Malicious intent

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The numbers in the auxiliary monitor's Global Positioning System window showed her to be solidly in the middle of the Kentessee District. I'm almost 750 kilometers northwest of Hilton Head and I have the Great Smoky Mountains between here and there. If I'm lucky I can hit fifty kilometers per hour. That's fifteen hours.

  She realized she'd decided to return to Hilton Head before she'd fully considered what had happened to her, and what she was sure to find at the ComStar headquarters. There was no question the Lancers had deliberately fired upon the DropShip with the full intention of killing her. They had no reason to assume she'd be buttoned up in a 'Mech. Even if the Transits had tried to follow the True Word down, chances were they'd have thought her 'Mech blasting free nothing more than a malfunction on a stricken ship.

  Things began to slowly slip into place for her. The fact that the Lancers had tested as far more capable than what their service records indicated should have made her suspicious. Instead of wondering why they exceeded her expectations, she'd welcomed their precocious skill. It made her job of defending Terra easier.

  I should have figured out that the Lancers we hired were different from the Lancers we got. The attack on her showed the substitution had been part of a plan to, at the very least, leave Terra defenseless. That made no sense since Terra was the Clan objective—unless, of course, the Lancers were really a Clan unit in disguise. Even so, if they were, how would they have been able to insert into ComStar computers the information needed to get the Lancers the proper security clearances?

  Regardless of who the Lancers really were, only one group could have accomplished the substitution of records in ComStar files. Word of Blake had intimate knowledge of ComStar procedures and facilities, and everyone knew that some individuals in ComStar still had sympathetic ties to their former brethren.

  And Word of Blake had long been making noises about reclaiming Terra and "driving the blasphemers from the temple."

  Lisa brought the Quickdraw to its feet. She switched the scan mode to magres. If anyone else made it out of the DropShip, or if the Lancers have sent ground forces to check out the crash site, I'll be able to pick them up. While they were hitting me, they must also have turned on the Terran Defense Force battalions training with them—provided they weren't infiltrated with Blakists, too.

  She sighed. "Their goal has to be Hilton Head and the Primus. I can't stop them, but if this storm delays them long enough, I may be able to surprise them." Lisa turned the Quickdraw in a southwesterly direction. "Behead the snake and the body dies—but only if the head is truly dead. There's a fine line between winning and total victory, and with any luck I'll be able to pinpoint exactly where it lies."

  22

  DropShip Barbarossa Nadir Recharge Point Raman

  Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

  1 March 3058

  Watching his friend's face as he studied the holographic star map projected into the space between them, Victor couldn't help but smile despite the gravity of the situation. The Kai Allard-Liao sitting across from him in the DropShip cabin seemed as sharp as ever, and his comments were as insightful as in the days of the Clan invasion, yet he'd changed in the six years since the truce of Tukayyid.

  And in the six years, since I left him behind on Alyina. The two friends had met since then, but what little time they'd spent together had been on Arc-Royal. That had been only a couple of years ago, but Kai had changed significantly in that time—as much as he'd changed after the year behind the lines on Alyina.

  Physically he was the same as ever: tall and on the lean side, but proportionately muscled. His almond eyes and yellow skin, along with his black hair, were all characteristic of his family's Asian background. He'd gotten his gray eyes from his mother, but the intelligence that shone in them came in equal and generous portions from both his parents.

  Still, he looks different. "That's it," Victor said suddenly.

  Kai looked away from the glowing globes of the holo map. "That's what? You've found a solution for this Falcon raiding?"

  "No, I've been trying to figure out what's different about you."

  "Different?"

  The Archon Prince of the Federated Commonwealth nodded. "You look happy. For the first time in all the years I've known you, you actually look happy."

  Kai blushed. "I guess I am happy." His smile wavered for a second. "Not that I haven't been before, but, well, I always felt a lot of pressure trying to live up to what my parents expected. Of course, what I thought they expected had nothing to do with what their expectations really were—I was the one who decided I had to prove myself worthy of being heir to their reputations."

  Victor laughed. "Their legends, you mean."

  "Right." Kai shrugged. "It's odd, you know, but there are only a half-dozen people who I can talk to about this with any hope of their understanding. Being Hanse Davion's son, or Melissa Steiner's son, can't be any easier than what I faced, but you handled it differently."

  "The situation wasn't exactly the same." Victor frowned. "Your parents were proud of you and willing to let you find your way in the universe. Mine knew I stood to inherit the family business, so they didn't have that luxury. As a result, my father would set up targets and I'd hit them, which meant I had a lot easier time figuring out how I was doing."

  "Your parents had you hitting the kind of marks that would prepare you to rule the Federated Commonwealth one day, while mine let me pick my own—which happened to be marks they'd hit themselves." Kai rubbed a hand along his clean-shaven jaw. "Deirdre and I are combining those methods. She's already done a wonderful job with David."

  Victor smiled. "I look forward to meeting him some day."

  "You know Deidre is pregnant again."

  "Really?"

  Kai nodded, then his eyes sharpened. "You already knew."

  "Well, yes, I did." Victor's smile turned sheepish. "I don't have my people spying on friends, but ..."

  "The impending birth of an heir to the throne of the St. Ives Compact is a matter of national security, I know. I have to keep telling Deidre that so she won't ditch the security detail my mother has protecting her."

  "Kai got up and crossed to the sideboard where he pumped a refill of naranji juice from a decanter into the zero-G suck-cup he'd been drinking from. He took a sip and smiled. "There's a bit of lime in this mix," he said appreciatively. "Just the way I like it."

  "Thank Jerry Cranston, that's his doing."

  Kai nodded. "I will. It's funny, he seems so familiar, but I can't place him."

  "He did some graduate work at the New Avalon Military Academy in 'forty-six—you might have met him then."

  "That's probably it." Kai gestured with the cup at the holographic map. "But back to this . . . Allowing for the sketchiness of the details, it does seem like the Falcons are probing rather deeply into Alliance space. But with the way things are right now, you can't really do anything unless Katrina invites you in."

  "And that won't happen. Katherine hasn't even deigned to make a public statement about any of this. Nondi Steiner is moving troops around to try to deal with the raiders, but she can't leave the border undefended."

  "Classic problem: how to defend everything that's valuable to you? An attacker can threaten more points than you can defend." Kai sipped some juice. "That's always been our disadvantage against the Clans. We're always reacting to what they do."

  "Except when we hit Twycross and Teniente—they didn't know what to expect and we beat them." Victor nodded slowly. "I'd like nothing better than to have the opportunity to take the war straight to the Clans."

  "Perhaps that's what Focht has in mind."

  "What do you mean?"

  The Duke of St. Ives set his cup down. "You, Hohiro, and I were all trained on Outreach back when the leaders of the Inner Sphere realized they had to unite against the Clans. It strikes me that Hohiro might be interested in continuing that kind of training in preparation for mounting some kind of strike against the Clans. I've been
hearing about a war between the Wolves and the Jade Falcons, though it's been not much more than rumors. But if it's any indication of a general rift within the Clans, we might be able to start taking them on one at a time and do some serious damage."

  "You might be right, Kai." Victor stood and glanced over at the door as a chime sounded. "Enter."

  Jerry Cranston came into the room leading a woman wearing the scarlet robe of a ComStar demi-Precentor. The dark circles around her eyes and the paleness of her skin told Victor the shuttle that had brought her to his ship had pulled some serious G-forces in its race to get here before his ship jumped out. Moreover, since anything she would tell him in person could have been broadcast to the ship, he assumed the news was both bad and very private.

  She bowed to him. "Forgive my intrusion, Highness. I am Precentor Regina Whitman."

  "Please, Precentor, be seated." Victor nodded as Kai turned back toward the juice dispenser. "Would you like some refreshment?"

  "Thank you, yes."

  Kai handed her a cup of juice, and she sucked down half of it in the first go, then blushed when she realized they were all watching her. "Again, forgive me."

  "No matter. Have you a holodisk for me?"

  "No. The message came directly from the Precentor Martial, text only, no visual. It made for a smaller packet that traveled faster." The Precentor caught her breath. "We have lost contact with Terra."

  "What?" Victor looked at Kai and Jerry, whose expressions showed they were as stunned as he was. Was the raid into the Alliance only a diversion? "Have the Clans taken Terra?"

  "No, sir, I mean, Highness." She clutched the cup tightly and Victor could see the liquid inside it quivering. "According to some preliminary messages coming out of the Free Worlds League—both overt and covert intercepts—it appears Word of Blake has moved to lay claim to Terra. They struck on the last day of February—yesterday—because it was the 276th anniversary of Jerome Blake being given control of Terra and what would become ComStar. It was also the 38th month since the official naming of Sharilar Mori, and Jerome Blake had a 38-year reign—it all gets terribly complicated and bound up in their malignant theology."

  Victor nodded slowly, his mind racing. Terra was the world from which humanity had spread out to inhabit the stars. Though he'd never been there himself, the fact that it existed and was held in trust for all mankind by ComStar had been a fundamental tenet of how the universe worked for him. Back during the Clan invasion he would have been ready and more than willing to fight to prevent the Clans from taking Terra. At this moment he realized that his willingness to defend the homeworld of humanity had not waned.

  "Does the Precentor Martial want us to divert to Terra? Our flotilla here has two full BattleMech regiments, as well as artillery, armor, infantry, and aerospace regiments. We can reach Terra before we can reach Tukayyid."

  Precentor Whitman smiled gratefully, and he saw that a little color had reentered her face. "The Precentor Martial asked me to thank you for that offer, but he said it would not be necessary. He said the loss of Terra is grave, but is the lesser of the two evils facing the Inner Sphere."

  Victor nodded. "If we can't deal with the greater of those evils, Word of Blake can defend Terra from the Clans."

  "The Precentor Martial's thoughts exactly." She stood and sipped the last of her juice. "If it would not be an imposition, I would travel with you to Tukayyid. I need to survey the situation in the systems where you will stop during your trip, and report on them when I reach our destination."

  "Please, make yourself at home. Jerry, have someone find the Precentor a cabin."

  "My pleasure, Highness. This way, Precentor Whitman."

  Kai held a hand up. "One question, if I might?"

  "Please, Duke Allard-Liao."

  "The Primus. Where was she at the time of the attack?"

  Whitman's shoulders slumped. "On Terra, at Hilton Head." The Precentor shook her head. "We've had no word and must assume she is dead."

  23

  ComStar First Circuit Compound, Hilton Head

  Island North America, Terra

  1 March 3058

  The burning in her eyes came from more than smoke and fatigue, as did the tears welling up in them. Precentor Lisa Koenigs-Cober couldn't believe the destruction in the compound. Not a single building had gone undamaged. Fires burning in some of them rivaled the weak dawn light from the east. To the west the black smoke reinforced the dark clouds gathering to blast the island with the storm she'd so recently fought through.

  The Primus's Bodyguard unit—light armor and jump infantry mostly—had managed to blunt the direct assault by the Lancers' armor battalion. The Lancers had retaliated by setting up their artillery battalion and using it to methodically bombard the First Circuit Compound. Their intention clearly had been to hammer the Bodyguards until just before dawn, then punch through their line with an armor assault.

  And that would have happened if Crown and I had not arrived and spoiled their timing. After leaving the crash site Lisa had located one other member of her lance. Demi-Precentor Stephen Crown had managed to get his Shadow Hawk clear of the doomed DropShip. The other two 'Mechs aboard, a Centurion and a Hunchback, had been fitted with drop-assist jet packs that had either failed to work, or failed to work well enough to save their pilots.

  Constantly goading each other to keep going, Lisa and Crown had made it to Hilton Head in thirteen hours. They'd systematically destroyed all the microwave dishes and communication lines they could find along the way, as well as taking down portions of the power grid. They assumed the interruptions to service would be blamed on the storm, and it minimized the chances that word of their approach would precede them.

  Their caution paid off. They hit the Lancer artillery batteries from the rear, going for munitions first, then destroying hovertrucks packed with the stuff. The vehicles exploded like firecrackers on a string, filling the night with a false dawn and fiery death. Lisa chose to bypass most of the artillery and jump past the armor positions. She and Crown could have done significant damage to those forces, but it would also have destroyed their own 'Mechs, and thus any hope of accomplishing her main objective.

  Glass and mortar crunched beneath her feet as she ducked through the doorway to the First Circuit chamber. She could see the gray sky through a hole in the southwest corner of the building. Dim light filtered into the room through the hole and the empty, semi-circular windows that surrounded the chamber. Smoke filled the upper reaches of the room, but down below in the wooden bowl, amid the Precentors' crystal podia, the air was clear. Standing in the center of the room was Sharilar Mori, Primus of ComStar. Worked into the polished floor under her feet was the golden insignia of ComStar.

  "Primus Mori, we must go."

  The Primus looked up, clearly startled. The hood of her golden robe slid back to reveal long, dark hair streaked with white. "Go, Precentor?"

  Lisa descended the wooden steps, kicking debris out of her way. "Yes, Primus. The Fond Memory is ready to leave. We can link up with Serene Wisdom and leave the Terran system."

  The older Japanese woman slowly shook her head. "I will not leave Terra."

  "I have my orders, Primus."

  Sharilar Mori's dark eyes sparkled with irritation. "I am Primus. Your orders do not concern me."

  "I'm afraid they do." Lisa folded her arms across her chest. "In the event Terra falls I am supposed to evacuate or destroy everything of value to our enemies."

  "Then do your duty and leave me behind."

  "I cannot."

  "The Blakist rabble will not drive me from Terra."

  "You'll be a martyr, then?"

  "If they make me one."

  Lisa shook her head. "I thought we'd abandoned such nonsense when the Blakists purged themselves from our midst."

  The Primus stared up at her with hard eyes. Lisa braced for a brutal rebuke, but the anger in those eyes suddenly drained away. "The old ways die hard."

  "The old ways here
are dead." Lisa held out her hand. "Come, Primus."

  Mori took Lisa's hand and let herself be led out of the First Circuit chamber. "How bad is it?"

  "Oh, about as bad as possible. The Lancers are Blakists. I have to assume the 201st Division is gone: either destroyed from within or without."

  "You don't think they went over?"

  Lisa shook her head. "If the whole unit had mutinied, there'd have been no reason to shoot me and my command lance down. We represented a rallying point for resistance, so we had to be eliminated. Between turncoats and the Lancers, they're gone. I have no idea what's happened at Sandhurst, but I have to assume Blakist units are burning hard for Terra."

  The Primus winced. "Two JumpShips did come into the system outside the moon's orbit."

  "If not for the storm the Lancers would be waiting to welcome them right here on Hilton Head."

  Sharilar Mori let her eyes travel over the savaged landscape, then shuddered. "They are welcome to what they find."

  Lisa shrugged. "It won't be much, I'm afraid." She waved two soldiers over. 'Take the Primus to the Fond Memory. Tell Precentor Konrad to leave immediately. Incoming DropShips are considered extremely hostile and are to be avoided at all costs."

  "Yes, Precentor."

  The Primus held her hand out. "Wait, aren't you coming?" Lisa frowned, then tapped a toe against the ferrocrete curb. "This island is honeycombed with research facilities, storage areas, and computer archives. We've loaded as much as we can onto the Memory, and your Bodyguards, save a squad or two, will also go with you. What's left of the rest of us will have to blow this place."

  "But you will escape?" Mori's eyes narrowed. "I will not leave if my people are staying behind."

  "A shuttle is waiting. We'll catch up with you before you link up with the JumpShip."

  "Then I look forward till we meet again." The Primus turned toward the aircar parked in the middle of the boulevard, then looked back over her shoulder. "Remember, Precentor, martyrdom is nonsense we have abandoned."