Liao laughed humorlessly. "Terrible for them. With one stroke, we will wipe out the cream of Davion's forces, along with the best of his commanders. But there will still remain the man himself. Along with his webwork of treacherous treaties and unwritten understandings with other spheres of influence."
"We are trying to find some leverage," Ridzik said. "Intelligence informs me that they are making every effort to find someone suitable for use as a hostage. Davion's family, unfortunately, is too well guarded."
"No lovers?" Liao's tone was sharp.
"Oh, lovers, yes. But none who could be used to alter his policies. He chooses well, that one. His women are all loyal, not only to him but to what he stands for. They would die before letting themselves be used to damage the Federated Suns."
Liao chuckled. "Admirable. If true. What of male lovers? Sometimes that can be a less...sentimental... relationship."
Ridzik sighed. "Only one close friend. Not a lover— from what we can discover—but a friend from youth. One Ardan Sortek."
"Sortek...I know his father. A hardheaded old fool, indeed. Full of talk about honor. No, he would not be a lover...but he might well be a lever. A childhood friend can be dearer than a mere partner in fleshly concerns." Liao looked thoughtful.
"Sortek is on New Avalon," Ridzik continued, "in the Royal Brigade. A unit-commander. Hanse will never let him out of his sight, I fear. But we might keep our spies alert for anything that changes concerning him."
Tt pays never to ignore any opportunity, no matter how seemingly remote." Liao said. "See to it. And send me the breakdowns on the units we have deployed. I want to be able to chart everything as the reports come in. You may go."
When Ridzik had bowed his way from the room, the Chancellor of the Capellan Federation stood for a long while at the map. He seemed to be measuring distances from world to world, from Sian to New Avalon. He traced the lines demarcating the borders of the five Successor Houses. To be Supreme Lord of them all....He sighed.
When the requested information came, he bent over the wide table serving as his desk, soon lost in the intricacies of supply and manpower. Only the arrival of an Adept from Comstar brought him out of his concentration.
"A message from Stein's Folly, Highness," the girl whispered. She was very young, and so shy that she hardly dared raise her voice to audible levels.
"Well? Well? Out with it!" Liao snapped. His patience, never notable, seemed to have worn thin within the past months, while his plans ripened.
"Command on the planet reports guerrilla activity. Severe damage to headquarters, resulting in forty casualties, among them Commander Rav Xiang. Request immediate assignment of new commander or brevet-promotion of subcommander Sten Ciu."
Liao jerked upright in his swivel chair. "What?" His sallow skin was suddenly flushed, his pale eyes blazing. "What else?" His tone was deadly.
The girl seemed on the verge of fainting as she continued. "Detachments remaining on Stein's Folly on search-and-destroy missions have reported no success in locating the source of the guerrilla activity. The swamps and the dense forests are natural hiding places for small groups of hostiles."
"The 'Mechs—what about the ‘Mechs? They should be able to stalk right through such terrain!"
"Six 'Mechs lost to quicksand, together with their pilots. The other two were lost, but their MechWarriors escaped. There seems to be no way to retrieve the lost equipment, as concentration of enough men and machinery to extricate them attracts hit-and-run attacks."
Liao was now a dangerous color. "Get Ridzik!" he breathed.
The Adept bowed and scurried from the room, relief showing in every movement. In a moment, the Colonel tramped into the chamber and stood staring down at his seated ruler.
"Sir?" he asked.
"Only minor mopping-up! That is what you said, isn't it?" Liao demanded.
"It is. That is the information given to me on the state of affairs. It seems that our commander was in error." The soldier hadn't turned a hair before Liao's obvious wrath.
"Well, his error was a fatal one. He is now dead. You will go and take his place, and will take charge personally of springing the trap on Davion."
Ridzik looked pained. "With this most important maneuver in the process of completion, would it be wise for me to drop everything here?"
Liao seemed to swell, his small figure straightening in the chair. "You will do as I say. And you will not question my orders. There is more to this than a simple group of holdouts. I am certain of it. Find the leader. Bring him to me. We will have the truth out of him and know with certainty whether anything more than loyalty to a lost cause is at work there." He glared up at Ridzik.
"I can arrange the surprise attack quite well, as you know, Colonel. You take too much responsibility upon yourself these days. A change of scene will be good for your...health." He was almost purring.
Ridzik, who had been unmoved by Liao's anger, now seemed visibly shaken by the man's present mood. The Chancellor was most dangerous when he seemed calm and concerned with his subordinates' health.
"We have weeks yet to complete our strategy and to make ready. Our people are in place a single jump from their goal. We have not the logistical problem Davion faces. Eight jumps from New Avalon to Stein's Folly—a time-consuming matter for his commanders. The rest of his people can do nothing but wait for recharges of their JumpShips as they leap from world to world, toward their goal."
He smiled.
Ridzik shuddered.
"You will go to Stein's Folly by way of my personal jump sequence. I want to know what is going on there... How a handful of holdouts can disrupt command quarters and kill one of my best people. You will be back at Sian by the time you are needed, Ridzik."
The Colonel saluted formally. "Sir!" he said quietly. He knew when to obey his volatile Duke without question. This was one of those times.
As the Colonel left the chamber, Liao stared hard at his retreating back. Even Ridzik...even Ridzik could not be entrusted with too much power, too much knowledge of the intricate machinations of the Prefect of Sian.
He looked down at his own hands, clenched into fists on the table. He prided himself on the fact that the left one seldom knew what the right one was doing.
It was the secret of his success.
8
It had been a difficult period for Ardan as he worked with his Techs, readying the Victor for transport. He had supervised the loading of the bulky mechanisms into the DropShip, along with the necessary parts, supplies, and weapons for the troops accompanying the command on its swift journey to the port at Dragon's Field.
He dreaded the trip. Jump always affected his inner ear, making him nervous and irritable even when there were long layovers for recharging. To go through on the Command Circuit was something he dreaded even more, because the jumps occurred without the usual layovers in between. His trips with Hanse to the Summer Palace had always left him drained.
As the time for departure drew near, he kept putting off his farewell to his family. Adriaan Sortek was made of rock, his son sometimes thought, but his mother, Vela, tended to dissolve into tears whenever her son went into battle.
Three days before his date of departure, Ardan finally made the short trip to their modest villa. Though dreading the scene that must follow, he knew that duty demanded this farewell. If he should not return, his parents would suffer if they had not seen him one last time.
He found Adriaan stripped to the waist, supervising the loading of grain from the fields behind the villa. The old soldier had not taken kindly to retirement. Inactivity would kill him more quickly than a laser, he had always maintained. So the elder Sortek had gone into farming with the same fervor he had applied to his military career.
As a result, his fields produced twice as much grain, his vineyards twice as many grapes, his trees twice as much fruit as those of any of his dilettante neighbors. For most of the local gentry, the farms in the countryside around the city were dedicated more
to the amusement of the wealthy than the production of food.
Only his long service and the friendship of his son with the ruler had allowed Adriaan to situate himself and his family in such a wealthy neighborhood. However, he oversaw every step of the work, from the preparation of the fields in the planting season to the gathering at harvest time.
Covered with dust and sweat, he stepped down from a grain-bin as Ardan approached on foot through the orchard.
"Well," said the older man. "You are going back to active duty, I hear."
Ardan swallowed hard. "The Brigade isn't exacdy inactive," he murmured.
His father slapped him on the shoulder. "You know what I mean. Drilling without killing just doesn't accomplish all that much when it comes to keeping your skills intact. You have to draw blood to be a soldier."
Ardan had a swift interior vision of the child in the dust, but he swallowed again, and used sheer will to turn his thoughts away from that image.
"Well, I'll be back into it soon enough; we leave day after tomorrow. Hanse has all the timing worked out. I wouldn't say this to anyone else but you, but we should arrive on Dragon's Field a few hours after the last of the detachments from Ral and Hamlin. We will all jump together then, and when our DropShips land, we'll hit Stein's Folly from a number of directions, all at once. He has some air support arranged, too, which should help distract the Liao forces from our advance." His father nodded approval, and might have asked a question or two if Vela Sortek had not come out to meet them as they strolled toward the low, comfortable-looking house. Ardan waved at his mother.
"Dan! Come, let me hug you! My soul, you have grown up to be a fine-looking man. I simply cannot think why you don't find a nice girl and provide us with some grandchildren!"
He laughed affectionately at this familiar refrain, and bent to hug her tightly. Vela was still sturdy and square, her smock smelling of fresh-baked bread, sachet, and the soil of her kitchen-garden. She was a fanatic about cooking only freshly harvested vegetables. Her servants were used to her close supervision, and, unlike those of more detached mistresses, bore with her instructions patiently.
"I have a specially good meal planned for this evening, but if I'd known you were coming, I'd have invited Listessa," she said.
When Ardan looked almost as bored as he always felt when in the company of their nearest neighbor's loquacious daughter, Vela Sortek sighed with resignation. She pinched his sleeve between two fingers and shook the cloth impatiently.
"I simply do not know how you expect the race to continue when you youngsters go off on your noisy machines and leave all the girls who aren't warriors to their own devices. Where you think grandchildren are going to come from, I do not know!" She looked up at him, her round cheeks flushed beneath their tan.
"What about Felsa? She married, right enough. Her child, if and when she has one, will be just as much a grandchild as mine would be." He grinned secretly, knowing his mother watched his sister's waistline with as much attention as he paid to an approaching enemy 'Mech. So far, though, Felsa had remained as slim and lissome as ever.
His father grunted. "Six months," he said. "In just six months, your mother will get off your back. She'll have her precious grandchild and, if the Divine is merciful, well hear no more about it." He sounded gruff and careless but when Ardan looked around at Adriaan, the ex-soldier was beaming helplessly.
They went together into the house, where they were soon joined for supper by Felsa and her man. When the meal was done and cleared away, Ardan and his sister reminisced about old times when she had trained as a MechWarrior with her older brother.
Felsa had been injured when her ‘Mech's shielding failed during a fire-test, and for a long while, it looked as though she might have been blinded. When Felsa's vision did return, her mother had demanded that she leave the training.
She had not really minded, no longer being physically fit for the grueling training, much less for combat. She had soon married her Mak, whose neighboring parents had also favored the match.
Brother and sister still could talk shop, however. Felsa was eternally interested in new battle techniques being devised. "How are the ‘Mechs holding up?" she asked, as they sat in the soft twilight of the terrace.
"Fairly well," Ardan said with a shrug. "Battles don't help, of course, but the Techs keep scrounging parts, combining 'Mechs that have had severe damage. We do need to redevelop the necessary technologies," he replied.
"Hanse Davion must be attempting that very thing," Adriaan said. "I hear that NAIS is working hard to releam the old techniques and to develop fresh ones suitable for our needs."
He reached to take his wife's hand. "It occurs to me that this latest attack by the Capellans may have been motivated by the fear that we would succeed in all that After all, their weaponry and systems, like everyone else's, are wearing out and being lost from year to year."
Ardan nodded in the growing dark. "That's a possibility, but there are probably many reasons. One of which is the fact that Hanse has persisted in meddling in the affairs of other Houses."
Adriaan moved irritably. He and his son had had many arguments over this very issue. The old soldier knew what happened when weak rulers didn't know how and when to apply pressure. He had tried to make Ardan see the realities, but their two heads were equally hard.
"Time will teach you, I fear," he said. "Time and the battles to come." Adriaan sighed then, and shrugged. "It's true that the young cannot wear the heads of the old."
Ardan rose from his comfortable chair. One of New Avalon's moons was rising, filling the fields and gardens with tenuous light.
"I must go. Another hard day tomorrow when we get a battery of medical checkups and shots. I likely won't be able to come again before liftoff."
He heard his mother make a soft, despairing sound. He turned and kissed her cheek. "You take care of this old man. Make him be careful...just a little. I'd like to see the old coot again."
Felsa rose to give him a parting hug. "You take care, yourself," she said. "And when you come back, you will probably be an uncle. That should give you some incentive!"
He laughed. "It will, I'm sure. Goodbye Felsa...Mak. Goodbye all!" Ardan called, as he turned and went down the steps of the terrace to the path. This footway led along a stream into the city. An hour's walk would see him back in the ready-barracks. He needed the time alone.
Walking away, he knew that his mother was probably weeping softly now, his father stroking her hand helplessly. Felsa would be watching him go, holding tightly to Mak's hand and being grateful that her man was a farmer, not a soldier.
But he was glad. Glad to be leaving the ease of this secure world. He had grown soft, lazy. It was time for him to get back into harness. His father, as much as he hated to admit it, was right
Drilling without killing didn't do the job. In combat with men who were armored and weaponed as he was, Ardan was in his element, his adrenals charged to their fullest extent, his mind racing like a computer, commanding his huge brute of a mechanism to do impossible things...three at a time.
In the distance, from the shadowy bulk of a house beside the stream, there came the cry of a child.
Ardan stopped. He stared down into the star-speckled water. Ripples made the points of light dance across the stream before breaking among the reeds at the edges.
There was another side to battle, one he had not admitted to himself before that terrible day that hung in his memory like a ghost or a demon. He shook himself, however, and hurried on, knowing he must force his mind to remain focused on the necessary aspects of war.
Not just one child would suffer if the Liao forces took over the worlds of the Federated Suns. All the children of all the people would starve, would be enslaved from the cradle upward. He knew the policies of Maximilian Liao as well as anyone.
The wily Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation had only one purpose for people—to use them. If they did not serve his needs, he discarded them like so many lifel
ess pawns in a game. And by that time, many were, indeed, without life.
For a moment, Ardan was intensely grateful that he had not given his mother the grandchild she craved. He felt a momentary pang, thinking of Felsa's expected infant What would come to it, in its lifetime, if the advance of Liao were not stopped now?
Of course, he knew that it would not be totally stopped. No more than had Hanse's depredations into Capellan space. There seemed no end to the back-and-forth exercise.
Politics. It all boiled down to politics, the control of men and machines by other men and machines. He hated the word now, was growing to hate it more every day of his life.
He sometimes felt as if his brain would foam up like the batter for the bread his mother had the cook make so often, running over the edges of his skull, rising and expanding and exploding. But he shook himself again.
What was the matter with him?
The cry of the child came after him through the soft, warm night. He saw, behind his eyes, that other child...and began to run up the path toward the barracks.
9
The jumps were as nasty as Ardan recalled them. He was dizzy and disoriented as the DropShip travelled from Jump-Ship to JumpShip, docking onto a fresh vessel without the long wait for recharging necessary for less-favored groups. Though a JumpShip normally needed a week to recharge before it could make its next jump, the Command Circuit used a relay system of ready-charged ships waiting at each jump point between worlds. Because it was so expensive to maintain, the Command Circuit was reserved for only the most high-priority uses.
There was no need to consult with Felsner or Hamman. All possible advance planning had been done. Details checked, rechecked, chewed to rags by the officers and by Hanse. Only the totally unforeseen could disrupt their counteroffensive, he decided.
The sword and the dagger Page 6