The Scorpion Jar

by Jason M. Hardy

  The bartender studied it, frowning. “Yes. I don’t know who he is, just that he isn’t one of our regulars and probably isn’t a local, either. But he and Tony were here once or twice. Tony never introduced me. Your boy never seemed too comfortable, always seemed antsy to move on.”

  Horn refolded the picture and put it away. “Thanks.”

  “You going to let me know who it is?”

  “I don’t believe I am,” said Horn, rising to leave. “And you can keep the change.”

  The late-night air outside the Cloverleaf Bar was chill and crisp. Horn breathed deeply, clearing his lungs of the Cloverleaf’s smoke-fouled atmosphere. The stars overhead were sharp and there was a ring around the moon: high ice crystals, he thought, and maybe the prospect of snow.

  He thought about the photograph of Henrik Morten, now tucked back inside his coat. The bartender had identified the man in that picture as someone who had been seen with Delgado earlier.

  He’d read the stream of information Levin had sent him about Morten. And now he had directly connected him to the attempt to intimidate, or harm, Elena Ruiz.

  It was time to stop beating around the bush. They had enough to go after the rabbit himself.

  29

  First Stop Bar, Geneva

  Terra, Prefecture X

  12 December 3134

  From time to time, Jonah Levin experienced moments of gratitude that, unlike most of his fellow Paladins, he was not a physically memorable person. He didn’t have the striking, Clan-bred looks of a Tyrina Drummond or a Meraj Jorgensson, both of whom were the products of generations of selective breeding for strength and symmetry and commanding appearance. And unlike Gareth Sinclair or Maya Avellar, he lacked the easy assurance that came of being born into wealth and high position.

  He was only a man of average height and average weight, with hair and eyes a nondescript shade of average dark brown and a face that could have belonged to a hundred other men of the same general age and ethnicity. In much-laundered street clothes a year or so behind the fashion, he could sit in a workingman’s bar drinking beer with a whisky chaser, and none of the observers would recognize him as a Paladin of the Sphere.

  The sharper-eyed ones among them might have frowned for a moment, puzzled, before going so far as to remark, “Say, did anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like that guy What’s-his-name—you know, the Paladin from Kervil?”

  And Jonah would say, “Yeah . . . lots of times,” in tones of bored resignation, and that would be that.

  This functional anonymity allowed him to nurse his drink and eat salted peanuts at a back table in the First Stop Bar, undisturbed by the comings and goings of the shift workers and truck drivers who made up the greater portion of the First Stop’s boisterous clientele. Left alone at his vantage point, he watched the front door of the bar and waited to see if the man he had contacted would show up.

  He didn’t have to wait for long. The time was still an hour short of midnight when the door opened to admit a broad, heavy-shouldered man who walked with a distinct limp. The man’s long-sleeved shirt and denim jacket couldn’t disguise the fact that his right arm was a prosthetic attachment.

  The man’s worn face lit up at his first sight of Jonah, and his lurching gait became faster. Jonah stood up to greet him, and the two men shared a handshake that turned into a quick hug. They sat down together at the table. The other man spoke first.

  “Captain.”

  “Sergeant,” Jonah replied. “You’re looking well.”

  “You’re not looking too bad yourself.” Wilson Turk’s gravelly voice hadn’t lost its Hesperus accent after all these years on Terra. “Married life still agreeing with you?”

  “I’d sooner be at home on Kervil than working here in Geneva—but you and I both know life doesn’t always give us what we want.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  The waitress came over from the bar. Turk nodded toward Jonah and said, “I’ll have one of whatever he’s having.”

  She left and Turk turned back to Jonah, all business now. “I came as soon as I could when I got your call. Whatever you need, Captain, I’ll do it. Or try my damnedest, anyhow.”

  “It shouldn’t be difficult.”

  Jonah finished his drink and contemplated ordering another. He decided against it. He had no fondness for drunkenness for its own sake, and he didn’t have either the stamina or the constitution of the young militia captain he’d been when he learned to drink beer with whisky chasers during the campaign on Kurragin.

  “I don’t know if all of what I’m about to tell you has made it out onto the streets or not,” he said, after the waitress had brought Turk his whisky-and-chaser. “It’s probably safest to assume that if you haven’t yet heard something similar on one of the major news feeds, then you don’t officially know about it until you do.”

  Turk looked unsurprised. “I didn’t know you were doing intel work these days.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Jonah. He moved on to the business at hand. “To begin with—how much do you know about the death of Victor Steiner-Davion?”

  “Only what everybody else does,” Turk said. “Have to admit, it shook me up a bit. I know he was nine years older than God, but he’d been around for so long it felt like he was going to last forever. Hard to believe that he’s dead.”

  “Not just dead,” said Jonah. “Murdered. And the Exarch has put me in charge of the investigation.”

  Turk whistled. “What did you do to make Damien Redburn hate you that much?”

  “I’m still trying to figure that one out myself,” Jonah said.

  “Cracked the case yet?”

  “Yeah. Looks like the butler did it.” That earned a weak grin from Turk. “No, it’s far too early to know anything. But there’s a distinct possibility that Steiner-Davion’s murder was planned by persons very high up in the government.”

  “How high? As high as you?”

  Jonah nodded gravely. “Maybe. But I hope not.”

  Turk shook his head. “They still don’t give you the easy jobs, do they? Where do I come in?”

  “You and your people come and go in the government buildings at all hours,” Jonah said. “You see the stuff that the workers bring in and the stuff that they throw out; you see who’s meeting with whom off the record; and nobody ever sees you. The custodial staff in a large building is effectively invisible—you could be plotting the overthrow of the government and no one would even notice.”

  Understanding crossed the other man’s broad face. “Anyone in particular you need me to put the word out on?”

  “Henrik Morten.”

  Turk showed no recognition. “Anything in particular about him?”

  “Who he works for. Who’s acting as his main sponsor. I’ve got him doing odd jobs for half a dozen politicians, but I know there must be someone out there giving him a majority of his work, and protection to boot. He’s been in more than one sticky situation and come out smelling like a rose. Someone powerful is watching his back.”

  Turk nodded. “I’ll get the word out, and we’ll see what people try to tell me.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant.”

  “No worries, Captain. I owe you one.”

  Jonah shook his head strongly. “I thought we’d established a long time ago on Kurragin that I owe you.”

  “Not the way I figure it. If you hadn’t been with us, we’d never have held down the flank without breaking, and I’d have gotten chopped up just the same.”

  Jonah looked at the other man. Turk’s expression was firm; nothing was going to sway him from his position.

  As Jonah drove home, Turk’s expression stayed with him. Everyone needed someone they could trust with the important work. He had Horn, Turk and a few others. A few people, it seemed, had Henrik Morten.

  Morten certainly seemed loyal enough, but his ethics looked quite malleable. Unfortunately, that’s all some people demanded. The people that Jonah valued were the ones who pro
ved themselves beyond Jonah’s expectations, the ones who did a better job than he could have thought of ordering.

  Turk was one of those. His face hadn’t changed much from the days in the Kyrkbacken militia, and it didn’t take much to push Jonah’s mind back to those days.

  30

  Kyrkbacken Militia HQ

  Kyrkbacken, Prefecture VI

  June–July 3110

  The headline displayed in the scrolling marquee atop the newsstand read:

  EXPEDITIONARY FORCE LOST. CAPELLANS DENY INVOLVEMENT.

  Captain Jonah Levin was making his way through the public transit station when he saw the marquee and paused. After a moment’s consideration, he went over to feed his personal card into the newsstand’s payment reader.

  The bored young clerk watching the transaction observed Jonah’s militia uniform and said, “Checking to see if you know any of the missing troops?”

  “No. Just interested in what people have to say about why we’re doing it.”

  A JumpShip was gone. One day it had been stationed near the Capellan border. The next day it was gone, and Republic military commanders had fallen completely silent about it. If they received any transmissions from it, or knew anything about its fate, they weren’t telling the public.

  This was bad, Jonah knew. More and more voices were proclaiming that war with the Confederation was inevitable even before this ship disappeared, and those voices were only going to grow louder. But Jonah wasn’t sure The Republic was ready for conflict with the Capellans. Not yet.

  Jonah took the news printout with him onto the public transit car and read the full story on his way to Militia Headquarters. Units from five planets spread over three Prefectures had been aboard the ship. The force had been touted as a prime example of the cooperative spirit of The Republic. Now it was gone, and Jonah wondered how cooperative those planets were feeling.

  He checked the names of the planets. Elnath, Yunnah, Palos, Wei, and Holt. All border planets. All pivotal to The Republic’s defenses. We can’t afford to lose their support now, Jonah thought.

  The newssheets offered a few personal reactions, mostly politicians and family members saluting the troops’ bravery. A few, though, questioned the buildup of force on the Capellan border and wondered why people from so many other planets needed to be involved. And this was only the first day of the story—things would get worse as time passed, especially if the missing JumpShip never turned up.

  At the HQ transit stop, he exited the train and made his way through the main gate to the building where he had been assigned an office. The Kyrkbacken Militia was mostly a reserve force; the bulk of its personnel drilled one night a week, one weekend a month and two weeks out of the year. A small permanent cadre—of which Jonah was a member—provided administration, training and the framework of a regimental structure. All in all, the militia was a quiet, low-key posting for a young officer who needed to pay his dues before moving to a more interesting assignment.

  Based upon the news stories, and upon the apprehensive energy pervading headquarters when he arrived, that peaceful time was about to end. He went to the cell-sized office that he shared with fellow militia captain Rafaella Graves, and found her already at work at her desk.

  “Jonah,” she said.

  “Raffi.” He nodded a greeting, then slipped into his chair and called up the desk files for this morning’s paperwork. “How did we manage to lose a JumpShip?”

  “That’s the big question, isn’t it? I’ve squeezed a few bits and pieces from a few contacts I have near the border. They say the JumpShip might have wandered a little off course before it disappeared.”

  “ ‘A little off course’? As in, into Capellan space?”

  “That’s the gist of it, yeah.”

  “They wandered into Capellan space and disappeared?”

  “From what I hear.”

  “Refresh my memory,” Jonah said, though he knew full well the answer to the question he was about to pose. “Do the Capellans like their borders being crossed?”

  “Hmmm, I’m pretty sure they don’t.”

  “So when a JumpShip disappears after wandering into their space, we can pretty well assume . . .”

  “. . . the worst,” Raffi finished.

  Jonah shook his head. “This is going to get worse. At least we have a pretty good vantage point from which to watch it all unfold.”

  A month later, Jonah found out he was going to do more than watch.

  “Called up? To where?”

  “The border,” Raffi said. “First and Third Regiments both.”

  “The border? What the hell? We’re supposed to be support for the border troops, not border troops ourselves! If we’re guarding the border, who’s guarding us?”

  “I don’t think we’re guarding the border. We’re going to it, where we’re supposed to wait further orders.”

  Jonah didn’t like the sound of that at all. “There aren’t too many places they can order us to once we’re at the border,” he said. “Tell me they’re at least equipping us decently.”

  The Kyrkbacken Militia possessed two BattleMechs, a Mad Cat III and a Legionnaire, and Jonah had trained in both. He leaned toward the Mad Cat, preferring its greater strength and mass, but lowly militia captains piloted the ’Mech they were assigned to and learned to like it.

  Raffi grimaced. “You’re not going to like this. The ’Mechs are staying here.”

  “What?”

  “You said it yourself. Support of the border. If they’re going to take away manpower, they want to at least leave firepower. We’re supposed to get new equipment out there.”

  Jonah’s hopes raised. “New equipment? Like, fresh-off-the-assembly-line new?”

  “No,” said Raffi. “Like, stuff-that’s-been-sitting-around-because-no-one-else-wants-it new.”

  “Old equipment, you mean. Ancient.”

  Raffi flashed a smile brimming with false cheer. “It’s new to us!”

  “Did they say what we’re getting?”

  Raffi glanced at the new orders. “Says here they’re purchasing a couple of clapped-out, secondhand Stingers from a disbanded mercenary unit.”

  “They’re giving us used Stingers? To defend the Capellan border?”

  Raffi nodded. “Yup.”

  In the past ten days The Republic, or at least these parts of it, had been enveloped in turmoil. Politicians on Holt were talking secession. Senators were openly questioning the military’s ability to protect the brave soldiers assigned to it. Anti-Capellan factions were urging for an immediate, overwhelming display of force—a display that, Jonah knew, could wipe out large portions of The Republic’s military and fatally weaken the border with the Confederation.

  “I wish I knew what they’re going to ask us to do,” Jonah said. “But whatever it is, I don’t think I’ll like it.”

  Kurragin, Capellan Confederation

  June–July 3110

  The secondhand Stinger BattleMechs were even worse than Jonah had initially feared, and so was the assignment. Both ’Mechs had been stripped of their jump jets—their former merc owners must have been cannibalizing them for parts before putting them up for sale. The fact that the ’Mechs also lacked proper repair-and-replacement schematics and had only a minimal number of critical spare parts was another bad sign.

  For the first time, Jonah appreciated the cynical comment that he’d heard on occasion from the older officers at headquarters: Nothing’s too good for our men and women in the militia; too bad the government hasn’t figured out how to give us less than nothing yet.

  He’d have to rely on his people, who, though not regular military, were not without promise. They ranged from weedy pseudointellectuals taking a year off from college, through the usual assortment of troublemakers, slackers and steady, reliable, young men and women, all the way to Sergeant Wilson Turk—who was, in Jonah’s considered opinion, something close to a gift from on high.

  Unlike most of the Kyrkbacken Militia�
�s enlisted personnel and noncommissioned officers, Turk had actually seen combat. He had served for two years in a front-line mercenary unit before cashing in his bonuses and returning home to semicivilian life on Kyrkbacken. Jonah, whose own battlefield experience to date was purely theoretical, soon found himself leaning heavily—but, he hoped, unobtrusively—on Wilson Turk.

  Jonah and his men found themselves near a small town with the unpromising name of Rotten Creek on Kurragin, only a jump away from the Capellan capital of Sian. The fact that he was there, combined with the way he’d arrived, caused him no end of astonishment. He’d been in a JumpShip escorted by Capellan troops, guided into the heart of the Confederation. The missing JumpShip—or what was left of it—had been found. The troops within it had been located, mostly alive, but in deep trouble.

  The JumpShip had, in fact, wandered accidentally into Capellan territory. Their mistake had been seized upon by House Ma-Tzu Kai, one of the more extreme elements of the Capellan Confederation. The Republic troops had run, only to dive deeper into Capellan territory. The ship, on its last legs, eventually managed to expel its DropShips near Kurragin, where the troops landed in a wide, desolate mountain range. The JumpShip was destroyed soon after, and House Ma-Tzu Kai had pursued The Republic’s troops to the planet.

  The Confederation, in a display of generous diplomacy that struck Jonah and many others as quite out of character, announced to The Republic that the lost unit had been found on Kurrigan, and that they would allow a relatively small force into Confederation space to retrieve it. The Confederation reported that it had asked House Ma-Tzu Kai to cease molesting the Republican troops, but, regretfully, Ma-Tzu Kai had not responded well and seemed to be pursuing its own agenda against the troops, and the Confederation was not going to move militarily against one of its own Houses. If The Republic wanted the troops to return safely, it would need to extricate them with its own people.

  Jonah, and many of the other soldiers he spoke with, were immediately suspicious of the Confederation’s strategy. They already had one unit stranded in Capellan space, and now they were asking The Republic to send more troops in far beyond The Republic’s border. Though Capellan diplomats repeatedly promised a safe escort to the Republican troops many considered such promises to be worthless.