Satisfied, Blaire glanced down the line of MechWarriors. “Post.”
Stepping out on their right feet, the entire line of MechWarriors marched out toward a waiting Stingray aerospace fighter. The craft had been painted a stark, bone white for the occasion. Blaire took a position nearest the fighter, and the rest of the MechWarriors strung out in a line between the Stingray and the fusion incinerator. The ashes were passed to Tassa Kay with reverent slowness, who then handed them on to Charal DePriest. It passed through Raul’s hands and those of Clark Diago to Colonel Blaire. The Colonel ducked beneath the Stingray and loaded the missile through a groundside access port.
Raul swallowed dryly, followed the Colonel as they retreated back to their original line. The fightercraft fired up its engines with a throaty roar, taxied to one end of the parade grounds and then screamed down its length. Timed perfectly, the Stingray leapt into the air and banked immediately into the just-rising sun, flying straight on until it was finally lost in the glare. The pilot would turn off his heading moments later, cruising south and finally firing the missile over the Sonora Plateau, scattering the ashes of Sir Kyle Powers over the battlefield on which he had died.
Colonel Blaire allowed another moment of silence. Then, without any preamble, barked out, “Dismissed!”
Raul completely agreed. What more was there to say?
Until later that evening.
The briefing room felt empty with only the four of them: Raul and Colonel Blaire on one side of the table, Brion Stempres and a man introduced as Michael Eus on the other. A pitcher of iced water sat untouched and sweating on a sideboard. The low hum of air conditioning seemed to grow in volume as the awkward silence stretched out behind Michael Eus’s demands.
“You expect—” Blaire began.
“Lord Erik Sandoval-Groell expects,” Eus was quick to interrupt. “I am simply here as his adjutant, Colonel.”
Raul wasn’t so certain. Dressed in a civilian suit and slightly stoop-shouldered, Michael Eus cultivated the look of a civilian administrator, not the kind of man who would be worth much as a military advisor, or as a hostage against Erik Sandoval’s ambition. Still, he had a strength behind his gray eyes that promised something more about him than his previous position as the operations officer of Taibek Mining.
“And as Sandoval’s adjutant,” Blaire sounded as if he wanted to substitute a less flattering title for Eus, “you will be sitting in on all command-level planning sessions and advising us on the need for support for Swordsworn operations? This sounds more like an ultimatum, Mr. Eus.”
Raul agreed. And it wasn’t helping that Tassa had warned him of the Swordsworn not too many days ago. The Sandoval faction hadn’t been interested in the mutual protection of Achernar. They had simply been here first, before the Steel Wolves. “We are supposed to trust Erik Sandoval now? After what he has done?”
“Lord Sandoval considered it in Achernar’s best interest to abandon his own financial concerns and move to protect River’s End.”
Colonel Blaire scoffed. “It seems that Lord Sandoval—or is it Duke Aaron Sandoval?—has something in common with Kal Radick after all. Both of them seem ready to tell us what is in Achernar’s best interest, as they move to occupy our world.”
“Our new position forms a second line of defense for River’s End, protecting the population of the capital as well as the HPG station. It goes without saying that the station is of extreme value to The Republic. Lord Erik has shown a commitment that I should think you would admire, Colonel. He has even placed two converted MiningMechs outside the facility on a twenty-four hour guard.”
“Besides which,” Brion Stempres stepped into the conversation, “Erik Sandoval was named a legitimate foreign-auxiliary commander by Knight-Errant Powers. He is, in all respects and matters military, your equal, Colonel. The Republic recognized him as such. And,” he added, “Erik is not occupying River’s End in the military definition. I invited his assistance, do not forget.”
“I haven’t forgotten that, Lay–gate Stempres. Governor Haider also called me this morning, to express her confidence in your decision.”
With two ’Mech conversions leveling weapons at the HPG station, Achernar’s tenuous link to the outside universe, Raul bet that Governor Susan Haider had little choice but to back up her military counterpart.
Therein lay the entire problem. Erik Sandoval-Groell was holding the HPG—and River’s End itself—hostage against the garrison’s behavior. Stempres had chosen to side against the Republic, and he had enough clout to drag Achernar’s top political leader along under duress. Everything was falling apart as the Republic continued to fracture into disparate factions.
It left a cold void hollowing out Raul’s stomach to think about it. He couldn’t sit any longer. Shoving his chair back, the MechWarrior paced the long way around the table to get some water. He poured for the Colonel first, ice clunking into the bottom of the glass, and delivered it, pointedly ignoring their guests. A second glass for himself, which he sipped leaning back against the sideboard. The crisp, clean water could not wash away the sour taste in his mouth.
“Colonel.” Michael Eus seemed determined to keep his ambassadorial voice calm and confident. “Colonel Blaire, we simply must reach an agreement that Achernar is better protected, at the moment, with Lord Sandoval’s assistance. Now, can we count on you to work with us? Or not?”
With Legate Stempres no doubt on hand to relieve Blaire in the face of any negative response, the colonel nodded reluctantly. “Achernar must come first,” he agreed.
The bargain struck, Raul assumed his duties as advisor—hardly needed in the face of such overwhelming pressure—were no longer needed. “With the Colonel’s permission?” he asked, abandoning his water glass and taking long strides toward the door. For the first time since his drunk with Tassa Kay, he felt the acute need for something a touch stronger than water. And were he to stay any longer, he might say something that he’d have plenty of time to regret after Stempres bounced him off active duty.
Which might not be a bad way out of this mess.
Which would only go to prove that citizens had no stronger investment in the Republic than residents.
Oh, yes. He needed something very much stronger than water.
His walk from the base command post to his BOQ room left Raul miserable as well as upset. The day’s humidity had spiked over forty percent thanks to the previous days’ rainstorms, and then the temperature had hit a new high of forty-two centigrade. His uniform clung to him like flypaper, bunching up around his waist and sticking to his back. Sweat beaded on his forehead and left a salty rime on his upper lip. He stomped up his front steps and unlocked the door to his dark apartment, paused near his vidphone, but then gave it up for the bottle still sitting out on his kitchenette counter. Two fingers poured into a water glass. The amber liquid swirled around in the bottom like liquid smoke.
“So did you think about calling me just a moment ago, or her?”
Raul nearly fumbled the glass, ended up grabbing it with both hands as he turned to find Jessica Searcy waiting in a dark corner, sitting on a folding chair rather than at the table or on the utilitarian couch.
“Jess! Where have you been?” Raul set his glass next to the sink. “I tried to reach you all yesterday.”
Rocking up to her feet, standing almost motionless, she folded her arms and nodded. “I know. I screened your calls.” She must have seen his confusion in the evening light spilling through the still-open door. “I was home, Raul. Watching the trivid. They’ve been running the fall of Kyle Powers on every station. Truthfully, I’ve been drawn more toward the preparations. You know. Choosing the support forces. Gearing up your machines. The speeches and the private words. How long have you been wanting to kiss that woman?”
Raul found the lights, switched them on even as Jessica’s question reached a cold hand into his gut and twisted him up. She looked awful, hair pulled back into a simple band and eyes dark from lack of
sleep. Not the polished resident from River’s End General. In the aftermath of battle, Kyle Powers’ death, and Erik Sandoval’s move against the capital, Raul had forgotten about the video teams on hand for the challenge.
Jessica, it seemed, had been thinking of little else.
“Jess, I can’t even begin to tell you how surprised I was at Tassa’s move. I honestly didn’t see it coming.” He moved toward her, but she held up a hand to freeze him in place.
“You kissed her back.”
Raul nodded. “I did.” There was no denying it. He’d wanted to, and so he had.
“I thought…” he began, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. And to answer your first question, I don’t know. I guess I felt an attraction toward Tassa the day she arrived on Achernar, three… four days before the Steel Wolf assault.” Raul remembered that late afternoon meeting—had it only been three weeks ago? Tassa had promised to be on Achernar “As long as it takes.” And then the Steel Wolves followed—
Jessica took three quick steps forward and slapped him. She looked awkward doing it, unsure of herself the way she frowned at every move. Medical school and residency had never prepared her for this. She reacted woodenly, as if this was something she had simply been instructed to do from the Guide to Feminine Behavior.
Raul saw it coming, began to flinch away but then forced himself to stand there and take it. Jessica had put more force behind the blow than he expected, watching her hesitant motions. The side of his face stung warmly, and his right ear rang.
Something tickled his chin and Raul swiped at it, the back of his hand coming away with a smear of blood. He winced and a stab of pain cut at one side of his mouth. Jessica’s engagement ring had cut the corner of his lower lip. He nodded, and a surreal side of his mind almost prompted him to ask her, “So, we good?”
He didn’t.
“You embarrassed me in front of the entire planet, Raul. How do you expect me to react?”
All their arguments and fights over the last few years, and this was the first one that rang with any sense of permanence. The slap notwithstanding, Raul saw it in Jessica’s haunted eyes. “However you feel you have to.”
There were likely a dozen other comments he could have made that would have gone over better. He just couldn’t think of them right then. Raul had a feeling that he had missed a great many such opportunities in the last few minutes—in the last few days, or even weeks. Important opportunities to make things right. To change the events which had unfolded in the wrong direction. But he couldn’t go back.
Jessica proved that to him as she stripped the ring off her finger, picked up his hand and placed it in his palm, and then calmly folded his fingers over the circlet.
“Good-bye, Raul.”
He stood there, watched her cross the floor and exit through the open door. The perfect end to a terrible day. Raul fought down an urge to run after her, knowing it would do no good, and instead turned back to the kitchenette and his depleted liter of Glengarry’s Best. He picked up the glass and dashed its contents into the sink, wasting every drop. Before he could think better of it, he also upended the bottle and allowed it to drain. He didn’t need the drink anymore. Raul had been looking for a bit of numbness.
He’d found it without the bottle.
18
Escalations
Highlake Basin
Achernar
6 March 3133
Achernar’s blue-white sun tore a brilliant hole through the pale afternoon sky, flooding Highlake Basin with heat and bleaching light. Temperatures ebbed higher, past the usual tidemark of forty-two Celsius and lapping up toward forty-three. With no moisture left to the cracked-mud plains the air remained dry and baking, and puffs of dust swept up from each pounding stride Star Colonel Torrent took as he turned away from the Stealthy Paw and eased into the last leg of his run back to the DropShip Lupus.
Torrent’s khaki shorts and dust-smeared tank top were damp with fresh sweat but hardly soaked through. The thirsty desert air drank in the moisture quickly. Still, his shaven scalp and his arms glistened as if painted with a diamond glaze. His lower legs were streaked with mud—desert dust mixed with sweat, drying to gray streaks along both well-muscled calves.
Unsnapping a plastic water flask from his hip, Torrent swigged its last draught without breaking his stride. It tasted stale, tinged with the sweat on his lips and the plastic taste of the flask, and completely failed to wash away the sour taste of yesterday’s performance. He hooked the strap back into his belt, fastened it, and forgot it as his concentration turned back to the run and what might have been.
Kyle Powers was dead.
He knew it before any announcement was made. Torrent had watched his laser cut up over the Jupiter’s chest and into the thin strip of ferroglass that protected the cockpit, the ruby-bright beam punching through into flesh behind. The star colonel had to keep reminding himself of that or else lose himself in the anger of having been forced to flee. Torrent had defeated the Sphere Knight, had certainly driven a hard wedge in between the Swordsworn and Republic forces, and that had been his goal, after all. The Steel Wolves had required drastic measures and he took them. And he won. He always won.
But not one hundred percent, this time.
Not a flawless victory.
That single Legionnaire had held the line, battering back no matter how much Torrent’s Tundra Wolf threw at it. Raul Ortega—according to the staffing reports, a recently promoted reservist, not a regular line officer at all. He should have broken with the loss of Kyle Powers. He should have quailed beneath the Tundra Wolf’s heavier weapons. He should have.
Instead, Ortega’s threatening rotary autocannon had carved into Torrent, worrying his armor and chewing new damage into critical systems like his engine shielding and weapons. The star colonel’s anger—and his pride—had encouraged him to hang in, to push forward and live gloriously or die honorably by the next few minutes. His instincts, his many years of experience, his loyalty to Kal Radick—those all told him to take his limited victory over Powers and withdraw to fight again another day, perhaps to claim Achernar despite Fetladral’s misfortune and Kal Radick’s shift in priorities. This time he listened to the saner voices, but it had been a close call. Muscles tight with frustration, he had levered the Tundra Wolf away. One step. Then another.
Torrent continued his run—one stride, then another—picking up speed as he pushed himself for the DropShip.
A stinging tear of sweat leaked past the seal of Torrent’s dark goggles, burning at the corner of his eye. His vision blurred for a moment, but Torrent blinked it clear. Not that there was much to see in any case. A flat, dry basin pounded by the harsh glare of a strong sun. His dark lenses filtered out much of the painful brightness but did little to help the stark, colorless landscape. The desert looked more gray—maybe a dry dun—than the yellow he had expected. His Lupus commanded the horizon, but painted the stark, stellar white so common among space navy. Even the sky of this world looked washed out and lifeless to him.
But the world was not lifeless. It was an important world now, with its functioning hyperpulse generator station. So long as he had a means to pursue it, Torrent would not abandon Achernar. He would take what victories he could, build on them, and rise to greater honors than ever before.
That was what it was time to do. Build.
Pounding up the DropShip ramp and charging into the BattleMech bay, Torrent quickly dropped down into a brisk walk as he forced himself through several cool-down laps of the shaded work area. He stripped his goggles away, tucked them into his belt as well. His breathing strong but even, muscles burning with the pleasant ache of an honest workout, Torrent lapped the bay in slower circles, considering, planning. Seeing who was on hand.
“Star Captain Xera!”
The aerospace pilot stood within a small cluster of pilots and tank crewmen, looking over a grounded Scimitar and pointing out its weak spots. With her hands she had been showing att
ack angles, and the best way to strafe ground targets for maximum destruction. Now she snapped to attention, found Torrent, and jogged over to her commander.
“Yes, Star Colonel.”
The woman had bound her blue-black hair into a ponytail, secured by a steel-spring clip. Her bright, hazel eyes missed nothing as she scanned her commander’s face for any sign of displeasure.
“Your pilots. They are ready for a new mission, quiaff?”
“Aff, Star Colonel.”
He would have been surprised at any other answer. But, “Even Star Commander Drake?”
“Drake has adapted, sir. He was quiet for a few days after our Circle of Equals. Then a pilot in his star questioned my orders in front of him and other witnesses. Drake took it as a challenge to his own authority, and… he put the pilot in the infirmary for two days.” She saw the slight crease to Torrent’s brow. “I chose not to bring it to your attention as it was a pilots’ matter. I fully support Drake’s resort to personal discipline. Sir.”
Torrent hid his smile. Good. Xera would make a fine aerospace commander. “I want all aerospace forces ready in two days. They will provide escort to our DropShips.”
“We are not leaving?” The thought seemed to worry Xera, as if giving up Achernar would be a blotch on her personal honor. “Have we been recalled?”
“Neg, Star Captain. The time has come to heighten our profile on Achernar. We will be moving our staging area to a more appropriate venue.” Such plans had been discussed before, when the Steel Wolves first planned their assault on Achernar and, since, after every difficulty noted in staging raids over distance on this planet.
Xera remembered their secondary plans as well. “Are you thinking, perhaps, of the River’s Run flatlands?”
“I was thinking River’s End,” Torrent said, a choice that had not been among their original plans. He noted the predator’s gleam that immediately brightened up behind Xera’s eyes. “Or something very, very close to it.” He turned for the bay exit and a shower, leaving her behind to stew of excitement.
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