by Unknown
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “A victorious campaign coupled with a wrecked economy leaves us wide open for a takeover by the next faction that’s willing to have a try. Our ancestors fought too long and too hard for a free world of their own—we can’t betray them by throwing it away.”
“We’re still going to need those ’Mechs.”
“Then find somebody in your department who knows economics and can do the math,” she told him, “and have him or her figure out what percentage of the available ’Mechs we can take and retrofit for combat without damaging the planetary infrastructure beyond repair.”
Finally he gave a slow nod. “I have a couple of people I could put on that job.”
“Good. And get somebody else to start talking with the firms that actually produce all those working
’Mechs. Find out if they can start adding a certain number of . . . ah . . . preconfigured fighting models to each production run.”
“I can do that myself,” he said.
“Assign someone else to it if you can,” she said. “I want you to jaunt down to the Aerospace Branch of the Academy, on Halidon—they’ll need to know that there’s trouble in the wind, and that they’re as much a part of the defense mix as any of the units on Kearny or New Lanark.”
She paused and added, smiling, “It’s summer down there. Take a day or two of your accumulated leave, Colonel, and enjoy the sand and sunshine because once that Paladin gets here, I don’t think any of us are going to make it out of the city for quite a while.”
8
Commercial District
City of Tara, Northwind
December, 3132; local winter
Winter in the Bloodstone Range had been clean and snow-clad and cold. Winter in the capital city of Tara, Will Elliot had found, could be clammy and unpleasant. The streets were filled with dirty puddles of half-melted slush and raked by a raw, incessant wind that felt like it had come straight down from the polar regions without encountering so much as a strand of electric fencing by way of a windbreak.
The weather alone was not so bad—the mountains were much colder, and often as wet—but the air in the city smelled of garbage and chemicals and close-pressed humanity, and vibrated with the strident clamor of people and machines. Even the Great Thames River, clean and fast-running when it came out of the mountains north and west of Harlaugh, in Tara had been cramped and channeled and forced to run through concrete ditches.
He could have endured everything, he thought, if there had only been work. But so far, the time he’d spent living in a rooms-by-the-week hotel and eating generic-label microwave dinners for his one meal each day had failed to turn up any useful possibilities. He didn’t have the right kind of education, or enough of the education that he did have, to apply for office work; he wasn’t a member of the trade organization that controlled hiring and labor at the DropPort; and the few jobs that he could have gotten paid less than living in Tara cost, and would leave him with no time in which to search for something better.
He was on his way back to his rented room after another fruitless day of searching when he saw the poster in the shopfront window:
NORTHWIND HIGHLANDER REGIMENT:
STANDING GUARD
ASK ABOUT OUR ENLISTMENT BONUS
AND VALUABLE TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
The poster’s artwork depicted a young woman in full-dress uniform standing next to the foot of a BattleMech. On the outside wall next to the display window hung a metal rack full of brightly printed flyers, all of them bearing titles like “Regimental Advanced Education Program: Learn While You Serve” and
“Earth, Space, and Sky: Aerospace Fighter Command” and “Your Pay and Benefits.”
Will peered through the glass door at the room inside—a quick glance only, for the sake of appearing casual rather than increasingly desperate. He saw a man in uniform, with medals, sitting at a desk in the front of the office. A door in the wall behind the desk opened into another room, but Will couldn’t make out what lay on the other side. The man in uniform was talking to a nervous-looking young woman in regular clothing; she sat in a straight chair on the other side of the desk.
The diner across the street had a cheap lunch special, a hot meat pie and choice of two vegetables. Will decided that he could afford to treat himself this once. One way or another, he wasn’t going to be needing to stretch out his dwindling supply of cash much longer. So far, nothing he’d found in the capital had turned out to be better than the Harlaugh mill; he’d probably be heading back there tomorrow anyway.
He picked up a copy of the “Pay And Benefits” flyer to read while he ate. By the time he’d finished the meat pie and paid for his meal, the girl had left the recruiting office and the chair across the desk from the man in uniform was empty. Will pushed open the door and stepped inside.
He went up to the desk and said quickly, before he could change his mind, “I want to enlist.”
The man in uniform—from this close, Will could see that the name plate on his desk read Master Sergeant Dylan ap Rhys—looked him up and down and said, “If you’re here because you want to be a MechWarrior, you might as well turn around now and go home. We’ve got exactly two BattleMechs on the entire planet, and they’re spoken for.”
Will shook his head. “I don’t want to be a MechWarrior,” he said—and it was true. He’d always failed to understand the attraction of the giant fighting machines. Big as they were, next to the mountains they were small. “I just want to enlist.”
Ap Rhys’s expression became somewhat friendlier. “Then we might have a place for you.” He gestured at the chair facing him. “Sit down, and let’s talk.”
Will sat down. Ap Rhys produced a sheaf of papers and a pen from the top drawer of his desk.
“Now, then,” the Master Sergeant said. “Full name?”
“William Alan Elliot.”
“Place and date of birth?”
“Harlaugh General Hospital. 3109.”
“Education?”
“Liddisdale Secondary School,” he said. “3127.”
Master Sergeant ap Rhys gave him a considering look. “You’re a bit older than the usual run of walk-ins we get here. Do you have a current employer?”
Will shook his head. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I see,” the Master Sergeant said. “What about your previous employer?”
“Rockhawk Wilderness Tours. I was a guide.”
“What was the reason for your discharge?”
“There wasn’t enough work left for two guides,” Will said. “I was the spare.”
The Master Sergeant looked sympathetic. “Things like that can happen when times are bad. So you want to move from being a guide to being a soldier.”
“I have to work at something. And soldiering must be better than working at the lumber mill.”
“We’ll see if you still feel that way four years from now,” the Master Sergeant said. He pulled another document out of the collection from his desk, and marked one of the blank spaces near the bottom with a scrawled X. “If you’ll sign here, we can start with the preliminary swearing in and move right on into the standard test battery. That’ll give us an idea what your best assignment is going to be.”
He paused and looked Will in the eye. “If you’re going to back out, now’s the time and the door to the street is right behind you. Once you’ve signed—hunting down a deserter is a deal of trouble.”
Everything was suddenly moving very fast, Will thought. The pen was slippery in his hand; he managed to write “Will Elliot” in the indicated blank without scrawling too badly, but it was a near thing.
“Now,” said Master Sergeant ap Rhys. “Raise your right hand and repeat after me: I, state your name, do solemnly swear—”
“I, William Alan Elliot, do solemnly swear—”
“That I will support and defend The Republic of the Sphere—”
“That I will support and defend The Republic of the Sphere,” Will e
choed.
“And I will obey the orders of the Exarch and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to law and regulations.”
Will experienced a sudden desire to put down his hand and run from the office. He fought it off and continued, somewhat shakily, “And I will obey the orders of the Exarch and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to law and regulations.”
“Now the Regiment owns your sorry ass for the next four years,” said Master Sergeant Dylan ap Rhys. “On your feet, soldier, and go out through the other door—you have some tests to take.”
9
The Fort
City of Tara, Northwind
December, 3132; local winter
Colonel Michael Griffin arrived at the Fort shortly after dark on the night of the Regimental reception for Paladin Ezekiel Crow. As he approached the main entrance to the complex, he could not help but feel a certain amount of pride in a job well done. In the short time available, the Northwind Highlanders had pulled together an impressive display in honor of their distinguished guest. Colored lights played over the structure’s rugged exterior, bathing it in festive splashes of blue and red and green. The windows, high up on the massive walls, shone yellow with the light from inside.
A steady stream of vehicles came and went at the front gate, dropping off prominent politicians, high-ranking Regimental officers, prominent offworlders resident on Northwind, and representatives of the planet’s most prominent families and most important business interests: Everyone, in short, who merited an introduction to the newly arrived Paladin, or who—regardless of merit—might consider himself fatally insulted without one.
Security would be unobtrusive but omnipresent. The dress-uniformed soldiers standing guard at the entrance would not be so crass as to demand identification of the arriving guests, but no one who lacked an invitation would be admitted to the festivities. Those invitations—as Griffin, who’d assisted with their design, had good reason to know—were as individualized and personal as an ID card and a great deal harder to forge.
He showed his own invitation to the guards, exchanged salutes with them, and made his way up through all the levels of the Fort to the grand reception hall. At one end of the long, high-ceilinged room, a chamber orchestra played music from the prespaceflight days of Terra. The soft chords and rippling arpeggios ran like a melodious undercurrent through the murmur of conversation. Behind a long table at the other end of the hall, and at smaller tables placed at intervals along both sides, caterers in formal dress stood ready to serve the guests with food and drink. The long table had a towering ice sculpture of a Blade BattleMech for a centerpiece. Griffin gave the caterers points for quick and thorough intelligence gathering if not for subtlety: Ezekiel Crow had brought a Blade with him to Northwind.
The Paladin himself stood with Tara Campbell at the base of one of the hall’s tall lancet windows, far enough from the music that his conversation with those who were introduced to him would not be overpowered. The window was also far enough from any of the refreshment tables that those guests who had come specifically to meet Ezekiel Crow would not be jostled by all the other guests who had come to fulfill an obligation to be present and who—having been counted among those attending—now desired only to sample the decorative pastries and the sparkling punch, and go home.
Years of attending regimental and diplomatic bun-fights all over Northwind and most of Prefecture III had made Griffin an expert in the art of juggling cup, napkin, and plate of small edible objects without risk to his dress uniform. Secure in the knowledge that one more regimental officer with his hands full of refreshments would not draw anyone’s attention, he withdrew to one side of the reception hall and watched the Countess and the Paladin from a discreet distance.
Griffin had seen numerous photographic images and tri-vid clips of Ezekiel Crow, but this reception marked the first time he’d had an opportunity to observe the man in person. Crow was not a physically imposing man. Like most of those who successfully trained as MechWarrior, he was of little more than average height, but he had an undeniable presence. His dark brown hair and reserved demeanor made him an effective foil to the Countess’s platinum-haired ebullience, and to Griffin’s trained eye he carried himself as a man schooled to fight in numerous disciplines.
Tara Campbell stood in vibrant contrast to the more somber Paladin. She’d chosen to wear formal civilian garb tonight, a long, full-skirted gown of rich black velvet and a tartan sash pinned at her shoulder with a massive amber brooch, and she’d done something to her short blond hair—Griffin couldn’t tell what—that had smoothed out its aggressive spikiness into a gleaming helmet that emphasized the elegant lines of her neck. Dressed so, she looked very much like the Countess of Northwind, and very little like the battle-tested MechWarrior, heroine of the campaign against the Black Dragon pirates on Sadalbari.
Griffin reminded himself that appearances could be deceiving, and that the petite porcelain Countess had been the martial-arts champion of the Northwind Military Academy during her student days. Her gown’s long sleeves and full skirts would be hiding not soft flesh but firm muscle, and her grace of movement was a fighter’s grace.
He had watched the Paladin and the Countess long enough, he decided. It was time to make his official appearance and pay his respects. He set his empty glass and plate aside on one of the side trays provided for the purpose, and moved to join the small throng of guests waiting their turn for a minute or two of talk with the reception’s guest of honor.
When Tara Campbell saw him, she gave him a smile of genuine recognition and not mere practiced politeness, then turned, still smiling, to Ezekiel Crow.
“My lord, you really must meet the man who helped plan so much of this evening,” she said to the Paladin.
“Paladin Ezekiel Crow, may I present Colonel Michael Griffin of the First Gurkhas?”
Crow was in uniform, as was Griffin, and the two men exchanged salutes. From this closer vantage point, Griffin saw that Crow’s eyes were not brown or hazel, as the color of his hair might have indicated. They were, in fact, dark blue. Griffin found the mismatch subtly off-putting, for reasons that he could not clearly articulate. Tara Campbell also had blue eyes, but her fair complexion and platinum hair gave them a more appropriate setting.
“Colonel Griffin,” Crow said. His voice was low-pitched, and free of any planetary accent that Griffin could identify. Maybe such blandness was a requirement for anyone who intended to play Republic politics at the Paladin level, but Griffin couldn’t help thinking that he’d prefer to hear an honest touch of local patois in a man’s voice. “It’s an honor to meet you tonight.”
“I’m equally honored, my lord,” said Griffin. “Under the present circumstances, it takes a brave and committed man to risk travel to another planet for the sake of nothing but the chance of danger and hard work.”
“I go where The Republic of the Sphere sees fit to send me,” Crow replied. “Which, for now, is Northwind.”
Tara Campbell gave Crow another smile. To Griffin’s eyes her expression appeared slightly apologetic, as if she might be remembering her earlier ambivalence about the Paladin and his mission to Prefecture III.
“And we’re all grateful,” she said. “Once these formalities are over, we can get down to work on the real issues.” She looked around the vast reception hall and added, “Under somewhat less crowded circumstances, of course. Out of all these people, I think I see perhaps half a dozen who might actually need to be in the loop. Maybe fewer.”
“You and I, of course,” Crow said. “The Planetary Legate. The Governor. Colonel Griffin, will you be there as well?”
“I’ve found that the Colonel wears many hats,” Tara Campbell said. Griffin couldn’t tell from her expression and tone of voice whether she meant to counter the Paladin’s subtle dig or simply to state a fact. “One of them is Prefect’s liaison with the local intelligence networks. So we’ll definitely need him on the team.”
&
nbsp; “It will be my pleasure,” said Michael Griffin.
10
The Fort
City of Tara, Northwind
December, 3132; local winter
Tara Campbell was pleased to see that in spite of the last-minute nature of the operation, the Regimental reception for Paladin Ezekiel Crow was going smoothly. For a combat officer with a sideline in domestic intelligence, Colonel Michael Griffin had turned out to be surprisingly good at pulling a party together. She made a mental note to write him up a letter of commendation; as her father had said more than once, it never hurt to have another one or two of those in your personnel file, as a reserve against later disaster.
In the meantime, she intended to take advantage of her first opportunity to spend any length of time with the newly arrived Paladin. She still felt somewhat irked that the Exarch had placed so little confidence in her, but the irritation was tempered with a profound relief that she was not, after all, going to have to face everything that was coming alone.
And if she had to work with a Paladin of the Sphere, she had to admit that Ezekiel Crow was one of the best: distinguished graduate of the military academy right here on Northwind; Planetary Legate for Footfall in Prefecture V; leader of a successful campaign against smuggling and terrorist activity in that region; Knight of the Sphere; architect of a peaceful settlement to the Liao Conservatory of Military Arts Rebellion; and finally, a Paladin at the young—for that position—age of forty.
She wasn’t certain what she’d expected, as far as appearance went. She’d seen occasional pictures and tri-vee likenesses of him, and while they gave the viewer an idea of things like height and coloring, and recorded his fondness for wearing civilian clothing of plain color and conservative cut on those rare occasions when he wasn’t in uniform, they did nothing to convey his undeniable presence.
Crow had chosen to wear dress uniform that night—making it the first time that many of the guests at the reception had seen a Paladin in all of his glory. Tara was glad that she’d decided to wear formal civilian clothing, which wouldn’t threaten to outshine him. The plain black velvet gown made an effective contrast to the richness of Crow’s military regalia.
