BattleTech MechWarrior Dark Age 05 Truth and Shadows 2003

by Martin Delrio

  Such a talk would have the added advantage of distracting her from the threat of motion sickness brought on by the whaleboat's erratic motion through the choppy water. Ian Murchison had suggested that she prepare herself with a medication taken in advance; she had waved the idea aside on the grounds that a person who was qualified to ride a 'Mech would not be susceptible. She thought now that she should have listened to the medic in the first place.

  "Bannson," said Nicholas Darwin in a thoughtful tone. He looked away for a moment, out toward the western horizon, where Balfour-Douglas #47 was now visible as a distant gray blur.

  Oceangoing scavenger birds wheeled in the air above it, small black dots against the blue. "Do you want the stuff that gets broadcast about him on the tri-vids, or the stories that get told about him on the streets?"

  "Both."

  "All right. The short official version first. He was born on St. Andre-the family was not in rags, but they were not citizens either. They had a small business."

  "What kind?"

  He shrugged. "Selling something, I think. Jacob Bannson left his school without graduating- this is an important thing on some worlds in The Republic because without graduation papers it is hard to find employment-in order to work for his parents. The business had some kind of trouble, but Bannson turned it around inside a year, and ended up owning all his competition while he was at it.

  After that, he kept on going."

  So far, Anastasia thought, she was hearing only the biography of a shopkeeper, writ large.

  There was nothing about this story that could explain a man who cultivated the image of a raider of old; nothing that could account for the weight she had already learned was given to his name. "What does the street gossip say?"

  "That the competitor Bannson took over was the same one who had almost forced his parents' business into bankruptcy. And that he did not just take over the man's company, he ruined him outright-left him stripped too naked to start over."

  "A man who doesn't believe in sparing his enemies, then." Anastasia Kerensky felt inclined to approve. "Go on."

  "He had made enemies," Darwin said, "growing so wealthy so fast. They accused him of something-of breaking The Republic's rules for how business ought to be conducted, I am not sure how. All anybody knows is that inside three years all of his accusers were found guilty of even worse crimes than mere rule breaking, and that Bannson supplied the evidence. After that, nobody dared to cross him. It took The Republic of the Sphere itself to stop him from expanding his financial empire into Prefecture III."

  "He lost very little time making up for it once the HPG net went down," Anastasia said. The whaleboat was approaching the oil rig now. Nicholas Darwin steered the craft deftly between the platform's giant metal legs and into the calmer, shadowed waters beneath. Anastasia drew a deep breath and released it. Then she asked, "Do you think he could have done it himself? Brought the net down on purpose to take advantage of the disruption?"

  "Nobody knows," said Darwin. "And nobody wants to ask."

  10

  Castle Northwind

  Northwind

  Prefecture III

  December 3133; local winter

  Captain Tara Bishop had to admit that her new post as aide-de-camp to the Countess of Northwind had its benefits-the present opportunity to spend a long working weekend as a guest in the Countess's family castle being one of them. Castle Northwind was a large gray stone structure, unabashedly pseudomedieval in design; the Countess had described it earlier to Captain Bishop as looking like the combined good-parts version of Edinburgh Castle, Carnarvon, and the Tower of London, with all the modern amenities built in.

  Today the Countess was in residence, along with Paladin Ezekiel Crow. Their personal banners flew from the castle's parapets along with the banners of Northwind and of the Regiments. And where the Countess was, there her aide was also. The three of them were at work in the castle's lesser hall, a large rectangular room with a vaulted timber ceiling. Comfortable upholstered chairs and a long worktable of polished dark wood had been set up in front of the big granite hearth, and a wood fire blazed in the massive cast-iron grate.

  Off to one side another table, also of dark wood, supported a row of silver warming dishes with domed lids. The warming dishes held a selection of breakfast delicacies brought up from the kitchen by the castle's resident staff, all of whom seemed genuinely happy to have the Countess and her aide and a Paladin of The Sphere in temporary residence. Captain Bishop supposed that with the Countess living in the New Barracks, or even off world, for most of the year, the lives of the castle staff lacked interest a great deal of the time. They would be pleased at the chance to show off their expertise to strangers.

  Captain Bishop was pleased as well. She was not so long away from Addicks that she failed to appreciate a post that came with the choice of kippered silverlings or baked eggs in saffron sauce for a casual working breakfast, not to mention the choice between a bottomless pot of finest imported Capellan black tea and an equally bottomless urn of Terran dark roast coffee.

  At the moment she was working on her first mug of coffee-the Paladin and the Countess didn't share her taste for the beverage, preferring the more traditional tea-and listening to a discussion of the problems inherent in a postwar economic recovery. This weekend was dedicated to administrative work, and specifically to the ongoing cleanup process after the past summer's military campaign.

  Routing the Steel Wolves had not left the Countess and the Paladin without employment.

  Northwind had problems enough to keep any number of people busy. The Bloodstone region in particular was suffering from economic depression because the fighting in Red Ledge Pass had resulted in extensive damage to the local infrastructure.

  "We've got the road repairs done, at least," Tara Campbell said. "That was a priority. Highway 66 at Red Ledge is the single year-round road through the northern Rockspires."

  "You know the local situation better than I," said Crow, with the air of one conceding a point.

  Captain Bishop got the impression that this was merely the latest round in a discussion between Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow that had been going on for long time before she arrived. She was finding the relationship between the Countess and the Paladin interesting to watch. The two of them seemed hyperconscious of each other, each one watching covertly while the other was looking away, then quickly glancing elsewhere as soon as their eyes met.

  That not-quite-exchange of glances, and the way that Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow unconsciously maneuvered around the worktable-so that they always wound up a fraction inside formal speaking distance, but never quite close enough for actual touching-were enough to convince Captain Bishop that the two of them shared a powerful attraction. Bishop wondered if they'd figured the attraction out for themselves yet. If a specimen like Crow had been givingher looks like that, she'd have made a point of looking back by now.

  Crow was still talking. "But you can't neglect military preparedness." He picked up a folder of printouts from the table and gestured with it. "We've got recommendations here from senior regimental staff, in favor of continuing the buildup, and their arguments are most persuasive."

  Tara Campbell gave an audible sigh. "The Prefect of Prefecture III agrees with you wholeheartedly, Paladin Crow. But the Countess of Northwind has a voice in this argument too, and she's reminding the Prefect that unemployment in the Bloodstone region is up to 19 percent, that our main DropPort is only functioning at three-quarters capacity, and that the planetary economy hasn't yet fully recovered from the destabilizing effects of the HPG crash. We have to take more than the military situation into account when we're portioning out resources which are, unfortunately, finite."

  "The negative consequences-" Crow began.

  "Are considerable, no matter which way we fall into error. So we'll keep on robbing Peter to pay Paul, and borrowing from Paul to compensate Peter for his losses, and cutting nonessentials wherever we can." The Countess
of Northwind sighed again. "Not that any two people on Northwind have ever managed to agree on what's essential and what's not."

  Crow nodded. "If we hold social services funding at current levels-" "It'll mean writing off the mountain communities," protested Tara Campbell. "They don't have enough private money to take up the slack." She paused, thinking. "Kearney's booming, though; we could divert resources from there. They'll bitch and moan, but so long as all they do is bitch and moan . . . let's have a look at those spreadsheets again."

  The Countess and the Paladin went back to going over the spreadsheet printouts together, their heads closer than ever, talking to one another in low voices. Captain Bishop left them to it. She refilled her coffee mug from the big silver urn with the Northwind crest, and returned to her own job of dealing with the Prefect's incoming message traffic.

  Some of the traffic was stuff that had no business being brought to the Prefect's attention at all.

  There was a surprising amount of that, and all of it got sent back with a stern note about making sure that it reached the proper recipient. Another, smaller portion of the traffic could be handled routinely by the Prefect's aide without the Prefect needing anything besides a summary after the fact. There was quite a bit of that stuff as well, and dealing with it constituted the main part of Captain Bishop's day- to-day job. Slightly rarer were problems for which the Prefect's aide could recommend a course of action, and for which she could expect-on most occasions-to have her recommendations followed.

  Finally, there were those very rare messages which had to be brought to the Prefect's personal attention immediately, if not sooner. Captain Tara Bishop hadn't really been expecting to encounter an example of the last kind of problem, but life in the Regiment had a way of presenting people with the unexpected. Five minutes into dealing with the morning traffic, she laid a message printout onto the big table next to the stack of heavily annotated spreadsheets.

  The Countess of Northwind picked up the message and read it, then passed on the sheet of paper to Ezekiel Crow.

  "This changes everything," she said to the Paladin. "If Anastasia Kerensky has been sighted on Northwind, and if her DropShips never returned to Tigress-" "Then both Kerensky and her DropShips are most likely still here."

  "Still here somewhere, and we don't know where." Tara Campbell turned to Captain Bishop.

  "Captain, send for Brigadier General Michael Griffin. I have work for him to do."

  11

  Castle Northwind

  Rockspire Mountains

  Northwind

  December 3133; local winter

  Brigadier General Michael Griffin had traveled to Castle Northwind on official business before, and he knew enough not to bother attempting to approach it overland. The remote glacial valley could be reached by road, but not quickly. The journey required several hours of travel along the main highway, followed by more hours spent climbing into the heart of the Rockspires on a strip of winding two-lane blacktop, culminating in passage through a heavy-duty security barrier and a final half-hour ascent via the Countess's private driveway.

  Over the years, the setting had proved quite effective as a means of ensuring privacy-or at least, that any interruptions would not be trivial ones. Michael Griffin, like most visitors with urgent news to impart, came to Castle Northwind by air.

  The pilot of Griffin's VTOL descended below the cloud cover at last. Griffin watched through the window beside his seat as the aircraft made its final approach to the castle.

  Even on an overcast day like this one, the vista was impressive. Castle Northwind lay in the most dramatic part of the Rockspire Mountains, where the jagged, perpetually snowcapped peaks had been further scored by the advancing and retreating glaciers during Northwind's most recent ice age.

  Here, glacial action had scooped a long valley out of the granite, cradling a series of intermountain meadows and a deep, spring-fed lake. The castle stood on the high ground above the lake, with a precipitous mountainside for a backdrop; seeing it, Griffin could understand why the long-ago first Count of Northwind, given the choice of any place on the planet in which to build his principal residence, had chosen this spot.

  The VTOL landing pad was separated from the castle by a small wooded hill, for the sake of deadening the sounds of landing and takeoff-and also as yet another measure to discourage casual or unexpected visitors. The early Counts and Countesses of Northwind had valued their privacy, and the current Countess followed tradition, coming here to work when she didn't want interruptions.

  Yet, thought Griffin, she had summoned him. The fact left him tense with anticipation. He already suspected the root cause of her summons-he had seen the morning's message traffic from domestic intelligence, and as Prefect, Tara Campbell would have gotten the same report. General Griffin felt a touch of unworthy pleasure underneath the tension and anxiety-Paladin Ezekiel Crow was with the Countess, but she had not asked for the Paladin, she had asked for him. She would have-he hoped-orders for him.

  Michael Griffin was not an unperceptive man. He was as self-aware as the next person and by no means stupid. He knew quite well that he had succumbed early on to Tara Campbell's particular combination of courage, beauty, and charm, and he was equally certain that the Countess had never come close to regarding him in a similar light. But it was to him, and not to the Paladin, that she had earlier given the task of holding Red Ledge Pass.

  An electric runabout waited beside the VTOL landing pad. The vehicle required no driver, being self-steering over its programmed path to and from the castle, and Griffin boarded it at once. The VTOL pilot had not yet finished his postflight routine; Griffin would send the runabout back to the pad empty, and the pilot could come up to the castle later if their stay turned out to last more than a few hours.

  Castle Northwind's butler-an impressive individual who reminded Griffin of a regimental Sergeant Major in mufti-was waiting for him at the main entrance.

  "The Countess is in the lesser hall, sir. Up those stairs and to the right."

  "Thank you," Griffin said, and followed the directions up to a large room-"lesser" only by comparison with the great hall below, which was big enough to contain an entire political rally, if some Count or Countess ever wanted to hold one. This room was considerably cozier, with a thick carpet, a fire crackling on the hearth, and a view of snow-covered mountains through the leaded-glass windows.

  Tara Campbell and Ezekiel Crow were working together at a long table covered with folders and printouts and portable data terminals. The Countess's aide, Captain Bishop-another Tara; sometimes it seemed to General Griffin as if half the female twentysomethings on Northwind answered to that name-had another, smaller table off in one corner, with its own data terminal and stack of papers.

  The Countess looked up and smiled as he entered the room. "General Griffin! Thank you for coming so promptly."

  "Orders from the Prefect do have a few advantages," he said. "I bumped aside five other people and got the next available military VTOL leaving the New Barracks."

  "A wise decision," said Ezekiel Crow. "You've seen the intel report?"

  "Of course," Griffin said. "It's another reason I moved as rapidly as I did. The prospect of Anastasia Kerensky active again on Northwind is most disturbing."

  The Countess ran a hand through her short blond hair, making it stand straight up. "That's probably the understatement of the year. When you add in the stories about those Steel Wolf DropShips never returning home to Tigress, it's worse than disturbing-it's downright scary."

  Griffin nodded. "I take your meaning. We have to assume that those DropShips are somewhere in the Northwind system-the question is where."

  "It would be handy if we had some idea when they reentered Northwind space," the Countess said. "But with the observation post at the jump point still only working about half the time, we're as likely to have missed them as caught them sneaking in."

  Captain Bishop looked up from her workstation's display long enough to ask
, "But how do you hide something as big as an entire flotilla of DropShips?"

  "With considerable difficulty, I should imagine," said Ezekiel Crow. "But Anastasia Kerensky is daring and resourceful; she will have thought of something."

  "They could be lurking on the far side of one of the moons," Captain Bishop said.

  The Countess gave her aide an approving glance. "That's a good thought. We can send a couple of DropShips up there as soon as we can spare them, to make a swing around and check for signs of life. But this new piece of intelligence puts Kerensky or someone a whole lot like her down on the Oilfields Coast. And I don't think that the Galaxy Commander is going to stray far from her ships."

  "So you believe that she's hidden them here on the planetary surface somehow," Griffin said.

  "Exactly," the Countess said. "And we can't look for her on the surface using remotes. There's too many places to look, and it takes an instruction set a lot more complex than 'fly past and report anything not logged on previous flyby." ' "You'll have to send troops out of Fort Barrett to conduct a reconnaissance in force."

  The Countess turned to Ezekiel Crow. "I told you he'd see the point right away." Then to Griffin she said, "You're right- I want a reconnaissance in force. And I want you to be the one who conducts it."

  "I'm honored by your trust, my lady."

  The Countess gave him a wry smile. "You should be furious with me for handing you another chance to get yourself killed. But the last time I asked you for something impossible, you delivered.

  Now your good deeds are being rewarded because I'm doing it again."

  She paused for a moment, while Griffin heard only the fire on the hearth, crackling and hissing, and the soft but distinct patter of sleet against the window panes. Then she continued.

  "General Griffin, I need you to find those DropShips, and quickly. If Anastasia Kerensky has brought the Steel Wolves back to Northwind, she won't stay hidden for long."