by Victor Milán
"She destroyed two Clan OmniMechs in a Phoenix Hawk?"
"A Vulture and a Puma."
Westin shook his head in wonderment. "She must have been one extraordinary pilot."
"She was. The best PH pilot alive." Cassie drew a deep breath, let it out through flared nostrils. "She was our soul, Mr. Westin. And the only friend I ever had. Nothing's the same since she's gone."
"I can imagine," Archie murmured. He had a sense of intruding, and covered as best he could.
From ahead came the flicker-flash of an arc welder, blue-bright even in day, and the sound of a guitar. They rounded the corner of a building and there they were: the tall, hangarlike 'Mech assembly structures that had so intrigued Cassie earlier in the day.
Sitting on a flatbed trailer behind a tracked prime mover was the detached forearm assembly of an Atlas. The sight of it sent a shiver through Cassie.
A bare-chested man sat atop the 'Mech's forearm, strumming a guitar. His chest was covered clavicle-to-beltline with a peculiar tattoo. Standing by the trailer talking to him was a handsome woman in her thirties with lustrous auburn hair.
As they got closer, Archie could see that the tattoo depicted a woman in a cowled robe, surrounded by stylized radiance and standing upon a crescent moon.
"Odale, Zuma," Cassie called.
The guitarist grinned beneath his mustache. "Hey, now, little sister. What's happening?" Belatedly Archie realized this was the man who had entered the bar with Cassie the night of their arrival.
The woman turned and smiled. "Hello, Cassie."
"Annie," Cassie said, more perfunctorily than she had greeted the man with the guitar. "Mr. Westin, I'd like to present Lieutenant Senior Grade Annie Sue Hurd and Master Sergeant Richard Gallegos. Lieutenant Hurd pilots a Rifleman for Bronco. Richard's our Senior Astech. Folks, this is Archie Westin from the Federated Commonwealth News Service."
"Hi," said the woman in the fringe. She was pretty in a watery way.
Gallegos—Zuma—nodded politely to Archie. "Understand you had a little run-in with my cousin. Hope nothing got shaken loose."
"Your cousin—oh, you mean Lieutenant Alvarado."
Zuma laughed. It was a big laugh for such a small man, but it seemed he had a lot of practice. "Macho? No. He's so stupid I wouldn't admit I was related to him even if I was, which thank the Virgin I'm not" He paused to cross himself. "I meant Billy. Lieutenant Payson."
"Cowboy," Cassie supplied.
Archie blinked. He seemed to be doing a lot of that. "Cowboy's your cousin? I thought—"
Zuma looked at the little scout. "He hasn't got it worked out about us yet, has he, girl?"
"Give him a chance, Zuma. It isn't like it's simple or anything."
"Please forgive me," Archie said. "I had garnered the impression that the lines between your ethnic groups were more sharply drawn than that."
"Nothin's sharply drawn with us," Zuma said. "Except the line between us and the rest of the universe."
"I see," Archie said.
"You're from the Federated Commonwealth?" asked Annie Hurd, rounding on him. He nodded. "Well, I just want you to know how deeply I feel for your royal family. I do so hope Victor and Katherine work out their differences soon. I just can't believe either of them had anything to do with their mother's awful murder."
Archie was opening and closing his mouth like a carp. Cassie laughed. "Avengin' Annie is a big fan of Misha Auburn," she said. Lieutenant Hurd nodded brightly.
"I ... see." Misha Auburn, Countess of Tikonov, had been Archon Melissa Steiner's best friend and official historian for the court of the Lyran Commonwealth. Her astoundingly sycophantic histories of the Federated Commonwealth royals were the subjects of much amusement among the literary sophisticates of Davion space, among whom Archie counted himself with a touch of smugness. They were wildly popular with the general public, though, and not just within the Federated Commonwealth.
Like the Davion soap opera Royals' Pride of Cassie's youth, they had even become popular in the Capellan Confederation and the Combine, into which Theodore had recently permitted their legal importation—the warming of relations between the Draconis Combine and the Federated Commonwealth in the wake of the Clan invasion having been duly mirrored in Countess Auburn's works. Even people who did not much care for the F-C as a political entity were charmed by the antics of their ingenue nobility, it seemed.
"I adored Melissa: The Triumph and the Tragedy," Hurd bubbled. "Simply adored it. I'm still broken up over her death."
"I thought most members of your Regiment hailed from the Free Worlds League," Archie said delicately.
"Oh, yes. I'm from Galisteo myself. But the Regiment has served the Federated Commonwealth most of the time I've been a member. And I've been an admirer of your royal family since I was a little girl."
She shook her head, causing her auburn tresses to bounce around her shoulders in such an artless manner that Archie was instantly convinced she'd spent hours practicing the gesture. "I don't feel there's any reason for rivalry between the Commonwealth and the League, really I don't. After all, the Captain-General's son Joshua is a guest of Prince Archon Victor's at the New Avalon Institute of Science."
"Indeed," Archie said, a trifle hollowly. Among the cynics—and among those in the know—the ailing Joshua's status was considered to be more hostage than honored guest.
"Well, I have to get along or Bunny Bear will start to miss me," Hurd burbled with scarcely a pause for Archie's response. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Westin. If you ever want to chat about the royal family, look me up any time. Wonderful to talk to you, Cassie, Zuma." And she went bouncing off with a happy-schoolgirl walk.
Once Annie was safely around the corner of a building, both Cassie and Zuma broke into laughter. "Bunny Bear?" Archie asked.
"Her teddy bear," Cassie said. "Rides in the cockpit with her."
Archie blinked. "Senior Lieutenant Hurd seems a woman of pronounced tastes," he finally said.
"She's all right," Zuma said. "I mean, you take into account she's both an officer and a Mech Warrior, she's really pretty, y'know, normal." Cassie gave him a look of pure skepticism, but she held her tongue.
"There seems to be a surprising amount of antipathy toward MechWarriors, for a 'Mech unit," Archie said.
Cassie shrugged. "I don't like 'Mechs, I don't like 'Mech jocks. I don't get paid to. I get paid to kill them."
Archie stared at her in surprise. If she was joking, the smooth, fine features and the long gray eyes didn't show it. Cassie Suthorn was a very hard number to read, Archie realized; but to the extent he could, she seemed to be speaking with utter conviction.
" 'Mech jocks are like kids," Zuma said, his cheerful voice bursting the brief tension like an invisible bubble. "You can't take 'em too seriously. Just spank 'em when they get too far out of line, and put up with them the rest of the time."
"Leftenant Gallegos—"
"Sergeant," Zuma corrected hastily. "Or Zuma. Or Richard, or just, hey you. The patrdn keeps wanting to make me an officer, but I keep telling him I want to keep all my brain cells alive. Somebody's got to keep the tin men up and running in this outfit, you know?"
"That reminds me," Archie said, "if you don't mind my asking, where does the nickname 'Zuma' come from? I understand most of the callsigns I've heard in the Seventeeth, but that one has me stumped."
"It's short for Moctezuma," Cassie said.
"What else are you gonna call me?" Zuma said. "I'm the Head Aztech, after all."
A peculiarity of pronunciation of the common abbreviation astech clicked into place in Archie's mind. He laughed.
"You people seem to delight in wordplay," he said.
Zuma nodded. "Now you're startin' to get the hang of us, Mr. Westin. Caballeros play hard, and we play a lot, 'cause you never know when you're gonna get dead."
Mariska Savage had slipped discreetly off to the side and begun to record the exchange. She had a way of hanging in the background so one barely no
ticed her, not seeming to mind the role of ebullient Archie's shadow.
"Well, Sergeant—Zuma," Archie said, "will you play us a song on your guitar? Our viewers in the Federated Commonwealth would be charmed, I'm sure." He glanced at his assistant, who bobbed her head and grinned encouragingly without removing her eyes from the eyepiece of the holocam.
"Sure, long as you don't insist I stay on key or nothin'." The Chief Aztech struck a chord, threw back his head, and declared, "Presentando el Capitan Carlos Camacho!"
He began to strum the guitar and sing in a good—if nasal and tobacco-roughened—tenor voice. It was a ballad sung in Spanish, and Archie couldn't understand a word beyond what he took for periodic references to Captain Carlos Camacho, the evident hero of the piece.
When it was done, he applauded heartily. "Bravo! That was quite stirring, though I confess I couldn't make most of it out."
"It tells the tale of how Carlos Camacho fought los bravos del norte."
"Was that when the Colonel was a younger man? Still in Marik service, perhaps?"
Zuma and Cassie laughed. "That Captain Camacho has been dead a thousand years," the Chief Aztech said, "if he ever really existed. Los bravos del norte were wild Indians of northern Mexico—Chihuahua, Sonora, where a lot of us hail from."
"They call us bravos and bravas sometimes, too," a clear Cowboy-accented female voice called from behind them. Ever so slightly Cassie ducked her head; if Archie had not been watching her as intently as his well-honed Northfield manners would permit, he'd never have caught it. "Us wild boys and girls from out in the desert and the chaparral."
Archie turned. "Captain MacDougall," he said. "A pleasure to see you."
"Likewise, Archie, Ms. Savage. Hi, Cassie."
"Hello," Cassie said, almost sullenly.
"I heard the tail end of your song as I came up, Zuma," Kali said. "I was trying to figure out which one it was— Carlos Camacho flying Spitfires against the Japanese, or fighting the Viet Cong, or taking on our hosts the Dracs in the First Succession War."
"There's a Carlos Camacho in every age," Zuma said, "and a ballad about each one."
"That's fascinating," Archie said. "What about your real-life Colonel Camacho? Will there ever be a song about him?"
Zuma shook his head. "I'd write him one—"
"Zuma's a pretty mean songwriter," Lady K said. "In fact, I'm not sure there's anything he can't do." Zuma chuckled. "Sure got 'em fooled, don't I?" he said with a wink to Archie. "Anyway, he won't let me write one."
His expression set. "He won't let me write one for Patsy, either. Even though she's gone, and the way she went out should have won her a song."
The cheerful atmosphere cooled, as if the sun had gone beyond a cloud and let the incipient autumn bite to the air come to the fore. A few beats passed, and then Kali MacDougall said, "When do you think a bay'll open up, Zuma?"
"This afternoon, they said. You should see the 'Mech facility they got here, Kali." He shook his head. "They mate fire-control systems to them here. It's incredible what they got. And they said we can use them when one frees up."
"Great. I'll be glad to get Dark Lady back online—that's her forearm Zuma's sitting on. I don't think we can afford to let our guard down, no matter how far off the firing line we seem to be. Uncle Chandy's paying more like the Archon Prince than a Kurita, and we're getting near-Kell Hound rates." It was her turn to shake her head. "I don't think he's shelling out that much just to show off his pet gaijin regiment to his fellow CEOs. 'Least, I don't want to take that for granted."
Archie noticed that Cassie was watching the tall blonde officer closely as if reappraising her reluctantly. "I take it then, Zuma, that your role is more than administrative," he said. In most outfits, astechs were often grunt-level laborers, commonly hired in from the local pop.
"Yeah. In the Caballeros us Aztechs mostly handle the mechanical stuff. We leave the skull sweat, neurohelmets and all like that, to Astro Zombie and his crew."
"Astro Zombie?" Archie asked. "My word, I'm starting to sound like an echo, aren't I?"
"Cap'n Harris," MacDougall said. "Our Chief Technician."
"When you meet him," Cassie added, "you'll understand the name."
"La Curandera—that's Doc Ten Bears, our sawbones— she says he's the only psychosomatic hunchback in the Inner Sphere," Zuma said with evident pride.
"Cyberpuke," Cassie said, as if that explained it all.
"Indeed," said Archie, because it rather did.
Cassie had been edging almost imperceptibly away from MacDougall ever since the taller woman's arrival. "Zuma, they got a monkey pit in this joint?"
He nodded. "Down the line, past the end of the 'Mech hangars, they got a big old garage for their motor pool. If they didn't get a 'Mech bay open before long I was going to go hang out down there, see if I could pick up a few pointers. These here culebras seem to know a few things."
Cassie nodded. "Later," she said to the group at large, and strode away, braid flopping against the back of her blouse.
Archie gazed after her in consternation. "It seems that young woman is always running away from me," he said.
"It isn't you," Lady K told him. "It's me. Can I buy you guys a soda?"
* * *
The HTE garages were well-lit and sparkling clean, which anywhere else but the Draconis Combine would have sounded like a contradiction in terms. The techs were startled when Cassie addressed them in fluent Japanese. Despite her gender and her gaijin status, that gave her standing.
Much of Masamori's populace was Japanese, by affinity if not always extraction, yet far from all of them spoke the difficult tongue. Facility with the language of House Kurita was a mark of good class-standing in the Combine, and Cassie used Middle Class forms. The Workers treated her with automatic respect.
Hai, yes, they did have a grease pit that was currently unoccupied. Hai, she could use it. They didn't ask what for, but their eyes did.
Their eyes got even wider as she kicked off her athletic shoes, eeled down into the pit, and took up an obvious martial arts stance in the midst of grease that came almost to her ankles. She began to work through a sinuous kata, sometimes compensating for the slippery-treacherous footing, sometimes seeming to actually use it in her shadow-boxing. A crowd began to gather.
Cannier martial arts masters drilled their students in alleys and woods and rice paddies, not just on the neat tatami-covered floors of the dojo. One was seldom attacked in the middle of open, well-lit rooms, after all. Pentjak-silat took that a step farther; Cassie's Guru Johann had insisted she train on the worst footings imaginable: amid overturned furniture and broken bottles; in shin-deep mud; on a marble-strewn sidewalk; on pools of oil. Most fighters crave good footing as an addict craves his drug, Guru had told her. Your enemy's prejudices and desires are among your most powerful weapons. Use them.
Wish I could strip down for this, Cassie thought as she moved in the thick petrochemical muck to begin practice of harimau, the ground-hugging tiger forms of pentjak-silat. But it'll make life tough for Don Carlos if I scare the straights too much.
She bent from the waist until she was spread-eagled, arms and legs stretched wide, her flat stomach a centimeter above the waste oil and grease. The spectators oohed and ahhed at this, but for Cassie the outside world had gone away. Her heartbeat and respiration had slowed and leveled, and she was, for a brief time, again at peace.
12
Masamori, Hachiman
Galedon District, Draconis Combine
2 September 3056
"Now what are you asking for, young lady?" Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird asked. Though born on a ranch on Galisteo, he'd been raised in Johnson City. His accent was that of an Urban Cowboy, not too different from any Free Worlds gringo, but his voice took on a nasty, waspy whine when he was trying to show that something was beneath his contempt. Cassie got that a lot.
"Permission to do my job, Colonel," she said levelly.
"Your job." He looked aro
und at the battalion and company commanders of the Seventeeth assembled now in the briefing room in the guts of the Citadel. "Your job, as I understand it, is to scout out unknown terrain and report back on what you find. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but we are currently in the middle of a very large city, are we not? I don't see any scrub or swamp for you to reconnoiter."
"That's my job as you understand it," she said. Baird stiffened. All right, so I behaved myself as long as I could.
Don Carlos sat at the head of the table, chin sunk into his chest. He didn't appear to be listening, but Cassie believed he was. Maybe because she had to.
"My job is to monitor the Regiment's surroundings, wherever that might be. Just because we're in the middle of people and pavement and big, tall buildings instead of trees and flowers and chirping birds doesn't mean we're all of a sudden in a vacuum. Far from it."
"But what's the point?" asked Captain Angela Torres. She was Frontera Company's commander, callsign Vanity. "You want to know our situation? We're surrounded by culebras."
That was the word for "snakes," old unit slang for the Combine.
"Indian country," drawled Lee Morales, Deadeye Company's CO. Bobby the Wolf, who bossed Cochise, gave him the hot eye. Force Commander Peter White Nose Pony and "Stretch" Santillanes, the other two Indians present, just grinned.
"We're in the middle of millions of enemies, Cassie," Angela Torres said. "What more do we need to know?"
"There's more to life than how you look in the mirror, Captain Torres," Kali MacDougall said quietly.
Torres glared at her. "Excuse me?" she said.
"You're excused. We can't just assume every Drac's our enemy. Or have you forgotten that Combine troops shed their blood right alongside us at Jeronimo?"
Don Carlos crossed himself, but said nothing.
"We can't get complacent, either. At least, most of us can't." The tall blonde Cowgirl addressed this last to Baird, who stiffened. "Our employer is laying out a lot of change to have us here. If everything is just totally swell on this pleasant little planet, then why?"
