Lost destiny

by Michael A. Stackpole

  32

  Teniente

  Smoke Jaguar Occupation Zone

  4 May 3052 (Day 4 of Operation Scorpion)

  Victor Davion looked directly into the viewscreen. He purposely set his face in the grimly satisfied smile he would have expected from Morgan Hasek-Davion addressing the troops. Clad in a cooling vest, he let Kai's pendant rest against the vest's outer kevlar surface. Punching a button with a gloved finger, he opened a line to each communications monitor in the three-ship armada racing toward the planet.

  "In two days you will begin final preparations for our invasion of Teniente. We are only forty-four hours out from atmospheric entry and everything is proceeding according to plan." With those words, his grin expanded, but he trimmed it back before continuing. "This mission is a go and nothing is going to change that."

  His gray eyes flicked down, then back up. "The last time a force from the Federated Commonwealth tried something like this, we were the Federated Suns and many of us could only have played at being MechWarriors. At that time, my cousin, Morgan Hasek-Davion, told his men that history would wonder at how they had accomplished so much with so little. He showed complete confidence in their ability.

  "Well, I know how they managed to succeed in the face of incredible odds. I learned the solution over the last year working with all of you. We survived Alyina because of your guts and your determination to make the Clans pay for any centimeter of ground they got. We worked hard and came together as a unit because of your resiliency. We have mastered new tactics and strategies and machines because of your heart and your desire to carry the battle back to the Clans."

  Victor's eyes glinted hard and cold. "This is our chance to prove to the Clans and everyone else that the Inner Sphere will not roll over and die. Our best case, our greatest victory is one in which no one fires a shot. We get in, we get our target and we get out, simple as that. If we have to fight, well, I have no doubt you'll give far better than you get. But we're not here to retake Teniente. We're on a rescue mission. We can collect scalps another time.

  "This is the Revenants' first battle. It will not be our last. Take the time while we are inbound to get to your machines and strap in. Double- and triple-check everything. When we go in, we go in hot. Kid gloves are off. When we go, we go to start a legend that will haunt the Clans forever."

  Victor flicked a button, closing the commlink, and looked up at Shin. "Well?"

  The yakuza nodded solemnly. "Your assurances of confidence will make them do everything they can to justify that confidence. I do not envy any forces we face on the ground."

  Galen gave Victor a thumb's-up. "After this, if you suggested staging a raid on Sian, they'd go for it."

  Behind Galen a red light flickered atop a communications monitor. Victor and Shin both pulled out of line-of-sight of the screen. Galen slipped the cowl up on his robe, then touched a button to open communications. "This is ComStar DropShip Serene Foresight."

  Serene Foresight, this is ComStar Ground Control, Kunkai sector."

  "Go ahead, Kunkai."

  The ground operator's voice lost its edge. "Foresight, we have no orders concerning you, Ecstasy of Reason, or Valiant Wisdom. Things are a bit screwed up here. Can you give me confirmation of your mission?"

  Galen leaned back in his seat, but did not let the edge of the cowl reveal his eyes. "Kunkai sector, I have no authorization to say more than that we are on a mission with Beta Predeir clearance. The orders were filed as Lima Zebra 0945."

  "Understood, Foresight. Stand by."

  Galen flicked the monitor into standby mode. "Shin, I hope I got that right."

  The Combine MechWarrior nodded. "Perfect, Galen. That clearance is supposed to get us in and out with a minimum of trouble."

  Victor found himself crossing his fingers. He uncrossed them and clutched them behind his back. As the three men waited in the dim, narrow confines of the newly christened Foresight's communication center, Victor wished for a place to plug in his cooling vest. He noticed a bead of sweat roll down Shin's face and smiled.

  Galen's monitor beeped again. "Go ahead, Kunkai."

  "Roger, Foresight. Because of Operation Scorpion, the demi-Precentor is exercising an Alpha priority override of your mission. Your orders say you've got troops on board and we want them delivered at 45.33 north, 2.10 west. We could really use the help. We have you ETA forty-eight hours, correct?"

  In the background Victor heard some muffled explosions. He looked over at Galen and shrugged his shoulders. I wonder ... ?

  Galen let his voice drop an octave into a growl. "Have problems with Kurita insurgents, Kunkai?"

  "Kurita? I wish." The man's voice became strained as an explosion sounded louder. "Some damned Clan commander had his people out on surprise maneuvers earlier this week. When we went to round them up, they were gone." Another explosion resonated through the cabin. "Now they're mad."

  "Roger, Kunkai. We're on our way. Peace of Blake be with you. Foresight out."

  Victor's mind reeled. ComStar is fighting the Clans? Just our luck to be using "ComStar" ships to pull off this rescue.

  Galen draped his arms over the top of the console. "What's the call, Victor? If we don't go to those coordinates, ground control will know we're not ComStar."

  "And if we do," Shin added, "the Clan commander will be waiting for us."

  "True. We have to assume the Clans have enough Elint capabilities to have monitored that exchange." Victor chewed on his lower lip for a second. "Now that we've been identified as a target, the Clans will respond to us no matter where we go."

  Shin's face closed over. "Do we scrub this mission?"

  "Go home empty-handed?" Victor shook his head. "No way. I know the plan was to wait until the last moment to try to pinpoint Hohiro's position, but now we've got to go early. Find out where he is and find out what kind of fighting strength he can deliver by the time we get there."

  "Hai."

  Galen winced. "You gonna help ComStar?"

  Victor's face showed diabolical glee. "If we were caught with our tails in a vise, what would ComStar do?"

  "Charge double to send messages out?"

  "You got it." Victor pointed at the monitor. "You tell Kunkai we're coming down right on top of them, so they should hold at all costs. Make sure the broadcast beam is wide enough that the Clans can pick it up, too. That will make them push harder and the both of them will grind each other down."

  Galen straightened up again. "Roger. Then what will we do?"

  "Hey, we're strictly here on a smash and grab," Victor said with a shrug. "We're not looking for a fight, but if someone gets in our way, well, we'll give the Clans more than they bargained for."

  33

  Dove Costoso, Alyina

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  5 May 3052 (Day 5 of Operation Scorpion)

  Sitting on her cot, her back jammed into the furthest corner of her cell, Deirdre Lear hugged her knees tighter against her chest. Her face buried in the protective circle of her arms, she felt where her bitter tears had soaked the legs of her jumpsuit, and her jaws ached from clenching her teeth against cries of grief.

  When Kai had tried to explain what the fight with Taman Malthus meant to him, she had forced herself to suspend judgement. She knew, deep down, that it was folly for him to fight a man so much bigger than he was. Kai was already exhausted from their long hike, and though his wounds from the last fight had closed and healed, he was still not at the top of his form. The fight would be savage and brutal, and it conjured up her father's ragged ghost.

  Yet even as Kai and Malthus began, she could see how suited Kai was to combat. She even took pleasure in watching him feint and strike. Knowing that Kai had to be pushing himself close to the edge, it was miraculous to see his fatigue drop away. His surprisingly fluid movements and speed made her proud to have helped care for him.

  As Kai and Malthus exchanged blows, she cataloged the damage they were doing to one another. Deirdre became strange
ly detached, as if in a clinic watching another doctor operate. The instant Kai's foot hit the Elemental's thigh, she knew the blow had crushed tissue and ruptured blood vessels. Malthus would have a hematoma at the very least. Kai might even have bruised the large man's femur if the kick had not been so short.

  Punch and counter-punch had her involuntarily swaying to avoid them. Her heart had crawled up into her throat as Kai went down, but she knew, when he came back up, that he would never surrender. Part of her wanted to scream at him to give up, but she respected too much the courage he had displayed in inviting the Elemental forward.

  When Kai leaped up and kicked Malthus in the head, she had wanted to cheer. When Malthus' fist hit Kai in the ribs, she shared his pain, and when he hit the ground, she did not expect him to get up again. She knew it was over, but at least Kai lived.

  Then the ComStar helicopter came with guns blazing.

  Distracted by the violent death of the Elemental standing nearest her, she never even saw Kai fall from the mountain.

  Feeling the sharp pain of her own fingernails digging into her palms startled her out of reliving the end of that memory. Her hands reached out to haul Kai back onto the plateau, but the helicopter's pulsed thunder stole any last words, any last sounds Kai might have made.

  Kai, Kai, KAI! She wanted to shout his name aloud now, as she had not done when he fell. And she wanted to scream at the Elementals housed in the cell across from her, but she would not let them see how much they had hurt her. They might own her physically, but they would never break her. Not the Clans. Not ComStar. Not anyone.

  Distantly she heard the tones as someone punched the combination code into the keypad for the door. As it creaked open, she smelled food. Her stomach rumbled out of reflex, but she was too filled with pain and grief to want to eat. She did not even look up as her anonymous jailer slid a tray beneath the iron-bar door to her cage. She knew he would come and drag it back out later.

  The sound of a key rasping in the lock of her door did bring her head up. To her right, across a narrow corridor, she saw the trio of Elementals still trapped in their metal-rod walled cell. They clung to the bars with white-knuckled hands and watched their captor with a hunger that no food could assuage.

  In the half-second she studied them, Deirdre took vicious delight in noting that the bruise on the right side of Malthus' face had not yet begun to lose its color.

  Her blue eyes flicked up at the rotund figure opening the door to her cell. Khalsa moved her tray forward with his foot, then slowly closed the door behind him. He smiled at her, the corners of his mouth disappearing beneath folds of chubby cheeks. In his red robe, the demi-Precentor looked like a monk bent on exchanging his contemplation of the sin of gluttony for that of lust.

  "Doctor Lear, please, they tell me you are not eating." He brought his thick-fingered hands together over the ample mound of his belly. "I would have come sooner, but some Steiner partisans required suppression. Listen to me, you must not mourn that man. He was not worthy of your tears. He was a cad who only led you into trouble." His voice dropped into a whisper. "He had a wife and children back in the Federated Suns. You are too good for the likes of Dave Jewell."

  Deirdre gave him the coldest stare her red-rimmed eyes could muster, but not trusting her voice, she said nothing. She took refuge in Khalsa's use of Kai's alias because it proved how much the man truly overrated himself. Keeping his identity hidden had been important to Kai and she had worked hard not to betray him. Even as he died, I could not call out to him! Nothing would make her betray him in death.

  Khalsa got closer, inching his way across the cell, until he could ease his round buttocks onto the edge of her cot. "You must eat to keep up your strength."

  She continued to regard him mutely.

  A single bead of nervous sweat formed on his brow. "Well, I was going to save this as a reward, if you ate something, but I think your spirit needs some sustenance. 'Nourish the soul and you nourish the whole,' as the Primus has said more than once." He smiled like a preacher preparing to share the good word with a condemned convict. "It turns out that my superiors want the Elementals transshipped to our main compound at Valigia tomorrow. You will be able to remain here, in Dove Costoso, with me!"

  Khalsa clapped his hands as if that made things right in some way. His expectant leer mixed sexual desire and childlike innocence into a volatile concoction. As the first wave of revulsion passed over her, Deirdre felt a jolt of adrenaline surge into her bloodstream. "No longer will you have to endure the sight of these outland murderers."

  Khalsa's right hand pressed down on her left knee in the same motion as someone pushing down the plunger on a detonator.

  Deirdre jerked her knee out from beneath his hand and stood in one pantherish motion. "Don't you dare, you worm." Her hands curled into fists. "I wouldn't stay with you even if the alternative was being dropped into the sun. The Elemental might be outlanders and murderers, but there was never any question about what they were. We knew them for enemies and they came at us with no hesitation. Even so, they acquitted themselves honorably and were interested in fair fights."

  Khalsa's face changed color, almost a match for the ash-gray floor. "But ... but they murdered your paramour."

  Deirdre stalked toward him. "Did they? You set them on our trail. You betrayed us. You hid in a cloak of supposed neutrality, yet you took us into custody and called them. Who is to blame, the dogs of war or their masters?"

  Khalsa scrambled to his feet and half-stumbled over the food tray on his way back toward the door. "You are mad, woman! I offer you more than a lifetime spent in a prison camp." He fumbled with a key, then inserted it in the lock and cranked the door open. "You doom yourself."

  She darted forward and caught the thick-set man with an open-handed slap that left a red mark and four furrows on his cheek. "Beast! You're lucky you disgust me enough that I do not take time to think things through. With my training and knowledge, I could agree to your arrangement, then make sure that however long I let you live, it would be sheer agony."

  She pulled back and let him squeeze his bulk out through the door. "Run, Khalsa, run. As long as I live, you will never be safe. I will torment you in your dreams. You will taste my venom in your food and with every little ache or pain, you will wonder if I have gotten to you." Deirdre let herself laugh in the most horrid manner she could imagine. "Someday, you will be right!"

  Unnerved, Khalsa locked the door behind himself, then fled from the room. Across from her, Taman Malthus slowly, stiffly stood and clutched the bars of his cell in massive hands. "What a worthy match for a warrior you are."

  "Don't flatter yourself," she hissed, "I would no more be with you than I would him. You're the one with blood on his hands. You killed—no, you murdered him ..."

  The pain in Malthus' eyes shocked her enough to stop her in mid-tirade. "You are wrong, Doctor. I am no murderer. Only by going against the best can we confirm that we are the best." His hands opened, then finger by finger, slowly gripped the bars again. "Your paramour knocked me down, but I was not defeated. He knew it and he knew he would pay the price for his bold strike. To characterize what I did as murder renders my very worthy foe nothing more than a victim."

  Deirdre grabbed the bars of her cell as her body began to tremble. "He was a victim—a victim of this stupid war!" As her adrenaline began to drain away, fatigue and weakness poured lead into her muscles.

  "That, Doctor, is a foul slander. Jewell knew and accepted his part in our fight. He was more a warrior than many within the Clans." In a burst of fury, Malthus yanked at the bars but they did not give way. "Had ComStar not robbed me of my victory, I, Taman Malthus, would have made good on my promise to the both of you."

  Kai died for no reason! Despite the sincerity of the Star Captain's words, she felt her spirit begin to fold in on itself. The fact that Kai had died needlessly hammered at her and slipped in to replace the trauma of her father's death. It reinforced her lifelong conviction that war a
nd killing were moronic and a weakling's way out. She knew Kai acknowledged this, too, yet he had gone to his death like a moth drawn inexorably to a flame.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but the door-lock tones stopped her. The dungeon door opened again. The fire rekindled in Deirdre's belly as she saw Khalsa's scarlet bulk, but she held her tongue as she realized he was backing into the room. The light flashed off his bald head as it tipped back in a painfully awkward position.

  The reason for his deformed posture was the barrel of the autorifle stuffed up his right nostril.

  "Doctor, I don't know if this is the proper time or place, but I have this pain," quipped the man with the gun as he forced Khalsa into the room. "Are you seeing patients?"

  * * *

  The transparent and radiant joy on Deirdre's face made Kai's heart thump faster in his chest. She retreated from the bars of her cell and pressed her hands over her open mouth. She blinked twice, then stared at him as if willing him to evaporate like a ghost.

  "Is it really you?"

  Kai smiled and nodded. "Either I'm here or," he jiggled the rifle, "the demi-Precentor is having a very bad nightmare."

  "Urkle," commented Khalsa.

  Kai guided the corpulent man by the nose over to the door. "Open it."

  The demi-Precentor pulled the keys from his belt. "You'll never get away with this."

  Kai refrained from jerking the trigger. "If I want your advice, I'll open your head and sift your brains for it. I'm tired and I'm angry and I bounced bough by bough down through a pine tree to a very hard landing at the base of that drop-off. Open. The. Door."

  Khalsa complied, then Kai moved him aside. Deirdre flew through the open door and embraced him tightly. It didn't matter to him that her touch started bruises aching again because the feel of her body and the scent of her eased all of his pain. "I love you, Deirdre."