This level had once been part of the Regis University archives, but when the Kurita-backed new order had come to power, most of the records had been removed to a warehouse just outside the campus walls. A number of the basement rooms had become offices and facilities for what was euphemistically referred to as the "Special Branch". With its walls of ferrocrete and quarried stone block, meters thick in places, the place was perfect for the purpose. The screams of the guests of the Special Branch never penetrated to the upper levels of the building.
Nagumo was tired and harassed by growing worries. Rebel activity had been increasing during the past week, culminating with the raid on the deep-space transmitter just the day before. Instead of being broken after the raid on Fox Island, the damnable rebel movement seemed to be spreading like a cancer, infecting districts, villages, and whole regions that haduntil now been pacified.
Reports were on his desk of rebel attacks on Loyalist and Kurita outposts throughout the Bluesward and Vrieshaven, and even as far west as Scandiahelm. The toll in just this week since Fox Island had been ten ‘Mechs destroyed or put out of commission indefinitely. At this rate, it would be the skeleton of an army that met Duke Ricol in six more days. Six days!
The raid on the transmitter was a particularly harrowing climax. The deep-space tracking system on Verthandi-Alpha had marked the arrival of a JumpShip at the Norn zenith jump point shortly before the raid on the transmitter, had monitored a coded burst-pulsed radio message (which had not yet yielded to Kodo's naval cryptoanalysis department) and had then vanished back into hyperspace. To Nagumo's mind, it could only mean a plea for more mercenary reinforcements.
The mercenaries could not know that he'd been informed of their arrival by his spy network on Galatea. He had immediately dispatched a courier to alert his Galatean network that the jump freighter Invidious might be returning to Galatea. Where else close by could they go to recruit more mercs? The Galatean network had Nagumo's personal sanction to do what was necessary to block that ship's mission.
Nagumo could not count on success there. In fact, he had to assume that reinforcements would be arriving. Meanwhile, his grip on Verthandi was slipping. Rebel raids all across the inhabited portion of the planet had forced Kurita troops and ‘Mechs and Loyalist militia to keep to their garrison posts, to travel in convoys, to avoid travelling alone in rural areas. And now, a riot in the streets of the Regis Oldtown district. A riot! It had started as a demonstration—with students chanting "Death to the Dracos". Someone had fired a shot that killed a government militiaman, and then a platoon of Combine infantry had fired into the crowd. There were six dead before the lance of recon ‘Mechs had broken up the mob. Since then, the city had been simmering in sullen resentment.
What was he going to tell the Duke?
The guards outside the door to Room 6 saluted crisply, fists to chests, which Nagumo acknowledged with a curt nod. He gestured for his escort to remain there, in the passageway, then stepped through the massive door as one of the guards swung it open for him.
Dr. Vlade and two assistants were inside, their backs to him as they bent over a stainless steel table oddly out of place in the faintly dank and septic gloom. At the sound of the door, Vlade turned and smiled broadly. "My Lord, thank you for coming."
"What do you want, Vlade?"
He didn't have the time to watch Vlade play in his sub-basement funhouse. The place stank of blood, sweat, and stark terror. Filth crusted the floor under Nagumo's immaculate boots.
"My Lord..."
"Make it fast, Vlade," he said. "I've got work to do."
"Of course, my Lord. I wouldn't have called you down at all. This interrogation was purely routine, you see...but I've stumbled across some fascinating information I thought you would want to hear for yourself, right away...rather than waiting for my report."
"Well?"
His chief interrogator gestured to the table, which was nearly as wide as it was long. Vlade's current guest was there, lying spread eagled by rope restraints at wrists and ankles.
"Well, my dear," Vlade said in a kindly, almost fatherly manner. He tilted the table top up and locked it in place, bringing its prisoner upright to face Nagumo. "Won't you tell the Governor General what you told me?"
The woman's head tossed from side to side, her eyes shut tight in a face glistening with sweat and tears. She spoke between deep and desperate gasps for air, the words coming with a tumbling urgency. "Please don't hurt me please don't hurt me please..."
Vlade looked across her at Nagumo. "This is Carlotta Helgameyer, my Lord. She is one of the members of that self-styled Revolutionary Council you captured at Fox Island."
"I know, Vlade. I've seen her dossier."
"Then you know that she is also a respected professor on the faculty of this university. And she's been giving me names. Haven't you, Carlotta?"
"Please, don't hurt...yes...yes...anything...Please don't hurt me..."
Nagumo's eyes widened in surprise. "You've broken her so easily? I don't see a mark on her."
"Well, we've had her for a week now, my Lord. We first had to assemble a psychological profile based on her physiological reactions during the first interviews. That told us that Carlotta doesn't like...pain. Do you, Carlotta?"
Nagumo crossed his arms. "Who does?"
"Ah, but this is special." Vlade reached down to a small instrument stand and picked up what looked like a fencing foil with a heavy, complex grip—a neural whip. He fiddled with controls at the handle, and at the tiny clicking sound, the woman's eyes opened wide and her pleading rose in pitch and volume.
"Please...no...no...no...!"
He flicked the tip of the neural whip lightly across the woman's thigh, the touch wrenching a long shuddering scream from her. Vlade looked up at Nagumo, touched the blade to his own bare hand, and shrugged. "When I can get that...sincere a reaction with the power off, it's fairly safe to assume that the subject has been completely conditioned. You see..." He brought the blade down again, touching her stomach and eliciting another scream. "Carlotta has a problem in that she never knows whether the blade is going to be charged...so...or dead...or where it is going to touch her. When it gets to where the anticipation is as bad as any pain, well...she'll answer any question. And she'll answer it as truthfully as she can. Isn't that right my dear? We've been having a lovely conversation."
"And what have you learned?" Nagumo felt a mild revulsion for Vlade and his light-hearted patter. The man got results, but with what struck Nagumo as unprofessional familiarity.
"We've learned that there is considerable pro-rebel sentiment among the students and faculty right here in the University. Students have been distributing anti-Combine literature and rather sensationalist accounts of recent rebel actions throughout Regis. They've been openly recruiting for the rebel forces, talking about training an army under these mercenaries off in the jungle. The riot yesterday started with a student demonstration, you know, but that sort of 'spontaneous' gesture has to be carefully planned and organized."
"This woman was an organizer of the disturbance?"
"Oh, Carlotta has been very busy here in the capital when she hasn't been running around in the jungle with her rebel friends, haven't you, Carlotta? But she's had lots of help. Members of the University faculty, even some respected people on the Council of Academicians itself have been organizing meetings, spreading sedition."
"She's giving you names?"
"Oh, yes. She's been most cooperative. There is quite a sizable number in this cabal, isn't there, Carlotta? Prominent men in trusted positions in the local government."
"This is new?" Nagumo barked, but then paused to think. He knew that the relationship between Regis University and the Verthandian government was an odd one. The Verthandians took pride in the fact that their government leaders were trained for the job, that government itself was a logical and disciplined science, administered by trained professionals. The riots of the previous day showed that the citizens of Regis did
not always approach politics with logic. Nagumo had thought that his enemy was the rebel army and the mercenaries they'd brought in to help them. Now the flames of rebellion were spreading, heedless of military defeat or the might of the Draconis Combine. Perhaps what they needed at this point was not a military victory, but a blow against some visible symbol of the revolution to demonstrate the occupation army's power.
If treasonous elements of the University and government could be turned into a public example, right now, this week...a purge to demonstrate the firmness of his will, then things might be quiet when Duke Ricol arrived. Certainly, it was better than hurrying blindly across the face of Verthandi, reacting to the moves and threats of a slippery, invisible opponent.
He turned to pick up a chair and brought it close to the silver table. Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped dust and a stray splatter of something dry and brown from the seat, then sat down.
"Very well. Let's hear what she has to say."
* * * *
The dream began as it always did.
Lori sat in the cramped cockpit of her Locust, her hands on the controls, her body swaying with the rolling of her machine. Urgency drove her, though she didn't know what it was that had her heart racing, her pulse roaring in her ears. The landscape that flowed past the Locust's window was familiar...a wasteland stark and bleak, spires of ice and mounds of snow under a sky of midnight blue. It was Sigurd, a world of frozen seas and towering glaciers. The world of her birth.
Sigurd would forever be associated in her mind with cold, but as she pressed her Locust forward, she felt not cold, but heat. She could feel the sweat on her face and chest, could feel it trickling down her spine to pool in the small of her back. This was more than the usual heat of a BattleMech in operation, more even than the heat of an overload in battle. Through her ‘Mech's cockpit windows, she could see the reflected dazzle of flames close behind her. Fire!
Her hands twisted the controls and the Locust spun. A low, thick-walled house of logs, clay, and handmade bricks dissolved in flames like sugar in hot tea. It was her own home burning.
In the night, the soldiers had come. Now the village was afire and her home was burning. She could hear her parents and brothers as they screamed, could feel the hands of the neighbor who had snatched her back as she'd tried to run back into that hell of flame and pain. No... not hands. The straps of her harness were digging at her shoulders like the remembered grip of that neighbor.
Daddy!
She struggled, thrashing. Daddy was in the flames somewhere. She had to reach him, but there was someone in the way. It was a tall, lean man whose back was to her. He stood between her and the burning house, and something rested across his shoulder, something short, stocky and horrifying.
When he turned, she saw it was Grayson Carlyle. He stood below her just as she'd seen him that first day, in a city street on Trellwan, They'd been on opposite sides, then, she unknowingly fighting for a Kurita warlord, he leading the local militia in a desperate defense.
He set his eye to the crude sight of the inferno launcher and brought the weapon into line with her cockpit. His mouth twisted into its familiar, lopsided grin as he squeezed the trigger...
She sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake. The bed sheets were wringing wet, her hair plastered in damp tangles across her face and bare shoulders. She sat there a moment, breathing hard, taking in the dimly seen but familiar outlines of objects in her darkened cabin— the small terminal at her desk, her uniform locker, the nightstand by her bed. She crossed her arms across her breasts and sat there, trembling for a moment. It was only a dream. Only a dream.
He could’ve fired...he hadn't! She made herself remember what had really happened, fighting the terror. He had trapped her and her Locust in a blind alley, had captured her. He had nor pulled the trigger as he so easily could have. Why did she keep dreaming that he had?
One hand groped in the darkness across her nightstand and touched the lighting panel. The overhead fluoros came up gradually, and she rubbed the sleep and hair from her eyes. The programmable clock at her bedside showed her the time in Verthandi reckoning... 0210. She knew by now that she would not get to sleep again soon.
Lori got up, slipped into the closet-sized washroom, and splashed water over her face until the clammy feeling was gone. After pulling on shorts, shirt, and low-topped boots, she left her cabin.
The Phobos did not shut down during the night. Unless the ‘Mechs were out on a raid, however, the nightwatch stayed at their posts in engineering and on the bridge. She met no one as she followed the curve of C-Deck's outboard corridor clockwise to the crew's galley, then took the elevator up a level to B deck. With most of the crew asleep, the passageways were eerily silent, the only noise coming from the gentle hiss of air conditioning ducts and the shuffle of her own boots on the metal deck.
Lori stopped outside the lounge. Seated at the table was Grayson, a compad and a stack of printouts in front of him.
"Gray?" When he started to rise, she shook her head. "No, don't get up. Can I join you?"
"Of course." He stood up anyway as she entered the room. He was, she decided, a complex man. During a conference or on the battlefield, he seemed incapable of thinking of her as a woman, seemed to see in her only his Executive Officer. When they were alone, though, he often showed this maddeningly formal gallantry. Such manners were old-fashioned, faintly anachronistic outside of the courts and capitals of the Successor States. She wondered if he'd spent much time on one of the Inner Worlds to have acquired them. He smiled, offering her a chair, and she shivered. It was the same gentle, lopsided smile from her dream.
"Am I interrupting?"
"No, no. Just reports." That smile again. "I couldn't sleep," he said, "and somehow there’s never time to go over these things during the day."
"I couldn't sleep, either."
"Can I get you something? Coffee?"
She shook her head, crossing her arms on the-table before her. Grayson went back to reading the dispatch printouts. Lori watched him, searching for a way to open the conversation. "Well?" she said at last "Good news or bad?"
He frowned, distracted. "Confused, mostly. This rebellion has gone way beyond our little bit of this planet and I can't keep up."
"Well, they've been fighting their war without our help for ten years now."
"Yeah, but it looks like a lot of folks are coming out of hiding now. Now that they've heard about us, heard that we're winning battles. They hear that Kurita can be beaten...and they come tumbling out to join the fun."
"That's to be expected, isn't it?"
His frown deepened. "I suppose so. But how are we supposed to coordinate everything that's happening? How can we...well.... Here, look at this." He slid several comroom printouts across the table. "A band of farmers attacked a Loyalist convoy at a place called Junction three days ago. They relayed word to us that Kurita ‘Mechs retaliated by burning their town, and they're asking us for support. I can't even find Junction on the map! And here...there was a riot in the streets of Regis last night. Several hundred students and teachers demonstrating against the Kurita-backed government They had to bring in ‘Mechs to break up the crowd"
"That ought to stir things up."
"I'll say, because Regis University is the government! There were government militiamen in the mob! If Nagumo doesn't do something about that, he might as well pack up and leave. And if he does respond, there's not a damned thing we can do about it! I think half of Nagumo's ‘Mechs are inside Regis...most of them in that university complex." His fist closed, a sharp, compulsive motion. Lori was surprised to see the pain behind his eyes. "These people are looking to us for help. They’re assuming we're here to help them, and a lot of them are going to be dead because of it."
Lori felt a pang as she watched him. She almost reached out to touch him, but her inner turmoil stopped her. She liked Grayson. He was kind and gentle. She admired his quick intelligence and the way he could inspire respect, obedie
nce, and admiration in the people he commanded. She had watched him come through the bloody campaign on Trellwan. Beginning with nothing, he had ended with a hodge-podge unit that had outmaneuvered the cunning Lord Hassid Ricol and forced him to give up the world he had stolen. Now he was facing Ricol again, or at least facing forces that answered to him. In only a month, he had begun to transform the rebel army into a fighting force that could meet the Red Duke's BattleMechs and win.
But why did she always see Grayson in her dreams as a destroyer, wreathed in fire, aiming that inferno launcher at her face? It frightened her, and the fact that she was afraid angered her, too.
The first time she had seen Grayson Carlyle, Lori had been piloting her Locust in battle on a world she'd never heard of before, fighting for masters she did not know. He had stood before her, alone, unarmored, an inferno launcher on his shoulder. He had commanded her to come out of her ‘Mech and surrender, but he had not fired...had admitted to her later that he'd never intended to fire.
Later, at Thunder Rift, her Locust had burned and she had called to him and he had not come, not for long, long minutes. He'd been kilometers away at the time, fighting for his own life, but the horror of that engulfing fire, the feeling that Grayson had abandoned her, had left a deep and angry scar. She was only now coming to realize just how deep.
Lori's fear of fire was something she had grappled with endlessly, fighting it when she went into battle, fighting it in the nightmares that plagued her sleep. When she was awake, she trusted Grayson as her commanding officer. But on some deeper level that was revealed only in dreams, she associated him with the blind panic and lack of control she'd felt while crouched behind the controls of her Locust. Grayson had nothing to do with the death of her parents, had nothing to do with her dread of burning and death by fire. By day, she could admire him, even want to be with him, but at night came the dreams of fire and death, and the image of a smiling Grayson, bracing the inferno launcher on his shoulder.
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