Bred for war

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Aff."

  "And you see me as one of the worst of them, quiaff?"

  "Among the Wolves, aff."

  Vlad drew in a deep breath. "Then if you wish to kill us all, and I am one of the most dangerous to you, why did you not let me die when that Garrison Star ambushed me?"

  "The answer is simple, Vlad," Ulric said slowly, looping the towel around the back of his neck. "I am not of a mind to be deprived of my Phelan in this invasion."

  "What!" Vlad's mouth dropped and he felt his face flush, the long scar burning like a white-hot wire. "How am I your Phelan? He and I are nothing alike."

  "No? You are both passionate and convinced of your own superiority. You both bear grudges. You fight fiercely, and when you are not blindly rushing off into trouble, you can be intelligent.

  "In the last invasion, Phelan was invaluable because he knew the enemy. This time you are the one who knows the enemy best. You are my Phelan against the Crusaders."

  Vlad shook his head violently. He knew he was nothing like Phelan. Though the humiliation of having suffered defeat at Phelan's hands still scourged him like a barbed-wire whip, he refused to acknowledge Phelan's superiority over him in any way, shape, or form. Yet, in that thought, he found the first tiny scrap of resonance with what Ulric had said. Neither of us would ever compromise on anything where the other was concerned.

  But his mind still revolted against the idea. We are different because Phelan is a Warden, and in that he is wrong. I will never see things the way he does, and I know he will die before he would admit I am right. That difference forever separates us.

  Ulric went on as if he had not noticed Vlad's angry silence. "When you were ambushed, you merely reported the situation. You did not ask for help, you simply warned those coming behind you of what had occurred. That is what Phelan would have done. I would not have let him die as a consequence of his action, just as I chose to rescue you."

  "It was a mistake to exempt me from the death sentence you passed on our task force."

  "I did not exempt you, Vlad. I merely postponed the time of your death."

  "Perhaps I should thank you for that, but it will not win me over to your side."

  "I know that, Star Captain, and rest assured it was not the reason I saved you." Ulric shook his head slowly. "I will see you dead, but just not yet. We have many worlds to visit, you and I, and much killing to do before our mission is ended."

  Recital City, Woodstock

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  Seated in a rear corner of the ballroom of the Grand Woodstock Hotel, Larry smiled in spite of himself when the holovid projection unit splashed his face across the wide screen at the front of the room. He saw himself as billions of people had seen him earlier in the day, setting his helmet down on the table to announce the liberation of Woodstock. The cheers of the other Reservists drowned out his voice and his words, but he remembered clearly every syllable he'd uttered. He cringed a little at the corniness of it.

  So much for spontaneous brilliance.

  He took a swallow of the Woodstock Private Reserve lager someone had set before him, then shook his head. 'They going to run that every hour on the hour, Phoebe?"

  "What's the matter, can't you stand the star treatment? I'd have thought you were used to it from Solaris." She laughed at his obvious discomfort. "It's big news here, and you're big news, too. Definitely no waiting in lines now!"

  Larry frowned playfully at her. "At least on Solaris, if my face were on the holovids so much, I'd be hyping some product and be getting paid for it."

  "Pity that your AFFC agreement doesn't have an endorsement rider in it," Phoebe teased. "Relax. Your heroic declaration got us all put up here in this hotel and there will be the parade tomorrow. You may be bored with all this hero treatment, but why not let the rest of the plowboys and harvester-girls bask in a bit of glory?"

  Larry was about to make some witty riposte when the appearance of a yellow-robed ComStar courier at their table instantly made him forget everything else.

  "Kommandant Phoebe Derden?"

  "Yes."

  "I have a message for you from New Avalon." He held a folded slip of yellow paper out to her.

  Phoebe took the sheet and began to read, a smile blossoming on her face at first, but dying quickly as the color drained from her face. She seemed to re-read the message, then slid it across the table to Larry.

  He turned it around so he could read it, but her reaction made him hesitate for an instant. Even so, the beginning made him smile as well.

  "To: Kommandant Phoebe Derden, Woodstock Reserve Militia," it began, with instructions for forwarding from Charleston to Recital City.

  "Dear Hauptmann Derden," it went on. "You have my hearty thanks and sincerest congratulations on your recent victory over Smithson's Chinese Bandits. I knew, from your action on Teniente, that there was little chance the invaders would prevail, but the efficiency of your success exceeded even my wildest dreams and has been the sole bright spot in the past month of conflict.

  Your unit's spirit and ability have not gone unnoticed. In fact, the other half of Smithson's Chinese Bandits are on Nanking, waiting for you to complete their destruction. I look forward to a reunion in which you can introduce me to your Reservists and give me a first-hand report on our exploits.

  Knowing we have such reliable commanders and troops in our armed forces keeps up my hopes for the future of the Federated Commonwealth.

  With sincere thanks, your friend, [signed] Prince Victor Davion."

  Larry looked up with a big smile on his face. "Phoebe, this is great. You should read it to the troops. They'll love it."

  "I'm not good at that sort of thing." Her uneasiness showing, she handed the note back to the ComStar courier. "Perhaps you would be good enough to read it to my people?"

  "It would be my pleasure, Kommandant Derden."

  As the courier headed toward the front of the big room, Larry leaned forward. "What gives, Phoebe? That was a great message."

  "Sure, but what about the other half of it?"

  Larry frowned. "Am I missing something?"

  "Victor wants us to go to Nanking and liberate it." She sat back and squared her shoulders. "I know we can do it, but how are we going to get there? The Reserves don't have either DropShips or JumpShips."

  Larry leaned heavily forward on his elbows. "I don't think any Militia unit has DropShips or JumpShips assigned to it."

  Phoebe shrugged. "Victor's always been big on personal initiative, and he obviously expects us to get to Nanking.

  There are DropShips here on Woodstock, and JumpShips coming in to pick up shipments of grain, but our budget isn't big enough to charter any of them."

  Larry smiled ruefully. "I do have a corporate card from Cenotaph Stables, but I don't think Kai's credit limit is quite high enough for us to hire an invasion fleet."

  Phoebe glanced at cheering troops, who had begun shouting even before the ComStar courier finished reading the message. "We can't let Victor down, but what am I going to do? We can't very well have a bake sale to raise funds, can we?"

  "Limited return on a bake sale, though we'd probably get a lot of food products donated for it." Larry stopped, then smiled at Phoebe. "No, dammit, that's the key."

  "A bake sale?"

  "Not exactly." He winked at her and drained his beer. "Trust me, Phoebe, we're going to Nanking. I have a plan and it's going to work like a charm."

  30

  Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

  -Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

  Tharkad

  District of Donegal, Lyran Alliance

  13 October 3057

  Katrina Steiner allowed herself a small smile as she reread Thomas' reply to her message to him. Well played, Thomas. She did not like having been outmaneuvered, but she had to admire how he'd done it. By citing the fact that Sun-Tzu had Isis, he appealed to her for sympathy while vilifying Sun-Tzu. By noting that he feared his daughter mig
ht suffer the same fate as Joshua, he beseeched her not to put the girl into jeopardy by pressuring him. He also made it clear that he could easily strike at her were Isis to die and he able to blame her for the death.

  Thomas' mention of mercenaries had seemed at first read to be a threat, since he still could decide to use them to back Sun-Tzu. On her second reading she took his words in a different way. Is he suggesting I use mercenaries as opposed to House troops? The subject had been approached obliquely enough that the attempt to influence her might have seemed clumsy, but she knew Thomas did not make such mistakes. It must have been intentional, she decided, which meant he was offering her a solution he could live with.

  She smiled. Great minds think alike. Katrina had already decided that if intervention was warranted, she would employ mercenaries. She had already been studying Thomas Marik's use of them in the Sarna March, appreciating how it had distanced his nation from the conflict. He wasn't spilling the blood of his people in a foreign realm, but using hired soldiers to take those risks. Mercenaries were an elegant solution to the problem.

  For Katrina, there was only one choice of mercenary unit to call upon. The Kell Hounds were without a contract— something her brother had lamented at various times—and were fierce Steiner loyalists. Not only did they owe their existence to bequests from her maternal grandparents, but the Kells were also related to her through her mother.

  If she sent for them, they would help her.

  Her smile grew as she recalled recent conversations with Caitlin Kell. The groundwork implicating Victor in the death of their mothers had been laid during Caitlin's last visit. Katrina could build upon that in her request, binding the Kell Hounds more tightly to her. If Victor should decide that he wanted a military confrontation with the Lyran Alliance, she wanted the Kell Hounds on her side.

  Then another thought occurred to her, and she bit her lower lip in response. Daniel Allard commanded the Kell Hounds, and his father and brother had been devoted to the Davions. Her request might not be so inviting to him.

  She shrugged. "I'll simply have to go over his head."

  Striding over to her desk, she sat down and tapped the switch that brought the small holovid camera up. It focused tightly in on her, then she punched the button that started it recording. Earnest but worried should do it.

  "My dear Morgan, I need your help ..."

  Daosha, Zurich

  Zurich People's Republic, League Liberation Zone

  Cloaked in anonymity by the vast throng filling Fengzilusude Square, Noble Thayer stamped his feet to keep the circulation going. Cathy looked over at him, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, he smiled at her, then motioned with his head toward the far end of the brick-walled square. "We should pay attention."

  "Of course."

  Out across a vast expanse of paving stones, beyond the 'Mechs of the Black Cobra regiment of the mercenary Crater Cobras and the olive companies of the People's Freedom Army infantry, Xu Ning stood at a podium exhorting the crowd. In front of him, in ranks ten deep and twenty wide, two hundred of Zurich's leading politicians, police officials, clergy, academics, journalists, and artists knelt in steamy silence. Each one, regardless of gender, had been stripped to the waist and bound hand and foot. Each had also been made to don a paper tabard with his particular crimes emblazoned on it in scarlet letters.

  The crowd was too far away to see clearly, which was why, hung on the south wall, a thirty-meter-tall, forty-meter-wide, flat holovision monitor blew everyone up to heroic proportions. Xu Ning appeared big enough to go one-on-one with a BattleMech, and Colonel Richard Burr looked as stiff and mechanical as the 'Mechs in which his Crater Cobras rode. The screen, as if it were a magic mirror that emphasized emotion, also displayed the fear and humiliation of the two hundred.

  Xu Ning, his bass voice somehow incongruous with his nervously slender body, gestured defiantly at the captives. "These are the agents of the counter-revolution. They seek to perpetuate the servitude of the masses to the absentee planet lords who rape us second by second. Hanse Davion took this world twenty-eight years ago, claiming he would liberate us from the fetters that the Liaos had used to oppress us. He lied, and his son has murdered an innocent child to continue the evils of his father."

  He half-turned and pointed his right hand at the screen. "Look at them. Look at the enemies of the people. They have preached against the Liaos. They hold themselves to be better than we, thepeople, are. They defy the revolution because they are afraid of having their true depravity exposed. Theirs is a struggle to delay the inevitable, to deny the single verifiable tenet of reality, to escape the bonds that make us all one.

  "They wish to be apart from our great society. In the name of Sun-Tzu Liao, I am the granter of wishes. As I grant you the wish to be truly one with all your brethren, so I grant them their release from the human compact that binds us all. Liberators, do your duty."

  The ranks of the Liberators behind the prisoners parted. Two troopers from each company came running forward, automatic rifles held high above their heads. Clad in quilted olive green uniforms, only a scarlet collar and cuffs distinguished the Liberators from their comrades in arms. Twenty in all came to the front, and each one stood at the head of a column of state enemies.

  "Ready!" Xu Ning shouted.

  The soldiers charged their rifles.

  Many of the prisoners began to cry and curse.

  Cathy turned to Noble. "Do something."

  "Aim."

  The solders brought their rifles up to their shoulders.

  Several prisoners tried to get up, but managed only to hop a step or two before falling over.

  "We cannot save them," Noble whispered harshly, but the wind whipped his words away. "The world has to see this. They're lost, but their sacrifice might save others."

  "Fire!"

  Bright flashes and glittering brass cartridges filled the air before the podium. Gunshots combined into a rumbling roar that echoed off the walls and swallowed the screams of the dying. White paper and red letters vanished in an ocean of blood. Bodies writhed and spun, slamming into one another and collapsing limp and motionless in heaps and piles.

  Cathy cried out and clung to him, her voice just one among the sounds of outrage and fear rising from the crowd, a defiance immediately dampened by gunshots. Noble slipped his arm around Cathy's shoulders, holding her tight and comforting her, but did not turn away from the slaughter in the square or its spectacular depiction on the electronic mural.

  Reaching into the right side of his jacket, he thumbed the square button on the remote device hidden deep within the pocket.

  The image on the monitor dissolved into a field of bright blue. Then up through it came the image of a white square. As the corners rounded, a capering harlequin appeared in the center of the card. In Chinese at the top and English on the bottom was the legend, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

  Rising through the thunder, and gaining volume as the shooting stopped, a sinister, cruel laughter filled the square. It built until all the spectators were staring up in disbelief at the image of the Dancing Joker filling the screen. Off to the right, Xu Ning pointed frantically at the holovision monitor, and officials scrambled around as if they could somehow change what was there.

  This time, Noble hit the device's round button.

  The laughter trailed off, but the voice returned after only a moment of silence. "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind!" The harlequin, stark in black and white, slowly grinned and a single drop of bright blood ran languidly from the corner of his mouth.

  Two seconds later, four small explosions along the top of the screen shattered the silence. The screen shook and the image wavered, then the massive monitor started to tip away from the wall. As it fell, gathering speed, a cry of triumph went up from the crowd.

  One of the Black Cobra 'Mechs, a small Commando, reached its hands up to catch the screen, but the pilot miscalculated, the monitor crashing down on him, exploding in sp
arks and shards of glass. The 'Mech, its hands still up-thrust, punched through the screen and out the other side. Electricity crackled and sparked over the war machine's surface. Victorious for an instant, the humanoid machine then wavered and toppled over onto its face.

  The smoke from the screen rose thicker than the steam from the bleeding bodies.

  Noble turned Cathy away from the scene and guided her away amid the other fleeing spectators. "We have to go."

  She gave the center of the square one last glimpse. "All those people ... I wish we could have done something ..."

  "We have," he whispered to her. "They'll rest easy now. Our opposition won't, and that's comfort enough."

  31

  An army is of little value in the field unless wise counsels prevail at home.

  -Cicero, De Officiis

  Old Connaught, Arc-Royal

  District of Donegal, Lyran Alliance

  20 October 3057

  Because her father sat at his desk, behind her, Caitlin Kell could not see his face nor read his reaction to the holovid message from Katrina. She desperately wanted to see how he was taking her cousin's plea for help, words that were tearing her up inside. The fear and sadness in Katrina's voice pressed in on her heart. On either side of her, Chris Kell and Dan Allard watched without emotion, a reaction she could not understand.

  Katrina smiled bravely at them from the monitor screen. "I have endeavored to keep the Lyran Alliance out of war, but Sun-Tzu has brought war to me. The Captain-General of the Free Worlds League has told me he would view it as a hostile action if I send House troops into the chaos of the Sarna March to oppose Sun-Tzu. This leaves me little choice but to appeal to you to bring the Kell Hounds from Arc-Royal to put down the revolts on New Home, Keid, and Caph."