin
Avellaneda nadir jump point
Former Prefecture VII
17 December 3135
Star Colonel Xera pulled and pushed herself through the service tunnels of the Star Lord-class Stalin with the thoughtless ease of long practice. She was aerospace, her stature and her reflexes the product of generations of eugenics.
Turn, twist, turn; even if she had not had the labyrinth of maintenance passages memorized, she would have known where she was relative to the shuttle bay, the bridge, the axis of travel, and the cold of space to within the meter. Not through any supernatural ability—though many aerospace liked to feed that mystique—but through a lifetime of training—conditioning built upon a genetic proclivity for heightened spatial awareness.
Flowing around a ninety-degree bend, she plucked an
adjustable spanner out of the air without breaking rhythm. Xera handed it to the tech who'd "dropped" it and pushed around the next bend before the startled woman fully registered who she was.
Pushing open an access hatch, she gripped the threshold and drew up her knees, somersaulting into the main through corridor a half dozen meters from Galaxy Commander Varnoff Fetladral's wardroom. The guard at the door glanced her way incuriously, then snapped rigid.
Xera found it significant that Varnoff had a guard on duty. And that the guard cared little enough about his post to relax.
She ignored the man—a reprimand that spoke volumes— and pushed through Varnoff s door unannounced.
"Star Colonel Xera," Varnoff greeted her without looking up from the noteputer tethered to his web chair.
"Galaxy Commander," Xera responded.
Hooking a foot through a loop grip in the deck, Xera oriented herself to Varnoffs vertical and "stood" at her ease waiting for him. She felt the thrusters keeping the huge JumpShip and its sail aligned to best advantage adjust twice—compensating for the constantly changing net effect of solar winds and gravity wells of worlds orbiting the distant primary—in the minutes it took Varnoff to finish whatever he was reading.
"Our aerospace assets are dangerously concentrated," Varnoff said at last. "Three DropShips docked to two unarmed Merchants,. Vulnerable."
He paused, tacitly inviting her response. Xera waited.
"The Roofvogel is nearly as long as the Gier a Merchant was never meant to transport a Titan" he said when she remained silent. "1 am ordering the DropShips reassigned."
"I prefer to keep my command consolidated," Xera said.
"Your command." Varnoff let the words hang in the air between them for a moment. "Are
we not all Steel Wolves, Star Colonel?"
"Aff."
"Your aerospace cluster left Galatea independently of the Steel Wolves," Varnoff said. "You showed admirable initiative. And you showed wisdom in reattaching your cluster to the true Steel Wolves once we were free of the taint. In recognition of your initiative and your wisdom, I allowed you great autonomy."
Xera did not point out that he'd had little choice. He had no direct control over—no direct access to—the aerospace warriors.
"But despite the autonomy I granted you, your command is under my command, Star Colonel," Varnoff said. "A fact you seemed to forget on Rochelle."
"Our rightful objectives had been secured," Xera answered, not for the first time. "The secondary strike was unnecessary."
"The second strike was ordered," Varnoff repeated his side of the discussion.
That they were repeating this exchange was significant, Xera knew. Nothing had come of it at the Rochelle jump point. But at the Rochelle jump point Varnoff had not felt the need for the guard at the door. Things were changing, and not for the better.
"We are not Jade Falcons," she said, taking the debate to a new level. "Only Malvina Hazen wantonly punishes defeated enemies for having the spirit to resist."
"And only Anastasia Kerensky throws away her heritage when it suits her," Varnoff answered. "A Steel Wolf Star colonel does not form committees among her command and she does obey to the fullest when the Galaxy commander gives an order."
Xera braced. But Varnoff carried the threat no further. It occurred to her that she could declare a grievance at his treatment, but that she would not. Were they becoming more feeble or more wise?
"You doubt my loyalty?" she asked. "Or mv command?"
"If I did you would not be here," Varnoff answered. But he did not meet her eyes. "Both of us were too long under the influence of Anastasia."
She noticed he did not grant their former Galaxy commander the respect of using her full name.
"Before we realized the extent of her madness, we allowed some of it to seep into our own thinking. It is in the thinking of some of our warriors." Varnoff's voice became more intense. "You see it as well as I do. The lack of center. The loss of unquestioning obedience."
He gestured with his noteputer, a broad and careless movement no one bred to space would ever have made. Then he leaned forward in the web chair, as though conveying a confidence.
"We must be vigilant," he said. "We must examine ourselves and those under us. And we must crush any evidence of that woman's poison."
Xera kept her own counsel, gauging the depth of Varnoff's fears.
"You have been keeping aerospace as a separate force," Varnoff said a few moments later in a calmer voice. "That is Spheroid thinking.
"The Huvik and the Roofvogel will transfer to the Stalin," he said, consulting his noteputer. "Two Mule- class materiel transports will be assigned to the Gier. The Hibou will remain with the Cazador, but the Fang will be added. A Lion and a Miraborg should provide a symmetrical load."
Xera was not fooled. Varnoff was breaking up her power base, making it clear that the aerospace forces— that she—was not the independent ally she had striven to be. One of the JumpShips he knew was personally loyal to her was now an impotent transport. He had not completely stripped the second for reasons of his own, but he had garrisoned it with one of his troop carriers. And he had attached half her aerospace fighters along with her command Star directly to his flagship.
Varnoff saw her as a threat to his command and thought to destroy her influence by scattering her people among his own. Considering his outburst of a moment before, she elected not to contest the decision. In his present state he would hear even the most reasoned argument as a challenge that could turn their delicate balance into open conflict. And that was one thing the Steel Wolves did not need if they were to heal, to become again what they should be.
Besides, having her warriors and technicians in daily contact with warriors and technicians Varnoff considered unquestioningly loyal to him could work to her advantage.
"To build unity of purpose we must have a goal," she said as though moving from one item to another in a set agenda. "What are our long-term objectives?"
Varnoff considered her for a moment, though whether suspicious of the ease with which she relinquished her fiefdom within the Steel Wolves or gauging how much of his plans he should reveal was not clear. Xera schooled her features into an expression of respectful attention.
Secure in his woven zero-gravity chair, Varnoff may have thought himself a spider at the center of a web, but to Xera he looked more like a spider's prey, wrapped and held for later eating.
"Tigress," Varnoff said at last. "One more thing that woman took from us was our secure base, our home world. I intend to take it back."
"The Laurel family will have consolidated our holdings by now," Xera pointed out. "They will not be easy to dislodge."
"The Laurel family depended on the Republic of the Sphere," Varnoff said. "With that crutch no longer available, they will not stand against us.
"However, we will not attack in haste." He held up his noteputer. "We will gather our strength and resources along an archipelago of worlds that hold resources we can use. And we will hone our skills on lesser targets as we build."
Varnoff looked up, holding her gaze.
"And we will rebuild our reputation as a force to be feared through our swift and complete victories over those targets," he said. "Psychological warfare that will soften Tigress for our return."
He waited until Xera nodded her acknowledgment of that tactic.
"And, though we will not waste our time and substance searching for her," Varnoff said, "if our path should take us close to Anastasia Kerensky, we will hunt her down and kill her."
24
Caravanserail, Kalidasa
Protectorate Coalition
Former Prefecture VII
20 December 3135
The eyes of the Kalidasan customs agent slid over him, looking toward the large family waiting behind the line on the floor. That happened a lot, which was good. He worked hard to make sure it did.
Either the family behind him pointed or the agent realized his mistake. Either way, his eyes came back to Green. He smiled apologetically and Green smiled pleasantly.
Pleasant people were never remembered.
He had all his data in order, the crystal ready for the scanner, his luggage unlocked. Security at Caravanserail DropPort had become tighter. Again. The rumors were rampant. The Republic was coming back. The Republic was gone forever. The Mariks were considering annexation. The Steel Wolves had raided Rochelle. Stewart was invading neighbors to form its own pocket kingdom.
The only truth in the entire melange was the Steel Wolves raid, and it was the only part he'd had nothing to do with. Green found that amusing.
Stewart's Planetary Legate MacNaughton and her lap- dog Governor Ingram would be particularly shocked by that last bit. It was their solidarity, and her espoused dedication to Stone's ideals, that had prevented them from becoming the center of power in this region.
Not that he bought her faith in the return of The Republic for a moment. His intelligence sources were thin in this region, so he had no hard data, but unless he missed his guess, MacNaughton was waiting until everyone's back was turned. Then she would go running to the Marik-StewartCommonwealth, taking their namesake planet with her. That would be irony.
He watched the customs agent go through the mind- numbing routine of checking his luggage with three kinds of sniffer—in the proper sequence—and hand enter the negative results into the appropriate info fields on his terminal. Someone who'd never had to pass through customs or fill out a civil service form in his or her life had devised this system.
Green loved it.
It was the dearest wish of every underpaid minion forced to slog through this tedium to make it through a shift without finding anything that might require filling out additional forms. He did
his best to help them achieve their goals. One case in the most common style, neatly packed with all the appropriate items present and nothing unusual in sight. Data chit flawless, manner un- imposing, every exchange courteous but not one syllable past the necessary.
Green never wished anyone a nice day—after hours in line he'd be remembered as the only one who had. He never chatted about where he was going, inquired how to find anything, or stood in main traffic patterns.
Kalidasa really was the best choice as the center of this neighborhood—even before their parochial attitude had ruled out his boss' first choice.
Rochelle had many of the qualifications, but having already been invaded once, it lacked credibility as a leader. And after the Steel Wolves' visit, Governor Pe- trokovitch had been eager to become part of a mutual- defense network—despite Legate Illiarveski's objections.
Alkes and New Hope had gained the most in joining the newly formed Protectorate Coalition—a committee- chosen name if ever there was one. The one had minerals, the other abundant agriculture, but neither could flourish without outside markets.
Relieved to find nothing, the customs agent sealed Green's case with a tamperproof band—that came off easily with a mild alkali solution, then could be unde- tectably replaced with spray adhesive—and handed it and his data chit back to Green.
With a pleasant smile, a nod, and no inquiry as to where to go next, Green went out of his life forever.
Kalidasa was a wealthy world, used to comfort, used to being the center of trade, used to taking care of itself. Even its DropShip passenger terminal—a barn on most planets—was spacious, airy, well lit. with good terrazzo floors and sound-absorbing wall hangings that actually looked like art.
The boarding agent accepted Green's data chit without comment, feeding it into her terminal. He made no small talk as she wearily ran a fourth and fifth sort of detector around the outside of his case.
Kalidasa's leadership would make the Protectorate Coalition one of the most successful "neighborhoods" in the region. The ripest plum when the inevitable har- vesttime came around.
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