Ghost War mda-1

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Knights’ Hall, Santa Fe

  North America, Terra

  Prefecture X, Republic of the Sphere

  10 December 3132

  Dinner went as well as could be expected. Janella’s mother did make a couple of runs at me, but they were halfhearted. I actually welcomed them because her fire returned when she started on me, but quickly petered out. When she got going I recognized her, but otherwise Janella’s parents were strangers.

  On Helen I’d been able to see the effect of the grid’s collapse on everyday folks. While it had an impact, folks didn’t spend a lot of time pondering the larger consequences of it. They looked at how it would affect their lives right then, right there, and didn’t waste the brain sweat on looking beyond because they had no way of calculating the consequences that far out.

  Thomas and Andrea Lakewood did and had. For Thomas it meant interminable delays in important experimental data. He worked on projects where multiple labs were running parallel or complementary experiments, and lessons learned in one place would immediately be applied elsewhere. Any slowdown in that sort of information exchange wasted hundreds of man-hours and thousands of stones. The delays literally would cost lives as people waited for medicines and improved food crops.

  Andrea seemed to feel the impact more keenly. Being a lawyer she liked order, and the grid’s collapse was a mortal blow to order. While she did not see an anarchist lurking in every shadow, she reacted sharply to Janella’s recital of her recent trip to Helen. My role there was left out, but it would not have mattered as Andrea burrowed in on Reis and GGF, balancing their roles, their actions and the subsequent changes in the power flows on Helen. As dangerous as GGF might have been, she saw Reis’ gathering power as more so, and clearly feared this would be happening over and over again throughout The Republic and beyond.

  I don’t mean to suggest her parents were panicking, for they were not. They were just smart enough and had enough education to permit them to think several steps down the line. If people as intelligent as they were could see doom in the offing and, more importantly, didn’t see any immediate solutions, the future was not very bright at all.

  Eventually conversation spiraled down into comments about the food and remembrances of meals we’d had elsewhere. It might just be my opinion, but beyond the obligatory questions about how your food tastes, or the near orgasmic moaning that accompanies dessert, dinner is not the place to discuss meals eaten elsewhere. That’s only one step above discussing the weather, and when you have nothing better to discuss than the weather, you just have nothing to discuss. There is no conversation, the meal is dead, and everyone should just go home.

  We did rise above weather when, over coffee, Andrea declared she thought it was nice I could travel to Santa Fe while Janella was there. “When next she is given a mission, you’ll have to come see us. You still live in Zurich, don’t you, Mason?”

  “I’m here for a while, Judge. Meetings, consulting.”

  “On what?”

  Janella smiled. “He’s had a meeting with Victor Steiner-Davion.”

  “Oh, really, Mason? Helping him with his gardening, are you?” She phrased it sweetly, as if showing me the rose’s blossom would make me forget there were thorns lurking there.

  “Yes, Judge, helping with his roses. Tough to grow here.” I got up, excusing myself and found the restaurant’s manager. I covered the bill, then snagged two roses from a woman who had a basketful. I returned to the table and gave one each to the ladies—red for Janella and white for her mother. I had nothing special in mind concerning the colors, but I let her mom chew on the possible meanings for a bit.

  Thomas beetled his white brows. “Now, if they will just bring us the check.”

  “I’ve taken care of it.” I held hands up to quell protests. “No, the last few times we’ve had dinner, you’ve paid. My turn is long overdue.”

  “Nonsense. This was expensive.” Andrea gave me a kindly smile. “We know The Republic doesn’t pay… ”

  “Mother!”

  “Dear, it is just a fact of life. Now, Mason, we insist.”

  “Appeal denied.” I rapped my knuckles on the table. “I appreciate it, but I needed to do this.”

  A glance passed between husband and wife, and Andrea relented. “Well, at least come back to our place and have more coffee.”

  “Andrea, I think we’ve taken enough of their time.”

  Janella nodded. “There are briefings in the morning.”

  I smiled. “And aphids. Can’t get after them quickly enough.”

  Thomas’ hand swallowed mine. “Good to see you again, Mason. Thanks for dinner, and that was an excellent wine. Next time, though, there will be no slipping off to pay the bill.”

  I shook his hand solemnly. “Just beat me to it.”

  He laughed and lowered his voice. “You know, we’ll both be behind them.”

  “Uh huh.” I smiled as mother and daughter hugged, then I gave Andrea a hug. “Thank you for the invitation. I appreciate you letting me intrude on your time with your daughter.”

  Andrea held on a bit longer than was necessary. “Our pleasure, Mason. We almost think of you as family.”

  We left the restaurant and walked quietly with them through the streets of Santa Fe. We reached Knights’ Hall quickly enough and refused another invitation to join Janella’s parents for coffee. As we made our way through the various corridors, Janella hugged my arm and laid her head on my shoulder.

  “You do know I will have a talk with my mother, right?”

  “No reason, she’s just being a mom. It’ll be interesting when she meets my mom.”

  A little shiver ran through Janella. “I don’t know that I’m ready for meeting her myself.”

  “My mom will love you.”

  “You’ve said that. You’ve also said that she’s had umpty-eleven kids and works as a wildlife-management specialist in the forest preserve your father ran. She’s going to take one look at me and decide I’m soft.”

  “Your being soft isn’t bad, you know, because it’s all in the right places.”

  “Such a sweet talker. You think that’s going to get you somewhere?”

  I smiled. “Well, that and the fact I let you eat half my dessert.”

  She licked her lips. “Ah, yes, gallantry under fire. That does indeed deserve a reward, and I think I know just what it shall be.”

  I awoke the next morning feeling well rewarded if not fully rested. We skipped breakfast, save for some coffee that brewed while we were in the shower. We swung by Janella’s place to get her a change of clothes, then both reported to the briefing room we’d spent so long in two days earlier. Nessa and Consuela were both back, and I saw evidence of Wroxley’s handiwork as well.

  A fifth person joined us for the meeting and I immediately bowed low and respectfully to him. “Konichi-wa, Kurita Kitsune-sama.”

  The man returned my bow, with the overhead light shining from his shaved head. The traditional Japanese garb he wore bespoke his Combine origins more than the slight almond shape of his eyes. That Asian shaping was easy to miss, since the eyes were a brilliant gray that reminded me very sharply of Victor’s eyes.

  Which was only natural, since Kitsune Kurita was Victor’s son by Omi Kurita. Kitsune had been born while Victor was off on the Clan homeworld, and his birth was hidden from his father when Victor returned. While a lot of people believe Victor knew of him, the two of them never met until Kitsune, being elevated to the rank of Knight of the Republic, asked for the honor being bestowed on him to be given by “one without whom I would be nothing.” Devlin Stone and the others gathered thought he was referring to one of his uncles, either Hohiro or Minoru Kurita, but instead he addressed Victor. “Father, it is from your hand that I would receive this honor.”

  This revelation caused quite a bit of a stir in the Draconis March of the Federated Suns, where propagandists turned Omi into a succubus who had seduced Victor for nefarious purposes. The upset was even greate
r in the Draconis Combine, however, as certain reactionary elements had been looking to champion Kitsune as a rival to the current Coordinator, Hohiro. Once they realized that Victor’s blood ran in his veins, the divisive talk stopped and, rumor had it, two minor lords committed seppuku out of mortification because they had championed a Davion to replace a Kurita.

  Straightening up, Kitsune extended a hand to me. “It is good to see you again, Mason. Your scores from yesterday are promising.”

  “Promising more work, yes.”

  He smiled, then bowed to Janella and shook her hand, too. “And your scores are promises fulfilled.”

  “You honor me, my lord.”

  We sat again, with Kitsune sharing the couch with his niece. Consuela let us get settled, then began. “There has been nothing truly significant that’s developed over the last twenty-four hours. Stone’s wisdom in limiting access to BattleMechs is proving itself to be providential. The scramble to consolidate those resources is one that is hard to hide. We’re taking steps to secure the supply of ordnance, but ’Mechs going on a rampage can cause a lot of damage regardless. Luckily most of the industrial conversions we’ve heard about do not have sufficient power to use heavy energy weapons.”

  I nodded. BattleMechs have a fusion reactor as their heart and it puts out a lot of energy. Not only does the ’Mech rely on it for powering the myomer muscles that give it the ability to move, but it also fuels the energy weapons. Lasers, particle projector cannons and Gauss rifles could suck a small city dry of power, and the diesel engines of ’Mechs like Digger and Maria just can’t generate that much juice. While Maria’s small pruning laser was enough to kill that one terrorist, aside from bubbling up paint on a BattleMech, it wasn’t going to be much of a threat.

  Janella leaned forward. “You’ve clearly anticipated moves to establish supply lines. Security has been increased at storehouses. I assume you’re covering production facilities as well.”

  The Countess shifted her shoulders uneasily. “We are doing our best, but the lack of data is hampering us. For all we know, we are sending requests to garrison units that have already decided to take power by themselves. Industrialists may have already thrown in with one power broker or another, and plant security forces may have decided to hijack the factories themselves. If a factory puts out two ’Mechs a week, they could have two companies of fully armed ’Mechs ready to go. Given what they would be arrayed to fight, that’s a formidable force.”

  “It is indeed, Countess.” Kitsune’s voice came softly, making me lean in to hear him. “And this problem extends beyond The Republic itself. In instituting his reforms, Stone-sama always had Republic forces ready to deploy against those who opposed him. Their power was seen in the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation, and it was enough, at the time, to cow forces in the Combine and Federated Suns. There is a difference, however, between feeling the lash and watching someone else get whipped. Those who only watched are now thinking the lash will never fall on them.

  “As you know, the reformation of the Combine was declared early on, but forces resisted for the better part of another decade. BattleMechs were decommissioned, but in the Combine this did not have exactly the same meaning as it did elsewhere. To have a ’Mech destroyed would have been akin to asking a samurai to break his swords. A family’s pledge to retire a ’Mech was accepted and, for the most part, those pledges have been honored out of respect for Stone and The Republic.”

  I rubbed a hand over my forehead. “With Stone gone and The Republic seeming to lose its grip, people are looking to get those ’Mechs back in working order. I don’t doubt museums throughout the Inner Sphere are being scoured for ’Mechs. Do we have any idea how many could be out there?”

  Nessa shook her head and tapped a request for data into the keyboard. The holoprojector flashed up a cube that just bled numbers. “Exhaustive studies have been done concerning industrial capacity, demand for parts, munitions consumption rates, regimental muster sheets, everything. For centuries ’Mechs have been scrapped, salvaged, purchased new, stolen, shipped covertly to rebels, you name it. The gap between those we know are in service and being produced, and those that were decommissioned, destroyed and otherwise neutralized could be anywhere from a few hundred to thousands, even tens of thousands. And that’s just for the Inner Sphere records we can get our hands on. Clan figures are sketchy at best and if someone were to find some ancient Star League cache of equipment, all bets would be off.”

  Consuela spread her hands. “So, not only do we have internal disputes here that could tear The Republic apart, but those who had been laying low for fear The Republic would land on them could be rearming themselves. For all we know, there could be dozens of skirmishes taking place right now.”

  I shook my head. “It’s insane, though. If everyone just remained calm and at peace, no one would get hurt.”

  Janella shot me a sidelong glance. “We’re talking about human beings, Mason, not angels.”

  I winced. “True.”

  Kitsune held a hand up. “But we are not talking about devils, either. Many people are just preparing to defend themselves, if it comes to that. It would be a pity were there devils among them who would exploit this drive for self-preservation. It is upon them we must focus.”

  “So the trick is to identify them and then deal with them.” I sighed. “And we just have to hope that they won’t have sufficient momentum in their movement that nothing can stop them. If things go too far, the blazes that get touched off will just sweep through the Inner Sphere.”

  Nessa sat back, her shoulders slumping. “Two to three potential devils per world, thousands of worlds, well, if that’s the task, we have lots of job security.”

  “Yeah, until one of those devils shows up here on Terra and tells us our services are no longer required.” I stood and stretched. “I expect, if that happens, the severance package we’ll be given will include severing our heads from our bodies.”

  Janella looked up. “Ever the optimist.”

  “It could be worse.”

  The Countess raised an eyebrow. “Yes? How?”

  My mouth gaped, but no words emerged. The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t answer her question, but that I had too many answers that would suffice.

  18

  The first casualty when war comes is the truth.

  —Hiram Johnson

  Knights’ Hall, Santa Fe

  North America, Terra

  Prefecture X, Republic of the Sphere

  7 January 3133

  Over the next month things settled into a pattern, though not quite a routine—with a break for the holidays that made the workload bearable. We sifted through reports, which were digests of news reports coming in from everywhere. When an item seemed interesting or important, we’d call up the actual story and all relevant facts surrounding it. We’d pore over that material and prepare our own digests of it all.

  Now, with the grid down, the assumption would be that the amount of data we had to go through would be limited. This was true on one level, since it was a fraction of what would have been available to us were the grid working. The problem was that when the grid was working, we would get reports from Republic personnel on the ground, who would already be able to sort fact from fiction, and provide background and nuance to what news there was.

  Those reports were not getting through in a timely or reliable basis—for all intents and purposes they did not exist. Instead, what we got was a wealth of material that was similar to the tailings from a mine: there might be some valuable trace elements in there, but getting them out was tough, expensive and time-consuming.

  JumpShips were moving information between worlds on a spotty and indirect basis. While they sat at a recharge point, they’d also pull wideband scans of all communications media from the system—they sucked in Tri-Vid channels the way some folks gorge on spaghetti. They pulled in everything, duplicated it, traded it with other ships and distributed it. In a week-long rechar
ging stay they’d pick up an average of 20,000 channel hours per world, so by the time ships got to Terra, they’d be dumping off hundreds of man-years of things to be reviewed. While computers could scan the data and screen for keywords, developing the lexicon took time, and when something significant showed up in one report, new keywords would be added, so more scanning would have to be done.

  In some ways a hunt like that was exhilarating. It felt to me as if I was out on some savanna somewhere, crouched down, staring at the tracks of jackals, seeking beneath their steps for the spoor of lions. There were times I was certain I’d seen it, too, and would follow that trail until I had to admit I had nothing. Then I’d go back over the jackal tracks and prepare a report on what was happening there.

  All too often those reports amounted to a big fat zero as well.

  The core problem was, of course, that we had no way of verifying the information we were looking at. In the most simple terms, how could we evaluate Tri-Vid news reports coming out of Helen that were based on media releases by Commander Reis? Even if the facts were accurate, even if we eliminated all the guesses, the spin put on the facts would lead us to one conclusion or another.

  And trying to evaluate the things that weren’t said made it just that much tougher. Were we not getting tales of abuses of citizens’ rights from Helen because Reis had repressed those reports, were there simply no abuses or were we not getting reports because no one had been scanning that week? Were polling numbers that we were seeing accurate, or had they been manufactured to cloak a multitude of sins?

  Victor’s sister Katrina had used the manipulation of such data to steal the Federated Suns away from him while he was off fighting the Clans. Victor had left his realm in the hands of his youngest sister, Yvonne. Katrina started changing polling numbers and reports such that, by the time reports arrived on New Avalon, Yvonne believed the people thought she was the incarnation of Satan. She asked Katrina for help, then abdicated in her favor, leaving Victor homeless when he returned in glory from quelling the greatest threat mankind had ever known.