Lost destiny

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "What in hell?" Victor brought his 'Mech to its feet as the Thor froze, then slowly toppled to the side. "Whoever got that Thor, thank you very much."

  A distant radio call filled with static answered him. "It was my pleasure, Victor Davion."

  "Hohiro, is that you?"

  "It is, Revenant Leader. The 311th Pesht Regulars are joining up now." In the distance, Victor saw the Kurita 'Mechs sprinting into view. "We would hate for you to think, on your first visit to the Combine, that we would let anything untoward happen to our guests."

  36

  Sian

  Sian Commonality, Capellan Confederation

  8 May 3052 (Day 8 of Operation Scorpion)

  Though hardened by years of viewing the results of his mother's depravity, Sun-Tzu was shocked to see her and his father, Tsen Shang, in this way. It was not their nudity—he had seen his parents naked on various occasions—nor was it the apparent reconciliation that had placed both of them in the same bed. Tsen Shang, who had never been able to explain his attraction to Romano, had told Sun-Tzu that she would never kill him, and he would always return to her whenever she asked.

  What surprised Sun-Tzu was the violence and obvious surprise that twisted their bodies. Tsen Shang had slipped out of bed, his legs apparently tangling in the sheet as he had made a dive for the bedside table. His attempt had toppled the table and spilled the laser pistol he sought onto the floor, just centimeters from his outstretched fingers. The carpeting beside his right hand had been slashed clear down to the floor by the razored fingernails on his three fingers as he clawed his way toward the pistol.

  The laser wound in Tsen's back looked surprisingly bloodless. If not for the one thin ribbon running from the wound across his spine, the blackened circle could have been mistaken for an infected insect bite. It hardly looked sufficient to have stopped a man of Tsen Shang's size, but from its location, Sun-Tzu knew it had burst his father's heart.

  He stood up from his examination of the body and wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers. "Given that you died trying to protect my mother, I suppose you died happily. Here, on Sian, that is unique indeed."

  Looking at his mother, Sun knew the opposite had been true of her. Slumped back against the headboard, she looked as though she must have drawn herself up like a cat to hiss at her assailant. Fury still locked her face in a hideous death mask, but the position of her body made her look more piteous than frightful. Even so, Sun-Tzu could not help feeling more relief than sadness at her passing.

  Sun-Tzu folded his arms across his chest to suppress a shudder. Romano's assassin had been most careful, the laser having struck his mother squarely between the eyes. Part of him recognized the wound's stigmata as being that of the Biblical mark of Cain, but he rejected that as an explanation for the shot. He knew his mother would have railed against her assassin and would have bragged that she could destroy

  him using the powers centered in her third eye. What better proof that she was mad?

  Even as he became confident of his reconstruction of what had transpired in his parents' bedchamber, the allusion to the mark of Cain haunted him. Cain was a fratricide, if I recall my mythology correctly. He knew his mother had ordered the death of her sister and he strongly suspected her of having had her own father killed. A symbolic gesture, then?

  Immediately he knew who had slain his mother and father. "How fitting, how appropriate." He knelt once again and scooped up his father's laser pistol. He savored the cool smoothness of its grip and reveled in its weight. He knew where he would find the murderer and he resolved to thank him before he completed the job his mother's assassin should have done on New Avalon.

  As he stalked through the corridors of the palace, he felt his heart begin to pound louder and faster, though he recognized it as anticipation, not fear. Avenging his parents would be his first action as the new Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. According to his plans, his accession to the throne was decidedly premature. Nor had he anticipated the death of his father, though he had acknowledged the possibility that he might have to destroy Tsen Shang after he had eliminated Romano.

  The realization of his full responsibilities might have crippled another, but Sun-Tzu was energized by them. He knew he would have to move swiftly to consolidate power, but not with the brutal public purges his mother favored. Such measures would not inspire the people's loyalty or confidence, but bred the opposite instead. No, he would quietly repudiate his mother's actions and pay some reparations to those who had lost kin to his mother's predations.

  He would show his people the velvet glove, knowing he could always wield the steel fist it sheathed. To further unite them, he would launch a preemptive strike at one of the bases his Uncle Tormana maintained within the Federated Commonwealth. With enough evidence to prove they hoped to hit us, I will create an external threat that will bind us together.

  He shifted the gun to his left hand, wiped the sweat from his right onto his trousers, then gripped the gun firmly again. With his left hand, he twisted the knob and smiled to find the door unlocked. He opened it slowly and slipped noiselessly into the room that had become his sanctuary. Pressing the door shut behind him, he studied the second pair of tracks in the dust and traced them around to the hooded, cloaked figure sitting in the chair behind the desk.

  "Reports of your death have been greatly exaggerated, I see, Justin Allard." Sun-Tzu brought the pistol up and held it unwaveringly on the seated person. "I compliment you on the accuracy of your shooting. I had heard, on Outreach, that you were good with that wrist laser of yours, but I had not imagined such exacting skill."

  "There are many things you cannot imagine, Sun-Tzu Liao," Candace Liao hissed as she sat forward and let the hood slip from her head. "Justin was good, very good, and he got the assassin who would have slain the two of us, but he was not good enough to avoid dying from a mortal wound."

  Sun-Tzu, his mind reeling, blinked and felt his chest tighten. "How? You are supposed to be dead!"

  Candace threw her cloak back from her left shoulder with a stiff motion. "You know, of course, that I was treated for breast cancer on New Avalon six years ago. I underwent a radical mastectomy and had the muscles rebuilt with myomer fibers. Your assassin's laser had enough power to burn through flesh, but myomer is a bit tougher than that. When I fell, I hit my head and was knocked out, creating the illusion that the smoking hole in my chest had killed me.

  "So now you come here, kill your sister, and think you can simply take the throne, is that it?" Sun-Tzu bared his teeth as though the display would frighten her off. Candace stood before him like a dark void that could swallow his plans and destroy his dreams. "You want to become the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation."

  "I know you are smarter than that. Your act on Outreach did not fool me. You are no more impulsive or insane than I am dead." Candace laughed derisively. "The Capellan Confederation could have been mine any time I wanted it. When I left here twenty years ago, Justin and I discussed any of a number of plots that would have given me the throne. We could have claimed a kidnapping from which I was later saved through a miraculous escape. My father would have embraced me again, as would the people. If not that time, then when the troops from the St. Ives Compact moved to fight against the Andurien invaders, or when the St. Ives Compact severed diplomatic relations with the Federated Commonwealth to prevent Hanse Davion from attacking the Capellan Confederation.

  "There were plans within plans, and I always had more than enough aid available from within the Confederation itself. Romano's purges may have gotten one or two of my agents, but they created dozens more. You would not be far wrong if you imagined that I have had more palace people on my payroll than did my sister."

  I relied too much on my mother's view of her sister. That mistake I will not make again. Sun-Tzu leaned back against the door and concentrated on the pain of the knob grinding into his spine. "Why did you wait this long to strike?"

  Candace laced her fingers together
and peered over them at him. "It is because I do not want to be Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. While your mother painted me a whore and traitor for my alliance with Hanse Davion, I found it a way to allow my people to maintain their cultural identity without being absorbed into the Commonwealth. Though I think Hanse was far more responsible a ruler than Romano could ever have been, I had no desire to see my people denatured through union with his empire.

  "Had I been the Capellan Chancellor, I would have concluded an alliance with Hanse Davion to stop the war. That would have made me a buffer between him and the Free Worlds League. I would have been forced to strike at House Marik in the 3039 war just to keep the fighting on their worlds instead of our own. Eventually we would have been absorbed into the Federated Commonwealth."

  The cold logic in Candace's words surprised Sun-Tzu because of the distance between it and the motives his mother had imparted to everything Candace had done. "If this is so, why come here now?"

  Candace looked in the direction of her sister's bedchamber. "What I did to Romano was personal, not political. It was the last act in a drama that had gone on far too long."

  Her nephew shook his head. "But news of her assassination will create demands for revenge."

  "Even Romano knew to keep the true manner of our father's death private. Let this be your first lesson as Chancellor. Here in the Capellan Confederation, the truth is what you say it is." Candace stood slowly and let her cloak enshroud her again. "I did not murder your mother. She, in a fit of anger, shot and killed Tsen Shang, then killed herself. She left a verigraphed message to that effect, which you read and destroyed because it discussed matters that could not be made public. You will be vague in statements about their death, but you will mourn publicly and privately. Of course, you will threaten vengeance against whoever did the deed."

  Not all that far removed from what I had planned to say when I killed her. Sun-Tzu felt some of his confidence returning. "And my second lesson as Chancellor?"

  "Never trust your sister. Kali is as mad as her mother, if not more so." Candace held up one hand to stop him from speaking. "And your third lesson: Stay away from my children. None has any desire to sit on the Celestial Throne. Leave them alone and you never need fear them."

  "By their very existence they threaten me."

  "They threaten you only if you act against them." The look in Candace's gray eyes chilled Sun-Tzu to the marrow of his bones. 'There are more ways into and out of the Capellan Confederation and this palace than you can ever know. If forced, I can and will return, or I will unleash any number of my agents to avenge them. I may be reluctant to accept responsibility for the Confederation, but that does not mean I am unable to do so if need be."

  He motioned with the laser pistol. "What if I shoot you now?"

  She shrugged. "In that event, a full briefing on the security breaches here in the Confederation—including enough information to stage a successful coup to put Kuan Yin on the throne in your place—will find its way into Hanse Davion's hands. I can assure you that he will be less reluctant to make use of it than I ever would be."

  Sun-Tzu lowered the gun. "Why just my mother and father? Why did you spare me and my sister?"

  Candace smiled humorlessly. "You I spared because I know you are not stupid. If the Confederation is to endure, it will do so based on your actions. I hated my sister, but that does not mean I want the Capellan people to suffer. After Maximilian and Romano, my homeland needs a shrewd ruler, and I deem you capable of being such. As for sparing your sister, I had to live with Romano. Adversity makes you stronger, and I'd rather you looked for adversaries within your own home than outside."

  She crossed the room and touched a switch that opened a secret door in the far wall. "Remember, the future of the Capellan Confederation is in your hands. Consider it a sacred trust. The difference between the real world and the games you played on Outreach is this: now you get no mistakes. Remember that and live. Forget it and you will be broken."

  * * *

  Sun-Tzu stared at the panel after it had snapped shut, then tucked the laser pistol into the waistband of his trousers. So, my mother's reign of terror is over, and I have survived to see it so. Very well.

  He walked around Justin's old desk and dropped into the chair. He touched one button on the computer console there and, to his surprise, the antique monitor lit up as power surged into it. How interesting. It still works. There is yet life in the machinery that destroyed the Capellan Confederation.

  Sun-Tzu leaned back in the chair. "My mother and grandfather so hated Hanse Davion that they could not see how well his methods worked against us. I am not that blind. In me Hanse Davion will see his own tactics and strategies come to haunt him." He smiled and steepled his fingers "The Capellan Confederation is not dead, and what has not killed us will make us stronger."

  37

  Tukayyid

  ComStar Intervention Zone, Free Rasalhague Republic

  9 May 3052 (Day 9 of Operation Scorpion)

  Assuming the stature of Atlas in his artificial world, the Precentor Martial stood in the Dinju Mountains and watched the Smoke Jaguars retreat. As the battle evolved over the first eight days of the war, Focht realized the Smoke Jaguars had never correctly identified the Second Army as reinforcements for the Fifth Army division that had originally held the mountains. As a result, the Smoke Jaguars had expended incredible amounts of ammunition to eliminate what they believed were the last of the defenders. When the second half of the Fifth Army, fresh from killing the First Jaguar Cavaliers, came up from the Racice Delta to trap the Jaguars in the mountains, the end was in sight.

  Focht smiled as he watched the Clansmen retreat and allowed himself to take some pride in the victory over the Smoke Jaguars. The invasion's original ilKhan, Leo Showers of the Smoke Jaguars, had been a particular annoyance in Focht's mission to the Clans. It had also been the Smoke Jaguars who had laid waste to the city of Edo to suppress a rebellion on Turtle Bay. That they had been crushed made him feel happy.

  Be careful, Anastasius. Do not believe you or your people are invincible. Even as he cautioned himself, he did acknowledge that his analysis of the Clans and their tactics had given him an advantage. His people had exploited that advantage and turned it into a victory in the Dinju Mountains. The same outcome looked certain for the Przeno Plain, Hladno Springs, and even the Kozice Valley. If things did work out, that would give him victory over four of the Clans.

  Still, that will not win you the war. Focht reached his right hand up and brought the viewing halo down. He selected the window that opened onto the Brzo theatre. As it expanded to replace the mountainscape far to the southeast, Focht opened a radio line to Hettig.

  "Yes, Precentor Martial?"

  "Any reports of activity by the Wolves, Mr. Hettig?"

  "Checking, sir."

  Brzo, a fairly large agrocomplex, looked to the Precentor Martial much like a concrete disk sitting at the hub of a golden circle. Beyond it, the Pozoristu Mountains clawed at the sky with snow-sheathed fingers. In and around Brzo, he saw evidence of a few skirmishes, but no active fighting.

  "Precentor Martial, it appears the Wolves are resupplying and waiting to head into the mountains. With the exception of the Wolf Spiders, all Wolf units appear willing to accept your invitation to fight in the mountains. Our Eleventh Army has already taken up defensive positions and are reported to be in good supply. The Ninth and Tenth Army fragments are likewise pulling back, though the 282nd is continuing to be harassed by the Wolf Spiders."

  Focht sighed heavily. "Have Precentor Wollam withdraw the 282nd and get them into the mountains."

  "He says he is trying to do that, and will accomplish it as soon as he can figure out where the Wolf Spiders are waiting for him."

  "With Natasha Kerensky leading them, that could be impossible." He shook his head. "Have our scouts pinpoint all Wolf Clan supply bases on the plains below the mountains and target them for raids. If one appears to be near the 282nd
, you can send Wollam after it."

  "Yes, sir."

  Stroking his chin, Focht suddenly realized he'd picked up the mannerism from ilKhan Ulric. So what are you thinking, Ulric? Why are you accepting my choice of battlefields, here in the mountains? Is it just to get my people out of the positions we have prepared and to stretch out supply lines as yours are stretched, or have you seen something I have not seen?

  * * *

  Phelan dropped his Wolfhound into a squat as three electric-blue PPC beams shot over his head. "Ax Star, pull back. We've got armor up ahead." He flipped his radio over to ClusterTac. "Natasha, I've got armor holding the Bloody Basin Pass. Download coming."

  With the push of a button, Phelan started a datafeed to Natasha Kerensky in her Dire Wolf. Even with the brief glimpse of the forces opposing him, the computer had sorted out all the sensor data and provided a simple breakdown of the forces it had detected. "Looks like ComStar really wants to hold this pass."

  The computer reported that he faced a trio of Burke heavy tanks, two Fury heavies, and a single Rhino. The Burke sported a trio of PPCs in its turrets and an LRM launcher built into the front of the tracked vehicle. Though the Furies could kick out the most damage in one assault, they worried Phelan more because of their incredibly hard armor. Furies were known for slugging it out with 'Mechs, and Phelan's Wolfhound could not hold up to that kind of pounding.

  The Rhino was a heavily armored rocket-launcher with a couple of medium lasers to keep 'Mechs honest if the fighting got close. It was faster than the Burke, but couldn't match the Furies' pace if the unit was forced to move quickly. This, along with the fact that they had dug in, gave Phelan some ease of mind because it meant the tanks would not be rushing out toward his Star.