BattleTech : Mechwarrior - Dark Age 01 - Ghost War (2002)

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The collapse of ComStar's communication network was the equivalent of a massive earthquake. Everyone knows the earth is not supposed to move, so when you're in an earthquake, it's bizarre. In its aftermath nothing you took for granted can be trusted. The sun has always risen the next day, but would it tomorrow? Maybe not.

  ComStar had always allowed folks to communicate between planets. That ease of communication was what held society together because it created demand and inspired people. Once a news report came in about the latest fashions on New Avalon or Tharkad, the desire for those things grew. Industries would hustle to supply that demand, and satisfied customers do a contented populace make. As long as everyone thinks they are at parity with their peers throughout the universe, they are pleased.

  The media also managed to inspire both positively and negatively. In instituting Stone's reforms, David Lear had clearly seen that information was the key to everything. When news stories came through that praised and valued the folk arts of a particular minority, or praised the efforts of a local group to deal with post-pollution cleanup, people were inspired to emulate or repeat that behavior. When stories came through decrying an injustice, others rallied around that cause. Republic officials harnessed that momentum, provided programs and resources to see that things could be accomplished, and successful efforts in turn generated more stories that inspired.

  I know that could be read very cynically, primarily because it does involve the manipulation of the populace. That manipulation, however, was not the sort of ham-handed coercion Reis practiced.

  Taking action in those causes made citizens feel good about themselves. Those who were already Republic citizens were inspired to continue good works, and those who were not threw themselves into such causes to earn their citizenship.

  The bane of the Inner Sphere had long been national rivalries, and they burned hottest on border worlds. Stone knew that the most contested worlds were the places from which all future conflicts would arise, which is why the worlds he built into his Republic are some of the most battle- scarred and storied in the tale of humanity. If he could bring peace to these worlds, he reasoned, so it could spread to the rest of the Inner Sphere.

  For two generations he had succeeded. His retirement had caused some trouble, but things had been peaceful until the HPGs got hit. That was a fairly nasty blow because it left everyone in the dark, both about what was going on elsewhere, and about the identity of those who took the Hyperpulse Generators out.

  Rusty-God love him because no one else will-immediately jumped to the conclusion that the GGF had hit the local HPG because they were his bogeyman of choice. If GGF had the ability to take down an HPG out there in space, they'd not have a guy pussyfooting around the woods trying to blow off one of Maria's legs. Still, his reaction wasn't completely illogical, and was actually benign compared to some of the others.

  The Draconis Combine and Federated Suns had contested ownership of Helen down through the years. It had changed hands so often that coin collecting was a minor industry. Faces changed on the coins on a monthly basis in some years. At least once the switch happened so fast that scrip had Kurita faces and FedSuns' backs.

  Listening to folks in the bistro, which sat in a largely FedSuns district, I could hear traces of us- and-them conversations. Simple things like, "Well, I heardthey want to . . ." and "One time I dated one ofthem and . . ." The conversations went from benign to vehement and, most tellingly, would drop to whispers when some of the citizens of Asian descent passed by.

  Absent any indication of who had taken down the HPGs, everyone was free to speculate. While the adults of today might have grown up in an era of peace where they played nicely with people of diverse backgrounds, they still had parents and grandparents who had been in the old wars, or had heard the old stories from their sires, and passed them on with the transparent frame of "In my day . .

  ."

  Even without the efforts of a group like the GGF, society was going to be shaking itself apart.

  "Look alive, Sparky."

  I glanced at Ray. "What?" He nodded toward the Constabulary building. "Let her go past, then trail her. I'll get the hovercar. Keep her in sight, but don't let her see you."

  "Sheis your target?" Lady Lakewood had begun to descend the steps.

  "She's a bonus. Keep her in sight."

  I nodded and rose from my seat, then hopped the little railing that separated the bistro from the sidewalk. I slipped into the pedestrian stream easily enough and managed to keep an eye on her. It helped that she was tall, and helped even more that a few folks who recognized her bowed in deference.

  I followed from the other side of the street, which is a pretty good position to be in. Even so, I knew the chances of keeping her in sight and remaining unobserved were minimal. A solid tailing job like this would take a dozen people all connected by radio, so teams could switch off and cover a variety of routes she could be taking. If she ducked into a store, then went out through the rear of the building, she was gone.

  That assumed two things, however. The first was that she noticed she was being tailed. The second was that she wanted to elude pursuit. Unfortunately for me, shedid notice, and she had no intention of fleeing.

  What had escaped Ray's notice was that, as a Knight of The Republic, Lady Janella Lakewood had her own security detail. This detail consisted of two rather large individuals, one male and one female. They wore sour expressions, as if they'd applied to join Stone's Lament and had been turned down. They came up from behind me before I noticed and each grabbed my upper arms and quick- marched me into an alleyway. There I was thrust face-first against the wall and patted down by the woman while the man spoke into a personal communications device.

  The frisking wasn't as bad as it could have been. The hands landed in all the right places and she wasn't bashful, but the pressure was all wrong. If she'd been any more thorough I could have skipped my next physical, which was good since I'd need that time to be picking brick grains out of my left cheek.

  When they finally spun me around, there stood Lady Lakewood. "Been following me, have you?" "In your dreams."

  "Not even a daydream, Mr. Donelly." She crossed her arms and peered down at me with a gaze that was pure malachite fire. "Been hearing some interesting things about you. You've been making threats against Commander Reis."

  "Drunk talk, and you know it. I should be filing charges against him, a lawsuit and everything.

  He's as rotten as a month-old corpse." I shifted my shoulders indignantly, which brought her guard dogs back to alert. "So, maybe I was coming by the Constabulary to see him and tell him off, you know, and then I saw you. I thought I might tell you something, but thought better of it-then Jack and Jill here had me dancing cheek to cheek with this wall."

  "What is it you were going to tell me, Mr. Donelly?" "That I've been asking around, and Reis is rotten. What he did to me he's done to other people." I snorted. "Back when The Republic was something, he'd have been stopped."

  Her chin came up. "Can you prove anything?"

  "Data files and the like? The people down here don't have such things, but that doesn't mean they don't know the truth. You could start with when he was a warden with the local penitentiary and work from there. He's dirty, you'll see."

  "Just as I thought. You have nothing." She shook her head. "Let me give you something to think about, Mr. Donelly. You are in way over your head if you think you can hurt Commander Reis with unsubstantiated innuendo. This is especially true when you have established yourself as a liar."

  "I'm not a liar."

  Lakewood glanced at Jack. "The subject was observed at the Marketplace Bistro two hours and seventeen minutes ago. Upon your ladyship's emergence from the Constabulary building he began to follow. On your order we apprehended him."

  I slumped back against the wall. "Okay, I was watching for you. Reis took my job. I thought I could appeal to you for some help. I have nothing."

  Jill chimed in. "Clothes are
new, but there are no labels inside the jacket."

  "Nothing, Mr. Donelly? Are you sure you are not lying now?" "You know what? The hell with you and The Republic. I'm an innocent guy who got in the middle of something that turned out bad for constables commanded by an idiot. He ruins me. You ruin me. Once I get passage off this rock, I'm long gone from The Republic. I'm going, I'm going . . . I'm going to the Capellan Confederation where there's still some freedom left."

  Lakewood smiled, and I would have liked that smile under other circumstances.

  "Commendable histrionics, Mr. Donelly, but I've learned something in my tenure as a Knight of The Republic. The truly innocent protest neither so vehemently nor so eloquently. You've gotten yourself into something and you are afraid. Well, you should be. You should come to me and confess all before it is too late."

  "Oh, you'll hear from me in the future, you can bet on that." I brushed a hand over my cheek, wiping brick crumbs away. "Now, you gonna trump up other charges, or am I free to go?" Lakewood stepped aside and waved me toward the sidewalk. "Thisis The Republic, Mr.

  Donelly. You are quite free."

  I squared my shoulders and mustered as much dignity as I could as I wandered from the alley.

  It did not help that one of my too-big shoes came off at the heel. I glanced down and noticed that Jill must have untied it when she was giving me the once-over. I refrained from turning back and snapping off some witty remark in her direction and kept walking.

  I went to the next intersection and crossed over, then walked down the street. Eventually Ray pulled up in the hovercar and opened the passenger door for me. In a completely foul mood I slipped in beside him and strapped myself in.

  "Tell me what happened."

  "Not here. Make sure we are clean, then stop somewhere we can get a drink. I need a drink." I flipped down the solar-visor and used the vanity mirror to check the damage to my cheek. "Damned Reptiles."

  Ray chuckled, circled the hovercar a couple of times, then headed for some beer-skellar. He parked down the street from it and glanced at me. "Will this do?" "Yeah, fine."

  The close confines of a hovercar make some acts difficult. Having my way with Jill, for example, would have been impossible. Likewise, throwing a punch is tough, but I found it very easy to drive my left elbow into Ray's face. His head snapped back, then rebounded off the head restraint. I slipped my left hand out, grabbed the back of his skull and smashed his face into the steering wheel.

  Twisting in my seat, I unbuckled his restraints, then reached across and opened his door. I shoved him out.

  I got out of my side before he'd done much more than get his hands under him. I kicked his door shut, or as shut as I could given that his chest stood between it and closed. He shouted weakly, then moaned as I dragged him from the vehicle and pitched him into a trash midden. He was bleeding from the nose and had his arms hugging bruised ribs.

  I grabbed a handful of blond hair and cranked his head back. "You get one chance to answer this question right, or I leave you here with a crushed windpipe. Was it your idea to use me as bait to bring Lakewood's bodyguards into the open, or were you under orders?" A bloody bubble formed under his right nostril, then popped. "Orders. Mr. Handy."

  "Mr. Handy?" "The boss, what we call him."

  I pulled the bottle of water from my pocket, drank a bit then poured the rest down over his face to wash away the blood. "Okay, you're going to call Mr. Handy. I expect him to be at our rendezvous by the time we get there. Reis used me as bait once, and now so has Handy. The next person who does that gets very dead. You can tell him, I'm not bait, I'm the hook, and he wants me attached to his line if it's Reis he's going to catch."

  8

  Though the enemy be only like an ant, regard him like an elephant.

  - African saying

  Overton

  Joppa, Helen

  Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

  21 November 3132

  Ray managed to snivel directions to our new rendezvous point and I drove. We got there quickly enough and it didn't surprise me to see Letitia already there. Her furious glare didn't surprise me either. I put it down to her being angry that I'd not busted Ray's jaw, but she calmed down when he clutched his ribs and moaned about them being broken.

  I glanced at her. "You'll want to call Mr. Handy and get him here, or get me to where I can talk to him. We need to have a serious talk.Now! " Letitia hesitated. She didn't like the idea of taking orders from me, but Ray eased himself down into a chair and waved her away. With her face set in a steely mask of resentment, she stepped into the kitchen to make the call.

  We'd taken a safe house in the older suburbs of Overton. It was the kind of neighborhood where it took a year before you got to know your neighbors, and few were the neighbors who lasted that long. We could nod politely, exchange greetings, but beyond that we didn't want to know each other or be known.

  I stayed with Ray and didn't explore the house. From the looks of it, and others in the neighborhood, they'd been first-generation tract homes created just after the establishment of The Republic. Others had been expanded, with second floors added, or window treatments and lots of landscaping, but our home was still the basic low box. Thirty years earlier the neighborhood would have been open and friendly, but now, after its golden age had declined, the houses and owners had aged and old suspicions returned. It could be best thought of as a place where folks once grew up and moved away from. If The Republic lasted, decay and gentrification would follow in natural sequence.

  If not, the neighborhood was doomed.

  Letitia returned. "He'll be coming. A couple of hours."

  I nodded. It was good that she had his direct line, whether it was connected to a mobile device or some location. That went a long way toward ruling her out as the CDRF mole. If she were, the CDRF would have been able to swoop down on him and there would be no reason why Reis wouldn't have hauled his butt in after losing officers. Destroying GGF fast after that debacle would make his popularity skyrocket.

  Letitia did what she could for Ray while we waited. That consisted mostly of sticking rolled-up gauze pads in his nose, getting him some analgesic tabs-though none of her high-speed stuff-and wrapping his ribs. When she removed his shirt to do that I could see the mottled purple lines where the door and the car frame had smashed him. I didn't see enough swelling to make me think I'd broken ribs, but they were bruised enough to hurt for a long time.

  It's kind of funny how time passes in a situation like that. The two of them were radiating pure hatred for me. Not only did they resent my having hurt them, but they resented my presence. They

  didn't want to leave me alone, but they also didn't like having me there and able to listen to what they might be saying back and forth to each other. Watching them interact, I didn't think there was anything going on between them, but they'd clearly been friends and united by the loss of their other comrades- another discomfort they could lay at my feet.

  So time dragged on slowly. I really didn't care that they didn't like me. I actually enjoyed the fact that they feared me. That's the funny thing about intellectual folks-and it's only the educated who can get behind causes like endangered species. While they might be willing to embrace violence to further their cause, it's always some imaginary, ennobled form of violence. It's clean, the one-punch knockout, where you ask the other guy to say "uncle" and then you accept he'll act according to his word.

  I didn't play by those rules and that really got under their skins. With Letitia, one punch would have been enough-heck, just trapping her leg and tossing her back into a table would have been enough. With Ray, the elbow made sense, but driving his head into the steering wheel, that was over the top. And kicking the door into him, well, that was just fighting dirty.

  With their attitude toward violence, how could they justify shooting constables? It was easy.

  First, the shots were at range and they couldn't see the aftermath. Second, they were defending a comrade. Sel
f-defense layered nobility on their act while overlooking the fact that had they not been engaged in criminal activity, there would never had been a need for self-defense.

  Eventually Handy arrived. He made no attempt to disguise himself. He still wore black and was cadaverously slender, with a pasty-pale complexion that suggested he was a vampire who had not fed in a long time. He did wear glasses that darkened in the sunlight, and left a gray haze over his eyes indoors. He'd shaved his head, confirming for me once again that there is nothing uglier than a white man with a bare scalp.

  He surveyed the damage to Ray, then looked at me. His expression hovered between peevish resentment and amusement. "Well, Mr. Donelly, you have been busy."

  "I have." I stayed slouched in the overstuffed chair I'd appropriated. "The two of them, out.

  This is just you and me talking."

  Letitia was prepared to take issue with my orders, but Handy waved her away. "Ray will be more comfortable lying down. We will not be that long. There will be no need for Letitia to safeguard me, will there?" "Nope."

  Letitia guided Ray from the room and down the hallway to the bedrooms. Handy slipped onto the couch where Ray had been and flicked a bloody tissue into a wastebasket. "Was that really necessary?" "You tell me." I narrowed my brown eyes. "Bunch of choices here: you dangled me like bait in front of a Republic Knight, or Ray is the mole the CDRF has in this cell. Could be both, or could be that Ray is just a moron. You want to sort them out for me?" "Fascinating." His face betrayed little of his reaction. "I asked Ray to take you on the scouting mission. I might have suggested that you might be spotted, in which case he should be cautious and observe all he could. Ray is not an intellectual giant, but deliberately sacrificing you to the other side was not my intent, nor was it suggested to him."