Wasted themselves, was the only term that came to mind.
Thaddeus wondered if this pit bull tenacity, this focus on the immediate while ignoring the greater context, reflected Humphreys’ own orders to his military or a character flaw in the Andurien people. For anything so costly and so futile could only be a flaw.
Anduriens had struggled to throw off invaders and occupiers of one stripe or another for generations, if Thaddeus recalled his history, always with very limited success. This war was giving him an insight into those centuries of frustration.
The covered walk ended as the mall opened into a piazza hundreds of meters on a side. Thaddeus knew there were traffic tunnels beneath the town center—his infantry had spent days clearing the MPM out of the twenty-block warren—but here there was nothing to indicate this was not Terra over a thousand years ago. The architecture, like the climate, reminded Thaddeus of northern Africa or the southern coast of Spain.
Mindful that his security detachment would have preferred he travel by APC or stayed in his ’Mech, Thaddeus set a course that carried him close to what little cover was available as he crossed the great square.
To his left was the mosque, imposing in its simplicity and strict adherence to classic design. Directly ahead, resplendent in white local marble and tile, was the planetary government complex. There, Thaddeus knew, were all the prosaic offices that regulated the wide-ranging commerce that flowed through Mosiro’s DropPort as well as the world’s domestic infrastructure, hidden behind a façade that rivaled the finest palaces on a dozen worlds.
Miaplacidus could learn something from this noble simplicity.
Behind him, flanking the broad mall through which he’d entered the piazza, were the state museum and the concert hall. His briefing digest on Mosiro had included something about the significance of the local opera, but the details eluded him.
Here among the fountains, dry and silent now, and the sculptures and the carefully tended plants and trees, nothing disturbed the illusion of serenity. There was no provision for vehicular traffic, and Thaddeus noted that none of the modern buildings just a few blocks away was visible from the central square.
And try as he might, he could find no evidence of the final desperate battle for the city.
With the notable exception of Sergeant Peterson’s Ostroc.
Angling right, he made his way toward the incongruous BattleMech and the Ministry of Information building it was guarding. Rivaling the government offices in size, the Information Complex housed one of the most extensive libraries of physical books in the Free Worlds League, an equally extensive compilation of astrophysical observations collected since the days of the Star League, and the planetary headquarters of SAFE.
It was in this last that the Covenant intelligence officer had found something he thought Thaddeus should see directly.
Watson was waiting for him at the door, evidently anxious to escort him to the SAFE office. His civilian coat, as much a uniform as Thaddeus’ MechWarrior gear, was open in the midday heat. Thaddeus surmised the building’s central air-conditioning was not working.
Thaddeus missed Green, but appreciated Watson’s competence. Where Green had mastered the art of being blankly invisible, Watson cultivated a completely harmless image. Though he was not fat, his wardrobe choices and the way he carried himself created the impression of portliness, and his twinkling powder blue eyes and perennial smile could put even the most suspicious at ease.
The dashingly handsome superspies of holovid adventure fiction were just that—fiction. When it came to covert operations and intelligence gathering, it was the blank and the harmless that got the job done.
“We’ve analyzed this recording every way we know how,” Watson was saying as they stepped into a windowless interior office. Work lights were aimed at the walls and ceiling to fill the room with a shadowless indirect light. Cables snaked from a portable generator to power the lights and several pieces of equipment. “I can state unequivocally that it is pure and untampered with.”
“Which is a problem?”
“Sir, I think it may be a very big problem.”
Watson clicked a button, starting the playback.
A large monitor came to life, filling with the infamous view of Breezewood, Kwamashu, moments before the monstrous explosion that had killed—was still killing—nearly a third of the planet’s population. Thaddeus watched the scene beyond the talking man. A spokesperson for Humanity Without Borders, a humanitarian agency that specialized in medical and hunger relief, he was explaining they had come to help with civilian health concerns and discovered a battle on the planet.
Even braced for it, Thaddeus still started when the BattleMech complex blasted out of existence. Green and purple and orange and red, shot through with lightning, the column of flame burst free from the pits of hell. Thrusting toward the sky, it hurled buildings and debris and—invisibly tiny at this range—people hundreds of meters into the air. Then it expanded, consuming block after block in an insatiable conflagration. A fire burning so rapidly it was one continuous explosion.
He’d seen the recording a dozen times—hundreds, if one counted the nights its memory had kept him awake—and it never failed to fill him with horror. Still, he forced himself to watch as the team of volunteers broke and ran, tumbling into their VTOL. The cameraman—Thaddeus always marveled at the man’s dedication—aimed the recorder back out the open door and tried to keep the image of the growing destruction centered as the pilot fought to keep the aircraft steady in the hurricane winds.
Invisible in the cabin behind the camera, members of the relief team moaned and sobbed. And one voice, faint but clear, damned Oriente for killing thousands of civilians—for destroying a world simply because they couldn’t conquer it.
An icy hand gripped Thaddeus’ heart.
“This is authentic?”
“We’ve tested it every way we know how.”
“But the recording we saw,” Thaddeus said. “Damning the Anduriens—”
“Tested six ways from zero,” Watson confirmed. “Equally authentic. No editing, no dubbing, nothing added or deleted to either recording.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Most immediately it means someone with manipulative technology that exceeds anything we know about manufactured both recordings,” Watson answered. “In the broader sense—why it was done and by whom—I have no idea.”
Thaddeus stood, staring at the monitor. The last image of the recording was frozen on the screen: the huge column of flame canted at an angle as the VTOL banked into a turn. It occurred to him that was a very apt metaphor for what had just happened to his world.
41
Atreus City, Atreus
Former Marik-StewartCommonwealth
22 July 3138
Lester glowered at the ruins of AtreusCity.
The name of their capital says everything that needs saying about the imagination of these people.
The wind ruffled his hair, funneling between buildings to kick dust and scraps along abandoned streets. The area was secure; without need of armor, Lester rode in an open ground car. He stood, steadying himself with a firm grip on the open frame of the roll cage, the better to survey the fruits of conquest as the vehicle made its way through the late afternoon sunlight.
The city around him had not been ruined by Regulan forces; there had been no fighting here. Nor had it been ravaged by the Blakists. The self-styled “city of dreams” occupied an island continent far from the manufacturing centers of Corin and Lanan that had borne the brunt of the fury of their scorched-earth retreat. No, AtreusCity had crumbled under its own greed. Even at the height of the Free Worlds League’s glory, the capital had been known for its excesses. On a world that needed to import over a third of its food, obesity had been the number-one health problem before the Jihad.
Now…
True, the only refugees on the streets were those too sickly to escape or too fatalistic to consider fleeing. B
ut they were skinny, their short stature bearing witness to a lifetime of malnutrition.
How could Anson have let this happen? Lester ignored the fact that the process had run its course long before Anson had assumed power. This was once the heart of the Free Worlds League.
No doubt conditions were better on Paltos, the isolated island continent that thrust out of the sea nine thousand kilometers west of AtreusCity, long the stronghold of the aristocracy. There were scores of family-held fortresses and retreats hidden away among its narrow valleys and stony ramparts, and even now was the only part of the planet that Fief forces did not hold uncontested.
Nobles and their private armies. None of them was a match for the Regulan forces in open combat. But they were able to hold a rocky island of little worth. There was no point in wasting resources and good Regulan lives digging the popinjays out of their warrens. With nowhere to go and no way to get there, the aristocracy of Atreus was under virtual house arrest.
The white marble and chromium palaces that had housed the many ministries of the Free Worlds League towered like the mausoleums of gods, covering the hill that rose to the north of the city proper. The slanting sunlight caught the white planes and silver accents, reflecting a brilliance painful to unshaded eyes. Looking away, Lester found his eyes resting on the shuttered façade of a museum that had once been a mecca for artists and historians throughout the League.
“We have to rebuild.”
“Sir?” Salazar answered.
Lester had forgotten his stolid SAFE director riding beside him, sitting on his side of the rear seat as though it were a straight-backed wooden chair.
His hair doesn’t move in the breeze.
Lester considered remaining silent. He’d been talking to himself, not intending his words to reach anyone else. But it occurred to him he would be having this conversation with his right-hand man sooner or later. Once begun, it made sense to get it out of the way.
“This place, this city,” he said aloud. “We need to rebuild it.”
“Sir?” Salazar repeated. “AtreusCity has no value, intrinsically or strategically, and the cost of restoring it to its former stature would be prohibitive.”
“Agreed,” Lester said. “Its former stature was that of a glutton. But the ideal of AtreusCity—not the reality—is a powerful symbol. Think of it as restoring the spiritual heart of the Free Worlds League.”
Lester rocked right as his driver swerved to avoid a pothole. He imagined he could hear Salazar’s cogs turning.
“A powerful public relations coup,” the man agreed at length. “Certain to have an impact on both independent worlds and worlds of the former Commonwealth.”
Lester nodded.
“But,” Salazar added, “public opinion has only limited impact on diplomatic overtures and even less on military objectives. Do the Regulan Fiefs have the resources to both rebuild Atreus and pursue their broader objective?”
Eyes forward, Lester nodded again, not caring whether his seated lieutenant could see him concede the point.
The acquisitions of Alterf and Ionus had been almost bloodless. Given a choice between being brought under the protection of a nation of the Free Worlds League and the heel of the Steiner boot, both worlds had been happy to host Regulan garrisons. But the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of the Free Worlds League would not be won with guns. Nor with public-works projects that did little but refurbish unoccupied buildings—no matter how historically significant.
“Full restoration of only the House of Parliament, then. Symbol of what made—makes—the Free Worlds League unique,” he said. “Perhaps a general cleanup of other significant buildings. I’ll leave that to your experts on public opinion.”
A child, perhaps five—or possibly as old as ten and stunted by malnutrition—stared at Lester’s passing ground car with hollow eyes.
God.
“The people, Salazar, the children.” Lester felt his voice rough against his throat. “We need to get food here. Medicine. The people need us more than the damn buildings.”
A pause, maybe a breath, then Salazar’s voice with more heat than Lester could remember ever hearing before.
“Yes. Yes, sir.”
42
Talos City
Asellus Australis
27 July 3138
Lord Garith Talos tugged down the carefully starched cuffs of his formal shirt. Again. He’d been doing that often of late; the white linen had developed a habit of disappearing inside the broad sleeves of his frock coat.
He’d experimented exactly once with complaining that his clothes had somehow gotten smaller. Lady Joslyn had promptly informed him the problem lay with his expanding waistline, not his shrinking wardrobe. The generous cut of his brocade coat concealed the taut stretch of linen across his midsection, but there was no concealing the fact his increased volume made his sleeves ride up.
However, ordering new shirts would be admitting to what his wife called his middle-age spread. Worse, it would be an admission that he didn’t expect to ever get back down to his former weight, and that was one defeat he would never acknowledge. All he needed was a bit of discipline and a regular exercise routine—a resolution he considered frequently but had yet to act on.
To be vain and lazy is a deadly combination.
Stepping out onto the dais, Garith paused. Conversations across the audience chamber ceased or faded to murmurs, and the rustle of heavy fabrics announced that those who’d been seated had risen to their feet.
He extended his left hand without turning his head and felt his wife clasp it firmly. Together they strode to the two wooden armchairs flanking the center of the low platform, relics of his many-times-great-grandfather’s declaration that the Talos family would rule without pretense or ostentation.
Garith made the traditional show of steadying her chair as Joslyn sat—as though the two hundred kilos of Australis oak would shift under her weight. She hasn’t lost her fighting trim. She smiled appreciatively and he bowed slightly, smiling in acknowledgment, before taking his own chair.
Australis Hall was not grand as palaces went. In fact, Garith had seen pictures of hotels on Tharkad that made it look pedestrian. But he loved its simple geometry and the clean, spare lines of the audience chamber. This building had been the home of his family—of his world’s autonomous rulers—for twenty generations.
Until eighteen months ago, when Nikol Marik had announced from the cockpit of her BattleMaster that Asellus Australis was part of the Oriente Protectorate. Just as Sophie’s World and Sorunda and Lungdo and Asellus Borealis had all come under Oriente’s “protection” in a matter of weeks. Apparently Jessica Marik had decided the formerly independent worlds needed Oriente to defend them against Anson Marik’s imperialist campaigns.
True, the Marik-StewartCommonwealth had been extending its borders, but into star systems abandoned by the collapse of the Republic of the Sphere. Oriente was the only nation absorbing its free neighbors against their wills.
Garith had found it almost impossible to reconcile the steely-eyed MechWarrior informing him his sovereign world was now a vassal state with the awkward colt of a girl lost in her mother’s shadow on an informal visit—
God, was that only three years ago? Three and a half.
Pretending he didn’t know why a ducal audience had been called midweek, Garith looked to his court steward.
Unrolling the traditional scroll, the steward considered it for a moment as though selecting one item from many on the blank parchment, then announced:
“Marquis Cristobol Forcythe of Oceana, EtgarSea Fox, Talar Nova Cat, and Lady Julietta of Marik.”
Of Marik? Not just Marik? Or more properly, Halas-Hughes Marik? And what the hell does the lady mean?
Though the newcomers had been announced least to greatest—and young Forcythe being listed as less important than the Clanners was significant—Julietta Marik led the procession making its way down the broad aisle. She walked with two crutch
canes, each a metal tube with a band that wrapped around her forearm and a simple peg handhold for her to grip, but there was no uncertainty in her deliberate advance.
Flanking her was a giant who looked like a Greek god from a sword-and-sandal holovid and a man of normal proportions with a disconcerting stare. In their wake came Forcythe. Garith first noted Cristobol was the spitting image of his father, Thom, then realized he was moving with the easy confidence of a man among equals.
By tradition guests of any rank stood when addressing Garith and Joslyn, but only an ass would keep a woman standing who needed canes to walk. Without being told, the steward stepped forward to position a chair for Lady Julietta Marik. The Lady Julietta of Marik.
She stopped him with a look that sent him scurrying back to his station.
“Lord Garith, Lady Joslyn.” Julietta nodded to each in turn. “Well met.”
“Well met,” Garith returned the oddly truncated greeting. “It is an unexpected pleasure to see you on Asellus Australis. We have heard little of you since word of your tragic attack many months ago.”
Not counting the rumor of you haring off to join the Clans.
“My mother is not one to share family gossip,” Julietta agreed. “As it happens, I now live on Marik.”
She paused, but Garith did not rise to the bait. He’d be polite, it was not in his nature not to be, but he would not do Lady Julietta’s work for her.
“Many believe I serve as Oriente’s envoy to the Clans Spirit Cat and Sea Fox,” Julietta said before the silence stretched. “But my role is more that of cultural adviser. Even after so many years of exposure, the ways of we spheroids can be confusing.”
She smiled slightly and Garith found himself smiling with her.
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