Assumption of risk

by Michael A. Stackpole

  She's gorgeous. Watching her take Tormano's arm, Kai was impressed with his uncle for the first time in his life. The knowledge that the man was still married did cut into the admiration, but Kai suddenly saw Tormano as so many others did: a powerful and wealthy man who did not show his sixty years. I can but hope to age as well.

  Tormano led the woman straight over to the two MechWarriors. "Welcome, gentlemen, welcome. I am honored to be your host for this evening." Tormano bowed in turn to Wu Deng Tang and then his nephew. "Your presence pleases me more than you know."

  Wu returned the bow. "Your invitation honors me and I thank you for it. Few would have expected a man in your position to wish my presence here."

  Tormano brushed aside the caution in Wu's words. "Solaris is a world unto itself, with its own political and social currents. The outside world has so little to do with it."

  He frowned slightly. "I had hoped Ms. Fung would come with you. Is she ill?"

  Wu's face closed a bit. "She sends her regrets. Doctor's orders prevent her from being here, but she is well."

  "Splendid." Tormano turned to the woman and smiled. "Nancy, please remind me to have flowers sent to Ms. Fung; if that would not be presumptuous of me, Mr. Wu. I know how this dreary world can make even the slightest illness seem grave."

  "She would be most pleased with your gift, Mandrinn."

  Tormano smiled at the use of his title, then looked down and shook his head. "Forgive me, I am being very rude. Kai Allard-Liao, this is my aide, Nancy Bao Lee. Nancy, this is my nephew, Kai Allard-Liao, and his challenger, Wu Deng Tang. Mr. Wu, may I present Nancy."

  Wu bowed to Nancy, as did Kai. Straightening up, Kai took her hand in his, then raised her knuckles to his lips. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Ms. Lee."

  Nancy blushed. "And I am happy to meet you, Mr. Allard-Liao."

  Tormano shook his head. "I will have none of that formality, for I love you both and want you to be friends. Kai, Nancy here is quite a fan of yours."

  "And of yours, Mr. Wu," she added politely.

  Kai kept the smile on his face and murmured appropriate nothings as he withdrew inwardly. My uncle playing matchmaker? Why? Does he honestly think I need a companion, or is he trying to impress this woman with his access to me? Is she truly a fan, or is she a spy?

  Tormano deftly steered Wu Deng Tang away, leaving Kai and Nancy standing together. An awkward silence closed in on them, then both tried to speak at once. Their voices combined into gibberish, then they laughed. Kai gestured at her with his left hand. "You first."

  Nancy shot a glance over at Tormano's retreating back, then let her voice sink into a husky whisper. "Please, Mr. Allard-Liao, don't think ill of your uncle for introducing us like this."

  "An introduction to you is not something I will hold against him." Kai winked at her. "And do call me Kai. My surname is a mouthful at the best of times."

  "Thank you, sir." She looked down, then her doe eyes flicked back up. "I am a fan of yours, but not like, well, like ... you know."

  Kai raised an eyebrow. "Groupies?"

  A quick nod. "Yes, exactly, not like that." She paused and took a deep breath, which sorely tested the elasticity of her dress. More composed, she began speaking again. "I'm making a mess of this, which is not what I wanted to do. You see, when I was writing out the check for your uncle's box at The Factory, I mentioned that I would love to see you fight some time. He asked if I wished to accompany him to your title defense and I'm sure he may have interpreted my enthusiastic response as that of a frothing fan. When he offered to introduce me, well, I mean, it is an honor ..."

  Kai gathered her right hand in his left and patted it gently. "Don't worry, I understand. My uncle wants me to have the best life possible and has trouble reconciling that with the fact that what I want may not be what he thinks I should have."

  "He is a kind man. He knew I was not involved with anyone and he thought, well, that perhaps, we might... not that I would object to seeing you, of course." She smiled and blushed again.

  "Of course?"

  She gave his hand a squeeze. "In case it has escaped your attention, you are a very handsome and very eligible man. I rank you up here ahead of even Victor Davion."

  "Ahead of Victor?" Kai frowned.

  "All I mean to say is that Victor seems a little chilly to me." She smiled quickly. "And he's short."

  Kai laughed aloud, then smiled. "Prince Victor is actually a very warm man and a good friend. But, you are correct, he stands well shy of the two-meter mark." He raised his right hand to her chin. "He would come up to here on you."

  "Too small, warm or no." She caressed the back of his hand gently. "My preference runs to men of your height."

  He met her eyes and read the interest in them. He waited for, hoped for, a jolt down in his guts that would tell him they had clicked and that she was the right one to win a place in his heart. It had happened before, once, and he wanted it to happen again.

  He got nothing.

  The inviting light in Nancy's eyes flickered and died. "I am embarrassing you." Kai shook his head. "Not at all. You flatter me."

  "But there is someone else?"

  "No, not really." Kai pulled back emotionally. She had played coy and shy, yet she presented her hand to him in such a way that bringing it to his lips seemed natural. She had dressed seductively but denied being there to seduce him, then behaved in a way that could easily have led to seduction. Even so, she pulled back when he balked. Was that another ploy, or is she back to her original, shy self?

  Kai gave her a wry grin. "My track record for relationships is less than stellar. For the next month or more I have to concentrate on my fight with Wu Den Tang, which won't give me much spare time for starting a relationship with a nice woman who would be deserving of all my attention."

  Nancy brought her hands together and up toward her throat, her forearms hiding her breasts. She glanced down at the ground for a moment. Despite a commotion raised behind her at the elevator, Kai found himself focused on her hands. As she looked up he did too and their gazes met again.

  "You're a wonderful man, Kai. Most would not have been so honest nor so considerate of my feelings. Those who name you Steelsoul are the biggest fools in the Inner Sphere."

  Bigger fools than a man who lets a woman like you get away? "Shall we be friends then?"

  Nancy smiled broadly and easily as she slipped her right hand through the crook in his left arm. "For the time being, I would be honored to be your friend."

  "For the time being?"

  She nodded. "Win your fight, then let us see how far we wish our friendship to go."

  Zurich

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  Seated behind the emergency room desk, Deirdre Lear stifled a yawn. She'd been here for hours, getting sleepier and stiffer by the moment. She leaned back and stretched her arms overhead, trying to loosen up the kinks in her shoulders and to wake herself up a bit.

  Still sitting back in her chair, she studied the report on the computer screen. It being a slow evening, she had offered to help Anne Thompson by typing in her own report on the little boy they'd seen earlier. She knew that to say "a five-year-old Zur male was running naked through his home when the family dog became excited and bit him on the scrotum" was the proper way to write up the report, but she balked at the idea of doing it that way. "There has to be another way to do this."

  Anne glanced back at her, tearing her attention from the holovid viewer in the corner of the waiting room. "What's that, Doctor?"

  "The report on little Donny Li."

  "The boy who will have the interesting scars."

  Deirdre smiled in spite of herself, then shook her head. "There you go, that's my problem. If I try to humanize this account, it becomes achingly funny. If I don't, and I treat it clinically, I can see colleagues reading the report in the boy's file and checking out my handiwork in putting him back together. It was bad enough that he got bit, but he'll relive that t
rauma whenever another physician looks at him."

  "I see the problem." Anne waved her up and out of her seat. "You have to think like a doctor in a hurry. Diagnosis: Dog bite. Wounds: two punctures, one tear. Treatment: antibiotics and seven stitches—two per puncture, three for the tear. Prognosis: no scarring or disability." Punctuating her comments, Anne hit the Enter key and the emergency room report vanished from the screen.

  Deirdre smiled and rolled her hands around to loosen them up. "Nice work."

  "Thanks." Anne watched her for a second. "I had a boyfriend who used to do that. He was big into martial arts."

  "So was I, once. I learned for self-defense."

  Anne got up and drifted back over to the counter. "What did you study?"

  "Aikido."

  "Craig was into Kuk Sool Wan. We met when he removed an ugly growth from my arm."

  Deirdre wandered over to the counter and stared out into the empty waiting room. The holovision set reflected in the window, but she could still see out into the dark of the Zurich night. "He was a surgeon?"

  "Nope. The ugly growth was an ex-boyfriend who had trouble understanding the word 'no.' " Anne sighed heavily. "Craig was a nice guy. We had fun together, then he just up and took off one day."

  "You don't know why?"

  The brown-haired nurse frowned as she pulled a sweater from her chair and looped it over her shoulders. "Not really. He never told me, but I think it was because I'd entered my last semester of nursing school and was doing a lot of work with a hospice. Craig couldn't get used to me becoming so involved with terminal patients. I know terminal illnesses really get under some folks' skin, but I thought Craig could handle it."

  She shrugged. "Anyway, my love life has been a history of disasters." Anne looked over at Deirdre. "So, what happened to Mr. Lear?"

  "Ah, er, um, there, ah, was no Mr. Lear."

  Anne blushed. "I'm sorry, I'm prying." She smacked herself in the forehead with the heel of her left hand. "I get that way on the graveyard shift. I'm sorry."

  Deirdre frowned. "Seems I've got everyone saying that around here." She patted Anne on the shoulder. "Look, Lear is my family name—my stepfather adopted me when he married my mother. David's father and I, we met during the Clan War. It didn't work out. He was a good man, but he was younger than me and we each had our own career tracks going."

  "I understand."

  "You do?" Deirdre shook her head. "Maybe someday you can explain it to me."

  The question on Anne Thompson's lips died as the doors to the emergency room burst open. "Shangkou, shangkou!" shouted one of the four Zur men rushing through the door. Between them, with two men on either side, they carried a thick, flexible mat woven from native fibers. On it they bore a man in the uniform of the local paramilitary constabulary.

  Deirdre picked up the phone and punched down the intercom button while Anne ran around and pulled a gurney away from the wall. "Surgery team to the emergency room, stat!" Deirdre slammed the phone back down, then vaulted herself up and over the counter. She reached the constable's side just as the men heaved him up and onto the gurney.

  The man was a mess. His blue shirt had three holes in it, each one like a black well in the middle of a growing crimson ocean. Deirdre pulled the shoulder strap of the black Sam Browne belt away from his right shoulder, then ripped his shirt open. Beneath it she saw a rapidly reddening kevlar vest. Good, maybe the kevlar slowed the bullets down so they didn't fragment when they hit bone. She mentally shut out the Zurs' chattering and listened closely for the sound of hissing air, but heard nothing.

  "Anne, I need this man cross-typed and matched for whole blood. Start him with one unit and pump him full of penicillin." She looked over at the Zurs. "Do they know who he is? Do we have records on him. Is he allergic to penicillin?"

  "He's Billy Hsing and was attending a meeting at their village. Zhanzheng de Guang ambushed him. Check the computer, he's a patient here."

  Anne started pulling the gurney down the hallway toward the emergency surgical theater and another nurse ran down to help her. Deirdre pointed the men to the waiting room, and used one of the few Chinese expressions she'd learned thus far on Zurich. "Juoxia, yes, that's right, sit down, jouxial"

  As they complied, she punched up the name Billy Hsing on the computer. It showed three possibles and she picked the one whose age was listed as mid-forties. Then the screen showed the smiling picture of a man who looked very much like the body being wheeled into surgery. Deirdre hit the button to reveal his history of allergic reactions to drugs and discovered he had none.

  "That's one little bit of a miracle, Mr. Hsing, that might let you live." His records showed him to be blood type O negative, which also worked in his favor. "Two for two."

  She ran down to the surgery, tearing off her white coat and tossing it in a trash bin beside the door. She joined Rick Bradford at the sink and soaped up. "Forty-three-year-old Zur male, in good physical condition, has multiple gunshot wounds. The bullet penetrated the vest he was wearing, which suggests close range and or automatic rifle bullets. I think his right lung is collapsed."

  Rick nodded as he lathered his arms up to the elbows, then lifted his head back while Anne Thompson tied a surgical mask around his face. "The lower-right quadrant wound is through and through, but I don't think it pierced the bowel."

  "Third miracle in a row." Deirdre looked back over her shoulder. "He's O negative and penicillin allergy is negative."

  Anne looped a surgical mask around Deirdre's face. "Looks like he has two bullets in him. One is resting against a rib behind his right lung. The other is right up against his spine. It missed the aorta by a millimeter and may be impinging on the spinal cord."

  "The bullet near the spine worries me." Deirdre glanced at Rick. "Patch the lung first and reinflate it. Then we do the bowel and then, if we need to and he's up to it, we go for the second bullet, right?"

  "Sounds good to me." Rick rinsed off his arms, then held his dripping hands up. "Gloves!"

  Another nurse—it looked to Deirdre like it might be Cathy in the full surgical garb—stretched latex gloves over Rick's hands. As he stepped away from the sink and Deirdre started to rinse her hands, the doors to the surgery opened again. Rick turned toward the newcomer and started to shout at him. "You can't be in here!"

  Flame lipped from the muzzle of the autorifle the man held and thunder filled the room. Rick ducked down away from the muzzle-flash, and behind him a glass jar full of cotton balls exploded. Anne screamed and backed to the wall, Rick still with one knee on the floor and the anesthesiologist raising his hands. Cathy stood trembling beside Deirdre, her hands rising toward the ceiling.

  The gunman gestured toward the back of the room with his weapon. "Get away from him. Now! Do it!" He pointed the gun at the constable on the operating table. "This man is an enemy of the people. It is time for him to die."

  Solaris City, Solaris VII

  Tamarind March, Federated Commonwealth

  Standing in the back of the elevator, Galen Cox smiled to himself and shook his head. The afterimages of the photographers' strobes still danced before his eyes. In traversing the gauntlet from the limousine to the door of Tormano Liao's palace, he had seen more flashes of light than he had in the battle against the Clans on Teniente. He had almost gotten used to everyone wanting to take Katrina Steiner's picture, but having the paparazzi call out his name and direct their cameras at him was a new and uncomfortable twist on the game.

  He could well understand their desire to capture Katrina's image. Tall and slender, she wore her golden blonde hair long, yet styled in a dazzling variety of different ways. She had played a game with Galen, choosing outrageous hairstyles on some of their planetary visits just to watch a particular coif suddenly become a new rage among the people of that world.

  Galen might have put that down to the cruel contempt of nobles for their subjects, but he had seen the serious, caring side to her. He'd been the one to mention the earthquake on Ginestra as
they traveled to Arc-Royal, but it was Katrina who had bent heaven and earth to divert their route to the planet so they could help out. Wearing heavy boots, jeans, a work shirt, gloves, and a hard hat like all the other volunteers, she had worked as hard as he had to dig people out of the rubble. That included taking her turn in a construction exoskeleton.

  Keeping his back pressed to the rear of the elevator, Galen watched her as she leaned over and spoke in hushed whispers to Omi Kurita. Tonight Katrina wore her hair in a long, thick braid that ran the length of her spine. Her backless evening gown was white with ice blue accents and sequins, long sleeves, and a short skirt. Galen recalled hearing the name of the designer who had created it back on Tharkad, but he'd long since forgotten it. He did notice that the blue-white diamond choker and matching earrings looked perfect on her.

  Omi Kurita, escorted to the party by Thomas DeLon, was equally beautiful in her green silk skirt, blouse, and jacket. Galen smiled as he heard Victor's name pass between the women and he felt happy that his friend had the love of a woman such as Omi. Her grace, sensitivity, and intelligence made her a great prize. Galen thought it sad that Victor and Omi could never be together.

  He realized, as the elevator began to slow and the two Davion bodyguards in the front shifted position, that Victor and Omi had about the same chances of being together as he and Katrina did. Actually, that's not as bad as it might sound. Omi and Victor were prevented because of the vast political and historical forces that had made their nations enemies for centuries. As much as they might love each other, their happiness would require an unheard-of alliance between the Combine and the Commonwealth. Because of hostilities that went back centuries, such an alliance would probably spark dozens of rebellions within the two nations.