"You are very well informed about what went on inside the militia command post," Tassa said, eyes narrowed.
"I am very well informed about everything-and everyone-on this world." Erik could not sit still.
He rose in a fluid motion and began to pace around his side of the room. "Everything, that is," he said then, "except you. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you doing here?"
She shrugged. "I thought men liked a touch of mystery in their lives."
Erik laughed into his glass. "Sandovals prefer to keep the secrets, not have secrets kept from them." He sipped carefully. "Although in this case, I might be willing to live with the mystery
Especially," he said with a frank stare of interest, "if it were on my side of the line."
Stretching back into the sofa's comfortable embrace, Tassa kicked her feet up onto the glass- topped coffee table and lounged in a more relaxed posture. "I'm listening."
Erik leaned over the back of his vacated chair, amber eyes staring unblinkingly at his guest.
"Twenty-four million," he said bluntly. "In Republic Stones or in a Federated Suns account. I'll give you the deal that Colonel Blaire wouldn't-a fully bonded contract for your services on Achernar, to be used for repair or replacement as necessary. And when you leave, you can keep ten . . . twenty percent of the balance for services rendered."
Tassa considered it and Erik watched as her eyes blurred for a moment as she seemed to be looking back at something. She gazed down into the red pool swirling about in her glass. "You are very generous," she finally said, and softly, barely more than a whisper
Erik began to pace again, circling the room now in long, slow strides. "When it's something I want, I don't haggle over the price. I think you're worth it, and I'm willing to pay."
Tassa continued to stare into her wine. "Quite the compliment. You know. For a woman like me."
"I never believed there were women like you, Tassa Kay." Erik stopped behind her, reached down with one hand to trace the back of one finger along the warm curve of her ear, and across her flawless cheek. He heard her sharp intake of breath, felt the slight hitching tensions. Was she choking back sobs? Erik leaned down behind her. "We could be very good for each other, you and I," he whispered.
That was when she finally started to laugh.
Not a nervous titter or an appreciative chuckle. No. Tassa threw her head back in a full-bodied, riotous laugh warm with her amusement and complete rejection. "Oh. My. You know, Erik, I thought I could hold a straight face through all of this. I really did. But it was too much."
She rocked forward, slipping out from under his touch and coming to her feet with the grace of a hunting animal. "You are completely without any sense of honor or shame, except possibly where it impacts your public-relations campaign, and you're a poor judge of character. You think you can buy me as one of your 'Yes-my-lord' people, both on and off the field? You are impetuous, self-centered, and, perhaps worst of all, impatient.
"Good for each other?" she scoffed, coming around the end of the couch at him. "I doubt I could trust you not to dampen your uniform the first time I whispered in your ear."
Erik had known refusal, even defeat, in the past. But never-ever-had anyone torn into him in such a manner. His ears burned with an embarrassed flush, and his fingers felt numb with a kind of distant cold.
"That was a mistake," he promised her, voice flat and dark.
Tassa looked ready to dash the rest of her wine into his face, then reconsidered, but not because she feared him. Her sorrowful glance made it clear that she wouldn't waste good wine on him. She drained off the merlot, then tossed the fragile glass over one shoulder.
"I've made others in the past," she said to the musical accompaniment of shattering crystal, "and I'll make more in the future, I'm sure. But I'd rather make mistakes than have no idea what I am doing. You don't, Erik, on or off the field." She turned for the apartment's foyer, dismissing him as easily as Erik might a servant in his uncle's home.
"Quite frankly," she said, "I have had better offers." Tassa cast a single, appraising glance back at him. "In all respects."
Achernar Militia Command Post
Achernar
The hard pounding on his BOQ door roused Raul from his silent contemplation. He had never turned on the lights after Jessica's departure, feeling more comfortable sitting alone in the dark. His room still smelled of the wasted liquor, smoky and sharp, and his face remembered the stinging slap of his ex-fiancée's hand.
Another round of knocking. It sounded like someone might be kicking the door on the other side.
He considered not answering it, considered sitting quietly in the dark until the person simply went away, but then a third, more commanding, series of poundings drew him reluctantly off the kitchen chair and around to the door. Whoever it was, they could be made to go away. Just then Raul didn't care if the Steel Wolves were at the edge of the base, ready to overrun the capital. He wasn't going out to answer an alert-he'd be of no use to anybody right now if he tried, and McDaniels wasn't going to haul him over to the O-club either. He wasn't going out, period.
He yanked open the door, and Tassa Kay stepped up to plant a long kiss over his mouth.
Like their moment on the Sonora Plateau, he didn't expect it. Unlike then, he didn't respond, and that threw a momentary hitch into her approach. Tassa stepped back, sized him up and down, and then said, "So you going to invite a girl in?"
Raul almost told her no. Then he inhaled the taste of her off his lips, and felt a spread of warmth along the back of his neck. Did he really want to sit in the dark for the rest of the night?
Tassa's mercurial moods might never bring her back to his door again if he turned away now. And he wasn't up to forcing another woman to walk away on him. One had been enough.
He didn't answer her directly. Didn't need to. Raul simply shoved the door open wide and then backed to one side, allowing Tassa to slip past and into his room.
Then he kicked the door shut behind them both.
19 - The Day After
Achernar Militia Command
Achernar
7 March 3133
Memories of the previous night invaded Raul's morning thoughts, teasing him awake with whispers of flesh and the promise of long, passionate kisses.
He remembered deep green pools of life swimming under his own gaze, acres of tanned skin and a few thin scars he did not remember on Jessica's body. Not blond hair hanging down into his face. Coltish red hair, long and damp. The scent of lavender soap and honest sweat, and the cool, sharp touch of a steel-bound crystal pressed against his chest.
As long as it takes . .
Hearing the husky whisper in his mind and placing it with a face, a body, Raul opened his eyes.
He stared at the ceiling of his quarters, still dim in the early morning light. An arm, draped casually across his chest, pressed down with unfamiliar weight. He turned his head far enough to find Tassa Kay, sleeping on her front, head turned toward him. Her eyes remained closed and her breathing deep and even, yet somehow Raul knew that she was awake as well. He suddenly knew a lot more than that.
"You're Clan," he said softly, though not quite whispering.
Tassa's eyelids rolled back like gunports opening. Bright, intelligent eyes stared back at Raul without a trace of guilt. "I did not know you could tell . . . this way."
Hearing her confirm it, Raul blinked rapidly as he cleared sleep from his eyes and the haze of time from his memories. "No. I mean, it's been a lot of little things. Adding up over the days. But you're Clan. Trueborn?" he asked.
"Yes."
Raul wasn't certain why that should make a difference, that Tassa had been born from iron womb technology. Maybe she seemed a touch more alien because of it. He stared back up at the ceiling, trying to sort through his thoughts.
"You don't speak like a Clanner." Then, "Not always," he amended. "You use contractions.
And you don't follow strict bidding pract
ices in combat."
"A wise warrior once commented that slavish adherence to tradition is the sign of a weak mind.
I'd like to think that I'm a bit like her."
" 'As long as it takes," ' he quoted her. "You came here to wait for the Steel Wolves." He remembered another of her evasive answers. "What did you come here looking for, Tassa Kay?" His vidphone chirped for attention, but he ignored it. "Is that even your name?"
"It is name enough," she said with formal cadence, letting her eyes drift back to half-mast.
"And I came here looking for battle, which is its own reason for existing. I wanted to test the Steel Wolves, and test myself against them, and that is all the answer you are going to get, Raul Ortega. It should be enough."
It should be. As much as anything else was an answer for him these days, living from day to day with little else on his mind except where the next attack would come from and how soon would it take to get his BattleMech fixed up afterward. The vidphone chirped again. Raul glanced toward it, then shrugged. Tassa might have refused to answer questions, but she had never outright lied to him.
He just needed to ask better questions.
Throwing the covers aside, Raul padded over to the wall-mounted conference phone and turned the camera off. Then he stabbed at the connection. The screen scrambled to life, showing a middle- aged man in a business suit and a silver goatee. In the lower left-hand corner the antenna-and-globe sigil for Stryker Productions Limited, the local ComStar affiliate, revolved on a vertical axis. Not the early-morning call Raul would expect. Right then, he wasn't certain what to expect anymore.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Raul Ortega?" the man asked. Raul nodded, then remembered he had turned off the camera. He repeated his earlier question. "Mr. Ortega, my name is Hanson Doles. This is a courtesy call to let you know that you have a message addressed to general delivery at our HPG station."
Raul was at once intrigued and cautious. With the failure of the HPG network, any message was golden. A personal message? It bordered on the unbelievable. Raul's security-trained mind didn't trust it. "Is it verifaxed?" he asked.
"It is not."
"Then why not send it by conventional transmission? I'll pay for the charge."
Hanson Doles rubbed one hand over his goatee. "I can only repeat, sir, that you have a message waiting here at the station. Conventional transmissions are . . . I guess you might call them suspect at the moment."
Raul stiffened. Erik Sandoval had troops stationed near-or inside-the HPG station. But if that was the problem, and Doles was trying to circumvent any monitoring, then he was taking a risk merely contacting Raul. "Who is it from?" he asked, still not willing to let it go. It wouldn't be the last time he asked one question too many.
Doles frowned, his wide face taking on extra years. He shifted in his seat, but his duty to deliver outweighed any discomfort. "Lady Janella Lakewood, Knight of the Sphere." And then, obviously having said enough in his own opinion, Hanson Doles cut the transmission from his end.
Tassa was sitting up in his bed, sheet draped over one shoulder and her necklace charm dangling down over her exposed breast. "You are becoming more popular by the day, it seems."
Jessica was gone. River's End lost to Sandoval. Star Colonel Torrent might attack again at any time, and Raul had a Clan warrior lounging in his bed. He felt pulled in five different directions.
No Pushed. Pushed from five different directions, each one of them trying to force him in a direction he wasn't certain he wanted to go. Tassa was here, she was waiting and he definitely had to have a talk with her, but Raul suddenly felt a need to step away and think.Me time, as Jessica would have said.
"I have to go out," he told her. It was the start of something, whether an apology or a promise he wasn't certain.
Tassa cut him off with a simple shrug. "I am not surprised."
ComStar HPG Station: Stryker-A7
Achernar
Two MiningMech conversions dominated the courtyard of the River's End ComStar compound, their weapons covering the broad avenue. Dark patches the color of wet concrete augmented their usual utility gray paint, putting together a rudimentary cityscape camouflage. Short- range missile packs sat double-stacked over the MiningMechs' left shoulder. A pair of anti-infantry machine guns replaced the grinder heads normally found on the left hand. Both converted IndustrialMechs stood in frozen profile as Raul rounded the corner. Arriving in a military jeep, though, he quickly drew their attention.
And their aim.
From the corner to the compound's main lobby Raul was stopped three times, asked for identification twice, searched once, and generally made aware that Erik Sandoval-Groell had invested more security around the HPG station than the militia base used to cover their main gates. A Demon medium tank guarded the front door, parked in the shadow of the large parabolic dish that rose over the bunker-style compound, angled crosswise across the sidewalk. Hauberk armored infantry walked posts around the station perimeter and Raul spotted another squad on the roof.
Just inside the door a uniformed squad bearing assault rifles inquired to the business of every customer, adding further intimidation to any traffic not daunted by the outside show of force. No customer was about to forget that the station was under Sandoval "protection." Raul submitted to a second check of his identification and stated his business very simply as a personal-not military-pick- up. A corporal checked to see that Raul Ortega did have a post waiting care of general delivery. With a glare the duty sergeant let him pass.
Hanson Doles met Raul at one of the two dozen service desks, taking over for a customer service agent who wore the white mantle so commonly known on Achernar as the duty uniform of Stryker Productions. There was no way to tell if Doles was a ComStar corporate officer or part of the local affiliate in charge of caring for the massive station-as before, Doles wore a simple suit, although Raul noticed up close that the showing tail of his breast-pocket handkerchief was monogrammed with the globe-and-antennae logo of SPL. They sat on opposite sides of a glass-topped surface, a small monitor sitting between them on a swivel-base.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Ortega. May I see some identification, please?" His voice was cultivated for calm assurance, but the man did not even try to disguise the suspicion that clouded his hazel eyes.
"And for a requested secondary verification, can you provide the verbal key? 'The Swordsworn are not necessarily here to help . . . ?" he began, trailing off into the question.
After so many security and I.D. checks, Raul began to question whether he was really himself.
Then he remembered one afternoon at the Officer's Club. "They were just here first," he finished, wondering how Janella Lakewood had known of his conversation with Kyle Powers. He must have passed it along to her. Which meant that Powers had been looking ahead toward his own injury or death days before Torrent challenged him.
"They arestill here, Mr. Ortega." The way Hanson Doles pitched it, Raul felt certain the man was simply voicing his own negative opinion of the situation. "Thank you for your patience. You may use this terminal to view your message. I have a dedicated earpiece for you," he passed over the plug- shaped device, standing, "and if you would sit in my seat, no one else should be able to view the screen. When the message has played through, a computer glitch will erase it automatically."
Raul stood, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and then moved slowly around to the working side of the desk. "Do you perform this kind of service often?" he asked.
"Twice since Kyle Powers' arrival on Achernar. Before that, the records show our last reception of a heraldic code to be more than five years ago." Doles moved off with casual aplomb, stationing himself several meters to one side.
Heraldic! Of and for the Knights of the Sphere. Raul slipped into the vacated seat, hands itching to reach for the video controls but stayed by a touch of nerves. Lady Lakewood wanted something from him. He wondered if he had anything left to give after this last chaotic week. Exhaling sh
arply, Raul reached forward and tapped the playback controls.
He expected trumpets and regalia, Heraldic crests, the public trappings that usually followed around a Knight of the Sphere. Instead, Janella Lakewood winked into existence without flourish or fanfare, the picture flat and dark. The transmission had not even come in as a holographic message.
It was difficult to tell, with so little detail besides her face and shoulders captured by the camera, but Raul thought it very likely that Lady Janella had used a BattleMech cockpit vidcam to record her message. Her thick, black hair looked matted, as if she had only recently removed her neurohelmet. Her green eyes were bloodshot with dark circles beneath from lack of sleep. Even so, she radiated something, even through a transmission that had originated forty light years away.
Competency, perhaps. Trust.
"Raul Ortega." She nodded at the screen. Even through a poor recording, she showed an animation that had Raul believing she stared back at him, knowing him on sight. "I have, only a few short hours ago, learned of Sir Kyle Powers' unfortunate and tragic death. I will confess to you that I did not immediately see the necessity for Sir Kyle to sacrifice himself in the manner he chose. Not for Achernar alone. Not in these dark times which will demand so much of every Knight, citizen and resident. So let me begin by assuring you that if his death has led to any amount of personal guilt or shame, it should not. Kyle looked beyond the battle. Beyond, even, the challenge for Achernar. What he did, and the way in which he did it, fostered a continuing rivalry between two Steel Wolf commanders. This has aided Ronel-and myself-directly, as well as assisting any future efforts against Kal Radick's growing faction."
It was a lot to take in over a very short count of words. Raulhad felt some guilt over the loss of Kyle Powers. Lady Lakewood's efforts to assuage that guilt helped, but also showed how little Raul himself actually knew about the enemy, the situation on other Republic worlds, and even about the Sphere Knights. Wanting to think over her words, he reached forward and tapped the view-screen's PAUSE key.
BattleTech : Mechwarrior - Dark Age 02 - A Call to Arms (2003) Page 20
