"You were right about the trigger delay," Carter reported, then thought to add, "ma'am. The targeting computer was running a tertiary confirmation of the lock before discharge. Pretty common glitch, actually. It's a standard protocol for calibrating the system when it's installed, but should have been off-line. Sometimes it initiates when the system reboots. Most MechWarriors would not have noticed the extra tenth of a second."
Alexia nodded once, accepting both the explanation and the circuitous compliment to her battle sense.
"How do I keep it from happening again?"
"I deleted the subroutine," Carter said, gesturing toward the bench as though the deletion would somehow be visible. "Ma'am. Whoever does your next scheduled revamp will not thank me, but your PPCs will be that much faster until then."
"How soon?"
Carter ran his eyes over the equipment spread along his bench. Murchison could tell he wasn't really looking at what was in front of him but calculating times.
"Three and a half hours," the technician said. "Faster if someone else does the physical reinstall, but I'd like to handle all phases myself."
"Three and a half hours," Alexia echoed. She left without another word or glance in Murchison's direction.
Carter stood looking expectantly at the doctor for a long second after the MechWarrior had left.
"She forgot you," he said after a moment.
"I wasn't with her," Murchison answered.
"Ah."
Now Carter's nervousness was back, though not as intense as his distress in Anastasia's presence. Murchison wasn't putting him in any danger of irregular heartbeats.
"I've been tasked with determining how the Ryoken's computer came to be overloaded," Murchison said. "Failures at that level are rare to the point of being unheard of."
Carter nodded in quick agreement. "I should have left my noteputer," he said.
Murchison said nothing.
"What happened was conservative thinking," Carter explained. "The system had been upgraded, modified, and repaired more times than I could count. That required—"
"Patches," Murchison cut him off. "You explained."
"Patches were added." Carter nodded. "But none were ever removed. Two-thirds of that BattleMech's crystal space was taken up by software for hardware it no longer had.
"They'd been afraid to take anything out."
Murchison could imagine this just-short-of- condescending attitude grating raw the traditional—and self-important—Chief of Technicians Garth. He'd no doubt ordered Carter to report personally to Anastasia to remind the little man of who he was and whom he served.
"Any evidence of tampering?" he asked.
Carter looked surprised. No, Murchison amended, dumbfounded.
"No! No, no, no. Just very careful caution," the computer tech quickly backed away from his implied criticism of his superiors. "Galaxy Commander Kerensky's BattleMech has had a lot of upgrades and replacements.
"Most BattleMechs have unused programs." Again Carter repeated his gesture of waving to the bench as though it somehow illustrated his point. "But in most cases it takes generations for them to reach critical mass."
Murchison nodded. The technician's evaluation dovetailed with his own investigation. The strongest emotions he had found among the Steel Wolves had been boredom with their prolonged idleness on Galatea and ambition to move ahead, neither a strong enough motive for murder.
"Except . . ."
Carter was frowning at something over Murchison's left shoulder. Fighting the urge to glance in the same direction, Murchison waited for the technician to complete his thought.
"There's no evidence that the computer was tampered with physically," he said at last. "All of the service tabs were in place, no one had opened the case."
"But?" Murchison prompted as a second silence descended.
"But there's no security in the cockpit," Carter said, focusing on Murchison. "Anyone could have sat in the command couch and input the software manually."
"Wouldn't that take a long time?"
"Hours. Days," Carter agreed. "But it's a threshold effect. There would be no evidence the system was being overloaded until it hit critical mass."
"Would the person inputting the programs have any indication he was approaching this critical mass?"
"They wouldn't know until the system failed," Carter said. "And that would depend on the operator inputting a complex series of commands at a critical moment."
"So it was dumb luck this happened at practice?" Murchison asked. "It could have happened in battle?"
"Battle would be most likely," Carter agreed. "But it could have been any time."
Murchison considered the image of a patient assassin covertly making several visits to the cockpit of Anasta- sia's Ryoken over a period of days or weeks to surreptitiously install garbage programs in hopes it would freeze her control systems in the heat of combat. Putting a banana peel on her front steps would seem a more reliable strategy.
Dismissing the entire train of thought, he left the little man to his work and headed back to make his report to Anastasia. He did not expect this to be his final report on the matter. She believed she had been sabotaged— that someone meant to kill her—and she would not regard the investigation as over until he delivered the culprit.
No matter what the facts said.
4
Steel Wolves compound, Galatea City
Galatea, Prefecture VIII
Republic of the Sphere
18 June 3135
"What do you think?" Murchison looked up from his inventory screen. Seeing she had his attention, Anastasia Kerensky stepped slowly into the infirmary, giving him time to take in the full effect.
She wore her usual black leather pants and waist- length jacket, which he could not imagine was comfortable in the brutal heat of Galatea. Though it hugged her body closely, the shirt under her jacket was almost modest, reaching nearly to her throat. And imprinted on the black fabric was her trademark red hourglass.
Her left hand rested on the head of a heavy walking stick of what looked like black wood with a silver band some twenty centimeters below her hand. The snout of
a dog formed from a dull silver metal protruded from between her thumb and fingers, a small, dark gem clutched in its bared fangs. Not dog. Wolf.
"The use of a cane is backward," Murchison said. "The broken bones and internal damage are in your upper body. You want to keep stress off your arms, chest, and shoulders. And your color is not good."
"Flatterer," Anastasia said, her lip curling in something between a smile and a snarl. "The color is makeup. And the cane meets the expectations of those who think me injured."
Murchison did not waste breath pointing out she was injured.
"The cane is a weapon," he said. Not a question.
Anastasia's smile neither confirmed nor denied his supposition. Perhaps the cane was meant to distract from some other weapon. Provided he stayed out of the line of fire it was not his concern.
"Come." She turned on her heel, heading for the door.
"Why?" he asked her back.
She stopped and turned slowly toward him.
"Because a medic at my elbow confirms my injured state," she said. "And because you ask why."
Murchison nodded and reached for his field kit.
"Oh!" A startled gasp in a shaky tenor.
In the doorway stood a portly little man in technician's coveralls, staring at Anastasia as his lips pulled away from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.
It took Murchison an instant to recognize Carter. A glance at his desk calendar confirmed he'd scheduled the computer specialist's physical for today—in about twenty minutes, in fact.
At five meters and without instruments, Murchison diagnosed arrested respiration and elevated heart rate. He hoped Carter's acute symptoms would not include incontinence.
"Ah," the little man said as the Galaxy commander strode toward him.
Then, evidently realizin
g he was between her and where she wanted to go, he backpedaled hastily. His shoulders hit the far wall of the corridor with an audible thump.
Anastasia strode past the quaking technician without acknowledging his presence.
"Let's reschedule that physical," Murchison said as he passed.
"Uh," agreed Carter.
Very few people displayed it as openly, Murchison reflected as he followed Anastasia into the blistering heat of Galatea's polar spring, but the computer technician's response to the leader of the Steel Wolves was fairly typical. Terror, awe—sometimes mixed with hatred or adoration or both. He wondered if she found it tiresome.
He didn't ask.
In the vehicle yard the sun was blazing, the air was dry enough to parch his eyes in their sockets, and the dust was blowing—of course. Typical spring day on the Galatean Riviera.
Seginus, the world to which the Steel Wolves had gone immediately after Skye. had been a swamp. He knew no planet was covered by a single biome, but the only colonized regions there were wetland. He had hated the bugs and the mud and the endless cases of foot fungus; been glad the agricultural planet's infrastructure proved insufficient to support their rebuilding. But after less than a week in the arctic desert of Galatea, he found himself missing the methane-laden stench of the salt marshes.
Settling opposite her in the chauffeured hovercar without a word, he angled his head slightly to make it clear he wasn't looking at her. After a moment the limousine rose on its cushion of air and the buildings of the Steel Wolves' rented citadel slid backward. Anastasia was silent as the ground car carried them toward Galatea City.
The view outside the tinted windows was of blank walls six meters tall with broad gates at irregular intervals. Uniform ferrocrete walls coated with uniform, echo-deadening stucco and painted a uniform desert dust yellow lined broad, featureless avenues designed to accommodate assault 'Mechs walking three abreast. With the exception of the few banners or emblems some of the mercenary commands hung on their gates, there was nothing individual, nothing that indicated place or culture.
Despite those bits of individuality, the mercenary district looked like nothing so much as a public works project. Which Murchison supposed it was. He wondered what the Republic of the Sphere's Office of the
Exchequer would make of the fact that all the financial aid for the rebuilding of Galatea had gone to housing mercenary commands. Then again, the mercenary trade was Galatea.
Galaport DropPort was designed to house a dozen mercenary fleets. It lay on the southernmost coast of the Amersia Sea—a landlocked, nearly saltless ocean that covered the northern pole like a beret, dipping south almost to the arctic circle.
Perhaps guided by the events on Outreach, the locals had used Republic of the Sphere money to place the rebuilt mercenary district as far from Galatea City proper as possible. Thus the DropPort, bordered on one side by the sea, was surrounded by an urban crescent. The mercenary enclaves were at one end, Galatea City at the other. Connecting them was a long business district officially designated the RESA—Recreation, Entertainment, and Services Area—but known to everyone as the Strip.
Murchison was not surprised when the car turned off the highway to Galatea City and into the Strip. Here the buildings were not uniform and the scenery not without character. It was barely midday, but off-duty mercenaries were already on—or still on—the streets.
Most of the people he assumed were mercenaries wore nondescript fatigues, but there were plenty of distinctive uniforms moving through the throngs. If he knew who favored what colors, the Strip would have given him a fair measure of which mercenary commands were in town.
Murchison found the general decay of the district interesting. Glittering casinos stood shoulder to shoulder with boarded-up buildings, dark dives, honky-tonks blaring frenetic music, and holovid theaters advertising shows with anatomically improbable titles.
The only building given a wide berth by the sidewalk traffic was painted in cheerful shades of blue and white. The hand-lettered sign above the door proudly proclaimed the shunned building was the "Soul Saving Station Rescue Mission."
Seventy years ago, Galatea had been a microcosm of the FedCom Civil War, with faction fighting faction through the streets of the cities. That conflict had barely ended when the Blakists launched their Jihad against the Inner Sphere. The Blakists and their mercenaries had made a major stand against Lyran forces on Galatea. The fighting had not been as devastating as the legendary destruction of Outreach, but it had been bad. Gala- port, the largest DropShip field in the region, had been destroyed, along with most of the urban centers in the northern hemisphere. Stone and his rebels had completed the devastation, targeting the Blakist stronghold for one of the most vicious battles of the rebellion.
Some incredible percentage of Galatea's population— Murchison thought it approached a fifth—had immigrated in the last few decades as part of The Republic's relocation and diversification programs.
More to the point, all of the buildings along the Strip—the Strip itself for that matter—were the result of the Republic of the Sphere's massive rebuilding program. None of the beaten and dismal buildings they were cruising slowly past were as old as Murchison. Yet they looked as though they'd been degraded and abused for centuries.
Murchison wondered if the builders—knowing what the Strip would become—had used materials designed to fall into the right state of hopeless disrepair as quickly as possible.
The car stopped at some unseen signal and Anastasia unfolded herself onto the sidewalk with just a hint of stiffness.
Murchison followed quickly, the kiln blast of Galatea's polar spring sucking energy from him before he made it halfway across the sidewalk. When Anastasia leaned heavily on her cane, his hand twitched. But he realized in time that offering to support her elbow would be gilding the lily. He wasn't sure why they were performing this particular charade, but he suspected keeping himself as peripheral as possible was the wisest course.
The building they were entering looked better than most in that it seemed solid and well maintained. It also lacked the garish advertising that plastered most of the Strip. In fact, it had no signage at all.
A doorman stood in the inky shade beneath the awning. It was evident he wasn't the usual shill trying to entice customers inside. He looked a lot more like a guard in place to keep people out.
A step behind, Murchison was gratified to see Anastasia did not lean too heavily on her walking stick. He knew she was keeping the fine balance between looking injured and appearing weak. Why she wanted to project an air of nonthreatening competence—instead of her usual full-bore deadliness—was of no interest to him. He just appreciated the net effect was to keep her from putting too much stress on her real injuries.
Like most buildings Murchison had seen on Galatea, there was a foyer, a vestibule with doors at both ends. The arrangement was very like an air lock, though its intent was to keep the forty-degree air outside and the twenty-four-degree air inside. Still, the moment of trapped immobility between doors never failed to edge his nerves. He wondered what it did to Anastasia's combat reflexes. Perhaps he should be monitoring her heart rate.
The corner of his mouth twitched at his own humor.
The inner doors opened onto what looked to Murchison like a tavern, complete with dark wood bar, and high-backed booths lining two walls. Matching what he was seeing with verbal descriptions, he recognized an informal hiring hall, one where unregistered contracts were arranged.
"Sit there." Anastasia indicated a chair at the end of a row of apparent spares along the wall by the door.
Murchison sat, wondering why they were in mercenary territory, but keeping his thoughts to himself.
Anastasia took a seat a half dozen meters away, in a chair at a table that gave her a clear view of the front door and an apparent side door at the far end of the bar. Her back was exposed to half the room and Murchison interpreted his duty as keeping watch in that direction.
F
or an hour they sat, Anastasia nursing a dark beer and looking nowhere in particular—though Murchison noted the wolf head of her cane rotating as she idly turned the stick in her hand.
People came and went with no apparent pattern or purpose. More business types than the colorful, hardbitten holovid mercenaries he'd have expected. People drifted from booth to booth, apparently meeting old friends. Conversations were sometimes very brief and sometimes went on for several minutes. Often, particularly during the longer exchanges, all parties stared down at the tables in front of them as they spoke.
It took watching a few conversations for Murchison to realize there were data terminals built into most of the tables. The terminals were flush so only those sitting directly over them could read them. Contracts were being negotiated, funds transferred, commitments made.
Now that he was actually looking, he saw every table had a white-noise generator prominently placed next to the condiment rack.
Twice men drifted over to talk with Anastasia, exchanging a few words without sitting down before moving on.
Murchison had begun to wonder if the door at the end of the bar led to a bathroom, when his charge rose without warning and headed for the door. He was at her elbow as she entered the vestibule.
The ground car was gone.
Unsurprised. Anastasia turned and began walking back toward the compound district. Picking up his pace, Murchison fell in beside her.
"What are we doing?" he asked.
"Seeing who talks to whom," she answered.
A shill of indeterminate gender, hardly more than a child, circled in, praising the physical and chemical delights available to the discerning customer with the wisdom to enter what was evidently a brothel. The patter died with a hard glance from Anastasia, and the creature faded rapidly toward the wall.
"Why do we care?" Murchison asked.
The corners of Anastasia's mouth curled up in the suggestion of a smile.
That was her only answer as they repeated their charade at three more of the covert hiring halls. Though the tavern motif seemed unifying, each place had its own spin on the theme. Murchison rather liked the one modeled on the Terran Old West; it suited the barren climate.
Wolf Hunters Page 3