Greater than Clipperton by an order of magnitude, Jessica thought. Why isn’t that comforting?
“How did you come by this recording?” Thaddeus asked.
“It is apparently a copy of a crystal struck by a humanitarian organization that was visiting Kwamashu,” Torrian answered. “Dozens of copies have been shipped to major news outlets from Mansu-ri to Calloway VI. We expect them to appear on more-distant worlds as transports reach them.”
“So this is not restricted intel, then?”
“Quite the opposite,” Torrian said. “There are already riots demanding vengeance.”
Another moment of pregnant silence.
“This is going to be an all-out war, isn’t it?” Jessica asked aloud, annoyed with herself for needing to ask, yet needing confirmation. “Not a border skirmish.”
“More than likely,” Torrian agreed.
“Then why isn’t it?” Thaddeus asked. “Why didn’t the Duchy’s forces pour across our border the moment our elite force was destroyed?”
Our border, Jessica echoed in her mind. Our elite forces. Have you accepted your adoption into Oriente, Thaddeus, or are you letting slip your intention to own the Protectorate?
“There’s a possibility they weren’t ready,” Torrian said. “This may have caught them by surprise as well.”
“Caught them by surprise?” Thaddeus echoed. “This must have taken months to prepare…. Or are you suggesting the trap was sprung prematurely?”
Watching Torrian consider his answer, Jessica noticed a single white hair, longer than the others, curling away from his sideburn.
Trying times turn even our young men gray.
“My thought is that an explosion of that magnitude could not be completely natural,” her intelligence chief said at last. “The expansion along the ground is far too uniform, and there is a definite sequential feel to the initial blasts.
“Yet I think the disaster itself is natural.” He tapped a few controls and the screen came alive with the frozen image of building fragments swirling in the updrafts around the pillar of flame. “The conflagration is clearly out of control within seconds, spreading well beyond the initial blast zone.”
“You’re suggesting there was supposed to be a firebreak,” Thaddeus said. “A ring cleared of flammables broad enough to contain the destruction.”
“We struck weeks, perhaps months before they were expecting us,” Torrian agreed. “Before the safeguards were established.”
“And whoever was at the switch when the Eagle’s Talons breached the walls decided to spring the trap anyway.”
“One hopes,” Philip spoke up, “that he had no idea what he was unleashing.”
“Amen.” Thaddeus nodded once.
“From a tactical standpoint, the premature explosion is a disaster,” Torrian said. “But from a public-relations perspective, it plays to their advantage. Taking a few weeks to gear up a crusade of vengeance is more believable than happening to have an invasion force standing by.”
“You’re suggesting this recording isn’t available in the Duchy?” Jessica asked.
“I have no idea,” Torrian admitted. “But since the blast laid waste to one of their worlds and killed thousands of their citizens, I’m thinking the images of the destruction will carry more weight than one man cursing in the background of a trivid recording.”
Jessica sat, imagining she could feel the patterns of the table’s finely grained wood rising as heat against her palms. Feints, ploys, posturing: that was all she had expected from Ari Humphreys. Nothing—nothing—like this.
“How long do you estimate we have?” she asked.
“That will depend on what preparations Humphreys was making and how far along they are,” Torrian said. “Weeks, maybe. Probably not longer than a month to a month and a half.”
Jessica nodded. She had moved Nikol out of the way—shifted her into the more dangerous ground of diplomacy—precisely so that Thaddeus would be able to shine if a military situation presented itself. No great gamble there; in the current uncertainty, military situations were becoming the norm. But she had never imagined he would need to take charge of something of this magnitude.
Leading the Oriente Protectorate in a victorious war would secure Thaddeus a place in the hearts of the people. Horrible as the Kwamashu destruction was, it presented a perfect opportunity to—
“Your Grace, I must return to the Covenant Worlds.”
Jessica blinked.
“My nation and our allies face potential dangers, but nothing on this scale,” Thaddeus said. “We can spare the resources to form a joint force to support you.”
“I had thought,” Jessica said, having to swallow once before finding her voice, “that you would lead the Protectorate’s forces against Andurien.”
“Impossible, Your Grace.” Thaddeus did not quite bow, as he was still seated. “I am warden of the Covenant Worlds. If I go into battle, it is at the head of my own nation’s forces.”
“He’s right,” Philip said before Jessica could formulate a response. “Raising an army of allies does more to promote unification than one nation standing alone. Not to mention the fact that being part of the Protectorate’s salvation will closely bind the Covenant Worlds—and whomever else Thaddeus persuades to join them—to Oriente.”
Her husband patted her hand, a propriatary gesture he almost never made in the presence of others.
“Think of the people, my dear.” He smiled; a little sadly, she thought. “An independent hero will make a much more romantic consort than a loyal employee.”
29
Navassa Plains Defense Perimeter
Belleville, Mansu-ri
Oriente Protectorate
27 February 3138
“Systems check,” Corporal Haverson’s voice crackled over Marvin’s headphones.
Marvin turned his head to look at Haverson, seated immediately behind him.
“Again?” he asked, not bothering with the intercom.
Haverson tore his eyes away from the command periscope to meet his gaze and keyed his throat mic. “Affirmative.”
“Corp, the headsets are so we can talk while taking fire,” Marvin said. “Sitting in a damn dugout with the engine off, you just talk to folks.”
“Besides, you’re wasting battery power,” Joline added from her post at fire control. Which was about a meter from Haverson’s right hip. “Even Beth’s on organics.”
Marvin smiled as he watched Haverson work out what on organics meant. His thought process was assisted by the sight of Beth’s lower torso, visible behind Joline’s position. Boots on her molded plastic jump seat, elbows on the rim of the open hatch, their sensor tech was hanging out the top of their ancient Hetzer to look around. When all internal systems had a battery life measured in minutes, you did what you could to conserve power.
Either that or have the ancient diesel clattering away behind them, wasting fuel and filling the cabin with stinking fumes.
Haverson wasn’t a bad kid, but he was a kid. He was here because he was the new guy and the sergeant didn’t want some new recruit smart-ass who tested in at corporal level getting the idea he was a hotshot.
Assignment to the rolling coffin—aka the Hetzer wheeled assault gun—was usually earned by screwing up, either consistently or spectacularly or both. Most troopers pulled H-WAG duty for a few weeks or months, until they’d worked off whatever penance they’d earned; the gun had a high turnover rate.
Marvin, Joline and Beth, crew of H-WAG-7 of the Belleville Urban Defense Garrison, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mansu-ri Planetary Militia, had served together for the better part of a year and a half. They were something of a legend.
Marvin kept his pilot’s chair via the consistently-screwing-up-small-things method. He didn’t want anything really big on his record, but he didn’t want a lot of work screwing up his tour of duty either. A Hetzer jockey enjoyed a relaxingly near-complete lack of responsibility: after all, how hard was it to drive a t
ank that spent ninety percent of its time dug in to a defensive position? Perfect gig for the military man of leisure.
Joline, on the other hand, was here because she liked to fight. Not with the H-WAG’s big cannon, though she routinely smoked the quarterly qualifier with the AC-20, but with her fists. Preferably in an off-limits bar.
Beth…Marvin drew a blank. Except for the fact that, like Joline, the sensor tech didn’t believe in sexing the driver, Marvin didn’t know a thing about Beth. She’d done something somewhere that put her at the dead bottom of the duty heap, which made her aces with him.
The three of them tended to ignore the command chair, the occupant of which changed every month or so. Fact was that whoever was sitting behind Marvin had pissed off Master Sergeant Amoto, and was just serving their time before getting back to one of the real tanks.
Though that wasn’t really fair. The Hetzer wheeled assault gun wasn’t a tank, real or otherwise. Like the name said, it was a gun with wheels. Quickcell Kalidasa had built their H-WAG around the Crusher Twenty autocannon, which on the face of it was a very good thing. The AC-20 was an impressive weapon; anything it hit usually disappeared. And with four tons of ammo onboard, the Hetzer could hit things for hours. Unfortunately, the gun was all Quickcell had spent money on. The rest of the vehicle was an engine, wheels, four chairs designed to cause major orthopedic damage, and just enough armor to prevent sunburn.
That last was also a little unfair, Marvin had to admit. Quickcell Kalidasa had mounted appropriate armor on the front, but for reasons known only to the MPM quartermaster, the sides and rear armor of all H-WAGs had been replaced with local plate.
But even without the Militia currying favor by giving unnecessary contracts to local producers, the Hetzer was a cheap ride. Quickcell hadn’t even sprung for a turret. The autocannon was thrust straight ahead, its muzzle framing the right side of Marvin’s field of view through the open port. The gun could traverse fifteen to twenty degrees in any direction, a percentage hardly worth mentioning. If you wanted to shoot something, you had to point the whole Hetzer at it.
With a top speed that enabled it to barely outrun most crustaceans, the Hetzer was designed to hit the enemy while someone else covered its butt. In practice, the wheeled guns were usually dug in as static defense.
Actually sitting inside the parked coffin was something of a novelty. Usually the crew would be spread around the dugout; the shallow trench cut into a fold of rocky earth, open at the end facing the Navassa plain. Belleville was an industrial center, a city built around Mansu-ri Mining and Manufacturing’s extensive mining and manufacturing complex at the base of the LelandRange. The Navassa plain had been a real money-saver for M3; the hardpan of the extinct lake bed was stable enough to be a natural landing field, saving them the expense of building a cargo DropPort.
Of course, anyone trying to take what M3 mined and manufactured at Belleville could see how useful the horizon-wide flat was too. So the Hetzers of the BUDG were usually dug in with their crews spread as far away from each other as possible, grabbing some shade or fresh air or privacy or some combination thereof. But the whole MPM, BUDG included, had been on Defcon three since the Eagle’s Talons bought it on Kwamashu.
The entire elite battalion of the Oriente Protectorate, the captain-general’s personal unit—disappearing in one shot sounded ridiculous on the face of it. But Marvin had seen the vid and there was nothing funny to say about it, even for him. The Duckies had gone completely crazy just one jump away from Mansu-ri. Even an officer could see that was too damn close for comfort.
So they sat in their Hetzer and waited for the sky to fall. They weren’t buttoned up, of course; death by heat stroke appealed to no one, but even with every viewport and hatch open, air circulation remained nothing more than an attractive theory.
The alert tone squealed through Marvin’s earphones. He almost snatched his headset off before the words following the wake-up registered.
“Defcon four. Repeat, Defcon four. Belleview Urban Defense, this is Militia Command,” the unfamiliar voice was brittle with stress. “Unknown bogies have jumped in system, sub-luna pirate point. Repeat, bogies inside lunar orbit. Best guess planetfall twelve to twenty-four hours. All units, Defcon four.”
There was a moment of stunned silence in which Marvin spent trying to remember defense-condition four protocols.
“Oh my God,” Haverson said, his voice betraying his sincere desire to be in something—anything—that had a snowball’s chance of making it through a battle.
“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Joline said. “The retirement plan sucks sand.”
30
Ennis, Piltory Plain
Westover
Free Worlds League
28 February 3138
Alethea Chowla hated headaches. And seated across the broad desk of genuine Terran teak was a migraine.
She counted the wide desk as her only extravagance. Or at least the extravagance most difficult to make secure in free fall. The desk was a gift from her younger brother, each panel hand-carved from a tree grown in the region of Terra that had been home to their ancestors. This impractical centerpiece to her mobile command center always gave her a steadying sense of context.
And she needed some steadying now.
Duke Wesley of Westover—an exercise in alliteration if ever there was one—had allowed the Rim Commonality defenders to land, but then insisted they wait on board their DropShips until his military attaché had vetted their “bone fides,” as the radio dispatcher had pronounced it. Not unexpected, given the forged internal report describing Rim Commonality intentions that had been provided by the Regulans.
Alethea was prepared for the attitude and ready to fight suspicion with transparency—until she’d met the gatekeeper appointed by the duke. Now she wondered if the greater good might demand she kill him.
“General Bernard Nordhoff,” she repeated.
The square man seated opposite her neither smiled nor blinked.
How does he manage to look both stolid and oily at the same time? she asked herself. Or do I only think he looks oily because I’ve read the warrants?
Alethea held up the noteputer containing the file she’d been reading.
“Archon Steiner and Duke Vedet have covered all of near space with your particulars and résumé,” she said. “A disgraced former general of the LCAF who deserted his troops under fire on Simpson Desert. You are wanted by the LyranCommonwealth for desertion and treason.”
Nordhoff neither blinked nor spoke.
“I find it interesting that you show up on Westover offering your services as a mercenary,” she said, probing. “The only reason any Free Worlds League world would need your company of mercenaries would be to fight off your former comrades.”
“Incorrect,” Nordhoff said. “Pirates attacked while the JumpShip carrying the Titanslayer was recharging. I ordered my DropShip detached and was able to arrive at Ennis in time to prevent the raiders from making off with an entire production run of Riever heavy fighters.”
Alethea smiled narrowly. “The timing of that so-called pirate raid stretches credibility just a tad.”
“As does your coincidental arrival to negotiate a month after my forces drove off the so-called pirates,” Nordhoff countered blandly.
Touché.
Alethea toggled through a few screens. “Duke Wesley says some nice things about your ability to beat back a raiding party while armed with only four staff officers and a mixed company of ’Mechs and armor.”
Again the blank nonresponse that Alethea was beginning to suspect was the rogue general’s default mode.
“On the other hand, given the Lyran Commonwealth’s widely broadcast determination to hunt you down and drag you back home, it could be argued you’d make Westover safer by simply going away,” she added.
“I find it difficult to believe the Rim Commonality has intelligence assets within the LyranCommonwealth.” Nordhoff’s tone was almost neutral.
&
nbsp; “This is the Free Worlds League,” she countered. “Information is the stuff of life here. We have many more resources, both direct and indirect, than you might imagine.”
Or a lot fewer, but this is not a topic for transparency.
“Can you be sure the indirect resources, as you call them, are one hundred percent reliable?”
Touché again, Alethea conceded. Regulan disinformation brought us here. Are you the victim of Lyran lies?
She rested the fingertips of one hand on the edge of her desk and let the weight of her wrist hang, stretching her tendons. The familiar warmth of the richly grained wood seemed to flow up her arm, relaxing her shoulders and the knot of tension at the base of her neck. She knew the energy flow was imaginary, but that didn’t diminish its effect.
Something in the wood—or more likely the studiously bland affect of the man sitting opposite her—told her Nordhoff was lying. Though intuitions imparted by furniture were not considered empirical evidence in most courts of law, the feeling was enough for her.
“The LyranCommonwealth is offering a reward for your return that would balance the budget of most industrialized planets,” she said, gauging his reaction to the change in tack. “Is there a good reason for me to not wrap you in pink ribbon and present you to the archon with a box of chocolates?”
Nordhoff pursed his lips.
“Duke Wesley is aware of the lies being broadcast to discredit me. He fully understands the crisis of conscience that forced me to abandon my homeland and its inexcusable invasion of the Free Worlds League,” he said. “It is your integrity, not mine, that he questions.”
Three for three. A lot of practice trading barbs with someone.
“I doubt he would allow your attempt to repatriate me,” Nordhoff added, smiling his first smile.
Alethea could not tell if that was a misstep or if the Lyran really thought he could goad her so easily.
To Ride the Chimera Page 16
