by Victor Milán
Father García smiled. "I'll spare you a lengthy discourse on the history and raison d'etre for my Company—my order, as you might call it. Suffice it to say that in my primary capacity I serve the Seventeenth as a common MechWarrior."
Finzi-Grich's jaw dropped. "I thought clergymen were always noncombatants!"
"Not in the Caballeros, ma'am," Baird said.
Leftenant General Marrou was frowning—or, to be accurate, frowning more deeply; the Colonel suspected that the rest-state for her features was pinched displeasure. This time, at least, her disfavor was aimed at the round-faced civilian.
"We've got our budget set for the fiscal year, too, Hermione," she said defiantly. "There's also a limit to how far the PG can throw its weight around."
She turned to Sir Osric Gould. "If your people can drill with these mercenaries, mine can too. I'm very interested to see how good they really are."
Finzi-Grich drew a deep breath. Deciding for the moment not to press the issue, she looked at Don Carlos and said, "One thing I have to caution you about, Colonel Camacho, both as a responsible citizen of Towne and a spokesperson for the Planetary Government. Don't have anything to do with any of the unofficial militias springing up here and there, especially this self-proclaimed Popular Militia. They're dangerous criminals and psychotics. They cling to this outmoded 'Charter' of theirs as a pretext for their continued existence. Some of them actually preach armed resistance to the Planetary Government's attempts to belatedly bring a degree of enlightenment and humanitarian rule to this planet, which has too long suffered the ravages of a frontier mindset. If you really want to do something about the peace and security of Towne, you can help us disarm them."
"We have come here to help defend the planet against a threat, Señora," Don Carlos said. "We have no wish to become embroiled in your local politics—"
A knock at the door. "Come," Gould called out. He displayed no irritation, just the serene conviction that his subordinates would not disturb the meeting without adequate cause.
The door opened and a Fusilier leftenant poked her close-cropped red head into the room. "General, there's something—" Her eyes flicked to the Colonel, and she moistened her lips with a pink tongue. "Perhaps your guests would be interested as well."
"Very well, Leftenant Hogeboom," Sir Osric said. "Ladies, gentlemen, with your permission—?"
He rose and indicated the door. The others headed out. Hermione Finzi-Grich said peevishly, "The correct phrase would have been citizens," but she trooped after.
The little leftenant led them down stone corridors decorated with battle scenes from the Fusiliers' past. Even though no Marquis had exercised his traditional prerogative of leading his troops into battle personally for the past few generations, Towne's rulers had been wise enough not to let their soldiers get rusty. While household troops or other planetary militias could be compelled to serve offworld only in the direst emergencies—such as the Clan invasion—a nobleman or woman could commit personal forces voluntarily. When the Clans struck, the current Marquis had sent two battalions of Fusiliers into action without waiting for a mandatory call-up.
Leftenant Hogeboom led them to a cozy officer's lounge with walls paneled in the native hardwoods whose export was a major source of Towne's relative prosperity. There were comfortable sofas and chairs, racks of the latest holomags, a billiard table at one end of the room. It was the holovid display at the other end that claimed everyone's attention.'
An exquisitely tailored woman with meticulously coifed blonde hair was holding a microphone up for a tall man in a tie to talk into. He had a long narrow head, long nose and jaw, dark eyes beneath a rather aggressive forehead, curly dark brown hair. Though he was far from a pretty-boy, he had the kind of looks that made men think of him as a tiburdn—shark—a real man's man, and made women want to think of him as theirs. His dark suit didn't look overtly expensive, but was cunningly tailored to display broad shoulders and trim body to advantage.
Hermione Finzi-Grich didn't seem smitten with him, however. Sight of him brought her up short, and she said, "Blaylock," under her breath in a disgusted tone.
"—all deplore this violence, Annabelle," the man
was saying. "But we must have the courage to face the
message it sends: the people of Towne are in pain, and
they don't know where to turn "
Gould raised an eyebrow at his subordinate. "I'm sure we're all very interested in seeing Towne's most distinguished opposition leader, Leftenant—"
Hogeboom fluttered her fingers. "Please, sir. Just a moment."
The newswoman touched the little white button speaker plugged into her right ear. "Just one moment, Assemblyman Blaylock. As promised, we take you now live to the north' bank district of Port Howard, where we understand the mercenary Seventeenth Re-con Regiment has just launched an unprovoked attack on demonstrators outside the Turanian Transport Company compound ..."
Don Carlos looked to his intelligence officer. Baird's eyebrows were raised, and he gave his head a taut little shake. From the corner of his eye the Colonel caught what he took for a smirk flitting across Finzi-Grich's full lips.
The scene shifted to Starry Wisdom Street, where the crowd was starting to run toward the gate. A weird metallic-grasshopper sprawl to the left side of the frame resolved itself in Camacho's mind into the legs of a fallen Locust. "Pipiribau!" he exclaimed, a soft explosion. A Phoenix Hawk was descending to meet the crowd on its jump jets' blast.
And then the gate swung open.
9
Port Howard
Aquilonia Province, Towne
Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth
12 December 3057
The black-clad motorcyclist streaked across the holostage toward Pipiribau's Locust, laid the bike down, and fired its SRMs. A gasp that was half-admiring and half-concerned rose from the crowd as the BattleMech fell. Even Leo Archuleta, a.k.a. El Pipiribau—bruised from his fall, but otherwise unhurt—whistled appreciatively.
"Now there," Cowboy Payson's voice twanged from the theater dark, "is a bad guy with balls of brass."
"Ovaries," Cassie corrected into her little hand-mike as the lights came up halfway.
At a hair under six hundred people, including babes in arms, the Seventeenth might be only a fraction of the size of a conventional regiment, but it was enormous by the standards of many 'Mech outfits. Accommodating the whole crew without scattering them like dandelion seeds required a high degree of art. For years that art had been ably provided by Colonel Comacho's executive officer and mistress, Lieutenant Colonel Marisol Cabrera. But she had died saving the Colonel's life during the brutal fighting against the Ninth Ghost Regiment the year before on Hachiman.
Her replacement as XO was Dolores Gallegos, who had no military rank and refused any kind of make-believe commission. She happened to be the wife of Zuma Gallegos and the mother of five children. Though her style was markedly different from Cabrera's—for one thing she was a whole lot easier to get along with than her predecessor, whose nickname had been la Dama Muerte, the Lady Death—she had, if anything, a more remarkable gift for seeing to the regiment's domestic needs.
While Towne's timber and copper exports were still going great guns, the flight of those who controlled the world's capital assets had severely cut the number of visitors—in particular tourists and construction crews—passing through Turanian Transport's Port Howard yards. Taking advantage'of that, Dolores Gallegos had found a hotel called the Markbreit Select just two blocks from the TTC main gate—right around the corner from the morning's riot, in fact. Nicknamed "Red" for the color of her hair and built like a von Luckner tank and about as easily deflected, she had persuaded the management to give its facilities over entirely to the Seventeenth while referring other potential guests to various area hostelries, none of which was overfilled.
To make matters better, right next door to the Markbreit was a hemi-demi-semiderelect holotheater known as the Top o' the Towne, w
here the whole of the Regiment could crowd in together to get filled in on the day's events while Zuma tried to get the old popcorn machine to work. Though there was no question of it being a democracy, the Seventeenth Recon really was a family. If it was feasible, nobody was kept in the dark, and everybody was consulted, even if el, patron held the undisputed final say.
Now Cassie was none too comfortably aware of a hair under twelve hundred eyes fixed on her from the ranks of seats and the two wedding-cake balconies stacked up below the ceiling, which was painted black and set with hundreds of tiny lights to mimic the constellations of the Towne night sky. It wasn't that she had stage fright—she had some notable phobias, but that wasn't one of them. It was simply that, as the Ultimate Scout, she had dedicated her whole professional existence to the principle of not being seen.
But whatever she did or did not do, Cassie never shirked her duty to la familia. So she stood as tall as her 165 centimeters would let her at the foot of the holostage thrusting into the semicircular theater and said, "Our mystery rider's a woman."
"Good lord!" sang out Cowboy Pay son again, sitting with his pal Buck Evans up in the top balcony where he could drop things on people's heads if he got bored. "You mean there's another one out there just like you?"
The audience laughed. Cassie glared at Cowboy. If her eyes had been Martell lasers he'd have had holes in him you could stick your arms through.
"Her name's Wolf Girl," Cassie continued when the laughter subsided. "Nobody knows her real name, nobody ever calls her anything else. She's reputed to be a master of weapons and of martial arts. She's a major organizer—'enforcer' might be a better word—for something called the Rights of Towne Movement, which is associated with the Popular Militia."
From the middle of the crowd, where he was sitting between Colonel and son Gavilan Camacho, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird stood up.
"We've been able to compile some information on the ROTM, or 'ROT' as most people call it," he said. He didn't need his own mike to be heard; in the darkness above the holostage Risky Savage was crouched on a catwalk aiming a shotgun mike at him. Cassie had her own mike because she was almost directly beneath the tech's position, and also to signify her position as mistress-of-ceremonies.
"ROT is a rather loose, rag-tag assortment of resist-ers whose general level of competence is demonstrated by the unfortunate acronym they've saddled themselves with. Its members range from Towne separatists to hard-line Davion or FedCom loyalists to outright anarchists. One thing they share in common is a passionate belief in the so-called Towne Charter, a document guaranteeing certain political rights to the planet's inhabitants, and empowering the citizenry as a whole to serve as an armed self-defense force. This was granted by Prince John Davion back in the late 2700s after the locals waged a savage and successful guerrilla war against the Combine and Capellan Confederation forces who'd invaded during the so-called Towne Debacle.
"The movement has achieved a certain popularity in the Hyborian hinterlands, especially among ranchers, miners, loggers, fur-hunters, and others who work the land. In the major cities, such as Port Howard, it appeals primarily to the lower-middle and lower classes. Its military arm is the so-called Popular Militia, which the Planetary Government is currently attempting to disarm."
"That's not exactly true, Colonel," Cassie said. "There may be a lot of overlap between the two groups, but you can't read too much into it, because neither's anything like a unified movement."
"And where did you come by this startling news, Lieutenant?" Baird asked.
"By going out and talking to people."
The S-2's face pinched. "Young woman, are you seriously suggesting we throw away the fruits of tried and true intelligence-gathering and evaluation on the strength of mere hearsay gossip?"
Cassie wanted to say you got that Foxtrot straight, but Don Carlos—for whom loyalty to an old friend was a beautiful, sacred thing, but who also knew Cas-sie's track record—said, "We've done our best to publicize our intention to help the people of Towne keep their independence and their freedom since we came to this world. Why haven't these groups sent anyone to speak to us?"
For answer Cassie hit a button on the little controller she carried in her left palm. As the frozen action kicked back into motion, Wolf Girl was seen riding off through ranks of demonstrators waving DRACS OUT OF TOWNE signs. "Who do you think was out there protesting us today?"
"Still sounds as if these people are the ones we oughta be talking to, instead of these head-up-the-butt Towne Guard types," said Buck Evans. He and Cowboy Payson were inseparable companions, which Cowboy joked was to "keep him out of trouble." But given the amount he managed to get into with his buddy on hand led to much lively speculation among the Caballeros about what might be the level of mischief if Cowboy were left to his own devices.
That brought a general chorus of approval. "But, you know, they hate us and everything," objected Frontera Company's commander, Captain Angela Torres, a raven-haired woman who came by her handle "Vanity" honestly.
Jeers in English and Spanish answered her. Her beautiful face flushed angrily as she began to shout back abuse.
"Wait a moment, people," Kali MacDougall said, rising from her own seat on the main floor. Risky, who had cannily swung her mike away when Vanity clouded up, focused on Lady K. "Vanity isn't just pushing air molecules around here. We got us a problem if these Popular Militia buckos think we're the ones they're supposed to be fighting."
"I'm relieved to see you speaking out on the side of sanity, Captain MacDougall," said Baird, who hadn't sat down. "We mustn't considertreating with these dangerous fringe elements. In fact, it's my opinion we'd be doing ourselves a great favor by complying with the Planetary Government's request that we help them disarm the Popular Militia."
A chorus of boos answered. Southwesterners still fdndly remembered their own days as a Bandit Kingdom. They had a reflexive tendency to root for outlaws over authorities, even when the outlaws were hostile to them. It did not, of course, slow their reflexes when they got shot at.
"That's not what I'm saying at all, Gordo," Lady K said as the catcalls died away. "I'm with Buck; we need to try to get these militia people working with us."
Baird stared at her. "But you yourself pointed out—"
"I was just secondin' Vanity, actually. Because she's right. It's not gonna be easy to 'open a dialogue' with 'em, as they say in Santa Fe."
The 'lleros laughed. To the wild-ass equestrian bra-vos and bravas who made up most of the Seventeenth's complement, Sierra's capital of Santa Fe represented everything trendy, oversophisticated, and generally foppish about urban Southwesterners. It was the translation of one of their favorite curses, "Sierra Foxtrot."
"But I reckon," Lady K continued, "that if anybody can weasel them into talkin' to us, it's our very own Abtakha."
* * *
"Senior Lieutenant Vásquez!"
Diana Vásquez stopped with her keycard poised above the slot of her door on the Markbreit's fifth floor. "Colonel," she replied, nodding gravely.
His right hand concealed behind his back, Don Carlos walked down the corridor toward her with a rolling bowlegged gait. As befit a true caballero from Galisteo he had grown up dividing his time between the saddle of a horse and the cockpit of one of the AgroMechs Trinity ranchers used to herd their huge, unruly Ranger cattle. Even though he still forked a riding-beast—a horse or whatever the locale offered— whenever he could, after all these years the walk was an affectation. One of the few he permitted himself!
"I hope that I did not embarrass you by praising your actions of this morning at tonight's meeting," Don Carlos said.
Diana smiled her easy, gracious smile. "No, I wasn't embarrassed," she said. "But I'm not sure why you bothered. Something had to be done, or people would have gotten hurt. I was there, and I did it."
Don Carlos did not doubt her sincerity. Neither would the most cynical of Caballeros, Cowboy or Bobby the Wolf or Vanity, who resented Diana almost
as much for her refusal to be drawn into quarrels as for her radiant beauty. In the huge and often contentious family of the regiment, everybody was constantly under the microscope; the slightest particle of phoni-ness or pretense was inevitably spotted and magnified by the Seventeenth's eager gossips. Though people might make fun of Diana's niceness—in a gentle way—no one ever found falseness in her.
An outsider might have thought her attitude ironic in a Mech Warrior—a woman whose job in combat was to rain massive destruction down on people from great distances. Few Caballeros would have seen it that way. The Seventeenth did not make war on noncombatants, and wouldn't work for employers who wanted them to. When Diana unleashed the fury of her Arrow IV missiles, it was only against enemies who could and would do harm to the regiment if they got the chance.
Had the mob gotten inside the TTC gates, it would have become an enemy, with the potentially catastrophic results Cassie foresaw. That was why Diana had acted—and why she was honestly puzzled at being singled out.
"I was speaking this evening as your commander," Don Carlos said in his courtly way. "And now I hope that you won't take offense if I speak as plain Carlos."
From behind his back he produced a bouquet of red roses. "I am very proud of you, mi amor," he said, bending to kiss her hand. "And I'm very glad you were not hurt."
She accepted the flowers, then threw her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply.
"And now," he said, disengaging, "I'd best slip quietly away, in case your little one is waiting up for you."
She smiled and shook her head. "I was hoping that after mi coronet was finished for the evening, Carlos mio would pay me a visit," she said. "I've sent young Marco off to spend the night with his Aunt Cecilia."
Then she opened the door with her card, and taking him by the hand, led him within.
10
Port Howard
Aquilonia Province, Towne
