Fire at Will

by Blaine Lee Pardoe

  She suspected that part of the problem was that she still hadn’t told anyone. She had wanted to tell Roderick before they left Tamarind, but couldn’t. Trillian knew he would understand; Roderick had taken many lives in his profession. At the same time, she worried that his opinion of her would change—a fear that spawned its own nightmares in the back of her mind. Each day during their voyage to Tharkad, she had contemplated telling him but fought back the urge.

  The cool air of the room hitting her sweat-soaked pajamas chilled her as she rose from the bed. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep. She knew her nightmares all too well. Each night was a wrestling match with her conscience and guilt. Some warm milk, that might help. Trillian pushed her feet into her slippers and pulled a robe over her pajamas, mostly for modesty. The royal palace was home, but it was always filled with people and activity, even at this hour of morning.

  Her return to Tharkad had not helped her sleep. Her report to the archon had gone well. She had resumed her role of confidante almost immediately. She questioned why her cousin was meeting daily with the director of Loki rather than his boss, the director of the Lyran Intelligence Corps. Melissa had explained her motivation. Trillian did what she did best—she challenged that thinking, pointed out that Melissa sometimes was too cautious, verging on paranoia. Leveraging Loki as she did was like using a machete to open an envelope. Despite their agreement to disagree on this point, it felt good to once again offer her council.

  Trillian passed the guards in the hallway and made her way to the elevator. In the first-level basement she silently walked down the corridors into the stainless steel kitchen. The kitchen smelled mildly of disinfectants, the aroma of fresh baked bread that made her mouth water, and something sweet, probably pastries for the coming day. She opened the massive refrigerator unit and poured herself a glass of milk. As she turned to the pulse warmer, she was shocked to see Melissa Steiner standing there in her robe. She jerked slightly in surprise, spilling some of her milk on the steel prep table.

  “I don’t suppose I could ask you to pour another glass?” the archon said, pulling her robe tight.

  “You scared me.”

  “I’ve had a hard time sleeping ever since the war started,” she confessed as Trillian took out another glass and filled it for her. “My physician wanted to give me a sleeping aid, but I hate taking medication. Plus, I had some late-night messages that kept me up.”

  The archon paused as Trillian warmed their milk. The archon laid the transcript of the message on the table.

  “I didn’t think you even knew where the kitchen was,” Trillian joked.

  “I may be the archon, but this is my house. You know I like a late-night snack from time to time. But why are you up at this hour?”

  “Nightmare,” she replied, handing Melissa her milk. The two of them sipped the warm milk. There was one person whom she could trust with her secret. Melissa would not judge her and could never share the secret. She wanted to tell someone, needed to tell someone. Trillian looked at her cousin and finally said, “I need to talk to someone, Melissa.”

  “The last I checked, I was someone.”

  “No joking,” she said. “This is serious.”

  Melissa pulled up a stool and sat down. “It has been a long time since we shared personal secrets.”

  The words came hard, as if her mouth did not want to obey her commands. Trillian felt her face get red, her eyes get wet as she began. “On Tamarind, you know there was a time when Klaus and I were hiding from the police. Duke Marik had everyone looking for us. We posed as locals, wandering the markets, trying to blend in.

  “We were confronted by the police. I got separated from Klaus. A policeman dragged me into an alley,” she said, watching Melissa’s face. The mention of the alley seemed to disturb her, perhaps because she suspected the worst. She has no idea. “He tried to force himself on me. I wasn’t sure if . . . what he was going to do . . . I think he was going to kill me—or worse.”

  Melissa said nothing but leaned closer, putting her hand on Trillian’s forearm. “I wasn’t sure how it happened, it was all so fast. I strangled him with the cord to his radio. I remember thinking he was going to kill or rape me or both. He just kept fighting. I choked him to death. Melissa, I killed another person.”

  She paused. The archon shook her head. “You protected yourself. If you hadn’t, he would have—well— you had to.” Her words were reassuring.

  “My God,” Trillian said, suppressing the urge to cry. “I killed someone.”

  Melissa got up and hugged her. “Trillian, what you did was survived. You’re a Steiner. You did what you had to do. If you hadn’t, we might not have had peace with the Duchy . . . at least not as quickly as we did.”

  Trillian held on to Melissa tightly. “I keep seeing him in my nightmares. I keep remembering what happened.”

  Melissa leaned back while still holding her. “It will pass with time.”

  “How do you know?”

  Melissa’s cool blue eyes locked with Trillian’s. “I started a war, Trill. You killed one man. I sent a lot of men and women to their deaths, and caused the deaths of even more. You’re not the only one in this house who has nightmares. You are not the only person struggling with her demons. I know your nightmares will eventually fade, but they won’t go away. Mine haven’t.”

  “You? You are always so strong.”

  “I have to be strong. People expect that.” She paused. “Does anyone else know about this?”

  “Klaus does, he was there. I tried, but I couldn’t tell Roderick.”

  The archon hugged her again. “You’ve told me. It stays with me. Your aide is a good man and will keep it to himself. I know you are close to Roderick. You may be able to tell him eventually.”

  Maybe . . . maybe after time. “Thank you.”

  “We’re family,” the archon reminded her. She toasted Trillian with her warm milk.

  Trillian wiped away the sting of her tears and toasted her cousin back. “I feel like the weight of the world is off my chest.”

  The archon slid the piece of paper in front of her but kept her hand firmly over it. “We all carry burdens. Sometimes they are negative, sometimes they are positive. Sometimes the things that keep us up at night are the past, sometimes they are the future.”

  “You’re waxing poetic. That’s not like you.”

  “A package was transmitted to us by a courier ship. A set of military plans in exacting detail.”

  “Plans?” Are we under attack?

  Melissa handed Trillian the paper. “Then this came in. A message from our friends.”

  “Clan Wolf!” she said, looking at the message.

  “Our friends have emerged from hiding, and not a minute too soon given what the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth is costing us.”

  With all that had been going on, Trillian had not thought about the Wolves in a long time. The memories of her meeting with them seemed so far away, like a lifetime ago. “Does Duke Vedet know yet?”

  “With the jump circuit I have in place—he should shortly.” Melissa Steiner grinned broadly.

  Breckenridge Heights

  Danais, Marik-Stewart Commonwealth

  Two Days Later

  General Frank Addams stood over the holographic map as Vedet Brewster once again demanded to know his plans. The man keeps talking in circles—talkingabout counterinsurgency. I want to know how he’s going to end this threat. Damn military mentality! A

  sniper attack two days earlier had killed General Leu-ken, putting Addams in command. The sniper had been caught, but the damage had been done. No place, not even his HQ, felt safe.

  The peace with the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey had been hard to swallow, as had Bernard’s dissertion. Food, sleep—nothing seemed to offer respite, lately. When word of the peace, negotiated by Trillian Steiner, had come, that had been bad enough. He had counted on old man Marik to kill or capture her, but she proved every bit a Steiner.

  Then the
re had been the military victory led by Roderick Steiner. He had to salute Melissa on that maneuver. She had managed to make sure that the victory on Tamarind was associated directly with the Steiner name. All his work, his leadership, his inspiration—all was forgotten. The archon and her family had robbed him of the glory he deserved.

  It’s not fair, but I know how the game is played now. I know now that my real hope is to shatter the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth. Once this realm fell, even she would not be able to claim credit for it. The Lyran people would know once and for all what he was able to do.

  General Addams opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by the arrival and quick salute of a courier. Both the general and the duke were handed communications packets. They both paused and flipped through the papers. The duke saw the words on the page but couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  From the Desk of Archon Melissa Steiner . . . ... Clan Wolf forces will be striking at the following worlds . . . ... are to be given a wide berth . . . ... considered nonhostile allies in our war against the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth . . . ... by order of the archon . . .

  He felt dizzy. How was this possible? That bitch! All along she had been in league with the Wolves and hadn’t told him. With the lack of a full HPG network, the Wolves could have been busy for a month or more without even being noticed. He felt as if the blood were draining from his extremities and his face.

  Melissa had bested him.

  From the beginning she had outwitted and outfoxed him. The negotiations with the Wolves had to have been in place before the war started. All along she knew what they were up to, she had to. She and Trillian both. At each step along the way, they had bested him. Did they manipulate Bernard’s betrayal as well? The duke slumped where he stood.

  He looked at General Addams. “I assume you got the same information?”

  “Wolves have swarmed across the border,” he said, glancing again at the paperwork. “They hit Gannett, that’s been confirmed. Our forces there fired at them, but they sent a coded signal that informed them of the”—he glanced at the paper again—” ‘new relationship’ with the Lyran Commonwealth. They then ordered us off Gannett.”

  “Damn her! She never said anything to me,” the duke spat back.

  “She is the archon,” the general replied coolly, not impressed with the duke’s theatrics. “I serve at her behest.” The words he didn’t say were strongly implied. As do you.

  Vedet Brewster tossed the communication across the room. “Fine, then, let’s see how the Wolves deal with these Silver Hawk Irregulars.”

  “Yes, sir,” the general said flatly. It was obvious the meeting was over. He left the room, leaving the duke alone.

  The war was different now. His mind reeled. There had to be a way to take advantage of this. But if there was, Duke Vedet couldn’t see it. And that lack of vision was what hurt the most.

  Dropship Titanslayer

  Nadir Jump Point, Westover

  Free Worlds League

  Bernard brooded in his stateroom as the JumpShip to which his DropShip was attached slowly recharged. There was nothing to do anymore, no more plans to make, no more reports to read. The moment I turned my back on the Broken Swords, I became a fugitive— for the rest of my life. He rubbed the cool metal of his former rank insignia with his fingertips, pressing in turn on each of the four points of the star. It already had taken on the importance of a talisman.

  His dreams were gone. Aside from the handful of loyal men who had left the battlefield with him, Loki had discovered and rooted out all his other comrades in the LCAF. He didn’t want to think what was happening to them at this moment. Things could be worse—Loki might apprehend him.

  I have to find a chance to prove that I’m as good as I know I am. If that meant siding with former enemies, then so be it. Being a mercenary is not the worst profession a former general could choose. From now on he swore he would make his own circumstances, he would seize and hold the initiative.

  Duke Vedet, Trillian Steiner and even Roderick Steiner would not be able to stop him—not in the future.

  For now, the first order of business was survival. If Bernard Nordhoff was anything, he was a survivor.

  Epilogue

  Diplomat Corps HQ

  Tharkad, Lyran Commonwealth

  30 March 3138

  Klaus Wehner carefully folded the paper and put it in the envelope, pressure-sealing it shut. Loki was highly sophisticated in the way it monitored communications, but there were ways around their devices and systems. Resorting to something so low-tech as a handwritten cipher delivered by a commercial merchant to a third party to pass on—that was hard to detect.

  His report to his SAFE handlers in the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth would outline the updated targets of the Lyran Commonwealth, just as he had done with the first wave of attacks. The information that he provided the Marik-Stewart forces had been invaluable. They had been able to position elements of the Silver Hawk Irregulars, train the locals, prepare defensives and generally make any attacks by the Lyran Commonwealth highly contested, bloody affairs.

  He had failed in some respects. Trillian Steiner was a genius, he had to admit. True, she did not know that he was a deep undercover SAFE plant for the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth. But that lack of knowledge was more a testimony to SAFE’s skills than to her oversights. No, where she had outfoxed him was in the involvement of Clan Wolf against his government. She had kept it a secret, even from him, her trusted aide-de-camp. As a result, despite all his successes, Klaus felt as if he had failed.

  He studied his monitor. Serving a ranking diplomat— and a member of the archon’s family—had given him access to information that had preserved much of the Marik-Stewart Commonwealth. He knew that the Lyrans considered SAFE a joke, regardless of which Free Worlds state they worked for. Klaus had proven them wrong.

  He felt some level of guilt: he liked Trillian Steiner personally. She was not only attractive but also brilliant. It’s a pity that we are on opposite sides. Even at her lowest point, living homeless in the streets of Zanzibar, Trillian had been a dynamo. When that policeman had assaulted her, she had killed him with her bare hands. She is a Steiner through and through. He even felt a little guilty that he had shared her actions with his handlers, though he knew their intelligence people would only leverage that information at the right time.

  His other pang of guilt was over the fate of the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey. The Free Worlds League was not like the Lyran Commonwealth. Each member of the League stood alone. While he knew they had been doomed in this campaign, it was up to his handlers to pass that information on. It had been difficult to watch a fellow member-state collapse. Fontaine Marik had been crafty enough to hold together the handful of worlds he had, but in the end Klaus had been forced to watch silently as the Duchy suffered the brunt of the Lyran assault.

  Wehner looked at the monitor and chuckled out loud. He scanned the Loki reports and admired how Bernard Nordhoff had managed to remain at large. He found it ironic that he had spread the rumor that Nordhoff might be planning a coup on Hesperus II when, in fact, the former Lyran general actually had been planning something along those lines. In trying to further divide the Lyrans, he had actually exposed a real threat.

  Nordhoff was missing along with four other officers. Loki hadn’t found him yet, but it made sense to assume he would try to sell his services to the highest bidder: a rogue general gone mercenary. He had included both the news and his speculation in the message to his handlers.

  Finding him and perhaps enlisting him . . . that would be another coup.

  Klaus Wehner turned off his monitor. It was time to leave for the evening. He would go back to his apartment, leaving the envelope at a drop point on the way. The next morning he was scheduled to meet with Trillian Steiner for breakfast.

  Another day deep in the belly of the beast.

  About the Author

  Blaine Lee Pardoe is the author of numerous science fiction novels, as well
as military history and business management books. He is a graduate of Central Michigan University and works at Ernst & Young LLP as an associate director in information technology. Blaine has written ten of the MechWarrior and BattleTech novels. He can be reached at bpardoe870@aol.com.

  Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  BOOK I

  Prologue 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  BOOK II 6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  BOOK III 18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  About the Author