Prince of Havoc

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Even without the signs, the joy on the faces could not be mistaken. People, hundreds of thousands of people, young and old, rich and poor, noble and peasant, lined the streets and cheered. Many wore broad white headbands with letters inked on them, others had fashioned uniforms reminiscent of those worn by his Tenth Lyran Guards or the Com Guards or another of the task force's groups. Children stood at the curb and saluted, or waved from their perches atop parents' shoulders.

  The crowd bowed and bobbed as the vehicles passed. Some of the people held slender tapers and others whole torches, and these open flames amply lit the procession. Skyrockets crawled up into the sky and exploded in brilliant colors, and the flashes of holovid cameras sparkled like stars in the crowd.. again the response stunned Victor. He had, more times than he cared to remember, ridden through parades on a variety of state occasions. As a child he had hated it because his arms grew tired from waving. Growing into manhood he understood the need to be seen and to smile and greet others, but it had always seemed something of a game to him. Here, however, the unadulterated love and thanks pouring forth energized him and made him smile and wave all the more, hoping everyone he saw would assume he had been waving at him or her specifically.

  Victor lost track of time in the passage from the spaceport to the Palace of Unity. The journey had seemed to last forever, but had also passed quickly. He could tell, from the ache in his shoulders, that he had been waving quite a bit, yet he really didn't feel tired. He lowered his hands as the hoverlimo slid through the gates, and when it came to a stop he hopped out and offered Omi his hand to help her alight. almost immediately she slipped her hand from his and glanced down. Victor turned and saw the Coordinator approaching. "That was quite a reception, Theodore-sama."

  "I am glad you were impressed." Theodore's expression darkened a bit. "There are things we must discuss—no, not about my daughter and you—but first there are people here who you should see. Omiko, if you would take Victor to them."

  "As you wish, Father;"

  Victor offered Omi his arm and she took it, slipping her left hand through the crook of his right elbow. "What is your father hinting at?"

  "Trust me, Victor, and trust my father." She stopped in the shadows near the entrance and drew him close. "Do you recall the cheers of the crowds?"

  "Just now? How could I forget them?"

  "Good, you should never forget them." She smiled and kissed his nose. "And do you recall our last time together in my sanctuary?"

  Victor smiled. "Very well, indeed, my love."

  "Good." She started toward the Palace of Unity's entrance again.

  "What am I missing, Omiko?"

  "Nothing, Victor. Trust me."

  Omi led him through the doorway and Victor's-heart jumped. Standing there in a hallway that emphasized her height, his sister Yvonne smiled weakly at him. She wore a red kimono several shades deeper than her hair, embroidered with tigers of the same gray as her eyes. She started toward him, then hesitated.

  Victor smiled at Omi and slipped his arm from hers. He crossed to his sister and hugged her. "Yvonne, you're here. This is great."

  "I'm glad to see you, too, Victor. I've been so afraid."

  "What?" Her voice had a tremble running through it that surprised him. He pulled back a bit and looked up at her face. Red rimmed eyes—she's been crying. "What's the matter, Yvonne? Why weren't you at the spaceport?"

  His sister stiffened and stepped back out of his grasp. She folded her arms against her belly and refused to meet his eyes. "I didn't want to spoil your homecoming."

  "Huh?" He frowned heavily. "How could you do that?"

  "Don't you see, Victor?" Tears spilled down her cheeks. "I've lost your realm."

  23

  Office of the First Princess

  New Avalon

  Crucis March, Federated Commonwealth

  15 March 3061

  Katrina watched the bubbles stream upward in her champagne. She marveled at how the light amber liquid and the champagne flute conspired to narrow the world she viewed through them. Slowly rotating the glass in the slender fingers of her left hand, she allowed it to capture the whole of what had once been Victor's office. She smiled, realizing she now held everything that had once been her brother's in the palm of her hand.

  She sipped the champagne and smiled. Dry, as dry as the dust Victor tastes now. Sitting back in the chair that had served both Victor and their father, Hanse Davion, Katrina allowed herself a throaty little laugh. She had not been surprised at Theodore's move to bring the task force to Luthien for a hero's welcome—it was so very Kurita a gesture, after all. There, Theodore would be able to break the news to Victor of how he had lost everything.

  But will the Coordinator do it himself or allow Yvonne to atone for her sins? Katrina sipped again, relishing the champagne's faintly fruity flavor and the tickle of bubbles bursting against the back of her throat. She knew Yvonne would have enjoyed the champagne—she'd been the one to lay in the stock of it, in fact. Too bad she does not see a cause for celebration now.

  Yvonne had fled the Federated Commonwealth soon after the new year, but the strains had been there during the holidays. Katrina had known that Yvonne would be hurt by the transition, but the First Princess had hoped her younger sister would see reason. After all, I did it for the benefit of our people, and the people of the Inner Sphere.

  Katrina sighed. From the very first she had known her brother Victor would be a poor fit as a ruler of men. Even as a child little Victor had been very proper, a little soldier who all but glowed beneath their father's praise for him. Given a choice, Victor would dress himself in the various uniforms the Federated Commonwealth's units sent as presents. She understood why the military loved him: his birth came at the cessation of the Fourth Succession War in which their father had gobbled up over half of the Capellan Confederation. Victor, born a male heir to Hanse Davion, with that name, became an avatar for their great success.

  She lowered her glass and looked around the office that had not changed in her memory. Victor had not altered it after their father had died. In this chair, in fact, Hanse Davion had his heart attack. Victor really had been shaped by their father— forged, more like—into what he had become. Victor truly had been the man most suited to dealing with the Clans, but his being a weapon meant he could never be a good ruler. Conflict, for him, involves blood and pain.

  Katrina again smiled, barely able to refrain from shouting for joy. As she began to vie with her brother for power, she had learned that opinion was as good as fact for swaying the minds of many. She had dealt Victor a death-blow in the Lyran Alliance territories by letting it seem as if there truly was truth to the rumor that he had murdered Melissa Steiner-Davion. Katrina had easily slipped into the role of being her mother's heir and had won the hearts of her mother's people. When she pulled the Lyran Alliance out of the Federated Commonwealth, the people heralded the move not as treason but salvation.

  Her manipulation of the media brought home to her a method for destroying Victor. With him still in power on New Avalon, her efforts had begun slowly, and were meant to cause him internal troubles, but with his venturing forth to slay the Clans, she was able to use Yvonne's innocence to further her plans. It all was so frighteningly simple.

  Rulers who have to contend with nations spanning hundreds of light years cannot take time to speak to each citizen to learn what they want and need. The reason a feudal system had arisen again was because of the need for direct local governance of worlds. The nobles who controlled those worlds were held accountable by the central government, and looked to that government for help, but they were also powerless to poll a whole planet by themselves.

  Enter polling firms who conducted research on opinions. Most such firms conducted polls that asked a variety of questions, including a section for opinions on whatever consumer product was sponsoring the survey. The business got useful data on their consumer base, with political and moral surveys of the populace a byproduct of
the process.

  Through a variety of corporate shells, Katrina sponsored lots of polls. The questions on them were slanted to elicit specific responses. Instead of asking "Is Prince Victor's leadership of the Star League Expeditionary Force a good thing?", the people being polled were asked, "Does Prince Victor's leadership of the Star League Expeditionary Force distract from his ability to deal with domestic issues?" All but the most staunch militarist would have to answer the latter question with a yes, leading to polls that showed over eighty percent of the populace believing Victor was distracted from his duties as ruler by his Star League activities.

  When Victor and his forces Left for the Periphery, Katrina stepped up her activities. Questions became more slanted, and dissatisfaction with Yvonne's leadership began to mount. To exacerbate all this, Katrina had produced and distributed a number of documentaries about the Clan war, the departure of Kerensky, the collapse of the original Star League, and the rise of the new one. In these stories Victor was likened to Aleksandr Kerensky. That showed Victor off in a most glowing light, but also played upon the fear that he would abandon the Inner Sphere, just as Kerensky had done. Worse yet, the Clans had been the product of Kerensky's exile, leaving people to wonder what sort of monster Victor's campaign would produce.

  In the Draconis March, the stories about the Clan war played up Victor's efforts to save Hohiro Kurita and to liberate Combine worlds—without first seeing to the liberation of the Lyran Alliance worlds that he still nominally claimed as his own. The people of the Draconis March had long feared the Combine, and Victor's actions on behalf of the latter began to polarize the population there. and dear Arthur was such a help in all that. Her youngest brother was a student at the Battle Academy on Robinson, the capital of the Draconis March. Though a willing and able military man, Arthur was a weathercock that pointed in the direction of the strongest wind, which, in this case, was that being produced by Marcher lords who were afraid their realm would be swallowed up by the Combine now that the Clans were no longer a threat. Arthur pledged that he would not allow that to happen, unknowingly placing himself as a rallying point for those who thought Victor had abandoned them. Arthur had been easy to manipulate. A couple of short messages to him, encouraging him and praising him for his astute addressing of local concerns guaranteed he would stay that course. Yvonne had not been so easy to play with, largely because Tancred Sandoval proved a shrewd advisor. Sandoval was Yvonne's political tillerman, steering her away from the traps Katrina had set. With him in place, her conquest of New Avalon would have been impossible.

  Fortunately for her, Sandoval's family ruled the Draconis March. As that border region became more and more restless, Tancred returned home to Robinson as Yvonne's personal envoy to smooth things out. Arthur and Tancred had a number of direct confrontations in which Tancred showed Arthur to be thinking more with his heart than his brain. This should have settled the situation, but Tancred had not reckoned with Arthur's appeal to many of the March people. As polls soon showed, Tancred came off as a bully in trouncing Arthur, undercutting Tancred's ability to be effective on Yvonne's behalf.

  The third and final phase of Katrina's covert war on the Federated Commonwealth kicked in when she learned of Victor's imminent and triumphant return. With hefty bribes being paid to polling company officials and petty bureaucrats, Katrina cooked the data being sent to New Avalon to show unrest spiking. This data also filtered back to the planets, and a few rabble-rousers scattered here and there—aided and abetted by Sun-Tzu's Free Tikonov Movement—were able to stage demonstrations that provided excellent holovid proof of the widespread dissatisfaction in the Federated Commonwealth.

  Yvonne's distress was apparent in her personal communications with Katrina. Katrina, in turn, suggested little things that Yvonne could do to win support. These strategies produced immediate and positive results—again thanks to poll manipulation. Unfortunately for Yvonne, a grant going to one world to solve a problem would cause other worlds to wonder why they weren't getting their share of central government assistance, deepening the problems Yvonne had to deal with.

  Suddenly the polls began to show a rising sentiment for Katrina. She spiked these by making a journey to border worlds, bringing with her support from the Lyran Alliance, which was much closer to worlds like Addicks and Helen than New Avalon was. Cheering crowds greeted her, and holo-ops provided her with perfect sound bytes. The image of a child crawling into Katrina's lap and saying, "You're pretty. I wish you were our ruler," was sweet enough to crystallize blood, but it received widespread play throughout the Federated Commonwealth.

  By the middle of October the debate had been neatly framed and boiled down to a simple question that was asked in barrooms and on holovid political shows. "If Victor died," it went, "wouldn't Katrina be the heir to the Federated Commonwealth throne?" After all, Yvonne had only been placed there as regent, and it was rather clear she was not up to the task. And, for all anyone knew, Victor was dead somewhere beyond the Periphery. It could have turned out that Yvonne had been driving the Federated Commonwealth into ruin for nothing since her sister should have already been ruling them.

  The debate drove Yvonne to desperation. By the middle of November she sent Katrina a message begging her to come and take over for her. Katrina agreed and accepted the reins of government just in time to preside over the holiday celebrations. She made certain Yvonne was at her side, and praised her sister for her valiant effort in such trying times, but everyone breathed a sigh of relief knowing a seasoned ruler was again at the ship of state's helm.

  Katrina put her honeymoon period with the people to good use. The polls showed an immediate spike in confidence, and Katrina initiated reforms that made her appear to be more responsive to the people. She sent Yvonne to Robinson to assure the people of the Draconis March that she would not abandon them, and was not surprised to learn Yvonne and Tancred had vanished and later turned up on Luthien.

  She drank more of the champagne and looked around the office again. "Too much old wood and leather. I will have it redone." a sharp knock at one of the oaken doors brought her out of her reverie. She glanced over and saw an older, solidly built man, clearly of old Asian descent, bow his head and enter her office. "Is there something you need, Mandrinn Liao? Are you here to spoil my mood, or shall I be generous and offer you some of this champagne?

  Tormano Liao regarded her carefully with his blue eyes. "I am not certain if what I have to tell you will displease you or not, Highness."

  She shrugged. "Then join me for champagne first. We shall have a toast to my brother's newfound life of leisure. Now he will have all the time in the world to cat about with his Drac lover."

  Tormano poured himself a glass, tapped it against hers, then drank. "Excellent, as always, Highness."

  "Of course. I do deserve the best." She clutched her flute in both hands. "What is it you wish to tell me?"

  "I need to resign your service, Highness."

  "Curious. Explain please."

  The elder Liao set his glass down and clasped his hands behind his back. "My nephew, as First Lord of the Star League, used Star League Defense Force units to occupy the St. Ives Compact, my sister's realm. As you know there has been fighting there and it has not gone well for my sister's people. Moreover, Sun-Tzu has been making gains in the Disputed Territories, reclaiming planets your father liberated before your birth. I have friends on these worlds."

  "I know, Mandrinn." Katrina smiled coolly. "As I recall, I have rewarded your loyalty by diverting my own assets into some of your liberation cells. The Free Capella Movement, I think it is called."

  "Yes, Highness, you have been most generous. However, at a time like this, leadership is as vital as money. While Cassandra and Kuan-Yin Allard-Liao are doing all they can to oppose their cousin Sun-Tzu, there is need for more leadership there."

  "And you would fill that role?"

  "I would." Tormano pressed his hands flat against his chest. "I am not the most able warrior anymor
e, but I do have experience my nieces do not share."

  "And you have a lust for power that they also do not share." Katrina laughed lightly and smiled at the forced look of surprise on Tormano's face. "Come now, Tormano, we both know you wish your ass was on the Celestial Throne on Sian."

  "I would gladly accept my duty as a Liao."

  "I know you would, but there are things you should consider that might get you there sooner than you expect. The first is this: right now Kai is on Luthien and will be hearing about the plight of the St. Ives Compact. I think he will come to fill that leadership role you seek."

  Tormano blinked with surprise, then smiled. "Kai will be most effective in that role, yes."

  "The second and most important thing to consider is this, however: Sun-Tzu's reign as First Lord of the Star League will end in November. At the Second Whitting Conference, which I will host on Tharkad in eight months, we will choose a new First Lord, and I mean to be chosen."

  Tormano frowned. "That is by no means assured."

  "Oh, I don't know. I get Sun-Tzu's vote by threatening his realm with complete destruction if he doesn't give it to me. Since little Janos Marik will be Thomas's heir—and I gather the Halas woman is pregnant yet again—Sun-Tzu's sham engagement to Isis Marik means nothing. He has no sanctuary, so he will vote for me. Likewise, Thomas will be mine in order to curry favor with me and to have me keep Sun-Tzu focused on the Federated Commonwealth, not internal League politics."

  "Theodore Kurita will oppose you."

  "No matter, he is one vote among six. I buy the Free Rasalhague Republic's vote through trade pacts and win your sister over by providing more aid to her troops." Katrina held her glass out for Tormano to refill it. "And, most important, there is no viable candidate to oppose me. Theodore would be the logical choice, but he is still consolidating the gains from pushing the Clans off his worlds. He can't afford the distraction."