By Temptations and by War

by Loren L. Coleman

  “He lives,” Evan commanded.

  “You’re risking my life, too.”

  “Shall we waste time arguing about it, Greggor?” Evan glanced at the back of his wrist. “Plus eight. A few more minutes, we’ll be debating it with some of Legate Ruskoff’s officers.”

  Greggor smiled like an ape baring its fangs and then shuffled off for the row of hoverbikes. Evan’s people had cracked the security on two, their instrument panels glowing in blues and subtle reds. They were at work on two more.

  Evan rolled William’s body out of the way, then jogged over to where a final team had laid out pieces of a suit of Purifier battle armor. Its storage berth stood nearby with the cage-built door half disassembled, but the locking mechanism still in place. These were the true objectives tonight: hoverbikes and a battlesuit. They would be added to a growing stockpile of military arms and equipment. Political statements and hindrance raids only went so far. When revolution came, the Ijori Dè Guāng had to be ready to act.

  “Ready?” one of the masked operatives asked. Her voice wavered uncertainly. None of Evan’s people had experience with powered armor.

  He offered some silent thanks to Mark Lo and David Parks for their unwitting help in training him for this mission. A little simulator time goes a long way. “Let’s get it on,” Evan said, nodding.

  Each suit of powered armor was a technical marvel that started with the bodymesh undergarment. Evan Kurst stripped out of his jumpsuit with no thought for the young woman standing nearby, then struggled into the tight-fitting mesh, a combination of cooling vest and padding. Its arms and legs were too long, bunching inside his elbows and knees. No help for that now. He worked his fingers into the gloves. The female operative pulled a thick hood over his head, adjusting the opening around his face.

  “Okay?”

  He nodded. Nearby, four hoverbikes powered up, turbo fans readied for their mad dash.

  Two larger men helped Evan alley-oop into the lower half of the Purifier suit. In theory, a trained infantryman could don the armor solo, laying pieces on the ground and shuffle squirming into the bottom half before pulling down the top carapace. Evan wasn’t a trained infantryman, and even the best solo attempt could result in an improper fit or broken seal. That wouldn’t do tonight. Evan pointed his toes downward, working his feet through the reinforced ankle joint. He now stood in approximately half a ton of immobile ferrosteel and myomer.

  The upper carapace came in three pieces. First, the chest shell, with arms held straight up to slip overhead like a metal-reinforced sweater. His right arm ended in a mechanical claw. A laser stubbed out of the left arm.

  Next, the helmet, shoved ruthlessly down over his padded head and locked into the deep neck well. Evan refused the mouth bit a veteran might use to operate many of the Purifier’s electronics, and had his technicians switch off the optical sensing array which translated eye movement and blinking into commands as well. When the hangar’s main doors rolled back, Evan would be running, not fighting. He didn’t need a wrong glance to cut his jump jets and send him crashing into the ground.

  His final piece was the power and control pack that detached for ease of suit up, but without which Evan was going nowhere. “Switch on!” one tech called. The suit hummed to life, flexing and settling around Evan in a smothering grip, charging the mimetic armor with its chameleonlike ability to blend into its environment. His helmet lit up with a soft green glow as the battlesuit computer painted a head’s-up display across the inside faceplate.

  Someone rapped knuckles against the side of his helmet. Dull, gonging sounds. “How’s it feel?”

  Like wearing a giant bandage wrap, then being shoved into a suit of ancient steel armor. The bodysuit bunched and pinched, and Evan could tell he didn’t fit the shell quite right. His arms felt awkward and heavy moving them around—carefully—to test his range of motion. His palms were sweaty. How did he feel?

  “Great.”

  Well, what was he going to say?

  His first steps, though, convinced him that he could make it off spaceport grounds. The Purifier’s internal computer corrected most of his awkward wobbling. The armor flexed where it was supposed to, and went rigid as necessary to prevent Evan from listing too far to one side. The effect was accomplished through negative feedback—thousands of sensors arranged over the inside of the suit. When he pressed in any direction, a power spike moved the suit’s artificial muscles in the same direction to relieve pressure. Evan might pick up strained muscles and more than a few bruises, but he’d also come away with a fresh suit of battle armor for the cause.

  He stomped over to the large hangar door—still closed, locked, and rigged with an alarm his people could not bypass.

  “Everyone ready?”

  Some operatives slipped out the side door, stepping over William’s unconscious form. A few others, living in the moment, hopped aboard one of the idling hoverbikes, straddling the forward-mounted machine gun. They’d ride out in style.

  Evan raised his right-arm claw and struck it down hard against the locking mechanism. Once. Twice. An alarm would be going off somewhere by now. Again. The housing cracked open, which let him thrust his laser into the housing. He clenched his hand and then stabbed it straight out. The triggering mechanism interpreted his actions and fired a bright, ruby spear of energy deep into the door’s lock.

  A light flashed from red to green. There would be no power for rolling it open by remote, so Evan clawed into the metal facing and shoved, rolling the door back several bowlegged paces. Enough for the hoverbikes to slip through.

  Evan stepped outside, out of the way. “Joy ride,” he said, his voice picked up by the suit’s internal mic and translated into a powerful broadcast.

  Four hoverbikes screamed forward on thrusters, quickly breaking into wildly different directions for their separate egress points. Only Evan knew where all four were heading: two for wilderness on the far side of the spaceport, where narrow paths had been cleared to allow them to pass; two more for breaches that would be blown in the fencing in less than thirty seconds.

  Evan pointed his HUD compass east-nor’east and set out in a loping stride that ate up the ground meter by meter. The Purifier ran at a top speed just over ten kilometers per hour and could leap in controlled jumps at forty—maybe sixty—meters at a time. Fortunately, he had the shortest distance to go, striking out for a place where the spaceport perimeter was walled off instead of fenced.

  This was going to work.

  Or not.

  Hope that had barely begun to flare inside Evan’s breast died stillborn as his HUD painted a target icon moving to intercept. He hadn’t figured on anything larger than a light hovercraft, but the identity tag read PK-H9R. A Pack Hunter BattleMech!

  There was no beating the light ’Mech to the wall, not when it pounded forward at better than one hundred ten klicks per hour. Evan slowed, hoping to gain some stealth effect from the mimetic armor. If the Mech Warrior inside wasn’t alert . . . wasn’t watching very carefully . . .

  Evan lost the Pack Hunter behind the customs warehouse and put on a burst of speed to try and reach the wall. The Mech Warrior was ready for him. On twin jets of bright plasma the BattleMech sailed up and over the warehouse, leaning into a long, flattopped arc that angled in between Evan and safety. It landed in a ready crouch, arms spread wide and the shoulder-mounted PPC aimed right for him. The red-and-gold columns of the Fifth Triarii, Liao’s garrison, stood out very clearly, the insignia centered right over the Pack Hunter’s right breast.

  Evan slowed to a walk, then a stop. With numbers on his side—even with the scattered hoverbikes—he might have stood a chance attacking the eight-meter-tall machine. Alone, he’d be vaporized by the PPC’s hellish energies or simply crushed underfoot. He readied himself for a suicide dash. Evan would not—could never—be taken prisoner as a member of the Ijori Dè Guāng. He knew too much, and they would find a way to drag it out of him.

  The Pack Hunter straightened to an
easy stance, swiveling at the hips so that the Mech Warrior could directly survey the nearby grounds through the cockpit’s ferroglass shield. No call to surrender. No warning shot fired. Near as Evan could tell, no call for reinforcements. The way the BattleMech had moved—it had come in fully ready to meet resistance. Expecting it. Instead, it had found a lone Purifier, running for the wall. Not much of a threat.

  What was going on?

  Slowly, so slowly Evan could count every rivet running down the outside of each leg, the Pack Hunter stepped back and turned away.

  Evan took one cautious pace, watching for any sign that the Mech Warrior might change his mind. Then another. The BattleMech stayed facing away, an obvious invitation. Another closet Capellan? Maybe one who had kept his sympathies hidden, or had been placed in the military after his academy years, but never to rise higher than the local Triarii garrison. Evan raced back up to full speed, heading for the wall. Did it really matter, the why of it?

  It did, but not right now.

  Thirty meters from the gray slab of high wall, Evan leapt up into the air, pointed his feet at the ground. Barely a few centimeters above the tarmac, his jump thrusters cut in, burning reaction mass as they rocketed him into a ballistic hop. They carried him over the ferrocrete wall, and into the woods beyond. Evan tried nothing fancy on landing, letting the suit absorb most of the fall as he snapped down through tree limbs and sprawled full-length upon landing.

  Bruised, but far from dazed, he struggled back to his feet. He burst through a thicket and crossed a stretch of train tracks, entering the fringe of Lianyungang’s industrial district. An abandoned factory stood dark and decrepit nearby. Evan went through an old door without pausing, shattering it into an explosion of splintered wood. Waiting for him in the cavernous interior was an old moving truck with back door rolled up and ramp extended.

  It was the work of a few moments to climb into the back, shed the power armor, and seal the truck up. Two minutes after that Evan was driving into light traffic, the spaceport and the authorities behind him, lost again among the people of Liao.

  7

  Old Wounds

  This morning, local authorities on Menkar attempted to rescue Governor Kincaid and his family following a twelve-day standoff with pro-Capellan terrorists. The mansion caught fire during the attempt. Burned almost beyond recognition were the Governor’s family and seven presumed terrorists. Claims that questionable tactics and unnecessary force were intentionally used—and may have led to the fire—are under investigation.

  —Jacquie Blitzer, battlecorps.org/blitzer/, 15 May 3134

  Lianyungang

  Qinghai Province, Liao

  21 May 3134

  They cut Ritter Michaelson out of line as he worked his way through customs. One more stamp, just a couple of questions, and he would have been free. Free to claim his luggage. Free to hail a cab and eventually grab an overcrowded train to Xiapu. Michaelson’s benefactor on Terra had secured a small ranch house for him not far from the midland city. Two more minutes.

  Then the uniformed customs agents crowded in next to him.

  The man was Asian, slight of build and wore a gold hoop in his right ear. The silver badge sewn onto the right front pocket gave his name as Tai Nae Luk. Amanda Ringsdotter was slightly taller and very curvaceous. She also wore stronger perfume than her coagent. Customs Security wasn’t Sphere Intelligence, and neither of these civilian agency officers were likely to be a Ghost Knight—one of the invisible Knights of the Sphere who acted as the Exarch’s eyes, ears and (at times) hands in areas best left out of the interstellar tabloids. Still, there was an obvious purpose about them, and as much authority in their voices as there was riding on their hips in small nylon holsters.

  They were polite and insistent, asking, “Could you please step over here, Major Michaelson?” while letting him know it was not really a question.

  “Over here” was located down a new hallway and into an office where his identification was examined again. He grumped and joked and picked lint off his uniform cuff, readying three different stories depending on what kind of problem they found.

  Nothing, apparently. His papers were handed back without hesitation or comment.

  Amanda Ringsdotter furiously typed information into an old keyboard, the sound of striking keys echoing like hail pelting down against a metal roof. She glanced up once, sharply, as if discovering something . . . unsavory? No, that wasn’t quite it. A mixture of pity and hesitation. Something she didn’t want to tell him. And, in fact, did not. Agent Tai made a phone call, where he did a lot of listening, and then the three of them left the spaceport together.

  “I’m sorry, but we have to detain you,” Ringsdotter informed him. She didn’t quite meet his eyes, avoiding the facial scarring as so many did. “Orders from the local garrison. You understand, sir. We’ll have your luggage collected and forwarded on to your destination if you will please fill out these forms here and here.”

  She handed him a small noteputer, left him filling out releases, while they waited for a black sedan to be brought around.

  In the car, sharing the backseat with Amanda while Tai drove, he carefully reviewed his situation. They hadn’t discovered any flaw in his new identity, so he continued to think of himself as Ritter Michaelson. Ezekiel Crow . . . Daniel Peterson . . . they were other lives, ones best left forgotten.

  Detailed paintings began with a blank canvas and very simple brushstrokes.

  He wasn’t under arrest, and the agents weren’t particularly on their guard. They did have guns—Nasant thirty-eights by the look of the protruding butts—which was unusual for Customs Security Officers, but not unheard of. Special detail? If so, under whose authority? Amanda had mentioned the local garrison, which kept Michaelson from speaking out against the delay to his schedule, merely grunting an affirmative like any good regular army officer. The ride took long enough that they engage in some offhand conversation. He learned that Beilù’s autumn has been unseasonably warm—good for the late harvests, hard on city living. The Eridani races were still run every weekend. And the delay in his arrival was not caused by a simple warehouse fire, as had been announced to passengers of the Burning Petals, but sabotage of a repair depot by a pro-Capellan terrorist force. Amanda glowered darkly as she mentioned them.

  Ritter Michaelson pasted a similar frown over his angular features, then rode along in determined silence as the car turned off the highway and onto one of many access roads for the LianChang Military Reserve. Although located several kilometers outside the sprawling mass of suburbs that was official Chang-an, Michaelson noticed that Lianyungang Garrison now co-opted part of the capital’s name for its own, giving it greater weight. That was new.

  They slid through one of the gates with a flash of badges and an infantryman’s wave. Five minutes later, he nodded good-bye to the CSO’s, settling himself into a padded leather seat. He gazed with frank interest at the well-appointed office and the well-decorated man who sat behind the teakwood desk: Legate Viktor Ruskoff, commanding all Republic military forces on Liao.

  Ruskoff tapped strong fingers on the dark wood grain. Of average height, he still possessed wide shoulders and a lantern jaw, which no doubt served him well at political photo-ops. His fine, ash blond hair was tightly shorn, showing a few scars twisting across a pink scalp. “There is no easy way to say this,” he began, then seemed at a loss for how to proceed.

  Steeling himself for most anything, question or accusation, Michaelson nodded encouragement. “Straight out is usually best.”

  “Very well, Mr. Michaelson. Ritter.” The early use of his first name spoke volumes on how awkward Legate Ruskoff must have felt. Still, what came next was something of a shock. “Your parents. I’m afraid they’re dead.”

  Michaelson blinked slowly, felt a dark stab of old guilt and pain deep in his gut. Celia and Michael Peterson were both dead all right. But they had died twenty-three years earlier, during the Massacre of Liao. He remembered the muddy boot p
rints, leading him up the stairs of their modest town house where Capellan soldiers had already been . . . then the laughter.

  “How—” His voice cracked on the first attempt, and Michaelson swallowed hard. “How did they die?”

  “A fire, it seems. Just a few months ago. On your family ranch near Xiapu.” Ruskoff offered a tentative smile of support. “You raise Eridani stock. Beautiful animals.”

  Michaelson was far too seasoned not to roll with it. “Yes, they are.” His mind worked overtime. He hadn’t been briefed on this aspect of his new life. A cruel joke played by his benefactor on Terra, or coincidence?

  “Can I offer you anything, Major?” Ruskoff paused one finger over an intercom button. “Brandy? Something to take the edge off?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t drink.” He had considered it, though. Just to calm his nerves? To the Betrayer of Liao.

  “Soft drink?”

  “Please.”

  The Legate stabbed down at the intercom, ordered his assistant to bring in two sweetened colas. Michaelson looked up with a guilty start. He hadn’t thought of sweetened colas in years. A Liao touch, adding a pulped naranji to the soft drink. The memory made his mouth water.

  “Passing along such grim news was not why I had you brought here, Major. I’m afraid I must intrude on your time a bit further.” Ruskoff smoothed his hands across the edge of his desk as if straightening out a wrinkle in the dark wood grain. “I would never interrupt your grief without need.”

  Which Michaelson could use to dig for more information. “I appreciate that, sir. If you are pressing customs into military duties, the situation must be grave.”

  “We’re stretched to the limit,” Ruskoff admitted. “We’ve had dozens of pro-Capellan movements pop up since the Blackout, though most of our troubles are centered around the Cult of Liao and the Ijori Dè Guāng terrorist cells. The Cult has spread its influence into some of the highest circles on planet. Fortunately, they operate mostly inside the political arena, which is Governor Lu Pohl’s headache.”