Ghost War mda-1

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The Germayne family had ruled it since the early days of the Federated Suns and the world had prospered. The people had been fiercely loyal to House Davion, and staunch allies of the Draconis March’s Sandoval family. Basalt stood ready to act as a bulwark against advances by the Combine, but they really were never called upon for more than sending troops, which they did enthusiastically.

  Count Achilles Germayne had accompanied Victor Steiner-Davion to the Clan homeworld of Strana Mechty. While he had not been instrumental in the Clans’ defeat, he did fight honorably beneath Victor’s banner, and even agreed to lay down his arms when Victor called his army to do that. Later he brought a company to help Victor in the civil war against Katrina. Once that was won, he returned to Basalt. During the dark times of the Blakist uprising, he married and his wife bore him two sons, Hector and Ivan. When Stone began his reforms and Victor supported him, Achilles Germayne declared Basalt to be for Stone.

  His eldest son, Hector, became the planet’s ruler upon his father’s death. Both he and his brother had two children, a son and a daughter each. Ivan died fifteen years ago in a hovercar accident and Hector took his nephew and niece into his care. While the Germayne family was hardly the wealthiest on the planet, all of them seemed more committed to public service than making money.

  The Republic files, both old and the sketchy new ones, reported little else of interest about the world. By all accounts it was a beautiful place, with lots of rain forests and natural resources. The climate featured terrific lightning storms. The planet boasted mostly light industry that served the local needs and, in that way, it was lucky since it was actually self-sufficient.

  A number of reports and articles, including some written back before I was born, predicted that Basalt would be the next “in” spot for tourism—citing the vast rain forests and diversity of plant and animal life as the main attractions. The follow-ups to those articles still touted the unspoiled nature of the world, but at the same time chronicled the collapse of deals designed to make luxury resort projects a viable concern there.

  The only other item that really caught my attention was a profile from a business journal that covered Aldrington Emblyn. He’d come to Basalt to manage one of those failed resort projects, but had stayed on and had become “Basalt’s own Jacob Bannson.” I’m sure that was meant as a compliment. The man, in twenty short years, had amassed quite a fortune and had been linked in the news with the most beautiful of women in Basalt’s upper crust. There were even rumors of his planning to marry Sarah Germayne, Hector’s niece, but those stopped appearing a year ago.

  After doing the basic research, I still couldn’t figure out why Basalt was the target, and I said as much in the briefing Janella and I gave Consuela and Kitsune. “It makes no sense. Basalt isn’t even a convenient jump point. Winning Basalt will gain no one anything.”

  Kitsune half-closed his eyes. “Perhaps, Mason, Basalt is not a prize to be fitted into some grander scheme, but simply is a prize for itself. Basalt, as you have noted, plays little part in the affairs of the Inner Sphere. Perhaps this is yet true. The forces on Basalt may be content with winning Basalt for itself. After all, Helen was no more special and you have not fit it into a larger plot.”

  My mouth gaped open for a moment, then snapped shut. “Yes, my lord, you raise an excellent point. Handy’s presence there may be no more significant than his reprising his role on Helen.”

  Consuela regarded me with dark eyes. “You resist this notion.”

  “Only because Handy is so much of a blank. He was clearly employed as an agent provocateur, but by whom and for what purpose we don’t know. For him to be employed there and then so quickly engaged on Basalt does suggest that he has a reputation, and it must be a good one since no one is going to hire him based on the events on Helen.”

  “I concur, that is a problem. Moreover, a variety of Paladins have expressed concern that an individual like this is operating within The Republic. The last thing the current situation needs is agitation.” She closed her eyes for a moment or two, then set her shoulders. “We’re going to ask you if you would be willing to go to Basalt.”

  I frowned. “My duty is to obey your orders, my lady.”

  Consuela raised a hand. “Mason, this is not an ordinary mission. Usually you are called upon to go into the field, investigate, infiltrate, slip away and report. Most people think the Ghost Knights are called that because no one knows who they are. You know that we want them to be phantoms.

  “Circumstances have changed. We are sending you into a situation where we know your contact is untrustworthy and is willing to have you apprehended or killed. He may be hiring you precisely because you are expendable. Your supposition that you are but one of many people with your talents is a good one, which means you will be in dangerous company. We can assume that, whomever is on the other side, they are equally skilled.”

  “My lady, I do know my way around a battlefield.”

  “I’ve seen your scores, Mason, and were we sending you into combat with Janella here by your side, or a Lament lance, I would have little worry about your ability to survive and even conquer. The fact is, you will be going in without any support. We’ll be setting you alone among wolves.”

  Her choice of words let me know that one of the Paladins she’d been talking with had been Victor. I grinned. “This is a chance for me to try out my wolfhound idea.”

  Consuela nodded solemnly. “Then you will do it?”

  “I’m leaning that way. I need to know the parameters of my activity. If you’re right and there is combat, how far shall I go? You know there is no such thing as shooting to wound. What if I have to engage loyalist forces in combat?”

  Kitsune knitted his fingers together. “You will have to defend yourself. You have no choice. You know what the limits are.”

  “What about activity outside a ’Mech? There’s likely a host of felonies I’ll have to commit. I’d keep mayhem to a minimum, but I may be required to do some fairly nasty stuff.”

  “That came up in my discussions. The Republic will indemnify the injured parties. Just try to make things a little less spectacular than last time.”

  I winced. “How far can I go, and what is sanctioned?”

  Consuela leaned forward and started ticking points off on her fingers. “First, you are to learn what is taking place on Basalt and Handy’s role in it. You are to intervene as best you can to maintain The Republic’s stability. Second, you are to discern the players in whatever is happening, including Handy’s superiors. If it is possible, we would like evidence collected that would be sufficient for prosecution in our highest courts. If we can make an example of people on a world like Basalt, it might well give others pause.”

  “And if they are beyond prosecution?”

  “How so?”

  “If they have destroyed the evidence or if witnesses are slain so they are insulated from any and all charges?” I looked Consuela straight in the eye. “What if someone’s continued existence is a direct threat to The Republic’s stability, and the only way to stop them is to kill them?”

  “We would prefer other problem-solving methods that could be reversed.”

  “If I have other options, I’ll exercise them.” I chewed my lower lip for a second. Through my mind’s eye ran the holographs of Aldrington Emblyn and the various Germaynes. I had no desire to kill or cause the death of any of them, but if they were the ones injecting poison into The Republic and I couldn’t convince them to stop, I would be left with little choice.

  Kitsune regarded me carefully. “You will accept this mission, then?”

  “I have to. It took me four months on Helen to get close to Handy. If you were to assign this to any of the other phantoms it would take at least that long to get to him. A lot of blood could flow in that time, and that’s just unacceptable.” I gave them both a grim smile. “It’s time for this wolfhound to get out and begin some pest control. I want the job and I’ll do it very well.”

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nbsp; 20

  The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

  —Herbert Spencer

  Inbound, DropShip Somerset

  Basalt

  Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

  29 January 3133

  Arrangements were made for me to leave Terra immediately. I’d go to Epsilon Indi, then on to Fletcher and finally to Basalt. I sent a message ahead indicating I’d go from Epsilon Eridani to Ingress and then Basalt. I pegged my arrival on that later course as being the third of February. That put me on the ground four days before Handy was expecting me, which is exactly what I wanted.

  We doubted my message, which would originate from Epsilon Eridani, would get there much before I did. I wasn’t certain if The Republic would have someone traveling on the ships I said I was going to take to look out for any agents Handy might have in place on the journey in. It wouldn’t have been a bad thing, and would have put at least one more Republic official on the ground where I could get some help if I needed it.

  And I was pretty sure I was going to need it at some point or other. Whether this was a wolf pack or a lion’s den, things would definitely get messy. Having backup would be useful, and I was given a variety of locations for dead-drops and names of contacts I could use if need arose.

  The toughest thing about the journey was that Janella’s parents chose to head back home to Fletcher on the same DropShip. They were utterly unaware of my journey and apparently had made a spur-of-the-moment decision to leave Terra. “I’m not sure what more good I can do on Fletcher,” Thomas Lakewood had said, “but as long as I’m a Knight of The Republic, I should be doing something.”

  Dodging them was not as difficult as might be imagined. I let my beard grow, which changed the line of my jaw and filled my face out. I also cut my hair shorter and colored it. If blonds do have more fun, you couldn’t tell by the trip I made, but, then again, that shade of yellow is seldom seen in nature so most folks didn’t look at it or beyond it for long. When going undercover I usually avoid dyeing my hair, since dye jobs have to be maintained and that looks suspicious. Handy would know exactly why I was dyeing it, though, so he’d accept it.

  From Terra out to Fletcher I flew on the Munson, then transferred to the Somerset for the run to Basalt. On the Munson I kept to steerage, didn’t make many friends and skinned enough folks playing poker that I soon didn’t get invited to games. That worked fine for me, as I spent the time downloading books from the ship’s meager library and boning up on Basalt history.

  My arrival on the planet proved uneventful and, using my poker winnings, I took a room at the Grand Germayne Hotel. I liked the place a lot, even if it was on the shabbier side of elegant: carpets just a bit too worn, Tri-Vid sets small and outdated, the menu the sort of thing that would have made my grandparents think they were eating all that cutting-edge cuisine enjoyed by the royals on New Avalon. The hotel’s chief claim to fame was that Duke Aaron Sandoval had once stayed there, and it was pretty easy to imagine I was seeing the same wallpaper in the halls that he’d seen.

  Once I’d gotten settled in, I ventured out into the downtown of Manville, the capital city. It had been built on a series of nine hills at the confluence of three rivers that joined on their ways north. The downtown occupied the area just south of the convergence and had been built up into a lush riparian park with bridges over the rivers and cable cars running from one hill to another.

  On this particular world, the native plants tended toward shades of blue instead of green, and while quite edible by humans and our herd animals, provided an exotic air to a world, especially for me so recently come from Terra. When disembarking I’d heard someone else remark that the plants made the world look as if the Tri-Vid needed adjustment. It could have been the result of the time I’d spent tending roses, but I actually appreciated the subtle shapes and colors that let these plants thrive here.

  The color of the plants was not the only thing that struck me as unusual. Perhaps it was because I’d been on Terra of late, and at a Republic facility to boot, but the signs of stress on the society surprised me. Basalt, in theory, had been stable for a long time, but the signs of division were easy to spot. Ethnic Capellans and Kuritans tended to glance down and move out of my way as I walked through a largely Davion section of the city. In some shop windows I could see faint hints of Japanese lettering that had been hastily scraped away. In other places I saw hand-lettered signs reading “Loyal to Basalt,” accompanied by iconic pictures of Achilles Germayne shaking hands with Victor Steiner-Davion.

  This shocked me. I did see a few boarded-up shops, but no signs of overt violence. Some Asian shopkeepers did hang in the doorways of their stores, glancing hopefully in my direction, but dejectedly dropping their heads as I made no move to enter their establishments. I might have, but the venomous glances given to them by other Anglos like me suggested patronizing those establishments would be outside the norm. Since my job was to fit in, I avoided attracting attention and went about my business quietly.

  I had not traveled to Basalt with much in the way of clothes for two reasons. First, Sam didn’t leave Helen with much. Moreover, my job was to fit in with society here at least until I met Handy. Since fashion varies world to world, had I decked myself out in what was the very latest on Epsilon Eridani, for example, I’d look like a clown on Basalt. The last time I’d looked like a clown, things had not gone well, so I was determined to avoid repeating that experience.

  I hit several department stores and didn’t buy the latest and greatest, but instead went to the clearance racks and picked out those clothes that were the least ugly. I mean, some of those clothes never should have been stocked in the first place, so it is little wonder they never sold. The normal stuff, though, made it to the clearance rack because it was a season behind. Okay, a season old on Basalt was an antique on other high-fashion worlds, but by purchasing slightly dated clothes here, I’d look as if I’d been around for a while. I’d fit in easily, and that was what I wanted.

  I made one exception to this rule and went to a high-end store where I got scanned for a suit. I added to it all the appropriate things from head to toe, skin out. If I needed to move into some upper-crust circles, I wanted the right uniform there, too. This made the clerk very happy and I agreed to return the next day to get the altered clothes.

  My last stop was to a styling salon, when I got my hair, as the personal-care consultant put it, “color corrected,” to a shade that wouldn’t make people’s eyes bleed. I also got my beard trimmed down into a barely there line of stubble that was supposed to be all the rage on Basalt. It didn’t do that much for me one way or another, but it looked easy to maintain, so that worked in my favor.

  Coiffed and accoutered, I returned to the Grand Germayne and my room. A lot of the spycraft I’d been taught focused on noticing the little things, as they might give one an edge in any situation. I had, in fact, seen two people in the lobby I thought might be house detectives, or local police, but both were plainclothed and didn’t pay any attention to me. I’d also been trained to do something like close my door on a thread, which would invariably fall out when someone opened my door, thereby warning me someone had been through the room.

  This is good in theory, save for three things. In general, household staff will be in and out of hotel rooms on a nearly random basis, whether delivering things or lifting things. They won’t look for, notice or replace an errant thread. Spies, on the other hand, will look for those things and will make sure they’re back in place so there will be no warning at all.

  The third thing was what confronted me. My door was standing wide open. There wasn’t a housekeeping cart in sight, which did send up little alarm signals for me. It seemed pretty obvious that whoever had opened my room had no desire to hide this fact, which meant this visit was benign or the individual was beyond being disciplined.

  In this case, it was both.

  As I came through the door
and the narrow hallway with the bathroom to the left, the first I saw of him was his legs. They were long and thick, which was in keeping with the rest of him. I’d seen hams smaller than his upper arms. He rose from the chair and it groaned in relief. He towered over me by a good eighteen centimeters and likely was carrying twice my weight. Looking at him I wondered if he weren’t a Clan Elemental, bred for size and strength, shucked out of his powered armor.

  His voice came deep and powerful, despite the long trip the words had to make to escape his chest. “Drop the packages, turn around, hands against the wall. You’ve done this before.”

  I tossed the bags onto the bed and, apparently, this was not exactly in keeping with his instructions, or I wasn’t complying with the rest of them fast enough. He reached me very quickly, grabbed me up under the armpits, spun me around like a child, then gave me a little toss against the wall. I’d have rebounded from it and landed on the bed, but a big hand in the middle of my back jammed me against the wallpaper which, this close up, appeared to have weathered long years of service rather well.

  He patted me down very professionally, checking all those places where a holdout blaster or a titanium throwing dart might be hidden. Once he’d finished, his left hand snaked up and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pitched me backward onto the bed. My landing scattered bags. I lay there looking up at this giant with his balled fists planted on his hips.

  “I am Colonel Nicodemus Niemeyer. I command the Capital District’s Public Safety Department. We are not the Constabulary. My people answer to me and I answer to Count Hector. He likes my work. A lot. We deal with the problems they are not equipped to handle.”

  I raised my hands. “I believe…”