Heir Apparent

Copyright © 2016 by Harebrained Schemes, LLC

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Chapter One

Rivergaard House, Rivergaard
Maldives

15 October 3000

Walter de Mesnil paused in the doorway of his boss’s suite and rapped a knuckle on the doorjamb. “We have a problem, Captain.”

“What we, Lieutenant?” Hake Angleton, leader of the Angleton’s Angels mercenary company, looked up from the ancient desk behind which he sat. “We’ve only been here a day. Is this the previous problem, or a new one?”

“Previous, and it’s not aging well.” To Walter’s eye, the man likely was as old as the desk had been recreated to appear. No way that’s an original antique from Terra. Still, it fits this place. Walter, half his boss’s age, and his black hair lacking any of the gray Hake had in abundance, stepped into the room. “I’ve looked over the new gun-camera files you sent me.”

Hake leaned back and the chair protested sharply. “Awful damned pretty, ain’t it?”

“Did you actually watch them?”

“Lieutenant?”

“Oh, you mean the Trebuchet?” Walter couldn’t help but smile. Among the files had been a portion of a local public-relations piece commissioned by the marketing department at Litzau Enterprises. It recounted the history of the BattleMech known as Destrier, which had been owned by the Litzau corporation since before the Concordat-Magistracy War. Chairman Augustine Litzau had used it to fend off salvage raiders during the war, and was credited with saving Rivergaard. He’d had the tall, humanoid machine painted as if it were a suit of armor, but in gunmetal blue, with his corporate logo added on shoulder and breast. “I liked the looks of it from the outside, and you know I’m a sucker for history, but . . .”

“The corporate branding takes a bit to get used to. To your point, however . . .” Hake shifted his shoulders. “The diagnostics and the films from the exercises were underwhelming.”

“To put it mildly.” Walter shook his head. “I don’t know why you took this job, Hake, and I don’t know why you’re making Ivan Litzau my problem.”

“I seem to recall your predecessor saying that very same thing to me. About you!” Hake hauled his bulk out of the chintz-covered, spindly legged chair and waved Walter to follow him. The mercenary leader’s heels clicked on the oak parquet as he crossed to a pair of glass doors and flung them open. Walter followed him onto the stone balcony, crushed stone crunching beneath his feet.

The balcony overlooked a valley running from the savannah of the central highlands south to the more temperate equatorial zone. The broad, azure Nyqvist River flowed lazily on, and lush green crops carpeted its shores as far as the eye could see. The river flowed onto a broad delta, and its controlled flooding annually reinvigorated the fields with silt from the distant highlands.

Several kilometers north of the Litzau corporate compound, the city of Rivergaard thrived. From that distance, it appeared to be little more than a village of huts fashioned from mud bricks. The Dhivi had learned well the lessons of the wars that had despoiled much of the Inner Sphere. They built their capital down deep and strong, creating fantastic galleries in caverns. Those caverns—which were wholly man-made—had been styled to look as if they had been carved out over millennia by the river’s gentle caress.

Hake leaned on the stone balustrade, his scarred hands flat on the rock. “I’ll answer your questions about this mission in the order you asked. I took this job because Acting Director Alexandra was willing to pay us well above scale. Despite the world’s axial tilt and elliptical orbit, much of this world is beautiful—no one has been complaining about the duty station. It’s green, you can breathe the air down here, it’s got water and in the valley it’s not too hot. Long as you’ve been an Angel, I don’t think you’ve seen a better posting.”

My whole life I’ve not seen better. Walter half smiled. “I don’t recall my pay packet getting all that much thicker.”

“But your Blackjack’s arm actuator is getting fixed.”

“Point.”

Hake turned toward him and sighed. “Look, Walter, I ain’t getting any younger. There’s no one left in the Angels that I started out with. They’re all dead or proto-walking dead.”

Walter frowned. “Is this you telling me you’re thinking of retiring?”

The older MechWarrior faced the river again. “Wouldn’t be hard to get used to seeing this with your morning coffee every day.”

“But, Hake, there’s a reason you call retired guys ‘walking dead.’ You always said you wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.”

Hake laughed, then coughed. He wiped his mouth with his hand. “I decided that when I was a kid. Maybe your age. Hanging on to that idea, that was me trying not to think about getting old. So this job here, it’s a way to get some money, and not just for me. Your Blackjack, Eck’s Jenner—I got MacDonald banging dents out of the Vulture’s Egg. This job is going to make the unit healthy.”

“Be a bad time to retire, Hake.”

“But not a bad place.” The older man’s expression grew wistful. “Wanna know why I never wanted to retire? God’s honest truth?”

Walter nodded and joined his commander at the stone railing. “Sure.”

“I always wanted the Angels to continue after me, you know. I didn’t think they would, that they could, without me.” The older man patted Walter on the shoulder. “But you know, kid, you ain’t half bad. They like you, the others.”

“Half of them are too young to know any better, and the vets are too tired to think for themselves.” Walter snorted. “You trying to tell me you’re going to turn the Angels over to me?”

“You see anyone better out there?”

“There has to be, Hake.” Walter shook his head. “Look, we do this job, we go to Galatea. There are blue bloods all over the Inner Sphere with stupid money, wanting to buy a mercenary company and promote themselves to Field Marshal High Mucky-muck Potentate. You cash out, they return home, parade us a couple of times, then let us take some contracts so they earn on their investment.”

“Nah.” Hake waved that idea away. “They wouldn’t be the Angels no more.”

“But that would be good for you, Hake.” The subordinate officer sighed. “As honored as I am—and I am honored—I can’t afford to buy chewing gum, much less this unit.”

“I’d be giving it to you.” The older man grinned. “Well, you’d be earning it.”

Walter turned, leaned back against the balustrade, and closed his eyes. “By dealing with the situation behind my other question.”

“See, you’re command material.”

Walter covered his eyes with a hand. “Hake, did you watch those videos? Really study the numbers? The kid—Vice Chairman or Chairman Presumptive or whatever weird title the corporations have given Ivan—he’s not hopeless, Hake, he’s worse. He’s hopeful. He brims over with hope. His comments recorded when he reviews the vids, they’re polite, and he promises to do better. But as a pilot, he is atrocious, with a capital A and a capital Trocious. And I have three weeks to do something about that? It can’t be done.”

“But it must be done, Lieutenant de Mesnil.”

The woman’s words dropped Walter’s hand from over his eyes. That’s— “I beg your pardon, Chairperson.”

“For what?” Her gray eyes ran a shade lighter than her hair, but the seamlessness of Acting Director Alexandra Litzau’s skin gave her back the years her hair sought to steal. Trim and barely a hair over 1.4 meters tall, she stood with her hands clasped at the small of her back, her chin up and eyes narrowing. “Is it for speaking the truth, or the lack of wit to realize you can and will do your duty?”

Hake had dropped respectfully to a knee and Walter followed his example after Hake’s slap to his stomach. “More the former, ma’am, I should hope.”

“And all of Maldives shares that hope.” Alexandra waved them to their feet with the flick of a gloved hand. “There are things for you to understand, Lieutenant. Your review of my son’s performance is not inaccurate—nor is your assessment of his character. My son is not suited to the life of a MechWarrior. He takes after his late father, Thomas, in that way. I would change that in neither either of them. What I will do, however, is change this world.”

She came to stand between them. “Maldives is dying. It has been for nearly two centuries—because the Federated Suns and the Capellan Confederation see worlds like ours as pawns in their political games. You look out here and see beauty, but you should know that once this world was home to a billion people. Now, less than a third of that. Those who remain, no matter how impoverished, pride themselves on our history and our traditions. They hold stakes in the fate of the world, and cut fierce deals to maintain and expand their holdings.

“My dear, late husband realized that those traditions were killing us—one above all others. Primogeniture. Do you know it?”

Walter nodded. “The right of corporate succession and inheritance passing to the first-born child.”

She smiled. “In its earliest form, that would be the eldest male child. Executive positions are handed down along familial lines, always from father to son. In turn, the corporations remain in the hands of the First Families that founded them.”

“Interesting way to run a business.”

“Primogeniture is an old practice. The Dhivi revived it during colonization, to keep from subdividing their lands and wealth between children. They intensified their love for it after the war. This resulted in a complex network of arranged marriages to create joint ventures and mergers between families. A fertile child, male or female, would be bartered to other families in Byzantine schemes to acquire lands or controlling interests in various projects. The Exodus of Dhivi to other worlds, like Itrom, for example, did not dissolve property ties. Each year young men and women are married off to families throughout the Inner Sphere just to secure stock in our various holdings.”

Walter arched an eyebrow at Hake. “You came from Itrom, right? So you know all this?”

Hake nodded. “I could of had me a Dhivi wife. But I decided being king of some boardroom was nothing compared to being king on a battlefield.”

The acting Litzau CEO spread her hands. “My husband understood that making our children into commodities did them a disservice. Shipping them away robbed the world of talent. For us to rebuild the world, we would need to get our people invested in the future. We would need to make them part of Maldives, and that would include expanding property rights and the right of inheritance.”

Hake ran a hand over his chin. “Give them a stake, and they stick around.”

“Exactly. And we would provide you all with the same stake if our venture here is successful.” She glanced down at her hands. “Those who have successfully concentrated power to themselves are against any revision or revocation of this Common Law tradition. My husband felt the sting of their opposition severely, as our first two children are female. This did not decide him on his course of action, however; it just provided impetus to realize his dream even more swiftly. He did know the work would take time, and he thought Ivan’s birth had bought him that time. Unfortunately, he would not live long enough to see his son reach his fifth birthday.”

Walter grew solemn. “My condolences.”

“Appreciated, Lieutenant.” The corner of Alexandra’s mouth twitched. “I’ll save you soliciting gossip: my husband died of rare lymphoma. He likely was not murdered, but that tale will be bruited about and I’m am most often the culprit.”

Hake nibbled at a thumbnail. “No other suspects?”

“Countless. Minor executives. The pirates who raid throughout the Periphery. Outsiders who wish to offer their daughters as brides so their grandchildren will have claim to ventures here.” She shrugged. “The list is endless. I count his death as natural, lest I go insane contemplating the identity of prospective guilty parties.

“To the point, however; my son—for whom I have been acting as surrogate—will be invested with my husband’s board position, holdings and duties—not just in Litzau Enterprises, but the Maldives Corporation. Because of other traditions tracing back to Augustine Litzau himself, my son will first have to prove he is the master of Destrier via an ordeal—the Final Vetting.”

Walt looked over at Hake. “The exercise plan you sent over . . . this Final Vetting is really just a nature walk and some target practice for Ivan and his Companion, isn’t it? We go from point A to point B and burn holes in a few slag heaps while the First Families watch. It isn’t much of an ordeal.”

“In the past it was more of a martial exercise. Military discipline was once the bedrock of our corporate culture, Lieutenant; Litzau Enterprises was founded by a retired MechWarrior. He used his earnings from the field as seed capital to launch his business.” She locked eyes with Walter. “In the early days, we were staffed almost entirely by veteran soldiers. Many of our senior executives are holdovers from that period—men who view competence in a BattleMech as a basic life skill.”

“Ah. And so if the Chairman Presumptive is going to earn their respect, he has to prove that he can handle himself.”

“Yes.” Alexandra nodded. “My husband suffered through the old Vetting ritual, but he changed it going forward. Ivan will still have to exhibit mastery of Destrier, but the Final Vetting is now less a trial by combat than it is a symbolic tour of corporate holdings—a way for the Chairman Presumptive to demonstrate that he truly knows what he’s going to be responsible for. As his Companion, you have two tasks: prepare him, then guide him.”

Walter frowned. “Why not just use corporate security for the Final Vetting? One of the Litzau Lancers would do just fine. Why involve mercenaries at all?”

“Loyal the Lancers may be, but they are drawn from the First Families and are steeped in Dhivi politics.” Alexandra smiled indulgently. “Using mercenaries will curb temptation, and having you as his Companion will ensure loyalty.”

“Don’t worry. When bought, I stay bought.” Walter sighed. “And you don’t want the job for yourself, Hake?”

“Nope. I wouldn’t mind the actual hike, but I don’t want to put Ivan through his paces before that. And when it comes to the Final Vetting, I’m going to enjoy watching from the corporate headquarters. Cushy chairs and beer—but I’ll be there for you, Walt.”

“That makes me feel so much better.” Walter’s brown eyes tightened. “If this is just a formality, why are the exercises and the Vetting going to be with full ammo loads? Powered-down weapons and training protocols would reduce the chances of an accident.”

“That would alter the tradition too much and undermine Ivan.” Alexandra returned her hands to the small of her back. “The results will be taken as a sign of Ivan’s strength. My husband thought the Final Vetting a barbaric practice, though he concluded his ordeal in a most unorthodox manner. For Ivan, the Vetting is a hurdle he must clear to be able to continue my husband’s work.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am, Walter here will do everything that needs to be done.”

Walter frowned. “I have to tell you, ma’am, that going full live-fire for the training is dangerous. Accidents happen.”

“That, Lieutenant, cannot be helped.” She shook her head. “I have no desire to see my son die. I don’t want to see anyone die or bleed or get hurt at all; but if he fails at mastering Destrier, the company’s confidence in him will die. That will just hasten Maldives’s death. Thus, what I require of you is that you help him succeed in this exercise. Work with him. Learn what he can do, then make him better.”

“What will determine if he’s good enough?”

Alexandra smiled easily. “We have always held our Chairmen to the Star League basic competencies.”

“Indig militia, House troops or SLDF?”

“Militia will suffice.”

Hake punched his arm. “See, Walt, that’s why I picked you to train him up. That’s the kind of thing you do better than anyone.”

“Three weeks, Hake.”

“Not a moment to lose, then.”

Walter exhaled loudly. “Where is he, then, your son? We can start right now.”

Alexandra shook her head firmly. “That is impossible.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ivan’s mother smiled in a way that sent a shiver clawing its way up Walter’s spine. “You, Lieutenant, are due for the final fitting of your dress uniform.”

“My what now?”

Hake laughed. “It’s got braid and we made up a few medals for you. I sent them your measurements as soon as we got into communications range. The Angels got some fancy dress clothes coming. You’re the first. You’ll need them for the reception tonight.”

Walter rubbed a hand over his forehead. “Reception?”

“My son’s coming of age is a bit more elaborate than finding a seedy bar and drinking alcohol that you hope won’t leave you blind. There is a reception tonight, here, for the Preferred, other Stakeholders and a few extra-planetary representatives. There will be more fetes and parades as part of the Investiture ceremonies, but you’ll find time to train with Ivan.” She raised an eyebrow. “You do know how to dance, yes?”

“Hake, you promised you’d never tell anyone.”

The older man raised his hands. “I didn’t, but that vid did get around . . .”

Alexandra’s smile grew and a note of sympathy entered her voice. “Calm yourself, Lieutenant. I merely wished to know whether to warn people not to ask were you reluctant to honor a request.”

“Not my strong suit, ma’am.”

“Noted. Consider it your Final Vetting.” She gave him a curt nod. “You were hired to help and protect my son. If to do that, you have step on the toes of every maid in Rivergaard, I shall not shed a tear.”

Chapter Two

Rivergaard House, Rivergaard
Maldives

15 October 3000

Walter flexed his shoulders, wanting the uniform to make him look as awkward as he felt. Fact was, the uniform fit perfectly; Walter’s discomfort came from never having seen himself look this good before. Dove gray with navy blue collar, cuffs and trim, the Angels’ dress uniform really made him feel like an adult. He could have done without the gold-braid epaulets, and the braided gold cord running beneath his left armpit, but the bright color did set off the more somber tones that dominated the uniform.

What he decided he really didn’t like was the pile of medals on his left breast. It was true that the Angels—pretty much like any other unit—handed out commendations liberally. They covered everything from good hygiene to valor under fire. Likewise, their employers had been generous in passing out their own medals, mainly because doing that was cheaper than actually paying promised bonus money. While he’d earned everything on his chest, seeing them all together invited him to evaluate his life, and introspection wasn’t something he indulged in often.

Chris Eck, one of the taller of the Angels, stopped in Walter’s open doorway. “Hey, have you seen where the Lieutenant . . . Oh, damn, you are just so pretty all cleaned up there . . .”

Walter growled at him. “Doesn’t your wife have dinner on the table for you?”

“Yep, so I was going to ask if you had plans . . .” Chris smiled, running a hand back over his brush of brown hair. “If I knew you wanted to play dress-up, my daughter, Kaylee, she’s always throwing tea parties . . .”

Walter turned toward his subordinate. “You know that time—that one time—Hake said you were funny?”

“Yeah.”

“He was lying.”

“My wife laughs at my jokes. That’s all that matters.” The tall man’s eyes tightened. “Seriously, sir, I wouldn’t know it’s you. That uni, it’s good. We all getting ’em?”

“So I hear.” The lieutenant grinned. “Probably, anyway.”

“Likely come out of our pay, right?”

“In your case, funny man, absolutely.” Walter tugged the uniform’s sleeve cuffs. “Hey, your family, they settling in okay?”

Chris nodded. “You know Laurie, she got us a place as we were incoming, and knocked the price down. Kaylee’s been admitted to a great school, so it’s good. Matter of fact, Laurie met the neighbor across the hall, says she’s cute and single, which is why . . .”

“Please thank her, and give her my apologies. I really do have to work.”

“I got you, but you know, she isn’t going to give up.”

“Yeah.” Walter frowned. “Hey, since she’s the closest thing we have to an intelligence officer in-theatre, can you get her to find out what folks think about Ivan Litzau?”

“Our employer’s son?”

“Soon to be our employer.”

Chris scratched at the soul patch on his chin. “You got a bad feeling?”

“Just want a read on things from outside the palace here.”

“Roger that, boss.” Chris smiled then tossed him a quick salute. “Try to have fun.”

Easier said than done. Walter let the echoes of Chris’s footfalls die before he left his room in the Rivergaard House guest annex. Though much newer than the main building, the annex shared its blocky sandstone construction. The Angels’ officers had been assigned accommodations based on rank. Walter got a two-room suite, with a small bathroom off the bedchamber. Neither of the rooms was as large as Hake’s office, but Walter had been on missions where the entire company fit into a room half the size of his sitting room, and were glad for it.

Walter understood the importance of his attending the reception, but the very necessity of it made his skin itch. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to act. He’d been brought up well enough to know his manners, to know which fork went with which course, and to otherwise comport himself properly. And while he didn’t need to shift into formal on many occasions with the Angels, he could when called upon.

Formal gatherings, quite simply, exhausted him. So many people working so hard to seem important, or more important than they are. He knew full well that such behavior went on all the time, but formality required different responses. If Walter, Chris and the other Angels had walked into a bar and some guy was mouthing off about how tough he was, someone could deck him or get him drunk enough to pass out, then stuff him on the next DropShip burning for the stars.

As much as he might want to, Walter couldn’t throw a punch at the reception. He chuckled. I’ll hear about it if I even look cross at someone. He shook his head and resolved to take one for the unit.

His journey took him out of the annex and, after a right turn, into the palace’s left wing. He didn’t know if it had a formal name or not, but he labeled it the Gallery. From the waist-high wainscoting up to the vaulted ceilings seven meters overhead, Litzau Enterprises had acquired and hung a fantastic collection of art. The curators’ tastes ran to portraits and landscapes, some of which looked fifteen centuries old. Others had been created with antique styles and designs, but depicted images of worlds distantly removed from Terra. Walter supposed they formed a loose chronicle of the Litzau family’s journey to Maldives.

Sprinkled among the landscapes, the family portraits again appeared to have been painted by Terra’s legendary Old Masters. Walter could not definitively place any of the styles, but got the sense of tradition which, apparently, had been transferred to Dhivi society as a whole. The family, and the corporate society, uses tradition to validate their existence, even as that tradition slowly kills their world.

Up a set of marble stairs and beyond a cavernous foyer, he entered the ballroom that housed the reception. It surprised him that no one announced him, nor did there appear to be any sort of receiving line. The lack of either undercut his theory about Dhivi tradition, but didn’t cause him to question his assumptions. He didn’t have enough data to do that, and plunged into the mélange of guests to see what he could learn.

He’d come into the rectangular ballroom at the south end. Opposite was a small stage upon which a small band had set up. Eight massive stone columns, four to the right, four to the left, held up a vaulted ceiling. Holographic projectors hidden in the vaults created a three-dimensional nighttime vista which made the rocks and space junk orbiting the world into a glittering crown for the planet. The pillars trimmed about ten percent of the floor space off each side. Food and refreshment stations occupied that marginal space, clearing the majority of the floor so people could circulate or, nearest the band, dance if they chose to.

Walter cut to the left and began to circle counterclockwise. He did that out of habit, focusing on what sort of food and drink his hosts had on offer. He felt hungry enough to just pull a chair up to any of the serving stations and start gobbling, but being new to Maldives, he wanted to get a sense of what sorts of cuisine the Dhivi favored. He seemed to recall reading in the tiny orientation package he’d been given that they tended to go for spicy, and that their red wines rated highly if you valued dry over sweet.

He made it a quarter of the way around unmolested before a tall, black-haired man broke through a thin screen of people and blocked his passage. The man wore a black uniform with silver trim. “So, you are the one who will be the Chairman Presumptive’s Companion.”

Walter didn’t recognize the uniform, and definitely didn’t like the disgusted tone in the man’s voice. He looked up at the soldier. “That’s the mission brief. Exactly how would this concern you?”

“That very question betrays your ignorance and also your bovine stupidity.”

Do. Not. Hit. Him. Walter silently began to count to ten, but his patience ran out at five. “Look, pal, I’ve just spent a week burning in from the jump point. We bounced like a small rock in a big avalanche through a couple of storms to make landfall. I’m a liter shy of sleep, and two shy of caring what you think.”

The man’s nostrils flared, but before he could vent the anger flashing in his brown eyes, a second man appeared at his elbow. A head smaller, the new arrival had blond hair and bright blue eyes. Clearly youthful, the contrast between the two made the blond appear to be little more than a kid. He wore a uniform that matched Walter’s save for a Prussian blue replacing navy for the trim, and with double the number of medals and ribbons.

“You’ve met him, Richard. What do you think?”

Richard’s pained expression slowly eased. “Chairman Ivan, I urge you again to prevail upon your mother to stop this madness.” He glanced at Walter. “I am certain that Lieutenant de Mesnil is a competent ’Mech pilot, but even he would admit that he has little understanding of corporate political nuance, at least as related to your Final Vetting.“

Ivan, his expression open, smiled at Walter. “And what do you say to that, Lieutenant?”

“I say, first, it is a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Walter bowed his head solemnly to the younger man. “As for what I would say to Richard . . .”

“Director Richard Oglethorpe, Captain of the Rivergaard Rangers.”

“Noted, thank you. The captain is not wrong. I have explained that I’ve been on the ground for less than a day and except for the catnap I got while the tailor finished fitting this uniform, I’ve had no sleep. I’ve not gotten my bearings yet, but I am pretty canny when I do.”

Richard adamantly shook his head. “You cannot acquire a lifetime’s knowledge of social politics—especially Dhivi corporate politics—in the three weeks before the Final Vetting. Without that knowledge, your blundering about could cause irreparable damage to the Chairman Presumptive’s reputation and standing.”

Ivan laughed easily, patting Richard on the shoulder. “I know you have my best interests at heart, Richard, but you are overreacting. Still, your caution is something I need to emulate. I shall discuss it with the lieutenant, and I am certain he will be happy to avail himself of your aid if he needs it.”

Walter and Richard exchanged glances which confirmed that the universe would die before help would be requested or considered, much less given.

Ivan clapped his hands. “There, I am glad that is settled. Now, Richard, let me consult with the lieutenant. It will be important that I understand him, and he understands me.”

Richard bowed his head. “As you wish, Chairman. It was a . . . pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant de Mesnil. You do not comprehend the honor of the position you have been given, nor the importance of your duty. I trust that this situation will remedy itself before disaster unfolds.”

“Thanks, Director.”

The tall man withdrew, and Ivan pointed Walter toward the room’s back corner. “Please.”

Walter followed with a nod. Ivan acknowledged other guests’ greetings with fleeting smiles and faint nods, as if half asleep. That seemed to surprise no one, though reactions varied from delight to barely concealed disdain. Ivan didn’t appear to notice, and certainly didn’t react to their expressions.

At the corner, the younger man waved Walter around so his back was to the walls, and Ivan faced him. “You will forgive Richard his reaction to you.” Though stated as a command, it came sheathed in gentle tones imploring compliance. “He has reason to be angry. He is actually angry at my mother, but you are a more accessible target.”

Walter frowned. “Are you willing to explain that?”

“Oh, very good, you don’t apologize for your lack of understanding.”

“Why would I, when it’s obvious and has nothing to do with the information I need?”

Ivan laughed. “Look out at the room behind me, Lieutenant. Most of them—were they in your position—would spend valuable time begging my pardon, explaining that they don’t mean to intrude, or plying me with any number of other social pleasantries—few if any of which they actually mean. Even the ones who dislike me would be polite to a fault. That’s one of the ways I know who to be careful around.”

Walter smiled. “And you explain that to see how long I’m going to let you meander around before you answer me.”

“Even more direct. Excellent.” Ivan inclined his head in a tiny salute. “Richard was chosen to be my Companion during my Final Vetting. Chosen by traditional means, which are something slightly less Byzantine than . . . well, I don’t know what. It would be easier if they just ripped open a chicken and read the entrails.”

“Back up. Why isn’t he your Companion? He’s in the Rangers, was it? Isn’t that your bodyguard unit?”

“Home guard for Rivergaard. Litzau Lancers are the corporation’s security unit.”

“I still need to know why he’s got his shorts in a bunch.”

“Shorts in a bunch, I like that.” Ivan smiled for a half second. “Shorts in a bunch. I am going to use that.”

Walter shook his head. “You toss up a lot of chaff. I’m going to guess that you like seeing how long a fuse folks have, right? That, or you’re a moron, and I’m rock-solid certain that’s not the case. Not even close.”

“You’ve caught me, Lieutenant. I suppose, in fact, you’d have a colorful turn of phrase for that, too.” Ivan held his hands up innocently as Walter’s expression started to darken. “I surrender. Richard’s problem is this: being chosen Companion is a great honor, but with being chosen comes a certain amount of danger. Because the Companion could be someone who is not well suited to combat, tradition allows for them to purchase the services of a surrogate to fight in their place.”

“But Richard, he doesn’t look like the kind of man who would do that.”

“Oh, no, not at all.” Ivan shook his head. “He’s angry because my mother exercised that prerogative on his behalf. She bought your services, thereby dismissing him.”

I’m lucky I didn’t get slugged. Walter ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t think that’s something that’s gonna be fixed by buying him a beer.”

“Not even by buying him controlling interest in a brewery.” Ivan smiled quickly, then let the expression die. “That’s not quite right for a retort, is it? Buying the beer is to get him a bit drunk and at ease, but buying brewery stock would be a business decision.”

“Close. You can work on it.” Walter’s expression tightened. “Why did your mother do that to him?”

Ivan’s innocent smile returned, but his eyes narrowed. “Because, Lieutenant, chances are very good that someone in Rivergaard will try to kill me during the Vetting, and when sorting out candidates, Richard rises quickly toward the very top of the list.”

Chapter Three

Rivergaard House, Rivergaard
Maldives

15 October 3000

“Then exactly why was he on the guest list tonight?”

Ivan shrugged. “The list is long. If we prevented everyone on it from attending, you, the woman playing the clarinet, my mother and I would be the only people here. Oh, and the chef.”

Walter glanced around, doing his best not to look obvious in doing so. “You don’t appear to be terribly concerned about this.”

“I’m used to it.” Ivan leaned in. “Sometimes the threat of being assassinated is the only thing that makes life worth living.”

The mercenary raised an eyebrow. “I know you’re playing with my mind here, but aren’t you being a bit glib?”

“This is a celebration, Lieutenant, but I take your point. I promise you that I shall be far more serious and attentive when it comes to what we must accomplish together.” Ivan’s expression approached seriousness. “I know you have looked at vid of me in Destrier, and this may have raised some concerns on your part. I assure you that since that time I have spent many hours running computer simulations in preparation for the Final Vetting. You will benefit from the fruits of my labor.”

“Good. I have modified a training regime we’ve used before and—”

Ivan held up a hand. “Please send me a schedule and I shall merge it with mine. But now social convention demands that I conduct myself properly. So many boring people here, you know—not you, but others. I need to deal with them.”

“More chaff.”

“You are refreshingly persistent, Lieutenant.” The Chairman Presumptive’s expression froze. “I should reward that. I’ll think of something. But, to explain . . . over there, over my left shoulder, that is Wen Xu-Tian, the Capellan Consul here on Maldives. He anticipates my becoming Chairman and does all he can to curry favor. He hopes that he can bring us into the Capellan sphere of influence.”

“Makes sense.”

“He is, of course, looking for a way to be recalled to Sian—in the good way, of course. He does his best to engage me in conversation, hoping we will strike up a friendship. So the last time we spoke, I lectured at length on interesting research being conducted here on seasonal sexual dimorphism in Highland spotted beetles. I emphasized the differences between cycles during Deep Summer and Second Summer.” Ivan allowed himself a smirk. “Over the last week and a half, in preparation for tonight, Xu-Tian has studied everything there is to know about the Highland spotted beetle. He will convey all he’s learned to me. And I will tell him all I know about seasonal sexual dimorphism in the Lowland spotted beetle. And when he says that he thought I was interested in the Highland spotted beetle, I will tell him that I was interested in it, but seeing that I could never hope to develop a mastery of the subject that could come at all close to his, I shall surrender that subject to him and continue my studies on the lowland species.”

Walter studied Ivan closely. “So you will turn the hard work he’s done to get close to you into a wedge that forces you apart—and deliver it in the form of praise that will make him feel good despite utterly thwarting his desires.”

“Harshly put, yes.”

“And who is he talking to?”

“Stephan Andrich, another cousin, fifth, perhaps, with a few generations removed.” Ivan’s hands fluttered. “He’s too dull to be much fun playing the game, and would be an absolute ruin were he ever to make it to a position with any real authority.”

“I see.”

“That look in your eyes, the tone in your voice, says you don’t approve of my pastime.”

“Actually, I’m kind of in awe.” Walter shrugged. “But if either of them kill you, some folks might think it justifiable homicide.”

“A case I’d not considered.” Ivan tapped a finger against his chin. “But, for this evening at least, the game persists. Please do enjoy yourself, Lieutenant. I look forward to working with you.”

“Thank you.” I think. Walter watched Ivan turn and weave his way through the crowd toward the Capellan Consul. That was different . . . Walter wasn’t at all certain if anything useful had been accomplished in that conversation, save for learning that he was going to be paired with a man whom some people wanted dead, and who didn’t seem to care much about that fact.

“Take this.” A slender blonde woman appeared at his elbow and offered him a glass of red wine. “Say thank you.”

“Thank you.”

“You are very very welcome, and you now owe me a rescue.” She touched her glass to his. “No one would blame you if you wanted something stronger, but this is our native Zweigelt. The vines came from Austria, on Terra, transported by the first Litzau settlers. We export it as far as New Avalon.”

“Is that so?” Walter nodded, then tried the wine. Dry, with the sweetness of berries. He let it linger on his tongue before swallowing. “Good, and really the sort of wine I like.”

“I hoped so.” She gestured with her glass in the Chairman Presumptive’s direction. “I almost pity the Consul. He’s not a stupid man, but he has yet to realize that he’s up against an intellect the like of which few of us even imagine exists.”

Walter cocked his head for a second. “You know the Chairman Presumptive well, then?”

She smiled. “I’ve had the pleasure. I take it they’re discussing beetles?”

“Lowland, Highland, something like that.”

“He asked me for references on Lowland spotted beetles mid-morning today. I suggested a dozen volumes or so.” She smiled. “He’s devoured them already, I’m certain.”

“You research beetles, do you?”

The woman regarded him for a moment, then nodded. “I do, as part of my ecological research. And forgive my manners. I’m Phee.”

“Walter de Mesnil.” Walter shook her hand, pleased with her firm, dry grip. “I’m with the Angels.”

“And are the Companion.” She snapped a finger against a battle ribbon on his chest. It was white with a running hound in green. “That’s what this one signifies.”

“I wondered.” Walter half smiled. “I didn’t think it was one I’d earned.”

“You will.”

“Pursuant to that, I’ve only just met Ivan Litzau, just now. I can see he’s very smart, but he’s also a bit . . . distant.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is detached.”

He considered for a moment. “That is better.”

Phee sipped her wine. “It’s also accurate. You see, most people, they do things for simple reasons: love, lust, greed. Those are the fancy words for hunger and companionship and the desire to reproduce. Addressing those basic needs makes most folks fairly easy to figure out. But Ivan—sure, he has to eat and clothe himself and needs human contact, but those things don’t motivate him.”

“What does?”

“Given how smart he is, most folks think it’s knowledge.” Her blue eyes focused distantly. “But knowledge is a goal; he likes knowledge, but for him, the true joy is in seeking. Many people set their sights on having done something, but Ivan, he delights in the doing, in the chase. Does that make any sense?”

The mercenary considered for a moment, staring into the dark ruby wine as he did so. “Sure. There are those . . . I have known some MechWarriors who don’t care about winning or losing, they just live for the fighting.”

“That’s a rather gruesome comparison, but accurate.”

“Sorry about that.” Walter shot her a sidelong glance. “Sounds like you know the Chairman really well. Are you two . . . you know, not to pry, but together?”

“Ivan and me? No, good lord no.”

“You tutor him, then, in sciences, or he’s a patron for your research.”

“Yes, Litzau Enterprises and the Litzau family support my research.” A tone entered her voice—playful, but something else there he couldn’t identify. “Let me ask you, Lieutenant de Mesnil . . .”

“Walter.”

“Walter, then. Walter, why do you do what you do? Is it the money?”

“When you’re a mercenary, that is the go-to answer, but I actually have another plan.” He lowered his voice and she leaned in. “I actually am saving up to start a wine importing business, so under the guise of being a mercenary, I get to travel to worlds, try their wines, and obliterate wineries that have no merit.”

“I’ll make you a list.” She tapped her glass against his. “Well played, sir. That’s the most entertaining example of being told to mind my own business I’ve ever been privileged to experience.”

“Just a second, Phee, I wasn’t trying to put you off.” Walter winced. “Holovids always make the mercenary life gritty or romantic. They make mercs into gallant warriors with tragic pasts who are off doing battle in some vain attempt to redeem themselves for past misdeeds. In my case the fact is that I pretty much fell into this life. People have these silly dreams about becoming a mercenary and doing great heroic things. I really didn’t have anything better to do at the time. Handful of years later, here I am.”

She remained silent for a bit, then smiled. “I sense there is more to be told there, but I accept your answer as given because, unlike most people here, you’re not making yourself out to be something important or terribly grand. That is different.”

Walter returned her smile. “Birds of a feather, the two of us.”

“Quite so.”

A middle-aged man joined them in the corner. “Forgive me for interrupting, just be a moment. I wanted to thank you for recommending Doctor Bitters. He said everything is going to be fine.”

Phee smiled broadly. “I’m so pleased to hear that, Ambassador Allard. Is your lovely wife with you?”

“No, I’m afraid not. Even though the doctor said Justin and Daniel should get over the bug in a day or two, she wanted to stay with them. But she passed along her best wishes and thanks.” The man looked over at Walter and offered his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m Quintus Allard. I’m representing the Federated Suns for the Vesting Celebration. We brought my boys along—it’s a bit of a trip from New Avalon and we didn’t want to be apart from them for that long.”

Phee pressed a hand to her forehead. “Forgive me, I thought you might know each other. This is Lieutenant Walter de Mesnil. He’s Ivan’s Companion.”

“Yes, of course.” Quintus smiled. “I hope you’ll get a chance to meet my boys. They’re of that age when they start dreaming of becoming MechWarriors.”

“We were just talking about that, Walter and I.”

The mercenary rolled his eyes. “The glamor of it all . . .”

“My sons quite believe that. In their eyes, all mercenaries are heroes, much like d’Artagnan.”

Walter winced. “The reality is that we’re more like Don Quixote.”

“A mercenary acquainted with the classics.” Quintus nodded in the other man’s direction. “Of course, in the opening chapter of The Three Musketeers, Dumas describes d’Artagnan as a Don Quixote, so perhaps both views are correct.”

“That, sir, puts some things in perspective. Thank you.” Walter raised his glass to the ambassador. “I’ll work on being more one than the other.”

“I think you’ll find that being the Companion will require the best qualities of both.” Allard shook Walter’s hand again. “Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.”

“And you, sir.”

The ambassador turned to Phee and took her hand in his. “And you, Research Director Litzau, always a pleasure. If there is any way I can be of service to you or especially your brother during his Final Vetting, please let me know. That’s not the Federated Suns making the offer. I am personally indebted to you, and Allards always make good on their debts.”

“You are far too kind, Ambassador. My best to your wife and sons.”

Research Director Litzau? A question took up residence on the tip of Walter’s tongue.

Sophia raised a finger. “Not a word.”

“But.”

“That’s a word, Walter.”

He fell silent.

She frowned. “Okay. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“What you’re dying to say.”

“Now I see why Litzau Enterprises supports your research.”

“It’s important research.” She snatched the half-full glass from his hand and set their glasses on a nearby tray. Then she grabbed his left hand. “We should dance.”

“Wait.”

“You don’t dance?”

“It’s not that.” Walter shook his head. “And it’s not me feeling foolish for not recognizing you. I can imagine that having the chance to be anonymous in a crowd like this is a treat. I don’t mind being the off-world bumpkin who didn’t know who he was talking to. I’m good with all that.”

Consternation wrinkled her brow. “Then what is it?”

“I am the off-world bumpkin who didn’t know who you were. Are you sure there won’t be some negative repercussions if we dance together? Isn’t there some protocol or something? A tradition?”

“Walter, we’re not the Draconis Combine. They’d have to convene a council of ministers to ask ministers to consider your question and we’d be ancient before we ever got a reply. And, yes, Maldives is really a small village where everyone knows everyone else’s business and there’s been so much intermarriage that family trees are really just this windblown mass of webs.” She tugged on his hand. “But you’re the Companion. I’m the Chairman Presumptive’s younger sister, one of your hosts. And this is just a dance, not an invitation to get married.”

“So you’re saying sex is off the table.”

“Lieutenant de Mesnil!” Sophia’s head came up. “I am a traditional woman.”

She had affected outrage, but he caught a teasing note in her voice. “You do realize, Director, that on your world, I have no idea what that means.”

“What it means is, Walter, that we can dance together, and no one will bat an eyelash.”

“Then it would be my pleasure.” Walter bowed deeply, and rose to see her granting him a delighted smile.

He led her to the dance floor, which was blond oak with dark wood inlays. The dark wood had been used to depict a stylized version of Maldives and, above it, the Litzau family crest. The map showed thick ice sheets at the south pole, lighter to the north, and the more temperate zones working down to a number of river valleys like the one created by the Nyqvist River. The Litzau crest consisted of a hound rampant, with a crown, and another hound running beneath it. That latter hound resembled the image on his Companion ribbon.

Walter didn’t recognize the tune the band was playing, but he caught the rhythm easily enough. He drew Sophia into his arms and led her through the stately steps of a waltz. He even tossed in a turn or two for fun. None of the other couples were doing that. Most of them looked decidedly stiff, as if they loathed their partners. Sophia, on the other hand, smiled happily and executed moves crisply, providing the sort of flare that everyone else’s mechanical dancing lacked.

As she returned to his embrace, he nodded toward another couple. “That’s Richard Oglethorpe. Your brother said that if there was a list drawn up of people who wanted to kill him, Richard would be at the top.”

“That was Ivan being a bit hyperbolic. Richard is a third cousin, therefore technically in position to garner enough proxies to replace Ivan if the Final Vetting goes badly. But then, three-quarters of the people who will be in and out of the corporate headquarters during the Final Vetting would have to be severed before Richard could reach the right number of votes, so he’s not really a serious suspect.”

Richard danced with a slender woman with long black hair that hung in thick curls. They move together brilliantly, clearly anticipating each other’s moves with preternatural prowess. “Who is he dancing with?”

“Abigail, my older sister.”

“She looks lovely.”

“Believe that at your peril.” Sophia winked at him. “You should be careful of her. As angry as Richard was, she’s more so.”

“At me? Really?” Walter blinked. “Did she want to be Companion, too?”

“Oh, heavens no.” Sophia lowered her voice. “She believes Destrier should be hers, and you’re part of a corrupt system which guarantees she will never claim her birthright.”

Chapter Four

Rivergaard House, Rivergaard
Maldives

15 October 3000

“Family holidays must be pure joy around here.” Walter tossed Sophia into a turn.

Her eyes flashed as she returned. “I’ll make certain you’re seated beside me next time.”

“You’re too kind.”

“I am also serious. Unless you’ve brought a spouse with you, protocol calls for you to be placed between my sister and me at the various Vesting dinners.”

Walter smiled. “I’ll read up on beetles, so we can have good conversation.”

The song ended and Walter walked Sophia back toward the corner. “Thank you, Director. I’m not sure what I was expecting this evening, but this was a most welcome substitute for what I feared would happen.”

“I’m glad, Lieutenant. Thank you.” She took his right hand between hers and squeezed. “I know you will do everything you can for my brother. Whatever you do, don’t let him doubt himself. That’s when he truly gets lost.”

“Noted.” He squeezed her hands in return. “And now I’ll surrender you to what I am sure are your many duties here.”

“You have no idea.” She tossed him another wink and lost herself in the crush of bodies.

Walter watched her go, then considered getting a glass of wine. He’d liked the Zweigelt despite his preference for beer or whisky. But if I get a glass, I’m trapped here . . . It occurred to him that he’d accomplished his mission: he’d met Ivan. Sophia had been a bonus, and the fact that he appeared largely invisible to everyone else underscored his being an outsider. He decided that leaving early and pleading jump-lag was preferable to remaining and running afoul of some odd societal expectation.

Plenty of time for that in the weeks ahead.

“Did you feel it necessary, sister, to make so complete a spectacle of yourself with that mercenary?”

Sophia turned slowly and smiled at her sister. “He dances well. Better than anyone else here.”

“He is an embarrassment.” Abigail accepted a flute of sparking wine from a passing server. “Mother was wrong in her approach.”

“She had no choice, Abby. Richard was selected because of what happened during our father’s Final Vetting, and it was done to embarrass Richard.” Sophia hugged an arm across her tummy. “If Ivan failed with him as Companion, Richard would be seriously diminished. When Ivan succeeded . . .”

“If, you mean.”

“I have faith, Abby.” Sophia sighed. “Ivan’s vesting would gall Richard. His honor or his ambition would be besmirched with either outcome; Richard was too proud to accept the traditional way out, so Mother accepted for him.”

“And dishonored him sorely.”

Sophia arched a blonde eyebrow. “Are you defending him?”

“Richard? Hardly.” Abigail stared down at bubbles for a moment. “As much as I loathe the Oglethorpes, the simple fact of the matter is that I hate seeing the Dhivi corporate elite being subordinate to off-world mercenary—”

The younger woman spitted Abigail with a hard stare. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

“It is the truth. You know what he is.”

“You haven’t even spoken to him.”

Shock spread over Abigail’s face. “He’s charmed you. Five minutes dancing and you’re already intrigued with him.”

“No, that is not it at all.” Though he is charming, in a rough way. Sophia’s eyes narrowed. “My point is that Mother made a good selection. You know how unpopular Father’s changes to the vetting ritual were with the old guard—some of them are going to want Ivan to fail. No employee of Litzau Enterprises is going to work him hard enough to change those opinions, but a mercenary could. Do not look at me that way, Abigail.”

“You say no one, but you know I would have.”

“Granted, but that is not a traditional option.” Sophia glanced over to where the Capellan Consul had finally escaped his conversation with Ivan. “If Ivan is to continue our father’s work, we need to be united in supporting him, against all opposition.”

“Agreed.”

“Is that why you were dancing with Richard?”

“You are such a child.” Abigail’s eyes half shut. “As the saying goes, keep friends close and enemies closer. Plus, he is a good dancer.”

“Wait until you dance with Walter.”

“Walter, is it?” Abigail shook her head. “No, little sister, I shan’t deprive you of that dubious pleasure. I only hope your judgment of him is not in error. Any failure on his part, and we are all doomed.”

Litzau Lancers Garrison, Rivergaard
Maldives

16 October 3000

A day later Walter met the Chairman Presumptive at the Litzau Lancers garrison—a place that appeared to be as much museum as it was a working military installation. The front third really was a museum, featuring rooms of exhibits covering everything from Litzau Enterprises history to high points of the war and famous Dhivi who had earned fame far from their homeworld. The hangar space comprising the rest of the building provided housing for the Lancers and the Angels.

A central corridor opened up onto a tall glass wall fronting the hangar space, behind which stood Destrier, spotlighted from below. The ten-meter-tall war machine’s right arm ended in the twin muzzles of a pair of medium lasers. The left arm, which had a hand, sported a third medium laser on the outside of its forearm. A long-range missile launcher rested on top of that same forearm, while the ’Mech’s other missile launcher hid behind closed launch panels on the right side of the torso. Scaffolding surrounded the machine and workmen scurried over it, removing the gray-and-blue parade paint, replacing it with light green woodland camouflage.

That’s not right. Walter had arrived for the first of the training sessions with Ivan and expected that the Chairman Presumptive would use Destrier for the exercises. Beyond the Dhivi ’Mech, midway back in the hangar, Walter’s Blackjack stood ready. All Walter needed to do was strip out of his coveralls, pull on a neurohelmet and he’d be good to go.

Walter flashed the ID tag he’d been given and the guards waved him through. He entered the hangar through a door between Destrier’s feet. Ivan waved to him from a low corridor to the left. Walter jogged over to meet him, frowning because the young man hadn’t dressed for training. “Was I mistaken, my lord? We are training, yes?”

“As I told you—at least, as I remember telling you—I have spent hours running simulations . . .”

“I appreciate that, sir . . .” Walter stopped himself. “Calling you ‘sir’ doesn’t feel right, especially not for a combat exercise. What’s your call sign?”

Ivan blinked at him. “My call sign?”

“What they call you when you’re training.” The mercenary rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Mine, at least among the Angels, is Rail, short for Azrail, the Angel of Death.”

“In the Christian tradition, that is the archangel Michael, or perhaps Samael.”

“The Angels are better warriors than they are theologians. Point is, Rail is fast to say, easy to understand in the heat of combat.”

Ivan pursed his lips as he considered. “I would gather you’ve earned this sobriquet through prowess in battle, then.”

“You’ve not been around mercs much, have you? We had a bad billet when I first joined. Completely filthy. I killed a lot of what passed for cockroaches.”

“Irony, then.”

“Yes.” Walter posted his hands on his hips. “And you have to stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Directing conversations off into dead ends. You did it at the reception, you’re doing it now. I understand that you might do that to mess around with people who bore you, but I can’t be one of those people. We don’t get things straight and accomplished, none of this is going to go well.”

“Ah.” Ivan slowly nodded. “I see you’re operating under some misconceptions about the Final Vetting.” He turned and walked down the corridor, pausing only when he realized Walter wasn’t following in his wake. “Please, come, let me show you.”

“Okay, but I’m not forgetting you need a call sign.” Walter headed down the hallway, entering a side room a step behind the Chairman Presumptive. Computers filled it, with four simulator pods along the back wall, and every other wall covered with projected images of simulated fights. As training centers went, it wasn’t the most up to date, but eons ahead of what some facilities had deteriorated into.

Ivan turned and opened his arms. “I’ve been working in here for days, since before you even came into the system. It’s true that the Final Vetting is meant to recreate the exploits of my ancestor, Augustine, back when he defended Rivergaard, but it has evolved since then. We are a people of traditions, and we are survivors. Things have changed to reflect that aspect of our lives more than to simulate history. It’s become symbolic.”

“I’m not tracking the relevancy here.”

“The Final Vetting is an exercise that I am required to endure, not emerge victorious from in a martial sense. Thanks to my father, it isn’t a combat exercise anymore. As such, the only way we can really fail is if we’re forced for some reason to abort the exercise.”

“So as long as you get back from our camping trip successfully, you’re in the clear?”

“Yes, precisely . . . Rail.” Ivan’s eyes widened. “Yes, yes, I see how call signs help.”

“Stay on target.” Walter looked around. “So you’ve been logging lots of hours in the simulators here?”

Ivan clapped his hands together. “I think you took my meaning differently than I intended. Not working in the simulators, but working on simulations.”

Walter’s eyes narrowed.

“Let me explain.” Ivan walked over to one of the control stations. “As complicated as is the method of choosing a Companion, the methodology for choosing the actual course of the Final Vetting is even more bizarre. The First Families gather in councils and they all vote to select from among scenarios which have been fashioned based on historical incidents. Now, what I did was study the First Families and their voting patterns in the past, as well as their reactions to various results. I weighted each of the scenarios based on a collated tabulation of their comments concerning me. Then I ran simulations of how they will vote. Thus, with 97.32 percent accuracy, I know what scenario they’ve chosen for us. Then I ran simulations of those scenarios, based on all the data I could cull about you and anything else that will be involved—seasonal weather, blooming of plants, availability of firewood, all that. I ran everything against the strategies that worked in the past, and those that did not. As a result, I have been able to choreograph a plan which, conservatively, gives us a 99.72 percent chance of completing the scenario successfully.”

“So you’re telling me that you’ve already mapped out and scripted our route for the Vetting.” Walter held his voice level. “You know where the slag heaps will be positioned, where we’ll walk, where we’ll find potable water and kindling for our campfires. That’s what you’ve been spending your time doing.”

“Precisely.”

The mercenary scratched the back of his neck. “I suppose you included a round of DNA analysis and correlated it with your selection biases just to cover everything?”

“Good lord, no.” Ivan shivered. “No, that is not allowed.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Lieutenant, the First Families keep track of genealogies as a matter of family honor.” Ivan raised his chin. “To do any DNA analysis is so far from our tradition that it constitutes blasphemy—well, maybe only industrial espionage, though most think it blasphemy. Please, do us both a favor and don’t ever suggest we have anything to do with DNA collection or analysis. Don’t even joke about it. The suggestion that it even had been considered would be ruinous.”

Walter raised his hands in surrender. “I didn’t realize—”

“You should have.”

“Sir, this is not my world. I’ve been here a day and a half.”

“But, still—”

“No, wait, stop.” Walter swung a chair around from another control station and plopped himself in it. “This is just another distraction. Good God, you need a hell of a lot more than just a call sign.”

The Chairman Presumptive frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Walter leaned forward, massaging his temples with his fingers. “You’re smart, I give you that. I’m sure that everything you’ve just told me is true, and that margins of error—even absent DNA analysis—are tighter than Hake’s grip on a C-bill. But there’s one truth you didn’t factor in to all this. It’s an old truth, more than a thousand years old: no plan survives contact with the enemy.”

“Rail, remember the ‘enemy’ in this case is piles of debris mapped to appear to be hostile ’Mechs and vehicles.”

“That has nothing to do with anything.”

“But, you see, I have factored in—”

“I don’t care if you can read the minds of every person on this rock, or if you have a crystal ball that shows you the future, it doesn’t mean what you foresee is going to happen.” Walter pointed vaguely in the direction of the palace. “Didn’t you tell me that if you were assassinated there’d be legions of suspects?”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t do something weird? They wouldn’t cheat?”

The Chairman Presumptive’s expression sharpened. “We have traditions, Lieutenant. No one would interfere with the Final Vetting.”

“But they would murder you?”

“Well, that is a different tradition.”

The mercenary held his hands up. “No. Traditions don’t cover this.”

“But they do, Lieutenant.” Ivan exhaled heavily. “My mother likely told you that traditions are why Maldives is dying. But traditions are the reason it hasn’t died yet. After the war, after people began to drift away, tradition and family ties were all that held us together. Traditions are what tie us back to our Golden Ages. Traditions are what will let us rebuild Maldives.”

“And yet it’s tradition that prevents Abigail from being Chairperson.”

Ivan glanced at the floor. “It is, and I want to change that. My father wanted to change that. I cannot tell you how much it hurts me that my mother, as Acting Chairperson, has only been able to act in that role because I have granted her a proxy to vote Litzau Enterprises stock—but some people would have it no other way. The Dhivi who understand how good a leader my mother has been, or how good a leader Abigail would be, want to see all that changed.”

Walter shook his head. “And I’m sure there are an equal number who like the status quo. Who will stop at nothing to preserve it, even if it means violating some ancient tradition. They set up a scapegoat, destroy him, establish themselves as the new heir of Dhivi tradition and the society keeps going.”

“I . . . I . . .”

This is what Sophia warned me about. He stood and rested his hands on Ivan’s shoulders. “It’s not that you’re not smart, but you can’t know everything. Let’s assume that all the simulations you ran were 1,000 percent accurate.”

“There’s no such thing as 1,000 percent accuracy.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Sorry.”

“Even if you’re right, you are right up until the point that someone acts out of character. They have a bad dream. They can’t get their favorite wine and decide to blame you for it. No, don’t tell me that’s irrational, I’ve got a scar over my ribs from exactly that sort of thing.” Walter shook his head. “Heck, there may be players here you know nothing about, and so they aren’t even variables in your scenario.”

Ivan’s shoulders slumped. “I had dismissed that possibility.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Walter smiled and took a step back. “Look, you ran your simulations. You gotta figure that anyone planning against you has run theirs. When they look at you, what do you think they factored in as most important concerning the Final Vetting?”

Ivan scratched at his chin. “I suppose it’s the fact that I’m not terribly experienced in piloting a ’Mech.”

Fact is, kid, you really suck in a ’Mech. Walter bit his tongue. “They’re looking at what you’ve done in the past, and they’re projecting it into the future. And you may be right, that being a little rabbit happily hopping down your bunny trail will be enough to get through the Final Vetting. But as your Companion, I have to imagine there are a dozen or so foxes looking to devour you.”

“Your logic is inescapable.” The Crown Duke looked up at him. “Is it too late for us to take prudent precautions?”

“Probably. Training you up to be a true MechWarrior, that’s not going to happen.”

“Oh.”

“But I can get you good enough that piles of debris will be really sorry they tangled with you.” Walter smiled. “As for protecting you from anything more malicious, depends on how good your simulations really were. Your surveys, do they include terrain analysis?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Walter pointed at the simulator units. “Today you’re going to walk me through the Vetting route that your simulations predicted. We’re looking for secure locations where we can minimize any threats. Then, tomorrow and thereafter, we roll out in our ’Mechs and make sure the simulations match existing terrain and conditions.”

“But that will create new data for enemy simulations. Wouldn’t that be contra-indicated?”

Walter winked. “Here’s the deal. Because people love to think the worst about their enemies, we’re going to scrub our data of anything that suggests you’re getting better or reveals our plans. I let folks know that, in a ’Mech, you’re only a threat to yourself.”

Ivan pointed off to where the Angels’ ’Mechs were housed. “You will even lie to your people about me?”

“I’m your Companion. This is all need-to-know, and they don’t need to know. I trust them, but here their guard will be down and mistakes will happen.”

Ivan nodded solemnly. “My mother’s choice was perhaps more prudent than even she imagined.”

“I’d like to think so, sir.” The mercenary gave him a thumbs-up. “Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Doesn’t guarantee success, but tends to grind the edge off defeat. Right now, that’s going to have to do.”

Chapter Five

Rivergaard House, Rivergaard
Maldives

20 October 3000

Walter accepted the tumbler of whiskey from his commanding officer. “Thank you, Hake.”

The older man dropped into the chair behind his desk. “This world is incredibly weird. It’s wearing me out.”

“Should have retired before we got here.”

Hake saluted with his glass. “If I had, you’d be sitting here dealing with all the headaches.”

“Sure, but then we’d have Chris or someone else dealing with the rest of them.” Walter sipped the amber liquor. “Heck, there is no ‘rest of,’ just the one, really.”

“Progress that tough?”

“We’ve got his call sign narrowed down to four or five choices. Take that as a mark of his indecision.” Walter leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. He didn’t like lying to Hake or anyone else in the unit, but Walter had to assume he was being spied upon as a matter of course. When he got called on it, after Ivan did better than expected in the Final Vetting, he figured he’d claim the kid swore him to secrecy as a surprise for his mother. Hake would see through that dodge, but if the Acting Chairperson was generously happy, he’d be in a forgiving mood.

“I’ve been putting the best spin on things that I can, Walter, but most folks think I’m gilding a turd. Not that they don’t think the Chairman Presumptive doesn’t have talent, they just believe it lies in areas other than driving a ’Mech. This Final Vetting has some folks seriously concerned.”

Walter groaned, not having to fake that at all. “He’s real smart, Hake, smarter than anyone I’ve ever been around. He knows tons of things, maybe all the things, but he lets himself get distracted. In a simulator, he’s okay . . .”

“Good enough for the Angels?”

Walter shook his head. “We’d tell him to get four years of experience and check back.” He sat up and drank. “But actually put him in the cockpit of that Trebuchet and he moves like he’s pulling a plow. LRMs, he’s okay; with the lasers he’s no threat. But, as he says, he just has to get back in one piece. I do the heavy lifting in keeping him that way.”

Hake nodded, his jowls wobbling. “You’re his tour guide and nanny. I’d say it could be worse, but I’d be lying.”

Walter drained his glass and set the empty on Hake’s desk. “What’s your read on the politics here? Near as I can tell, everyone is related to everyone. Put two Dhivi in a room and you have four conspiracies. At dinners, people form coalitions just to get someone to pass the salt.”

“Seen that, but it’s all sound and fury.” The older man shrugged. “There’s a lot of grumbling, but it’s about as threatening as Chris or Spin when they bet too much on a crap poker hand. I don’t get the sense that anyone hates Ivan enough to actually kill him. He may not be all they’d like in a Chairman, but they figure he’s young enough and smart enough to provide more stability than those who would replace him.”

“That makes me feel a bit better, then.”

Hake finished his whiskey then set his glass next to Walter’s. “Why don’t you refill us both. You have time before dinner. We need to talk.”

“That sounds ominous.” Walter hauled himself out of the chair and made his way to the sideboard. “What’s up?”

Hake ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. “I was serious before when I talked about you taking over the Angels. You know, in my mind, I’m pretty much decided on it.”

Walter returned with the glasses half full. “What’s changed?”

The elder MechWarrior held his glass up. “You’re kinda generous with my whiskey.”

“Way you’re talking it’s going to be mine pretty soon anyway.”

“Good point.” Hake touched his glass to Walter’s. “So while you’ve been working with the kid, I’ve been making the rounds, talking to folks, and there’s been some chatter . . .”

Walter smiled broadly. “You got your eye on someone.”

“Let’s not be—”

“Did Chris’s wife set you up? She’s good, but this would be going above and beyond.”

Hake fixed him with the one-eyed death stare. “Laurie had nothing to do with it—though she did gather some information after the fact. And it’s not that this woman is the deciding factor. It’s just that I’ve come to realize that the whole ‘girl in every spaceport’ isn’t something that’s going to work for me forever, handsome as I am. So I want you to think seriously about what you see as your future with the Angels, and what you see as our future. I mean, you get the Chairman Presumptive through the Final Vetting and I’m sure he’d be happy to make the Angels an adjunct unit to the Litzau Lancers. Take a couple-year gig here, get everyone healthy, then, like you said before, you go to Galatea and pull some lucrative contracts.”

“Hake, I can’t buy the unit from you.”

“Son, I’m not looking to cash out.” Hake smiled. “If this thing works out here on Maldives, cash isn’t going to be my problem. I just want to see that everyone gets taken care of, and you’re the guy who can do that. Leastways, that’s my thinking.”

Walter sat forward, cupping the crystal glass in both hands. All this he’s saying, and here I am lying to him. I can’t . . . “Look, Hake—”

“No, stop there, Walter. This isn’t a decision you need to make right now. We’re not talking about it any more—at least, not until the Final Vetting is over, right?”

The younger man looked up. “Okay, deal.”

“Good. Good.” Hake smiled broadly. “Now, here’s another thing, this Final Vetting, there is betting on it. Lots of odd stuff, like what you’re going to be eating out there, how often he gets distracted by flowers, that kind of thing. There’s some serious money going down on how efficient he’s going to be in shooting up the simulated targets. How many shots per, weapon choices. Care to help a buddy out?”

“Missiles, mostly. He likes the pyrotechnics. Lasers, well, beams travel in a straight line except when he shoots them. Hell, half the time I take cover, and I’m usually behind him.”

“The over on attacks-per is seven and a half.”

“The targets have to go down in less than eight shots for you to win?” Walter snorted. “Take all the action you can on the under, and give odds. Long odds.”

Hake arched an eyebrow. “I thought you said the kid isn’t any good.”

“He isn’t, Hake.” Walter winked. “But Companion shots only count for half, and I am that good. And then some.”

Sophia gave the blue sash on her brother’s uniform a tiny tug to set it perfectly in place. “There’s something different about you. What?”

“I am uncomfortable with my Companion.”

“With Walter?” Sophia’s stomach fluttered. “Do you fear someone has bribed him or . . .”

Ivan’s reflection stared back at her from the full-length mirror. “You have spent enough time with him in conversation over dinners. Do you think he could be bought?”

“No, but you are not answering my question.”

“The two of you share that predilection for being quite direct.”

“Ivan, you do not win this game. Not with me.”

He smiled. “Steeped as we are in tradition here—shackled by it, really—I was comfortable. My course in life, the family’s work, it really left me no doubt about anything. But Walter, free as he is, provides a different perspective. It’s unsettling. Am I wrong, or is this something you have seen in him, too?”

Sophia turned away, hiding the flush rising to her cheeks. “I do find him intriguing. And I trust him. I think he sees more than he lets on, but keeps his own counsel.”

“How far would you trust him?”

She spun to face her brother. “What are you thinking, Ivan?”

“Just that our work might require some outside support.”

Sophia hesitated. “I don’t know, Ivan. Perhaps, after the Final Vetting. After he proves himself . . . Father’s plans never mentioned . . .”

“But did not rule out off-world help.”

“But he did warn of off-world interference.” She frowned. “So many families have mythologized what Maldives was before the war. They want a return to that glorious age, and are willing to court external forces to win themselves a place in the future. But Maldives’s future is not in a return to the past.”

“Agreed.”

Ivan’s sister laughed. “And once again, you have wandered away from the subject I asked about. Are you uncomfortable with your Companion, or uncomfortable about the Final Vetting?”

Ivan ran a hand over his forehead. “The Final Vetting, of course. To fail would be unbearable, but to succeed could be worse. It will trigger so many intrigues that surviving the ordeal will seem simple by comparison.”

“But that, dear brother, is a problem for the Chairman to solve.” Sophia linked her arm through his and steered him toward the door of his chamber. “Think first about getting through dinner, then the Final Vetting. All else will sort itself out in due time, I have no fear.”

Rivergaard Rangers Security Services Headquarters, Rivergaard
Maldives

Lieutenant Aaron Doukas paused in the doorway to Richard Oglethorpe’s office. “You asked for me, sir?”

The dark-haired unit commander glanced up from his desk. “Yes, I’ve been going over the unit performance assessments.” He tapped a finger against the desk’s glass top and the monitor beneath it. “I don’t like what I see. Not at all.”

“Sir?” The subordinate officer stiffened. “The numbers—”

“The numbers better not tell the whole story.” Richard stood, then glanced past Aaron, toward the office beyond. People were staring. “Come inside. Close the door.”

“Yes, sir.” Aaron kept his voice subdued. A tall, stocky man, he moved stiffly, as if dreading the dressing-down that was coming. He caught a couple of gasps from the office staff before he closed the door behind him.

Richard remained stiff and formal, again tapping a finger against the glass. Though electronic countermeasures would hamper any attempts to eavesdrop on the conversation, the glass wall behind him opened toward the city. Observers could easily catch a visual, so his body language had to belie his words. “I will make this up to you, of course.”

Aaron, playing his part, nodded once, sharply. “I understand, sir.”

“Preparations for our little ordeal are set, then?”

“Yes, sir. Those who don’t need to know, don’t know. All of them will comply, however.” Aaron pointed toward the desk. “The Rangers are all unfailingly loyal to you, Director.”

“I had no doubt.” Richard came out from behind the desk and paused in front of a static holograph of himself as a boy wearing a MechWarrior’s cooling vest, shorts and boots. He stood with his father—a man stouter than Richard was now, but there could be no mistaking their relationship. “Twenty-six years ago, the last Final Vetting. It should have ended in ten hours, fourteen at the most. But when it went on, it set things in motion. When they believed Chairman Thomas was lost, people jockeyed for position. My father, he became one of the leading candidates . . . the leading candidate. Many had said they would surrender their proxies to him, and he was willing to accept the responsibility of the office.”

Richard turned and half smiled. “But his willingness to serve, his devotion to Maldives, his respect for our traditions, it went unrecognized. And—I am sorry, Aaron, I know you are from not Maldives, so all this must seem curiously quaint to you.”

The bearded MechWarrior shook his head. “I understand family and obligation, sir. I may not be Dhivi, but when my unit fell apart, you were willing to hire me into the Rangers. The Rangers are my family—your family. I have no doubt your father would have been a brilliant Chairman.”

Richard, playing for any distant observers, stabbed a finger at his subordinate. “This is why I have entrusted you with this operation. Now, I expect you to post my assessment of these results. You’ll revoke leaves for the Rangers during the rest of the Vesting Celebration, and schedule them for more training, especially up against the Final Vetting itself.”

“There will be grumbling.”

“Good. The only time anyone believes a soldier is telling the truth is when he’s complaining.” Richard, his back to the windows, flashed his subordinate a quick smile then returned to his desk. “Now, I need you to leave so I can dress for dinner. And please, forgive me.”

Aaron Doukas nodded, then opened the door. “Yes, sir.”

“And, Lieutenant . . .” Richard let his voice carry. “Just because certain entitled individuals believe they can get away with slovenly and sloppy performance piloting a ’Mech, my Rangers cannot. If you cannot make them understand that, there will be changes. Drastic changes. You earn a berth in the Rangers. It’s not a birthright. Do you understand?”

Aaron raised his chin, then saluted. “Yes, sir.”

“Good, go.” Richard narrowed his eyes. “And if the next assessment is this bad, just pack your bags and get off Maldives. Failure will never be tolerated while I continue to draw breath.”

Chapter Six

Litzau Lancers Garrison, Rivergaard
Maldives

6 November 3000

Walter stood at the feet of his Blackjack, staring up at it. The humanoid BattleMech had been painted in woodland camo to match Destrier. The Blackjack had a barrel chest that featured two medium lasers. Each arm ended in a pair of muzzles, the primary for a small autocannon and secondary for an additional medium laser. It boasted a fair amount of firepower for a ’Mech its size.

He patted the ’Mech’s foot. If your true owner is going to reclaim you, please, not here, not now. I need you. He smiled, content the war machine didn’t answer him, and that he heard no sirens suggesting law enforcement had finally tracked him down.

“Lieutenant, I know you’re going to be the best Companion my brother could have gotten.”

Walter spun on his heel. “Sophia, what are you doing here? I thought you’d be at corporate headquarters to monitor things with the others.”

Sophia laughed easily. “One of the reasons I spend so much time in the field, studying plants and bugs and critters, is that I can only take so much human company.”

“I never would have known that given how much I’ve seen of you during the Vesting Ceremonies.” Walter smiled genuinely. As she’d warned that first night, he’d found himself between her and her sister at a number of functions. Abigail had been coolly cordial. Sophia had been much more sociable, bringing him up to speed on the interpersonal politics within the network of First Families. She seemed quite at ease with others, introducing him to more people than he could ever hope to remember. “If you were at all uneasy, you had me fooled.”

“I was raised in the corporate world, so I know how to fake it. Spending time crowded into a modest venue with people I don’t know, watching a holographic recreation of what you and Ivan are, in theory, doing on the battlefield has no appeal for me.” She pointed back toward the simulation room. “I’ll watch direct feeds from in there, and then perhaps wander over to be sociable after the crowd thins.”

“One thing I need to ask you.”

“Yes.”

“You likely know the terrain we’re going to be traveling through better than most. I’m sure you could find your way through without any satellite positioning gear.”

“And can’t wait to get back out there.” Concern crept onto her face. “What’s going on?”

“I tweaked some equipment in my Blackjack and in Destrier. The satellite data that’s going into the displays will report us being a kilometer west and south of where we really are. You’ll know the landmarks aren’t where they appear to be on the map. And I even had one of the Angels go out and move the holovision recorders at our campsites. The signal repeaters will show us to be in the expected location, but we won’t be.”

Sophia’s eyes tightened for a moment. “Do you think there is an active threat against Ivan, or are you just necessarily cautious?”

“I’ve never really taken to the idea of folks knowing where I am when I’m out in a war machine. Unless they have hostile intent, they don’t need to know; if they do, I don’t want them to know.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Some people will consider this sort of thing cheating.”

“Probably, and I’ll take the heat for it. I’d rather apologize for being cautious than have your brother die because I wasn’t.” Walter shrugged. “I actually wanted some of the Angels to shadow us, but Ivan said that would be going a bit too far.”

Sophia nodded. “It would have been, but I am thankful you are on my brother’s side.”

“If you don’t point out the geographical anomalies, I think we should be in the clear.”

“And Ivan knows?”

“Yes. Being rather prudent, he has very reluctantly endorsed my effort.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” She leaned in on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Promise me you won’t let anything happen to him.”

“You have my word.” Walter gave her a quick nod, then mounted the gantry steps to the ’Mech’s access point. With every step she grew smaller and smaller, heading toward where her brother stood beneath Destrier. Somehow he looks even smaller than she does.

Walter entered the Blackjack’s cockpit through a small round hatch close to where the thing’s ear canal would have been. He sealed the armored door tight, then slid onto the command couch. He pulled up the cooling cable and snapped it into the slot on the cooling vest’s side. Piloting a ’Mech required him to be seated atop of a fusion reactor, using weapons and actuators that kicked out a lot of heat. MechWarriors were known to quip that it was like being in the heart of a star, but without any of the fun parts of that experience. The cooling vest recirculated coolant, which lowered the chances of him suffering a fatal case of heat stroke.

He reached up and pulled his neurohelmet from its perch above and behind his head. It rested heavily on his shoulders, and sensors pressed in a tight crown around his brow. They’d harvest neural impulses governed by his own sense of balance and translate those to the computers driving the ’Mech’s gyrostabilizers. He applied other sensors to his arms and legs with adhesive pads, then plugged their leads into the neurohelmet near his throat. That interface system allowed him to maneuver the ’Mech as if he was wearing it, allowing him to bring it to battle.

Once he had the helmet in place, he cinched it down to the cooling vest, then buckled himself into the command couch. He smiled. No matter where he went, what the weather or politics or his financial status dictated, he always felt at home in the cockpit. He shifted his body a bit, settling in, and tightened the safety harnesses.

I am good to go.

Walter punched the initiation code into a keypad on the command console. Lights began to flicker as various monitors came on line. A tone sounded in the speakers built into the helmet.

He cleared his throat. “Pattern check: Walter de Mesnil.”

The verification system responded quickly. “Voice Print Match obtained. Proceed.”

“Authorization code: Werewolves weave wretched rags.”

“Confirmed, Lieutenant de Mesnil. Weapon systems engaged.”

Walter’s primary and secondary monitors lit up. The larger monitor depicted bar graphs of the ’Mech’s weapons systems. They all showed green, which meant the medium lasers and autocannons were fully operational.

The fact that there wasn’t any active opposition force for the Final Vetting by no means meant the exercise wouldn’t be dangerous. Walter didn’t know if past Vettings had resulted in fatalities, but soldiers got killed in live-fire exercises all the time. Lasers, missiles and projectiles could malfunction, causing internal damage in the ’Mech, and possibly even lighting off a series of devastating explosions in an ammo compartment. Moreover, simply walking a ’Mech off the side of a mountain would do just as much damage as a pitched battle, and seldom provided a pilot a chance to eject safely.

Walter hit a combination of buttons that took the ’Mech’s heat meters from the secondary monitor and put them on the auxiliary monitor. He then put a small map of the local terrain on the secondary monitor. He smiled as icons representing the repositioned cameras slowly populated the area. Though he had not mentioned it to either Ivan or Sophia, he’d be calling up spot video checks for security purposes as they worked through the Final Vetting. It might be cheating, but doesn’t feel that bad when I’m the one doing it.

Lastly he brought up the holographic combat display. He left it on vislight initially, so the display floated a 360-degree image of the hangar before him, shrinking it into a 160-degree display. Golden lines defined the edges of the ’Mech’s forward firing arcs, and a pair of blue lines defined the rear arc. The joysticks at the end of either arm on the command couch controlled the aiming reticles. They drifted over the display as he ran through a targeting check. Tightening up on the joystick triggers would fire the weapons.

He keyed his radio. “Rail is green and hot.”

Ivan’s voice came back quietly. “Spurs is green and hot.”

Walter half grinned. While Ivan had gotten somewhat better during their training runs, he’d not exhibited any particular behavior that lent itself to the natural development of a call sign nickname. Ivan had been trying too hard and thinking about everything, almost never letting himself get caught up in the flow of the moment. The few times he did, his surprise and joy kicked him out of the instant, then he thought hard to get back into it.

The only thing he did without fail or thought was to wear old cavalry spurs on his boots. He wasn’t the first MechWarrior to do that—and wearing spurs was no less impractical than carrying a knife or wearing a pistol in the cockpit. When Walter had asked about the spurs, Ivan said they were the spurs his father had worn during his Final Vetting.

Walter had nodded and said, “Spurs it is, or you are,” and Ivan hadn’t raised even the hint of a protest.

“After you, Spurs.” Walter kept his Blackjack in the hangar stall as the Chairman Presumptive stepped Destrier through the half-empty hangar. After a brief ceremony in which the Litzau Lancers had all wished Ivan well, the Lancers headed out to Litzau Enterprises headquarters to flank the driveway and welcome esteemed visitors.

That left the Angels in the hangar. They lined up at the feet of their ’Mechs to wish Walter and his charge well. Unlike the Lancers—who were 60 percent women, and all looking quite disciplined in dress uniforms—the Angels affected more casual and irregular dress, quite in the spirit of the celebrations going on throughout the city. Still, as Destrier strode past, the Angels saluted solemnly and Walter felt a bit of a lump rising in his throat.

Ivan marched Destrier straight out into the sunlight. The Trebuchet’s leaner lines made it look positively noble compared to the blocky Blackjack—Ivan’s Don Quixote to Walter’s Sancho Panza. It hadn’t been lost upon Walter that a big portion of the Final Vetting was intended to be a spectacle that would cast Ivan as a capable and fearless leader. Until they got into the countryside, Walter was content to follow at a respectful distance and foster that illusion.

The BattleMechs stalked through Rivergaard, marching down the middle of roads lined with Dhivi throngs. Banners hung from buildings. Pennants flew from roofs, and people waved flags with the Litzau corporate crest, or the planetary flag, and sometimes both. The First Family members wore better clothes and tended to be stationed in upper-story windows. The rest of the populace remained closer to the ground, and yet cheered more enthusiastically than their upper-crust fellows.

They passed through the city, then, toward the northern border, they paused within sight of the Litzau Enterprises headquarters. Warded by the Lancers, the building had a classical feel, with tall columns and a portico roof crowded with the First Family elite, their guests and other people of importance. Brightly colored bunting undulated with the light breeze.

The Acting Chairperson saluted them from a dais toward the front. Her voice filled the cockpit, her pride unmistakable. “This is your last task, Ivan Litzau. The Final Vetting. Return victorious, and you prove that Litzau Enterprises will prosper long and well beneath your leadership.”

Around her the throngs of Dhivi nobles applauded. Some stood and, very reluctantly, others slowly joined them. Walter looked for Hake among the crowd, but couldn’t find him. Likely off getting a beer.

Ivan’s reply to his mother contained only a tiny hint of anxiety. “For the company, our shareholders, the First Families and the memory of my father, I shall not fail.”

Applause again sounded, but people quickly sat back down.

Alexandra Litzau gave no sign she noticed anything but the two BattleMechs before her. “Go with God, my son.”

Walter choked down the lump thickening his throat. Ivan surprised him by executing a crisp turn to the right, then marching Destrier up toward the hinterlands. Walter kept up with him until the switchback road emerged onto a plateau. A few holographers—mostly professionals, but a few well-wishing amateurs—had set up there for some final shots. Once past them, Walter took point.

He keyed his radio. “Flip over to Tac Two.” He punched a button on his communications console to switch radio frequencies. “You ready, Spurs?”

“Yes.” Ivan’s voice betrayed just a hint of nerves. “So, to Hard Luck Point?”

“That’s the first stop on our tour. Fast as we can get there. Watch your six, Spurs.”

“Roger, Rail.”

Walter took the lead, pounding through the landscape as quickly as possible. The zone they were to explore occupied parts of three plateaus, each of which was about three hundred meters higher than the previous. The Nyqvist River flowed from the last down into the Rivergaard Valley and out to the delta. The general flow from the highlands supplied each of the plateaus with a riparian area, with forests predominating over rolling hills. Some rocky areas were the result of old glaciers moving big rocks around in the distant past. A nature preserve defined the area’s northeast border.

Traveling into which constitutes a level of offense that Ivan said would cause his sister to murder us.

Hard Luck Point was Ivan’s designation for a place where a meadow ended at the conjunction of two lines of hills. Getting out of the meadow and moving up required traversing a narrow pass. It would have been a perfect spot for an ambush, except that forces that worked their way north and then around could shred the ambushers with ease. His ancestor, Augustine, had killed some planetary raiders in the area—so legend went—and tradition held that all Final Vetting runs would proceed through that pass.

Walter looked up at the holographic display. Destrier followed closely, but lost a step every time Ivan concentrated on their back trail. He had gotten much better at piloting the Trebuchet, but taking it on parades or hikes through the countryside wasn’t the same as piloting a ’Mech in combat.

Thank goodness no one is shooting at us. Walter shifted his shoulders, easing the weight of the neurohelmet. Three days, two hundred kilometers, he can do this. This is the hard part for me. Glanced at the Trebuchet in the holodisplay’s rear firing arc. After this, Spurs gets to administrate a planet-straddling corporation. There will be a point when he wishes someone had shot at him and put him out of his misery.

Chapter Seven

Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

6 November 3000

Four hours into the countryside, Walter and Ivan reached their first way station. The only thing remarkable about it was that the clearing was large enough that the light from their campfire barely reached their parked ’Mechs. Walter, who had never been very woodsy, had wanted to gather wood and ignite it with a shot from a laser, but Ivan had been included to hew to tradition.

“Besides, Walter, the ’Mech’s lasers would consume all the wood all at once.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t thinking of the ’Mech.” Walter jerked a thumb at the laser carbine he’d rested against a fallen log. “I tend to match weapon to task whenever possible.”

“Oh, I see.”

As Ivan ignited the fire with flint and steel, Walter rolled out bedding from their survival kits. Weather forecasts hadn’t indicated any rain—par for the course during Deep Summer—so they’d sleep out under the stars. The fire wasn’t even really necessary, since the night was warm enough that Walter anticipated sleeping on top of his bedding, but making fire was integral to the whole Final Vetting.

A demonstration of cooking was not, so they settled for prepackaged meals. Ivan did produce a coffeepot and set water boiling at the edge of the fire, however, and poured grounds from a small container into it.

“Either you don’t know how to make coffee, or someone has told you how mercenaries like it.”

The young man looked up. “I don’t know how to make it, and I don’t even drink it. My ancestor . . .”

“I’m gathering Augustine probably ground beans by chewing them, and sprayed coffee over his enemies, defeating them handily.” Walter smiled. “Part of the ritual, I understand. Makes for good optics.”

Ivan glanced to where a camera had been hung on a tree. Little more than a game camera, it sent occasional pictures back to Rivergaard to augment news reporting during the course of the Final Vetting. “I can’t imagine what people are thinking back home as they watch. I suppose some will be satisfied with my father’s adjustments to the company tradition, but others will be angry that we aren’t trading fire with other BattleMechs. And many more will rightly wonder what this sort of excursion has to do with my ability to administer the affairs of the planetary corporation.”

“Practicality versus tradition seems to be front and center a lot here. Makes for many strange things.”

“Such as?”

Walter ripped open a foil packet and speared what appeared to be a lump of meat on the end of his spork. “Women can’t own or vote stock, but it appears most of the Litzau Lancers are female. They’re trusted with defending the corporation, but not handling business affairs. That makes very little sense.”

“The Lancers always have had a strong female-warrior tradition. Augustine took his wife from the Lancers, and my father chose one of them to be his Companion. Then he married her.” Ivan peered cautiously into the packet he’d opened. “Are peas supposed to be that color?”

“Yeah, if there’s even a hint of green you know someone didn’t extract all the nutritional value.” Walter gnawed on the stew meat for a bit. “Why isn’t Abigail in the Lancers?”

“She was, once. She was very good.” The Chairman Presumptive shrugged. “Everyone told her that she’d be great as my Companion, and years of that just got to her. The same bit of unfairness you just noted caused her to resign. Well, that, and the fact that she’ll be married off to some other corporate family to make an alliance.”

“You’d make your own sister do that?”

Ivan shifted around so his back was to the camera, and then dropped his voice into a low whisper. “If it were up to me, or when it is up to me, I’d just as soon change things so she could be the Chairperson, and I’d resign in her favor. I know that would be a popular and positive change—unless you’re one of the First Family scions—and was what my father had hoped for. Abigail doesn’t believe we can change that fast and it makes her angry.”

“Not a surprise.” Walter nodded. “If she’s as good a MechWarrior as you hinted, I’m surprised she’s not headed off world to find a job.”

“As much as she hates the position that tradition has saddled her with, she does have a sense of duty to the family. She’s not alone. Sophia is very good as a researcher and could do fantastic things elsewhere, but duty to family keeps her here.”

Something about Sophia being married off to a salaryman simply to spawn some corporate joint venture sparked quick anger in Walter. “I think it would be a shame to waste either of your sisters that way.”

“We agree.” Ivan smiled. “Get me through this, Walter, and I promise that I will make the changes necessary to let everyone live the lives they desire.”

“That’s a deal, sir. In fact—”

A rising growl cut Walter off. He dropped his food and spork, then stood and reached for the laser rifle. He looked up as the sound grew in intensity. It seemed to be coming from the northeast, and from up in the sky. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, and yet the sound soured Walter’s stomach.

“Spurs, quick, mount up. Now!”

Two swept-wing Stingray aerospace fighters screamed overhead, flying just a meter or two above the forest canopy. They raced southwest, the roar of their engines resonating through Walter’s chest. A heartbeat later, red beams from medium lasers carved branches from trees. The blue beams from particle projection cannons shattered evergreens as the artificial lightning caressed them. Then the green beams from the aerospace fighters’ large lasers burned two furrows through the forest.

Walter’s mouth went dry. Right where Chris placed the camera’s signal repeater.

Ivan froze in a crouch beside the fire. Walter ran to him and yanked him to his feet. “Move it, now!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Those people who don’t like change? They just showed you how much they truly hate it.” Walter shoved Ivan toward his ’Mech. “They missed with their first shot. Let’s not give them a second one.”

Litzau Lancers Garrison, Rivergaard
Maldives

Sophia stared at the screens in the simulation center. The grainy images of Ivan and Walter around a campfire dissolved into gray static. She leaned forward and smacked the side of the monitor with the heel of her hand, but the picture remained lost. I wonder what happened.

Before she had a chance to even begin trying to figure things out, aerospace fighters roared overhead, shaking the garrison hangar. Gunfire followed in a staccato series of pops. That’s close. That’s very close. She vaulted from her chair and ran to the hallway. “What’s going on?”

Men and women, faces hidden by masks, streamed in through the museum. Many wore the same cooling vests and boots that her brother and Walter had donned for the Final Vetting, but none of their uniforms bore the insignia of the Litzau Lancers. Dread raked icy claws through her guts.

Sophia ran the other way down the corridor, and burst out into daylight through a pair of fire doors. Explosions flashed to the southeast. Black smoke rose from several buildings. The fighters she’d heard before looped up through the sky, and then swooped and leveled out for another ground-attack run.

She would have stood and watched, but a red laser bolt burned a hole in the door she’d just used. She cut right, heading toward the street, then dodged behind ferrocrete barriers that had served to keep spectators clear of Destrier’s march. She forced her hands into fists to stop their shaking, but the quivering just transferred itself to her legs. She dropped to her knees and tried to make herself as small as possible.

A Locust BattleMech in the black-with-gold paint scheme of the Rivergaard Municipal Constabulary bounded up the street toward the garrison hangar. The back-bent legs carried it quickly enough, with the machine-gun pods on either wing covering the sidewalks. The medium laser jutting from the forward-thrusting torso left no doubt about the ’Mech’s firepower, but the Constabulary used it primarily for crowd control. Sophia didn’t know where it had come from, or where the pilot meant to take it, but she doubted it would get very far.

One of the Angel’s smaller BattleMechs marched from the hangar. The humanoid Commando boasted two sets of short-range missile launchers and a medium laser in the left arm. For a heartbeat Sophia hoped the pilot had been fortunate enough to be already in the cockpit when the hangar had been invaded. When the Commando turned to block the Locust’s path, she concluded the pilot had been with the raiders—though his taking command of the ’Mech so quickly suggested he currently served in the Angels and had sold out to the people attacking the garrison.

The Commando’s medium laser raked a crimson beam up the Locust’s machine-gun pod. Molten ceramic armor dropped away in flaming gobbets. Two SRMs, launched from the Commando’s right arm, slammed into the damaged arm, exploding in the interior. One missile spent its fury gnawing through myomer muscle tissue. The other shattered ferro-titanium internal structures. Sparks exploded and the pod swung uselessly at the ’Mech’s side.

The Constable in the Locust had to have known he was outgunned, but he did not retreat his ’Mech. Instead, he triggered the ’Mech’s medium laser. The searing beam of coherent light stabbed into the Commando’s right side. Melted armor sloughed off the ’Mech’s flank, but the beam failed to breach the protection.

The traitorous Angel launched a half-dozen SRMs, which scattered themselves over the smaller ’Mech. Two blasted in through the hole previously rent in the BattleMech. The missile detonated deep inside the war machine. Smoke billowed out and the whole pod disintegrated. Then the Commando’s laser beam lanced through the blackened cavity. Metal glowed red from within, then the Locust lurched badly to the side. It collided with the ferrocrete barriers on the far side of the street, then toppled over.

“You there!”

Sophia looked up at the shout. She started to stand and raise her hands in defense, but it was too late.

The laser rifle’s butt slammed into the side of her head, and her world went black.

Chapter Eight

Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

6 November 3000

Walter slung the laser rifle over his shoulder and scrambled up the rope ladder hanging from his ’Mech’s right shoulder. He made it halfway up the Blackjack’s chest height when small-arms laser fire flashed angry red bolts past him. He leaped from the ladder, nestled himself in the crook of the ’Mech’s elbow and started trading shots.

Spurs, get the hell out of here. Walter waved at Ivan’s ’Mech, hoping his charge understood. Soldiers with laser rifles weren’t a threat to Destrier, but they could direct the aerospace fighters on a return trip. Ivan’s chance of survival would be for him to get as far away from them as he could, even though his running off would all but guarantee that crunch stew from a pouch would be Walter’s last meal.

Two more bolts sizzled past Walter. One had come at a sharp upward angle, which put the soldier near their campfire. Walter reached his rifle around and blindly fired in the soldier’s direction. A return bolt hit the laser rifle, melting through the barrel and making it too hot to hold on to.

Having no desire to die a hypocrite, Walter didn’t start praying. Instead he leaped up, grabbed the highest rung he could reach on the ladder, and raced upward. If you bastards let me make it to the cockpit, you will rue the day.

Two small bolts blackened paint either side of him. He smiled, barely three meters from the cockpit’s armored sanctuary. Then he felt it. A rising heat; and saw a red glow blossoming. Hey, you gave it a good try.

From behind and below him, scarlet beams stabbed out. Designed to melt thick sheets of ferro-ceramic armor on a BattleMech, the Trebuchet’s medium lasers burned through simple uniforms in a nanosecond. Flesh and bone were as nothing. Even a close miss with one of those beams turned a man into a living torch.

Walter reached the Blackjack’s shoulder and crouched. Destrier, washed in gold by the campfire and a trio of new fires, turned right. Coruscating red beams lanced through the night and pierced the underbrush. They scorched a path to a Packrat LRP vehicle. In a flash they cored through the vehicle’s side armor, transforming the interior into an inferno. The vehicle exploded, the shrapnel killing any of the men who’d somehow escaped a fiery death.

Walter dove into the cockpit and strapped himself into the command couch. He pulled on his neurohelmet and glanced at his secondary monitor’s local map. He immediately keyed the radio. “Spurs, cut northwest for a klick, into that ravine. Get low.”

Destrier broke right, then back toward the northwest. Walter’s Blackjack backed to the west. He studied their back trail for any other signs of life. He saw nothing but small fires, but that did little to quell the roiling in his belly. If those fighters come back right away, we’re dead.

Walter spotted Destrier beginning its descent into the ravine he’d mentioned. “Spurs, you need to pull your radio and transponder. We don’t want the fighters coming back and tracking us by comms traffic.”

“I don’t know how to do that, Rail.” Nerves sent a tremor through Ivan’s voice. “I’m lost here, completely lost.”

“You’re not lost, Spurs. You did great.” Walter pounded a fist against the arm of his command couch. “It’s going to be okay. Right now, open the panel below your communications console. Third circuit board from the left. Should be edged in red.”

“Got it.”

“Good, pull it out. It’ll kill communications, but also our transponders. Do it before the fighters come back.”

Ivan must have complied because static crackled through the helmet speakers.

Walter pulled the same circuit board and silence filled the cockpit, giving him a moment to think. The fighters had likely come in with only passive sensors employed, so they wouldn’t tip off the strafing run. With any luck the fighters will believe they got us on that first attack, and none of their boys survived to tell them any different.

He sighed. The troopers Ivan had killed had likely been stationed in the area to confirm the kill, or finish things off if they needed to. We likely have ten to twenty minutes before the fighters worry about lack of ground confirmation.

The mercenary followed Destrier into the ravine. If the aerospace fighters came back, the ravine’s narrow opening meant that no matter which set of sensors the pilots employed, they’d get only a momentary flicker of a hit. At speed, the fighters would need at least twenty kilometers to loop back, carrying them all the way to Rivergaard before the return trip. It wouldn’t take them that long, but it would be sufficient time for Walter and Ivan to move into a side branch of the ravine. There they might not be detected at all or only as a random reading.

Hiding and running isn’t a game that can be played for a long time. Walter had to assume that whatever cabal fielded the fighters and soldiers had likely also deployed BattleMechs. It only made sense, and even lacking evidence of ’Mech deployment, Walter’s only prudent course was to assume they were actively being hunted. He racked his brain trying to recall any location that would give them a fighting chance of survival.

Is there a safe haven?

Destrier stopped ahead of him and raised his closed left fist to signal a stop.

Walter complied, pointing skyward with the Blackjack’s left arm.

Destrier pointed at a spot a hundred meters further on, then waved Walter toward it. The mercenary couldn’t see anything special about that location, then shifted over to magnetic resonance. Oh, clever boy.

The Concordat-Magistracy War may have ended a hundred and ninety years ago, but Maldives still bore proof of the fierce fighting that had characterized the conflict. Ample amounts of wreckage still littered the landscape. Time had allowed nature to heal most of the scars, but huge chunks of metal still lay buried beneath the forest floor. The spot to which Destrier directed Walter showed up like a giant dinner platter on magres scanners.

Walter planted his Blackjack squarely in the circle’s center. Fifty meters south, Ivan stopped his Trebuchet atop a jagged sliver of metal. Walter flipped through the variety of map overlays available and added two to his secondary monitor while they waited. One map leopard-spotted metallic debris sites over the landscape, and the other used shades of red and yellow to pinpoint areas of ecological interest. We have plenty of magres hiding places, but that’s only going to shield us from satellite and fighter surveillance. If we remain in place, any ’Mechs they have hunting us are going to track us down.

The pair of aerospace fighters soared by overhead, but no energy beams wrought havoc on the forest. They continued on to the northeast, disappearing within the depths of the forest canopy. By the time echoes of their passage had died in the cockpit, Ivan had Destrier up and moving east. He took the ’Mech from point to point over debris sites and Walter paralleled his course.

Why this way? Walter looked at the map. Going into the Preserve isn’t going to help us now. Those fighters aren’t playing by civilized rules.

Ivan pushed his ’Mech as quickly as it would go, taking them across the Preserve’s western border. To Ivan it might have made an odd sort of sense: maybe he thought their enemies would expect that they’d feel committed to remaining outside the nature preserve. But Ivan’s course headed them directly into the ecological red zone, which included a big lake. According to the topographical data, it was as much as a kilometer and a half deep out in the center.

Despite the seriousness of their situation, it seemed out of character for Ivan to push them into the Preserve. Walter touched his monitor’s screen and data poured onto the auxiliary monitor. Lac du Vallee was the centerpiece of a very fragile ecosystem which was reported to be precariously close to complete collapse. Plants, fish, birds and small mammals all appeared on a list that showed declining populations. As nearly as Walter could make out, just looking at a map of the area was enough to cause a mass extinction event.

Destrier moved out into the open for the last hundred meters to the lake’s shore. Ivan’s ’Mech raised a hand and waved Walter on after him. Then Destrier marched directly east, water rising up to the Trebuchet’s waist.

And, one step further, the war machine sank beneath a froth of rising bubbles.

I’m sure it seemed like a good idea, but . . .

Walter waded into the murky water behind Destrier. According to the topographical data, the lake became deep gradually. Ivan never should have sunk there. Walter figured the data was old and Ivan was in trouble, so he plunged in after him.

As his ’Mech sank, Walter hit the external lights. The mud they’d churned walking into the lake reduced visibility to nothing for the first ten meters of descent. Then, in the corner of his holographic display, Walter caught sight of a floating ball marked “10/30.” As he drifted down, a second marked “20/30” greeted him. Twenty meters down, so this is thirty here.

The jolt as the Blackjack hit bottom surprised Walter. He’d expected to sink shin deep in the same sort of muck as rimmed the lake, but he hit something solid instead. The Blackjack staggered, but Walter kept it upright, gaining firm footing on a ferrocrete landing pad.

He brought the Blackjack around, following Destrier as it walked to the west. Ivan’s machine began to shrink as it worked its way up a ramp. Walter mounted it as well, and the Blackjack’s head broke the surface of the water. Both BattleMechs emerged into a manmade cavern complete with eight ’Mech bays, all of which stood empty.

Walter parked the Blackjack in a stall next to Destrier, then popped himself free of his command couch and neurohelmet. He crouched beside the couch, pulled a needle pistol and holster from a small compartment, then cracked open the cockpit. He climbed out onto the Blackjack’s shoulder, then leaped the small gap to the gantry. He quickly ran around to Ivan’s stall and extended the gantry there just in time for the Chairman Presumptive to emerge.

Walter unzipped his cooling vest. He wanted to pepper Ivan with questions, but the Chairman Presumptive stopped on Destrier’s shoulder. All the blood drained from his face. He shivered, then bent over and vomited all over the ’Mech’s back.

“It’s okay, Spurs. Isn’t a one of us hasn’t done that.” Walter held his hand out. “Come on.”

Ivan wiped his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. “The . . . it . . . they . . .”

“You did what you had to do. You saved my ass.” Walter waved him forward, then slipped an arm around Ivan’s ribs. “Kind of ironic, huh, Spurs, you saving me. Twice, in fact.”

“Twice?”

“Yeah, first time when you cleared them from the camp. Second, getting us here. If not for you, the fighters would have burned us on their second pass.”

Ivan’s mumbled “thank you” never rose above the level of a whisper.

“The important thing is that we’re not dead. Important for all the obvious reasons.” Walter guided them down to the hangar deck and to the left, toward a man-sized door built into the wall. “I want to keep it that way. I need to know who knows this place is here and how long will it take them to take another shot at us.”

Ivan reached out, opening the door. Motion sensors lit up wall sconces along the corridor beyond. “It will take a while, Walter. You’re one of a handful of people on Maldives who knows about this location. To everyone else, including the satellites above, this place does not exist. It’s far enough down that sensors aren’t going to detect it. Short of stumbling onto it accidentally, no one will ever find us. We’ve essentially fallen off the edge of the world.”

Walter steered Ivan into a small office with a window overlooking the hangar and settled him into a chair. “What is this place?”

“The future.” Ivan sighed. “And quite likely the reason they want me dead.”

Walter left Ivan in the chair and scouted around in the base. He passed by a number of doors that were secured with biometric locks. He found two stairwells and a lift that serviced lower levels, but kept to the main one. He located a canteen, so freed up bottles of water and some packaged foods. He hauled them back to Ivan and laid them out on the desk.

“I don’t feel hungry.”

“Yeah, well, you need to drink something and eat while you can. Every soldier knows that.”

The Chairman Presumptive looked up. “But I’m not a soldier, am I?”

“Close enough that we’re not dead out there.”

“You’re giving me too much credit, Walter, I wasn’t thinking. I just . . . the only thing I could do was . . .”

Walter cracked open a bottle of water and handed it to Ivan. “Listen up, Spurs. What you did or didn’t think about, doesn’t mean anything. You took action. That’s good. I’ve known a lot of MechWarriors who never saved anyone else’s skin. Ever. You’re one up on them.”

“Thank you, I guess.” Ivan drank a little water. “Those men, the ones in the forest, they’re dead, really dead.”

“It was fast.”

“We probably weren’t the only targets, were we?” Ivan hung his head. “This is more than an assassination attempt. It’s something between a hostile takeover and a coup d’état.”

“Seems like an elaborate operation just to off you, Spurs.”

Ivan’s head came up. “Please, don’t call me that. That’s a warrior’s name. I haven’t earned it. I don’t deserve it.”

“Hey, everyone gets the nickname they deserve. Half the folks hate theirs; more, probably, but most of us give up hating on it because we’re stuck with it.” Walter’s eyes narrowed. “And you have earned this one. Those spurs, you said your father wore them during his Final Vetting. You’re honoring him and the Augustinian tradition that put us here. Now, whoever tried to kill us, they clearly had no respect for what was going on. So you’re going to embrace Spurs, because your still being alive is going to be a big boot up their asses—spurs and all.”

“I’m still not a warrior.”

“You’re still alive, and you’re a lot closer to being one than any of your killers imagined.” Walter tore open a packet of chips with his teeth, then spat the strip of packaging out. “Think about it. They sent two aerospace fighters after us.”

“I fail to see . . .”

“It’s as clear as the nose on your face.” Walter pointed at him with a chip. “That’s an insult. They should have sent four at least. Probably a full dozen.”

Ivan frowned. “You don’t mean that. You’re trying to distract me.”

“Damned right.” Walter offered him the open bag. “Only thing’s going to defeat you right now is if you try not to feel anything. They want you dead. They want your family’s company for themselves. If that’s not a reason to be angry, you’re never going to be angry.”

“Emotion isn’t going to help me think straight.”

“In the heat of battle, too much thinking can make you dead.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” Ivan stood. “But now, I do need to do some thinking. So do you.”

“About?”

“Come with me. It’s time.” Ivan turned toward the door. “You have a right to know why they want us dead.”

Chapter Nine

Lac du Vallee, Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

6 November 3000

Ivan Litzau led Walter deeper into the underground complex. The tour took them beyond the canteen, to one of the doors secured with biometric locks. Ivan placed his hand on a dark glass sheet. Light flashed once, then the door withdrew into the wall.

“This way.” Ivan waved him into a large, amphitheater-style room. They entered at the topmost row, then descended down the stairs on the left. The far wall remained dark, but contained a number of large monitors. Several computer consoles lined the base of the wall. Ivan touched another dark panel and the computers woke from sleep. Strings of numbers and letters flashed up over the screens, but Walter could make no sense of them.

He folded his arms over his chest. “This looks like a command center.”

“It is, but likely not in the way you think of it. Please, be seated.” Ivan waited for Walter to plunk himself down in a chair before he continued. “You’re in the heart of a project that my great-grandfather started a century after the war. As I said before, you are one of a handful of people who know where this is located. Those who have worked on it, save for members of the Litzau family—and not each and every one of them—are drawn from other worlds. They work here as part of their education. Once they are finished, they go out there, to the other Successor States. All of them have knowledge, but research is compartmentalized so none of them truly know what is going on.” Ivan shrugged. “And, I suspect, even if they did know, they’d just think it’s the madness of a Periphery corporate marketing-and-research department.”

Walter sat forward, resting elbows on knees. “I appreciate the context, but I still don’t understand.”

“A bit more, then you will.” Ivan seated himself before one of the consoles. “When the war happened, the Dhivi tried hard to not choose sides. We feared that if we backed the wrong side, the victor’s retribution would be fearful; and if not, our contribution would be ignored. As it turned out, our worst fears were realized as the war killed our people—purportedly by accident—crushed our economy, and poisoned our environment. For the survivors, it seemed as if the whole world had turned against them.

“This is when the most powerful among them enhanced the power of the First Family Councils. They tightened regulations governing corporations to keep wealth and power concentrated in certain hands, believing that those who had wealth were best suited to managing stewardship of the world. And, indeed, the Preferred and even some of the Holders worked tirelessly through the Planetary Board for the next couple generations to rebuild and revitalize their corporate fortunes and the world. If not for their efforts, Maldives would have long since died.”

Walter raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. The third Preferred generation, born into privilege and wealth, decided what they had was a birthright, not an obligation.”

“True, yet everyone feared instability so much that they allowed the First Families to continue to regulate the corporate structure. Dissenters found themselves frozen out when it came to acceptable matches, stripped of their Proxies or married off to families elsewhere, like Itrom. Some even . . . well, let me show you.”

Ivan typed in a series of commands. What appeared to be a family tree flashed on one of the monitors. “Keep your eye on the branch there in red as I scroll up through time.” A counter in the corner of the string totaled up the years. Twenty years from the point where Ivan had started, the red branch disappeared.

“I don’t understand.”

“The grandson in that line, he was very vocal in his criticism of the First Families Corporate Personnel policy. Even though he was of the Preferred, the Planetary Board literally went back and retroactively sanctioned his family, stripping them of Preferred and Proxy status.” Ivan pointed at the screen. “They allowed him to sell off his family’s corporate holdings and take his kin off to another world. That family was by no means unique, but most often the mere threat of sanction was enough to keep people quiet.”

“I understand.”

“Good.” Ivan’s fingers flew over the console keys again. The family tree shrank and then joined a complex network of other families. The images comprised a flat disk, representing the relationships between families in decade slices. “These are the First Families and how intermarried they are. The brighter spots are Preferred ranks; the others are just Holders. The fringe elements are those situations where a child who is not in the line of inheritance has married someone outside the First Families, or has gone off world. Those are, in essence, dead ends.”

“Unless they were to somehow marry back in.”

“Very good.” Ivan turned in the chair. “Or if, by some grand act of value to the Planetary Board’s interests—including that of one of the major corporations—they earned back First Family status for their family. With people being this interrelated, it’s almost easier for a Corporate Personnel department to find a First Family connection than it is for a connection to be erased.”

Walter shook his head. This was a lot more than he’d ever wanted to learn about Dhivi society. “Are we closing in on what this facility is?”

“Yes.” Ivan hit a button, moving the disk to another monitor. “Now I’ll call up the same slice of time, but seen through the lens of this project.”

The new image that flashed up differed from the previous in two distinct ways. Within the main First Families disk, some of the links shifted. A number vanished and others appeared. In addition, the fringe lines tripled in number and connected out to small clusters which, in turn, sent tendrils back into the main disk.

“What am I looking at?”

“I thought it would be obvious—you suggested it three weeks ago.”

Walter squinted, then sat back. “This is a DNA chart.”

“For eighty years, this project has compiled criminal, medical and epidemiological databases into a sequenced DNA map of the Dhivi population. We have only a third of a billion people, and most of the data is collected at birth. All of those databases are legally separated from each other and the First Family Councils maintain constant vigilance to guarantee no one can put together a map like this. Further, every corporation has rules and regulations to prevent Personnel departments from garnering this information.” Ivan shrugged. “My family has been able to subvert those safeguards and has collected the data here.”

Walter got up and walked over to the monitor. “Something like this line here, it looks as if the Preferred child who inherited at this point wasn’t fathered by anyone in that family. In fact, that child is from this other family, and would be set to inherit a chunk of their corporation, not the family that claimed him.”

“And, remember, that’s a slice from my grandfather’s time as Planetary Chairman. In the last two generations that line has spread widely throughout the First Families. But look, the fringe is the more important thing.” Ivan hit more keys, painting a number of fringe lines in red. “These people are all of First Family blood, and Preferred at that, but the First Family Councils refuse to recognize them as such. And these people, they’re all good and smart and contribute—and are even of First Family blood—but are barred from even getting Holder status in the various corporations.”

Walter nodded. “Whether they know who they are or not, if they complain, they become ostracized and exiled. The families who want to get rid of them the most might be the very families from which they sprung.”

“Exactly. And to make any of this public would crash First Family corporations. It would cause incredible instability. For that reason, my grandfather declined to push for reform—several of the First Family Councils during his reign wielded great economic power. Various other corporations took steps to weaken those families. It’s taken a while, but things had progressed to a point that my father hoped to be able to begin the process of change. He wanted to first break primogeniture, but he died before he was able to make that a reality.”

“You intend to realize his dream? Our chat around the campfire wasn’t just a fantasy?”

“I truly meant what I said.” Ivan frowned. “You’ve met my sisters. You’re right: this system makes them chattel. They’re just bargaining chips to be traded with other families, to strengthen our ties. That is not right. If Abigail had been piloting Destrier today, they would have had to send a dozen fighters, and then a dozen more. And Sophia, can you imagine her being forced to bear children for someone who isn’t at least a tenth as smart as she is?”

“No.”

“Hence the need for reforms.”

“And this bumper crop of motives for murder. You realize, this means we have an incredible problem. Trying to kill you may not have been just an attempt to replace you. It may have been an attempt to bring down the entire societal structure.”

“But who?”

Walter jerked a thumb at the diagrams. “You can draw your suspects from anyone who is in power right now, or anyone who is not in power.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, and we’re down here, safe and sound, with no clue as to what’s happening out there.”

“I may be able to fix that. The site is completely isolated so that the data can’t be accessed remotely, but there are antennae and relays which allow the base to receive broadcast signals.” Ivan shifted to a different console. “I’ll see what I can get up here.”

One screen flashed to life briefly, then went to black. A box proclaiming “No signal detected” hovered in the middle. Ivan hit another key. The monitor shifted to black, then the legend appeared again. He repeated his search a half-dozen times, all with the same result.

He turned toward Walter, his face ashen. “That isn’t good, is it?”

No. But keep it together for him. Walter shrugged. “Might not be, or it might. I’ve never been part of a coup, but I’ve served on worlds mopping up after them. Half the time the government shuts down mass media to prevent panic, and the other half, well . . .”

“The rebels do it to hamper the government’s attempts at restoring order.” Ivan hugged his arms around his middle. “I read a very great deal, Walter—history and politics are more interesting than Lowland beetles. Right now I’m remembering things I wish I could forget.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is not going to be the best day of your life, but it’s also not going to be the last.”

A hissing filled the amphitheater as the media monitor brightened slowly. The image resolved itself into a cloaked and hooded human. Based on how his shoulders extended to the edges of the screen, Walter decided it was a man, but his face remained in shadows. His voice came low and strong, with only the barest strain of threat making it past electronic distortion.

“We are the Collective. We are the disenfranchised. We are those born to toil as cogs in the machines which are the corporations. We create their wealth. They deign to give us scraps, but deny us what we are due as humans. They have sowed the whirlwind, and now they have harvested it.”

The image shifted to an unstable black-and-white shot from a rooftop looking at the Litzau Enterprises corporate headquarters. A half-dozen aerospace fighters flew sorties over the target. Long-range missiles corkscrewed down into the structure, detonating with enough force that the image shook even harder. Explosions shattered ferrocrete, pitching dust and debris high into the air. Then the fighters’ lasers burned down through the smoke, melting the Lancer ’Mechs that had escaped the explosions.

Ivan reached a hand toward the screen. “Mother! Abigail!”

Walter wanted to vomit. Hake! Not the blaze of glory you wanted, my friend.

The voiceover continued as dust drifted down. “The First Families have now tasted the same death and humiliation they visited upon us. And to the north, our forces have slain the pretender Ivan.”

The image shifted to show black BattleMechs patrolling through Rivergaard. Smoke rose in the background, and shell-shocked citizens marched along the streets, directed by soldiers with guns. “We have restored order, and are administering justice. The crimes of the past will not go unpunished; nor will the actions of reactionary forces that seek to perpetuate the inequality of a system which has been strangling our world for generations.”

The man in the hood reappeared. “We are the Collective. We will be issuing statements of policy in the coming days. To obey is to be free. To disobey is to declare fealty to Planetary Board corruption. To disobey is to incur our wrath. We bring you freedom and equality. Reject this gift at your peril.”

The screen went black again. When the notice about lack of signal reappeared, Walter felt a moment of relief, as if that bit of normality meant he could ignore the reality of what he’d seen.

He turned to Ivan, who now seemed smaller than ever. “Spurs, I, ah, I am sorry for the losses you have suffered.”

“And you, Walter.” Ivan stared at his boots. “I cannot believe my mother and my sister are gone. I hope Sophia got away, but . . .”

“I’m sure she did. The Lancers may have gone down in the air strike, but she was with the Angels, remember, at the garrison?”

“I hope you are right. I know your people were good, but I fear for my sister and the Angels . . .”

“Because?”

“The black ’Mechs on the screen, patrolling the streets.”

“I saw them. I didn’t recognize them.”

“I did.” Ivan swiped at tears. “Those were the Rivergaard Rangers. Richard Oglethorpe’s regiment.”

Walter’s mouth soured. “Your sister said three-quarters of the people at your corporate headquarters would have to die before Oglethorpe could claim chairmanship of the Planetary Board.”

“That appears to no longer be an obstacle.” Ivan looked up, eyes red. “What do I do, Walter? How do I make it right again?”

Chapter Ten

Lac du Vallee, Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

6 November 3000

“Do you actually expect an answer?”

Ivan stared at him, his expression becoming set. “Yes, I think I do.”

“No, you don’t.” Walter waved that idea away. “You feel that you have to ask that question, but if you actually think, you’ll know that’s not a question you should be asking at all.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is.” The mercenary spun a chair around and seated himself with the chair’s back against his chest. “Right up until an hour ago you were the one who had defined the Final Vetting as a walking tour of the countryside. All you had to do was return with nothing more serious than a case of poison ivy and you’d succeed. You had no desire to prove to anyone that you were some mythical champion MechWarrior.”

“That’s . . . I didn’t . . .” Ivan’s face slackened and his lower lip began to quiver.

Good God, Walter, you’re an ass. He just lost his family and you’re making him cry. Walter forced his fists open. “Look, Spurs, couple of facts you’ve got to face here. Good news: you may never have wanted to be a MechWarrior, but out there, like I said before, you did something pretty much nobody does in their first time under fire. You kept it together. You got ambushed, and you didn’t lose your mind. You focused, you got us here in one piece, and your tactic of moving from one magnetic anomaly to another was brilliant. You used your head to push past panic and fear.

“Bad news is that here, in a safe place, you’re not thinking. You’re just feeling.”

Ivan pointed at the monitor. “You saw.”

“Yeah, I did. Your mother. Your sister, both probably dead.” Walter’s left hand curled into a fist. “Hake, my commander, he’s buried right along with them. And lots of other people you knew, and I probably met over the last three weeks.”

The Chairman Presumptive wiped his nose with his hand. “And your Angels.”

“Yeah, them, too. But, hey, maybe Sophia was able to get away, maybe they bought her some time and even made it out with her.”

“Your tone of voice . . . you don’t think that’s likely.”

“She’s sharp, they’re sharp, so if I had to bet . . .” Walter shrugged. “Keeping at least one of your sisters alive is good policy for the Collective. She can be married off to one of their leaders. While that might seem to run counter to revolutionary claims, it hitches back into the legitimacy of the old order and the tradition stuff you have going on. It gives some people a chance to believe things aren’t as bad as they are.”

Ivan’s brow furrowed. “I see the logic of that.”

“Good, Spurs, keep thinking. I need you thinking.” Walter ran a hand over his jaw. “We’re starting at zero here. We’ve got two ’Mechs, which is great, but we can’t do much without supplies for them.”

“We have ammunition and spare parts. Will that do?”

Walter blinked. “Seriously?”

“Not really a time for joking, is it?” The younger man nodded solemnly. “This was originally a Taurian facility; built before the war, halfway up a mountain, overlooking a river valley some glacier gouged into the landscape an ice age ago. During the war the Magistracy took out some hydroelectric dams to cut power to Rivergaard. The subsequent flood put the lake here, drowning this place. There are stores back in the ’Mech bay.”

“Okay, so we’re not at zero, but we’re not much above it.”

“Well, that allows me to calibrate my expectations.” Ivan’s frown intensified. “I believe you are thinking that we lack intelligence about the opposition, and this base’s isolation makes it difficult to gather data—save through what the Collective wishes to broadcast.”

“We have an even more immediate problem—we don’t know how close they are to finding us.”

“I see.” Ivan stood and began to pace. “When my family decided to reclaim this base, we did so after proclaiming it a natural preserve—the corporate tax advantages provided all the cover we needed. We imported workers, paid them for their silence and shipped them far away at the end of their employment. My great-grandfather then used computer information experts to systematically delete any references to this Taurian base wherever they were to be found. ComStar may have some records, but he went so far as to buy and steal heirloom books and then publish counterfeit replacements with all references deleted.”

“You’re telling me that no one knows of this place.”

“Yes.”

“Except your sister, Sophia.”

That stopped Ivan dead in his tracks. “She would never . . . but, of course, she could be compelled . . .”

“If they learn of this place—however they do it—they’ll be coming for us. We’re on a short timer. The only way we can leave is to learn enough to formulate some sort of a plan to escape.” Walter shrugged. “The ’Mech bay would be an interesting place to defend, but we’d lose against a determined assault.”

“I would concur with your assessment.” Ivan turned. “What do we need to do first?”

“Is there another way out of here?”

“A couple, actually. Well hidden, above us.”

“Okay, good.” Walter scratched at the back of his neck. “We need to find out how close they are to finding us. They have to investigate the team they lost, and flyovers aren’t going to do it. I need to go out and scout around. If I’m lucky I’ll see them and they won’t see me.”

The barest of smiles played on Ivan’s face. “I believe, Walter, here in the base we have the means to increase your efficiency and lower the risk. Please, follow me.”

Golden Prosperity Re-education Camp, Rivergaard
Maldives

8 November 3000

Sophia’s cheek ached, but she wouldn’t allow herself to believe the bone had been broken. “Ouch!”

“Sorry.” The dark-haired woman gently probing Sophia’s bruise winced in sympathy. “The swelling is down a little. You know, if we had ice . . .”

“They’d force us to memorize some revolutionary poems, then they’d deny it to us anyway.” Sophia smiled with the uninjured side of her face. “Laurie, you’ve been a godsend. You and your daughter. How are you holding up?”

Laurie Eck got a distant look in her eyes. “When I married a merc, I heard that the waiting would drive me crazy. And now, really, I don’t feel anything. I want to tell myself that I’m in denial, but, Phee, I can’t believe Chris is dead. And I don’t think I’m just being brave for Kaylee, either. And the Angels, they’re tougher to kill than the monster cockroaches we had in this one billet.”

Sophia reached out and squeezed Laurie’s hand. She desperately wanted to confide in her. Sophia trusted the mercenary’s wife, but revealing her identity meant the Collective might punish Laurie for not having revealed it. Sophia had no doubts the Collective had placed spies within the wretched legion they crammed into the Rivergaard Municipal Arena. “I am confident you’re right.”

“Thank you, Phee.”

A small, officious woman appeared in the doorway of the briefing room they’d been stuffed into and blew a whistle loudly. Kaylee, seated next to her mother, clapped hands over her ears. “I have some announcements.”

Unlike on the first day, no one replied with snark to that comment.

The woman looked at her tablet. “Tomorrow will begin with a lecture about the stratagems the First Family corporations employ to strip the people of their will and self-esteem. You will all, personally, denounce these techniques, renounce their use, and confess your having used them. Is this understood?”

“Yes, Madam Proctor.”

The sharp-faced woman looked up, eying them coldly. Sophia had no idea what she was looking for, but was determined not to be it.

The proctor glanced at her screen again. “After that, you will be split into work parties. Your unrepentant, corporate lackey comrades continue their repressive war against the people. You will work to make amends for their actions. If you even attempt to escape, we will be forced to disassociate you from the people, and disassociate three other members of your cadre here. Do you understand?”

Sophia nodded, marveling at how the Collective managed to come up with yet one more euphemism for murder. “Yes, Madam Proctor.”

“Good.” The woman lowered her tablet. “Reports of your work today were satisfactory. It has been decided, then, that you shall be allowed to attend a lecture on the secret history of Litzau Enterprises’ enshrined perfidy and their complicity in the ruination of the Maldives economy. This is a great honor. Do not tarnish it.”

“No, Madam Proctor.”

“You have thirty minutes of water, beginning now. Do not squander it.” The woman’s expression clouded with hatred. “The days of your crimes are at an end.”

The assembly remained quiet as the proctor exited, and even then conversation never rose above a whisper.

Laurie grabbed Sophia’s arm. “You have to promise me something.”

“What?”

Laurie’s blue eyes became slits. “You get a chance to run, take it.”

Sophia frowned. “But what she said . . .”

“Disassociation, I know.” Laurie hugged her daughter to her side. “This is just one big disassociation camp, Phee. Getting out is going to be the only way any of us end up living.”

Lac du Vallee, Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

11 November 3000

Clad in woodland camouflage, Walter squeezed his way between two rocks that covered the opening to an egress point. From the outside it appeared to be a naturally occurring rock formation tucked into the side of a hill. Beyond the choke point, it opened into small chamber that contained a trap door and, beneath it, a ladder leading down into the base.

Walter crouched by the rocks, glancing at his chronometer, and got his bearings. The oncoming dusk had sown the forest with shadows. He started off toward the southwest, moving from tree to tree, or around rocks, using all the cover he could manage. He kept his eyes peeled for any sign of searchers, and relied on the chronometer’s haptic feedback to alert him to one of the waypoints on his patrol.

Because Litzau Enterprises had declared Lac du Vallee a nature preserve, over the years wildlife had moved into the area and had organized itself around the lake environment. To study this, a series of holovid cameras had been hidden throughout the preserve. The devices took shots when they detected nearby movement and cached the data for later recovery.

Armed with one of the data recorders, Walter moved from point to point, harvesting the pictures. All he had to do was to get close enough to spot the device, train an IR laser on the camera, trigger the verification code, and the camera downloaded its cache. As he’d done on the prior runs, once he’d collected the images, he returned to the base and let Ivan begin analyzing them.

Walter had initially thought the Collective would begin immediately to intensively scour the area, primarily because they’d killed a field team. No evidence of searchers had appeared in the images for the past three days, and those who had showed up were less than diligent in their searches. A day and a half of torrential rain accounted for part of that—while hiding the footprints of passing ’Mechs wasn’t easy, the rain reduced them to muddy divots and revitalized the grasses that had been crushed underfoot. The rain also made the searchers miserable and encouraged haste.

Upon his return, Walter handed the data recorder over to the Chairman Presumptive. He watched Ivan work and realized that whoever had instigated the attacks had made a serious mistake in not ensuring the Chairman Presumptive’s death. They’d assumed that because he wasn’t much of a MechWarrior, he’d die easily or, if he survived, wouldn’t be a threat. And, Walter had to admit, Ivan wasn’t really the sort of charismatic individual that would inspire legions to follow him into hell, so his leading a counterrevolution wasn’t very likely.

But when it comes to analysis, he’s a holy terror. Walter smiled. “What have you got?”

Ivan idly ran his hand over the stubble on his chin. “I isolated the images of all the searchers and ran them through a facial recognition database. I matched on 60 percent of them, primarily from criminal databases. Others I matched are regular citizens—a few of them Holders, but mostly not. None of them are First Family Preferred—at least not as established by the normal databases.”

“The ones you can’t place?”

Ivan hit a few keys and a dozen images lined themselves up in three columns. “The shots are good enough that if we had them in the system, there should have been a match.”

Walter studied the pictures. “These are the guys who looked to be heading up the search teams. See how they are carrying their laser carbines? They’re professionals.”

“No one else has anything bigger than a needler.”

“Exactly.” The mercenary chewed his lower lip for a moment. “So, the leaders, they’re probably mercenaries.”

“You don’t know them?”

Walter chuckled. “I’ve been to Galatea twice, didn’t mingle much.”

“It would make sense, their being mercenaries. They were probably brought in under cover as contract labor for some project or another. There should be work permits, but the data might not have been processed yet if they came in as recently, say, as you did.”

“This is good information, Spurs. At least part of the revolution was bought and paid for. Someone has money, but these guys seem to have little interest in actually earning their pay.”

“The reason is probably some active, even robust resistance in Rivergaard.” Ivan wiped away the mercenaries and pulled up some side-by-side shots of the city. “While you were out farming pictures, the Collective made another couple of broadcasts. Two things are important about these images.”

Walter stepped forward and pointed. “The building in the background, there’s signs of a fire in that corner.”

“Okay, you saw that one. This one is a bit more esoteric.” Ivan punched a few keys on the console. The images melted into strings of green letters, numbers and symbols. “Broadcasts have computer coding embedded in them for diagnostic purposes. It allows technicians to determine which broadcast antennae is supplying how much of any image. Modern broadcasts actually gather signals from a variety of places and combine them in the viewing units. Well, here, the first few broadcasts came from a station designed 15A*QRX. That one supplied 90 percent of the images we were getting. But this new one, it’s from 71D#1RF, which only ever supplied 7 percent of the signal we got before. I don’t know where the stations are, but I believe the first one must have been destroyed.”

“Did the message say anything about crushing resistance or about crackdowns?”

“No. The opposite. They reported that the peaceful reordering of society was proceeding on pace. They said that people were flocking to ‘re-education’ centers willingly. They had images of happy people having their faces scanned at checkpoints or food distribution centers. They also showed some people being cheered by crowds for having turned in counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries.”

Walter nodded. “How tough would it be to take out a broadcast station?”

“A rat nibbling through a power cable could do it.”

“Spurs . . .”

“To your point, Walter, most are small buildings or a relay unit built onto a tower.”

“Couple guys with a satchel charge or petrol bomb.”

“Or several more with ’Mechs.” Ivan rubbed at his eyes. “How far are we above zero now?”

“Not far enough that we should even be thinking about leaving this hole.”

“But I have to, Walter.”

“Have to?”

Ivan exhaled heavily. “I have been able to do a lot of thinking—not feeling, but thinking. It occurred to me that because I always knew that I would fulfill my father’s dream and be the agent of change for Maldives, I never really looked at who I had to be to accomplish that end. My goal was to get through the Final Vetting, then work on changing things. I even, secretly, believed I would be able to resign in favor of Abigail, once I had made it so she could run the company. I never took responsibility for being the Chairman Presumptive.”

“I’m not a priest, Spurs. You don’t need to confess for my benefit.”

“That’s not what this is, Walter. And I am saying this to you because you’re insisting on calling me Spurs. You said I’d earned that name.” Ivan screwed his eyes shut against tears, but they leaked out anyway. “Do you realize that’s the first time in my life I ever earned anything? I look back now and the games I used to play with people like the Capellan Consul, they just make me appear to be utterly detached and unthinking—out of touch with reality. And I told myself that was a role I was playing, but it was true. I can’t even remember a time when that role didn’t define me. And because I knew I was never going to be a great MechWarrior, I let it define me. I embraced it.”

Walter folded his arms over his chest. “Where’s this going? You know, just because you realize you may have sold yourself short, that doesn’t mean all that damage gets undone.”

“I am painfully aware of that.” Ivan wiped tears away. “What the broadcasts have showed me is that citizens are being forced to betray each other. They’re being forced into re-education camps. Neither you nor I believe there’s any education going on there. And we know there is some resistance. And, I feel . . . no, I think . . .”

The dark-haired MechWarrior shook his head. “You had it right the first time. You feel responsible. You know they are suffering and you want to take some of that suffering onto yourself. You want to punish yourself because, somehow, you believe that if you’d been different, or acted differently, none of this would have happened.”

“I have a duty, Walter.” Ivan’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t expect you to join me.”

Walter grabbed a handful of Ivan’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. “If you’re going to say that you understand that I’m a mercenary, and that I do things for money, and that chances are I won’t get paid, so I don’t have to do anything, I’m going to hit you so hard you’ll think a moon landed on you.”

Ivan shivered, but never broke his stare with Walter.

The mercenary released him.

The corporate heir missed the edge of his chair and landed abruptly on the floor.

Walter stared down at him. “What I need here, Spurs, is for you to do some more thinking. Sure, you feel responsible. Sure, you want to do something. Sure, you want to avenge your family. You’re not alone in that. But the two of us marching our ’Mechs out of here is suicidal and stupid. On the list of things I never want to be, those two are right at the top.”

“We have to do something, Walter.”

“Sure, but throwing our lives away doesn’t do anything good for anyone.” Walter wanted to punch something, but Ivan didn’t deserve it and the walls were meter-thick slabs of ferrocrete. “Much as I hate to say it, I need the old you back before we do anything. Just because we can’t march out of here in our ’Mechs and kill things doesn’t mean we can’t cause the Collective some serious problems. You’re going to have to figure out how to do that.”

Ivan looked up from the floor. “Don’t you think that if I had a better plan than getting myself killed in Destrier, I would have mentioned it?”

“The fact you don’t means we don’t have enough information to form a plan. We need to remedy that.” Walter cocked his head. “So, we do some thinking about what we can do to bug them, then it’s data harvesting. And that means, for you and me, we’re taking a field trip to find out for ourselves what the Collective never intends to show us.”

Chapter Eleven

Nyqvist Upland Preserve
Maldives

15 November 3000

Walter’s breath steamed as he crouched at the wood’s edge. His vantage point overlooked a small farm which backed up to the Preserve. The owner ran a modest herd of dairy cattle, kept chickens and had twenty hectares under cultivation—though whatever he grew had been harvested at least a month prior. The family milked the cattle daily, made butter and cheese, and what looked like a smokehouse probably did most of its duty as a way to keep prying eyes off a still.

Ivan rested a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure?”

“We have pictures of the farmer and two of his kids poaching in the preserve. They’re not going to do that, or keep the still, unless they’re not afraid of being caught. We come out, looking like we do, like poachers, and they’re not going to report us. We just have to get past their farm and to the road.”

“But . . .”

“You know we have to do this.”

Ivan’s shoulders slumped a little. “Yes, I know. It’s just, I’m . . .”

Walter gave him a wink. “Me, too.”

From the very beginning the two of them had acknowledged that they couldn’t act without sufficient information, and broadcasts from Rivergaard supplied very little. The broadcasts put forward a message of peace and unity, even though some of the images showed signs of continued fighting. Gangs of people worked to clean up debris, with the voice-over describing them as volunteers. The armed individuals surrounding them were described as “safety officers.” Facial recognition on both the workers and the safety officers did little to provide much information, save that the percentage of Preferred in those gangs was higher than their proportion in the general population.

Walter had been under no illusions that they could avoid venturing out from the hidden base, so he set about preparing for their journey. From a compartment in his Blackjack’s command couch he’d pulled civilian clothes and a handful of gold and platinum coins he’d saved from previous deployments. It didn’t matter that they had been minted in faraway places like the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth; precious metals always served well as barter currency—especially in times of instability. With more ease than made him comfortable, Walter had been able to transform himself into a nondescript everyman. And with the suitable application of dirt, along with a moratorium on attaining any personal hygiene goals, he became an everyman that no one would want to notice.

Ivan’s transformation required more work. Walter forbade him shaving or bathing, then raggedly trimmed his hair off at the top of his ears. Ivan’s denouncing the haircut as the worst in recorded human history made Walter proud. Walter decided that it would be best if they could color Ivan’s hair, and the Chairman Presumptive surrendered knowledge of local plants that could be used for that purpose. After coloring, and with some more selective trimming, Ivan looked as if he had simultaneous cases of consumption and the mange.

Finding him suitable clothing proved a bit tougher. Destrier did have a change of clothes for him, but they were befitting a top executive, and that wasn’t really going to work. Walter tore them up a bit, and applied various coolant and lubricating fluids to produce a color palette that had never appeared in any boardroom. Grass stains, grime and assorted tree resins left the clothes looking older than war debris.

That was all fine for fooling casual observers, but facial recognition software could still pierce the secret of their identities. Beards—even as wispy as Ivan’s—would help a little. Dirt, strategically smudged, helped layer on shadow-defined bone structure where none existed. While avoiding cameras would be the number-one strategy for escaping detection, the greater their proximity to civilization, the higher their risk of discovery.

There was only one way to lower the risks, hence the outing which brought them to the edge of the farm.

Walter stood. “Remember, you’re Carl Spurling, so I call you Spurs.”

“And you’re Wall-eye Wilson. We’ve been working the Preserve, hunting during the celebration while no one would notice.” Ivan scratched at his beard, then looked disgustedly at his fingernails and the black line of dirt capping them. “I’ll never feel clean again.”

“Use less words.” Walter sucked at his teeth. “And not all the right ones.”

Ivan burped in response.

Walter led the way down the hillside, cutting along cattle tracks. He opened the pasture gate for Ivan, then closed it behind him. They walked across the pasture, and neither took great pains to avoid cow pies. The farmer and one of his sons appeared from the dairy barn, the younger man holding a shotgun.

Walter slowed, raising a hand. “Hello the farm.”

“What can we do for you?” The farmer eyed them closely, and the son moved to his right to keep his father out of the line of fire. “You don’t look like you were hiking the Preserve.”

“We weren’t. Don’t think anyone coming that direction there is hiking.” Walter jerked a thumb at Ivan. “Me and the nephew was thinking we might do some exploring during the doings down to Rivergaard. Ain’t got but wet and mud to show for it, of course. Did the brat get through his vettin’?”

The farmer, a chunky, middle-aged man with a bushy gray beard and a straggly halo of hair, toed the dirt. “You asking for true?”

“We had a bet, him and me. Thought we might seen some lights from it, what, two weeks back?”

Ivan nodded, pointing vaguely toward the west. “Heard thunder, maybe saw a fighter. Didn’t look too hard.”

The farmer shook his head. “He didn’t. Some folks appeared to have some hate for him and his kind. Been doings down to Rivergaard. Don’t know what, ain’t interested in trouble. I was you, I’d just turn around and go back where you came from.”

“I would, but I told his momma I’d have him back on the thirteenth, or thereabouts.”

The son rested the shotgun’s barrel back on his shoulder. “You missed it.”

“Won’t be the first time my sister took a cut out my hide.” Walter shrugged. “We got turned around in the Preserve, strikes me. How long a walk to Swindon, do you think?”

“You’d be in by dusk if you don’t mind cutting curves off the roads.” The farmer scratched at his beard. “You boys look like maybe you could stand to get on the outside of some breakfast.”

Ivan shook his head. “We don’t want to be trouble.”

“I’m not sure there’s any avoiding trouble these days.” The farmer pointed at a pile of wood, a block and an ax. “If you want to split wood, one of you, and the other shovel out the dairy barn, we can spare some eggs and cheese. Boy, go tell your mother we have guests.”

The son gave the two strangers a hard stare, then ran off to the farmhouse. The farmer pointed Walter toward the wood pile and waved Ivan after him toward the barn. Ivan gave Walter a puzzled look.

“Because you miss with a shovel and you won’t lay your shin open.” The mercenary gave him a nod.

Ivan shrugged—quite in keeping with his being Spurs Spurling—and headed toward the barn. Walter took up the ax, tested the blade’s sharpness, then went to work splitting and stacking. It had been a long time since he’d done anything like that. The work warmed him up quickly, so he shucked his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and kept at it.

Plenty of people he’d known—Hake included—would have pointed to the farm’s existence as proof that Maldives was dying. These were the same folks who’d come from a world where food production fell to giant agro-combines using ’Mechs and robots to cultivate hundreds of cubic kilometers at a pass. Those same people, on the other hand, loved to find those special little places where “craft creators” made artisanal products priced highly enough that only the well-moneyed could afford them. Had the farm been restyled to be an organic cheese manufactory, and if the farmer called himself a master cheesemaker, he’d have had those people seeking him out in droves.

What Walter appreciated was that the farmer and his family weren’t living at a remove from the land and their food sources. Down in Rivergaard the planetary order had been overthrown, but here, on the farm, nothing had changed. Because nothing needs to change. If the whole of the corporate structure got peeled off the planet, and nature reclaimed all of Rivergaard, the farm could go on and function perfectly well without any of them.

Which is why Maldives hasn’t died yet, and might never completely die.

The farmer came out of the house with an enameled mug of hot tea. “Doing good work there. Ain’t your first time.”

“Nope.”

“But been a long time.” The farmer handed him the mug. “You and the boy, your hands don’t show much sign of manual work.”

Walter sipped the tea, then shrugged. “We moisturize.”

“Fair enough.” The farmer sat himself down on the piled wood. “I don’t make no assumptions, but I gots to ask: you two escape from a detail?”

“Nope.” Walter set the tea down, then placed another piece of wood on the chopping block. “You mean work details?”

“My boy said he seen ’em over toward the main road. Thirty-forty people, following a truck, going slow up the road. Hear tell they is working ’round Swindon. Living rough.”

“What was in the truck?”

“Shovels. Things to bury.” The farmer’s brows arrowed together. “Couple trucks go up there every day.”

Work details are digging graves. “Ain’t nobody looking for us.”

“Mister, they’s looking for anyone ain’t them.” The farmer drank more tea. “You and the boy ’pear to be good people, but I can’t be having you stay around here.”

“We’re just passing through. We won’t forget your kindness, but we won’t be remembering it too hard neither.”

“Obliged.”

Walter split a log with a smooth, overhand stroke. “Anything should worry us?”

“Ain’t nothing from Rivergaard come here in a long while. Hear tell the city ain’t as quiet as they’d like—the Collective, that is.” The farmer shrugged. “I don’t mind about Preferreds and Holders and what all, but least ways no corporators done hid behind masks. Figure you do that, you’re hiding something really ought to see the light of day.”

They left the farm by midday. Fog played across the fields like smoke on a battlefield. Ten minutes out they lost sight of the farmhouse. By the end of an hour they saw the road heading south. Three lanes each way, it remained virtually devoid of traffic.

Ivan shook his head. “That’s not right. Swindon isn’t a big town, but a hundred fifty miles north-northeast is St. Antoine. It’s big. The city is there year round, and gateway to the mountains for skiing and winter resorts, as well as various wineries. The road should not be empty.”

“And yet, it is.” Walter turned south and walked parallel to the road, but kept the crest of the hills between himself and the highway. “Not really a surprise. You said they’d restrict travel.”

“I know, but . . .”

“This makes it real?”

Ivan’s voice grew small. “Very real.”

“Well, this doesn’t change our mission.” Walter pointed north. “We go to Swindon. We do some recon. I’m guessing we make the outskirts by dusk, find a place to hole up. If we get lucky, we’re in and out before anyone knows we were there.”

“Then back around to the lake by another route.” Ivan gave Walter a resolute nod. “I may be shaken a little. I won’t stay that way.”

“I know, Spurs, I know.”

As the crimson kingfisher flew, Swindon might have only been twenty kilometers from the farm, but the two men had to wind their way over hills, through ravines, across streams and around farms. They were less concerned about being turned in to authorities than they were about attracting attention to people whose land they only passed through. Eight hours after they’d left the farm, they reached Swindon, then pushed on further north, so that when they turned to get closer, they came in from the northwest.

Swindon, according to files Walter had read at the lake, had been a small ranching community—little more than a village, really—for the better part of a century and a half. The farmers raised corn and vegetables, and ran a lot of sheep over the rolling, grassy hills. Swindon had its own cottage industry of spinning, weaving and knitting, and did a decent trade in handmade clothing. This was especially true in the Long Winter as sweaters sold briskly to those headed up to the resorts.

Back before the war, a few Preferred and some of the rich Holders chose to build summer homes in Swindon to help escape the most humid of the Deep Summer months. That tradition had continued despite the planet’s slow decline. The sentiment among the people appeared to have been that if you could afford to maintain a home in Swindon, your fortunes had to be considered better than those of the people who could not. In First Family marriage and inheritance schemes, possession of Swindon land was not a negative.

From the cover of a copse of trees, Ivan pointed out a large estate on a hill overlooking Swindon from the north. “That’s August House, our High Summer home. Named after my relative.”

“I never would have guessed.” Walter gave Ivan a light jab with his elbow in his ribs. “Is it always lit up like that?”

“No. Those lights look to be placed in the gardens, but we never had any that bright or on posts that tall.”

“Well, someone is doing something there, so we need to reconsider.” Their original plan was to target the estate, in hopes that if they could get in, they could use secure data connections to harvest intel and do a little damage.”

“That’s not a problem.” Ivan crouched and drew a diagram in the dirt with his finger. “Main house is here. Gardens here. Guesthouse over here. Beyond the guesthouse there’s a blockhouse next to a well. You can’t see it now, it’s down in a depression so folks can’t see it from the guesthouse. It houses the controls for the well’s pump and the sewage treatment system. It also has a safe room in case there was a problem and we couldn’t get back to the house.”

“And you have computer access from there?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s go.”

A half hour of careful travel later they reached the blockhouse. A wire-mesh fence topped with razor wire surrounded it. The gate had been secured with a heavy chain and a padlock.

“I don’t remember that lock.”

Walter shrugged. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a rectangular strip of metal as long as his finger, with a single jagged triangle poking down from the center. He folded the metal around the lock’s hook and slid the slender tooth into the block. He pressed down, driving the tooth deep, and the lock snapped open.

Ivan stared at him. “How did you . . .?”

“. . . shim the lock? You know about Lowland beetles, I learned other things as a kid.”

“But . . .”

“Spurs, sometimes you really need something that others want to keep locked safely away.”

“That’s not right, but I find it oddly comforting.”

“Lead on.”

They entered the compound and Walter made even shorter work of the blockhouse door lock. Once inside the blockhouse, Ivan flicked two switches on the sewage control console, then touched two rivets on the side of the console. Air hissed and the console slid forward, revealing a small hole cut in the wall behind it.

The two of them entered the concealed room on their hands and knees. Ivan got up, turned the lights on, then hit a switch that brought the console back into proper position. Another switch dropped a steel panel down to block the crawl space.

Walter stood and stretched. The room had four sleeping berths built into two walls, a computer console along the third, and supply cabinets flanking the crawl space. “I’ve been billeted in worse.”

Ivan sat at the computer and brought it to life. In addition to the main display, two auxiliary monitors lit up. “I can get us some images of the garden from here . . .”

“First things first. We can look at that later.” Walter dearly wanted to see what was going on in the garden, but he already had a really good idea what was happening. It struck him that using forced labor to bury dead First Family members and destroy the Litzau gardens was the sort of thing that the Collective would find suitable as punishment for their prisoners.

“Okay, working on that.” Ivan held up the memory stick he’d pulled from his pocket. “I’m also going to use the software to get rid of any geographic and tax records of the farm we were at this morning. I can even extend the Preserve’s border to annex . . .”

“Tax records, fine; same with local directories, but don’t change the Preserve. The less attention we draw to it, the better.”

“Good idea. Yes! I am in. Virus inserted. And out.” Ivan swung around in the chair. “I think this will work. Twenty minutes, I pull what we’ve got so far, and we go from there.”

“Great.” They’d both agreed that for Ivan to get into the governmental computers and search around would leave him open to discovery by the Collective and whomever they had working on their data systems. What he did instead was to shape a virus that would tie into the software the Litzau family used to gather information for their DNA project. He’d be able to pull data and change some records in that first pass. At the end of twenty minutes, they could recover the data, learn how much had been changed, and then look at how much damage they could truly do.

What Walter really wanted to find out was the fate of the Angels. They had not been mentioned at all in Collective broadcasts past the first, so he hoped for the best. The virus would sweep through hospital records for anyone associated with the Angels. Ivan also added a list of names, beginning with his mother’s, to attempt to learn their fates. Neither man had been terribly hopeful, but they’d lied to each other about how hard their friends and family were going to be to kill.

Ivan turned to the console again. “Now, for security footage.”

Three images popped up on the monitors. As Walter feared, the gardens had been dug up, long rows running across flower beds and crushed stone walkways. Decorative statuary had been knocked off their pedestals, and more than one stone figure bore signs of having been shot at. People in ragged clothes slowly tossed black earth onto piles, while others hauled limp bodies off the back of a flat bed truck and laid them a the bottom of the mass grave. Armed men and women circled the workers like vultures.

Ivan, blood draining from his face, tapped one of the screens with a dirty finger. “You see this?”

“Yes, Ivan. Just . . . just don’t look.”

“What? No, Walter, we have to do something!”

“Spurs, if we go out there, we can’t do anything but die.”

“No, Walter, look!” Ivan tapped the screen harder. “We have to go.”

“Shit.” Walter’s stomach imploded as he leaned closer. “This is not good.”

The woman in the center of the image, the woman Ivan’s finger pointed to, was Sophia.

Chapter Twelve

Litzau Summer Home, Swindon
Maldives

15 November 3000

“Look, the side of her face. It’s swollen. She’s hurt.”

“It’s a bruise, Spurs. It’s big, but she’ll recover.”

“We have to go get her.” Ivan rose from the chair. “We have guns here and . . .”

“Ease back, Spurs. Slow down.” Walter held a hand up, hoping his stomach would stop bubbling acid into his throat. “We’re going to get her, rescue her. She’s going to be fine, but not if we go in without a plan.”

Ivan stared at him. “They could kill her any second now.”

“But they’re not going to.” Walter pointed to the chair the young man had just vacated. “Sit down.”

Ivan looked at him, mouth agape.

“I’m not questioning your courage or love for your sister, Spurs.” Walter raked fingers back through his unkempt hair. “A plan, remember? I need you to sit down there and tell me what you can and cannot do in that house and on those grounds.”

“Walter!”

The mercenary held up a finger. “Tell me, Spurs, have you ever slit a man’s throat? Have you ever used a knife to kill anything? Have you ever done more with a knife than slice into a rare steak?”

“No, but . . .”

“Sit down, son. Sit. Down.”

Ivan sat, almost missing the chair. “Walter . . .”

Walter squatted, resting his hands on Ivan’s knees. So earnest, and so out of his depth. “This is the score, Spurs. There’s at least six heavily armed guards just in the shots of the garden. Let’s suppose there’s twice as many that we’ve not seen yet. Many of them have to be eliminated or neutralized or killed, if your sister is going to get away. This has to be done fast, quietly, efficiently. You think you’re qualified for that job?”

Ivan shook his head.

“So, I need you to be my eyes out there. I need to know what else you can do in the house and on the grounds to help me.”

Ivan’s head came up. “What do you put the odds at?”

“Spurs, if I worried about odds, I wouldn’t be a merc, would I?” Walter ran a hand over his chin. “One in five, right now.”

“I see.” Ivan spun the seat around and began hitting keys. “I can get video feed from all of the cameras inside the estate and grounds. I can lock and unlock doors. I can shut off the exterior lights—that’s part of killing the electrical system—the estate is gridded, so I can take down all or part of it depending on what’s going on. The interior lights I can control—on, off, color and intensity. And the groundskeeping systems—sprinklers—and the sound system, intercoms and stuff.”

“And with the cameras, you can watch me as I go?”

“Yes.”

Walter rose and leaned on the console beside Ivan. “Is there a way to signal me?”

“Not without others in the house hearing. I guess I could guide you through the house by selectively locking and unlocking doors. I could do the same by turning some of the room lights on and off.”

“Safe rooms in the house?”

“Four.” Ivan’s fingers flew and a wire-frame schematic of the estate appeared on the screen. “One on each floor. Basement and main floor are bigger, suitable for two dozen people. The others are like this.”

“Good.” Walter straightened up. “When I get your sister, we’ll go back through the house. Use lights and sound, if you must, to direct your sister to a safe room in the event things blow up.”

Ivan turned and watched him. “One in five are horrid odds.”

Walter opened up a cabinet and studied the array of weapons available. “After what you’ve told me, odds go up to 40 percent. Things are twice as good now as they were five minutes ago.”

“Walter . . .”

“Does your sister shoot?”

“She knows which end of a gun to point away from herself at least.” Ivan shrugged. “She’s never been in a gunfight, to the best of my knowledge.”

“Useful, thanks.” Walter pulled on a shoulder holster and needle pistol, then grabbed a small satchel and tossed in two blocks of ballistic polymer and a handful of propellant cartridges. He clipped that to his belt. He selected three knives. He tucked the two smaller ones into the tops of his boots, and the larger one he slipped through his belt.

“No lasers or rifle?”

“Lasers equal light, and I don’t want to be seen.” Walter closed the cabinet. “And if I need a long gun to shoot things at range, I have bigger problems than needing to shoot things at range.”

Ivan got up and retracted the steel panel over the exit. “You’d better hurry.”

Walter shook his head. “I can’t go yet.”

“But they might kill her.”

“Calm down. If they were going to kill her, they’d have done it already. The fact that she’s there means either they don’t know who she is, or they are using her as a symbol of the corporations’ defeat.” Walter pointed at the monitor. “If I go out there without good intel, I’ll get her killed in the blink of an eye. I need you to look it all over—as many cameras as you can—and isolate each of their soldiers.”

“But I don’t have facial recognition software and even if I did, the balaclavas they’re wearing would—”

“I don’t care who they are, just what.”

Ivan turned and set to work. “How does this help?”

“Tells me who I have to kill.”

Ivan diligently cycled through the various cameras on the estate. The house itself appeared to be empty and locked up, but a couple of guards had been stationed on the patio overlooking the gardens. One of them had the bearing of a trained soldier. The other looked like his combat experience came from a long-running war against the rabbits that kept despoiling his vegetable garden. The continued survey spotted eighteen more guards, four of whom were professionals, and the rest were amateurs. Half of them had batons only, the rest had handguns in holsters on their hips.

Ivan looked back at him. “Twenty . . .”

“Five are real trouble.” The mercenary frowned. “Spurs, I know you love your sister. I’m going to get her out of there no matter what.”

Ivan closed his eyes. “But people are going to die.”

“The Collective picked this fight, not us.”

“But it’s not just agents of the Collective who will die.”

Walter cocked his head. “You’re thinking about people who might be collateral damage, right? That their deaths will be on your hands?”

Ivan nodded mutely.

“No easy way to say this, Spurs, but we can’t be sure that the Collective won’t shoot them anyway when they’ve filled all the graves. That notwithstanding, they are your people. Some of them will die.” Walter opened his hands. “I’m ready to take that responsibility. Comes with my job. Can you?”

The Chairman Presumptive looked down at his hands. “I don’t know.”

“Your honesty does you credit.” Walter nodded. “Keep an eye on me at all times. Teams appear to rotate, with people digging, then fetching bodies. When your sister rotates to getting a body, that’s when I’ll make my move. When you see me count down with my left hand, each finger curling down into fist, at the end, when it’s a fist like this, you kill all the lights. Got it?”

“Yes.”

The mercenary pointed a finger at him. “And, no matter what happens, you stay here. You don’t stir. You getting captured or killed isn’t going to help one way or another.”

Ivan nodded. “Are you sure you can do this? You’re a MechWarrior not—”

“I’ve done this sort of work before, Spurs. If I survive this time, maybe I’ll tell you about the last. Just remember the signal and we’ll be okay.”

“Walter, good luck.” Ivan offered him his hand. “And thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Walter dropped down and crawled through the exit. “Button this up after me.”

In the blockhouse, the console retracted behind Walter and clicked shut. He let the sound die. The quiet transformed the building into a mausoleum. A shiver ran down his spine, but he fought off the unease. Instead he embraced a moment of peace, then set out into the night.

As he moved through the darkness, Walter found himself curiously detached from what he was about to do. This sort of thing had never been part of his joining the Angels or coming to Maldives. That didn’t deter him. He assumed he would die, so his only real consideration was to make certain that Sophia did not. He also couldn’t summon any hatred or sympathy for the Collective agents he’d have to kill—they were simply obstacles between him and getting Sophia to safety. The other prisoners . . . He didn’t allow himself to feel anything about them at all—concern for them could doom Sophia.

In occurred to him that his attitude about the other prisoners was very much like the attitudes of the Corporate Personnel departments which likely inspired the revolt. He would seem to be perpetuating the willful disregard for the lives of others which made the Collective act. The irony of the fact that their actions showed a similar willful disregard for life was not lost upon him.

Nor was the fact that existential crises and philosophical musings meant nothing on a battlefield. Stuff and nonsense for memoirs and historians.

Walter reached the corner of the mansion nearest his first target. She stood silhouetted against the lights shining down on the garden. Walter surrendered about five centimeters to her, but figured they’d weigh about the same stripped out of their gear. She wore body armor and carried a long gun, but held it loosely by the grip, with the barrel resting on her shoulder. Why not? She’s got nothing to fear.

Five meters of ferrocrete separated them. Walter drew the knife from his belt. The double-edged dagger had been made of blackened steel, with a blade a good eighteen centimeters long, three wide. Walter held it low in his right hand and crouched. He advanced slowly, knowing that quick movement would alert others. While the next closest guard was a civilian and likely not going to fight back, his raising an alarm would end things fast.

Two steps away and Walter pounced. He grabbed her throat from behind in his left hand. He squeezed, hard. She clawed at his hand. At the same time he drove the dagger up into her armpit, stabbing deep and twisting the blade. A spurt of blood chased its withdrawal from the wound. He plunged the knife in again, a bit lower, between the ribs through the body armor’s flank gap, and then a third time, dragging her back with him into the shadows.

The first wound had done the job. The blade severed her brachial artery. The bloody spray accompanied an immediate crash of her blood pressure. She’s gone limp before he returned to the house’s shadows and within a minute and a half she’d bled out.

Walter waited in the shadows over her dead body. Further to his right stood the corpse truck. Pairs of prisoners, each led by a guard, stumbled to it, dragged a body from the bed, and hauled it by wrists and ankles to the open grave. They didn’t move very quickly, but clearly took pains to make sure they didn’t bang the bodies around like so much meat and bones.

There she is.

Sophia, her blonde hair hanging limply and her shoulders rounded wearily, shuffled her way along the path toward the truck. Walter didn’t detect a limp, or any other sign of further injury. That made him smile—both because he didn’t want to see her hurt, and adrenaline could counter weariness. Odds are getting better.

Walter raised his left hand and slowly folded fingers in. For every two meters she got closer to the truck, he folded another finger in. Almost there.

Then the second patio guard appeared only five meters away. “Cara?”

Walter stood. “Hurry, here, she’s been hurt.”

Without thinking, the man ran toward Walter. The mercenary drew his needle pistol and as he closed his left fist to signal Ivan, he shot the second guard in the face.

When Walter had first charged the pistol, a blade had sliced a thin layer of ballistic polymer into a dozen flechettes. The propellant gasses filled the firing chamber and with the trigger pull, blasted out a cloud of needles. Before the recoil and cocking mechanism had loaded another sheaf of flechettes into the chamber, the first cloud struck the man. Most slid along his skull, peeling the flesh away, but several pierced his eyes. They ran the length of his optic nerves and impaled his brain.

The pistol’s report didn’t carry very far. No one had a chance to even glance in that direction before the lights snapped off. Angry voices shouted commands. Fearful screams pierced the darkness.

Then someone started shooting.

Walter rushed forward. “Phee. Phee!”

“Here!”

He grabbed her hand in the darkness and pulled her with him toward the front of the truck. Gunfire crackled. Muzzle flashes strobed like lightning. People screamed—in pain, in fear, in vain hopes of stopping the firefight. Bullets pinged from the truck. Lasers burned scars on the building, and flechettes hissed like wind-driven sand off the truck’s siding.

“Phee, run to the house. Go. I’m right behind you.” He gave her a shove toward the building, then came around the edge of the truck, providing her a moment’s more shielding with his own body. “Run!”

The firefight had descended full-blown into the chaos that was war. The civilians scurried everywhere, silhouetted against muzzle flashes. The Collective’s mercenaries rarely shot, but the citizen-soldiers filling out their squads cut loose with abandon. They shot at everything and nothing, most often targeting their comrades by muzzle flash. The prisoners, caught in the crossfire, dove for the ground.

Walter raced after Sophia. He worried most about being tagged by an errant shot, but since no one was firing from the house, not much in the way of return fire headed in that direction. He reached the edge of the patio and crouched. No Sophia. Then a light flashed on inside the house, for a second or two. A figure ran toward the sliding glass panel and the lock clicked.

Someone went in low, and Walter followed as fast as he could. “Phee.”

“Here.” The voice came small and tremulous, from a hallway just the other side of the room.

Walter slid the glass door shut, then crawled over to the doorway. He pulled off the balaclava. “Phee, it’s me, Walter.”

Arms encircled him in the dark and hugged him tightly. She just shook and he returned the hug with one arm, keeping his gun free. “Shhhh, it will be okay.”

“How can it be you? You . . . you . . .”

“Haven’t shaved, I know.”

“Walter, you’re dead. They broadcast it hourly. All the time.”

He gave her another squeeze. “Their fantasy isn’t our reality.”

“Ivan?”

“Also alive. He’s the one working the lights.”

“And the sound.” Speakers in the ceiling crackled with Ivan’s voice. “You have to get out of there now! Go back to the truck, take it. No time to explain. I’ll fix things for you. Go! Don’t stop for anything. Go!”

Walter stood and took Sophia’s hand. “Ready?”

She smeared dirt across her cheek as she swiped a tear. “Don’t let go.”

“Never.”

Walter slid the door open slowly, hoping to avoid any sound. It made little, and the hiss of water from the estate’s sprinkling system smothered it easily. They stayed low until the edge of the patio. He tightened his grip on her hand, nodded toward the truck. “Driver’s side, keep the truck between us and bullets.”

Sophia nodded.

They were off.

Gunfire continued, but sporadically now. Someone was shouting for lights. Others cried out for aid. They got around the front of the truck and into the cab before anyone noticed them. And even then, when Walter started the truck, no one shot at them immediately.

“Stay down.”

Walter hit the accelerator and the truck lurched forward across the lawn. Water from the sprinklers sprayed up against the windscreen. The truck hit a bump as it gained speed. Bodies shifted and slid off the back. A rifle barked and the rear window spiderwebbed.

Then all the lights behind them came on at once with full intensity. The reflected brilliance stung Walter’s eyes, but gave him enough of a view to turn right, heading toward the front of the house. Then sparks shot behind him and everything went abruptly dark.

Way to go, Spurs. Walter smiled. Ivan had turned the water on to soak everything and everyone. Then he pumped a lot of current into the lights. Their cables and connections shorted, sending a jolt through those on the wet field. And because we were in the truck, we got away clean.

Sophia sat up. “Is it safe?”

“Should be. We’ll swing around, get Ivan, and get out of here.” Walter hit the truck’s lights, and then cranked the wheel hard to the left. The truck careened around the mansion’s front drive and raced toward the estate’s gate.

“Walter!”

He hit the brake hard, the truck fishtailing through gravel. “Oh, shit.”

“That’s why he wanted us to go fast.” Sophia gasped, her shoulders slumped and she rested her forehead on the dashboard. “So close.”

A hundred meters to the west, marching through the estate’s gates without even having to bow its head, came the first of the Rivergaard Rangers’ ’Mechs. A Wasp, the lead humanoid war machine dropped the medium laser in line with the truck’s nose.

To start up again was to die.

“I’m sorry, Sophia.” Walter sat back and raised his hands. “I guess I still owe you a rescue.”

About the Author

Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning writer, game designer, computer game designer, podcaster, screenwriter and graphic novelist who is best known for his New York Times bestselling novels I, Jedi and Rogue Squadron. He is currently the Distinguished Visiting Writer in Residence at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University. When not writing or teaching, he spends too much time playing games and figuring out how to cook things that taste good.