Prince of Havoc

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine

  2 April 3061

  Though wearing a uniform had been part of his daily routine for as long as he could remember, Victor felt uneasy in the one he wore now. It no longer seemed to fit him. He wanted to shed it as a snake sheds skin, and he knew, in that analogy, he had mixed feelings. Yes, he had outgrown the uniform and would be well rid of it, yet he felt like a reptile for itching so for the change. This will be taken as a betrayal by some, and I can't say I blame them.

  Victor stepped to the center of the small stage in Musashi House. The bright lights from the holocameras made it difficult for him to see the audience as much more than silhouettes, but he knew who they were. He'd seen their uniforms as they came in—an officer or enlisted person from every unit that had been in the task force, as well as the commanders of the national contingents. Though the uniforms varied, all the warriors had a Star League Defense Force patch sewn on the shoulder, and a series of tabs below denoting the battles fought in the war against the Clans.

  In the two weeks since his arrival, Victor had tried to avoid anything approaching duty and, thankfully, no one had tried to disturb him. Kai's wife and children had come to Luthien to welcome Kai home, and Theodore had made available to them one of the family's vacation palaces on a small island in the southern hemisphere. Victor had spent time with Yvonne and was pleased to see how supportive Tancred was of her. She again apologized and he accepted, though he was sure he'd have to keep on accepting her apologies until Yvonne herself began to believe she'd really been forgiven.

  Most of his time had been spent with Omi and she was a delightful salve and tonic for him. Their physical intimacy brought Victor back into himself and made him capable of feeling again. It anchored him in a reality that was pleasant and pleasurable and as diametrically opposed to warfare as it was possible to be. He had spent the last two and a half years in combat, on a constant war footing, and Omi's soft presence, her sweet scent and midnight whispers, returned him to a world that did not have killing as its focus.

  Her solicitousness of his needs meant that she anticipated what he wanted in all areas of his life. Until he dressed himself for the speech he would give, he'd not seen a single one of his uniforms. His meals ranged from mundane and very standard Federated Commonwealth fare to exotic dishes that suited him perfectly when he felt adventurous. Omi was nowhere to be seen when he wanted to be alone, and present when he couldn't stand to be alone.

  He had no doubt that she truly was his other half, the part of him that had been missing all his life, and without whom he would die. He became convinced of this when, working in her garden, he'd pricked a finger on a rose. Omi, who was seated a few steps away reading, immediately looked up, though he'd not cried out or jerked his hand away nor given any other sign of his injury. She crossed to him on cat's-feet, produced a handkerchief to bind the wound, and kissed his finger to banish the pain. and the next morning he awoke to find proper gardening attire laid out for him, including a pair of gloves. as the days passed, Victor's focus sharpened and he knew he would have to make this speech. Now, as he stepped up to the podium and adjusted the microphone's height, all the various versions of the speech flashed through his mind. There had been no clear-cut best way to say what he wanted to say. Some phrases sounded pompous, and others saccharine. He wanted something that would convey what he felt to the warriors he'd led without any hidden messages. Things are too tense now to allow any misunderstandings.

  "My greetings to all of you, both present in this auditorium and throughout Luthien and in orbit. I apologize for interrupting your holidays, for I know all of you need, deserve, and have well earned your time off. Two and a half years ago the Lords of the Star League authorized our war against the Smoke Jaguars, and all of us predicted it would take years to win. Yes, we said years, plural, but none of us expected it would be just two years." Victor smiled broadly. "Had I known how well you would fight, I would have suggested we plan for months, and a low number of them as well."

  Mild laughter rippled through the audience, and Victor could imagine beer mugs and sake cups being raised across Luthien.

  "As I am certain all of you know by now, the Federated Commonwealth has undergone a change in leadership during the time of our battles against the Clans. My sister, Katherine, was invited to assume control of the Federated Commonwealth for the good of the citizenry. This she did in December of last year and does not seemed inclined to relinquish her position. In fact, the same message of greeting you all got from her here on Luthien also came to me, but it came attached to many of my personal belongings. Apparently she is renting out my rooms on New Avalon, so if any of you need a place to stay, the view is wonderful...."

  More laughter filtered through the audience, and Victor flashed a smile that he knew would infuriate his sister. He let the laughter die, then continued.

  "In the past two weeks I have heard from many of you ..." He hesitated for a moment to let the thickening in his throat ease. "Both from Federated Commonwealth units and others, saying you would be ready to fight alongside me to depose her. Your willingness to step back into the hell we have all returned from on my behalf touches me more deeply than you will ever know. That you would again trust me with your lives is the highest praise I can imagine. I had thought there was no way I could be more proud of you, and I am happily proved wrong."

  Victor lifted his chin, stretching out his throat. "I consider your trust in me to be sacred, and it forces me to make a difficult decision. That decision is simply this: do I have a right to bring war to the Inner Sphere, to involve you and your loved ones and the citizens of countless worlds in a blood orgy that will return me to the leadership of a shattered realm? The answer is clear: I have no such right.

  "Some will argue that I have a duty to do that, but I would disagree. My duty, our duty, is to keep people safe. This was the reason that we fought the Clans, and our commitment to that duty was why we defeated the Clans. To go to war with my sister now would be to mock everything we have done to secure peace for the Inner Sphere. I will not do that to you or to the memories of those we love who have died in this cause."

  Victor pulled a water glass from a shelf in the podium and drank a little to ease the dryness in his mouth. "My mandate to lead you ended once we again reached the Inner Sphere. I know you will all soon be receiving orders to return to your homes, to see your families and friends, and I am very glad you have that opportunity. I know some of you are thinking it's a pity I've been robbed of that same joy, but I haven't, really. For the past two years, you have been my family. Knowing you are back where you want to be means I recover the joy of a homecoming from each and every one of you. My personal pain will dissolve in the ocean of your happiness."

  He stared straight into the holocamera at the back of the hall. "Because our mission is at an end, I have tendered my resignation to the First Lord. I have done this in part because I am tired of war, but more I do this because of all of you. A soldier could never hope to have a greater collection of brave men and women in his command. It has been my distinct honor and a sincere privilege to serve with you. I wish you all peace and godspeed and safe journeys home. You are the heroes of the Clan war, never foiget that, no matter what. You won a future for the Inner Sphere. Now that future is yours to shape and live. Go, live it, be happy. That is my final order to you all, and one I expect you to carry out." applause, solemn and proper, rippled through the audience. Victor stepped away from the podium and when he looked up again, he saw the soldiers had all risen to their feet. A lump materialized in his throat and he could feel his chest tighten. His heels clicked as he stood at attention and snapped his right hand up in a crisp salute. In an instant the applause died as the assembled soldiers aped him and returned the salute as one.

  Victor bowed to them, then retreated to the stage's wings. He slipped out through a side door and into a waiting hover-limo in which he'd expected to find only his driver and Tiaret Nevversan. To
his surprise he found three other people waiting for him as well, two of whom he recognized immediately. Seated next to Jerry Cranston was Curaitis, the agent he had sent out two years earlier to find evidence against his sister. Next to Curaitis, across from Victor, sat a petite woman who looked vaguely familiar.

  Victor leaned forward, a big smile on his face, and offered Curaitis his hand. "It's good to see you again."

  "And you, Highness."

  "How did you get here?"

  "We got here."

  Jerry Cranston laughed easily at Curaitis' taciturn response. "They arrived on a freighter that made planetfall two days ago.. They couldn't find a way to reach you, so Curaitis tracked me down in Kubeto and I brought him here. Then I had a devil of a time talking Tiaret into letting us wait for you here."

  Victor smiled. "You see, Curaitis, to replace you I had to take on someone from the Clans. You should feel honored."

  "Could be a good choice. We'll see."

  Jerry shook his head. "Neither of them is sure the other is a suitable guard for you. They're going to find a dojo and work out their differences."

  Victor nodded toward the young woman across from him. "Curaitis, who is this?"

  "Francesca Jenkins."

  That name sparked a memory in Victor's brain. Jenkins had originally been a Free Worlds League sleeper agent in the Federated Commonwealth. She had been the source of information that let Thomas Marik know that his son, Joshua, who had been on New Avalon for treatment of his leukemia, had died. Subsequently she herself almost died preventing assassins from getting to the double Victor had put in Joshua's place. Curaitis and others had been successful in turning Jenkins into a loyal FedCom agent and she had been set on the trail of Sven Newmark.

  Victor shook her hand. "It's a pleasure, Ms. Jenkins."

  "More so mine, Highness."

  The Prince unbuttoned his uniform jacket and sat back as the limo's engine started and the vehicle rose on a cushion of air. "What have you got?"

  Curaitis looked at Francesca, so she began her report. "We found Sven Newmark in his identity as Reginald Starling, an avant garde, neo-gothic artist on New Exford. I befriended him and, over the course of fourteen months, managed to get him to trust me. I wanted him to give me his diaries and records of his service with Ryan Steiner of his own free will, and I believe he would have, but Loki agents working for your sister found him and killed him.

  "Reg had taken precautions—he was paranoid, with good reason. After his death I recovered two ROM-disks full of information. One contained a vast library of books and the other what appeared to be a dump of information from whatever noteputer he'd used while working for Ryan. I isolated what I thought were likely his diaries and found they were encrypted."

  Viptor nodded. "Were you able to decipher them?"

  Francesca blushed. "Eventually. I should have been able to do it sooner because Reg had given me the key to his cipher, but I wasn't thinking straight at the time. He'd encrypted the diaries using a nearly unbreakable code that matches a word in a message to a page/paragraph/word designation in another book. If you don't have the proper book, you can't crack the code."

  "It's an ancient technique, Highness, and one we often, use." Cranston smiled. "As she said, without the key book, you can't break the code."

  "But, Francesca, you said Newmark left behind a disk full of books, so the key must have been one of them, right?"

  "Yes, Highness, that's what I thought as well." She glanced down at her hands for a second. "I ran his coded diaries against every volume on the library ROM and came up with gibberish. Nothing made sense. I couldn't figure out why it didn't work. I thought maybe Reg had gotten into the book files and scrambled pages themselves to encrypt the key book on one level or smother, so I sat down and started reading the books to see if they made sense. I even obtained copies of the books from elsewhere to compare them, but computer comparisons showed the text matched identically."

  Victor arched an eyebrow. "They were identical?"

  "Yes, Highness, the text was identical, but the books were not. Though I had two copies of the same book in the computer for comparison purposes, and the text matched, the book parameters themselves did not. The books on Reg's disk were either longer or shorter, and often by a good margin of pages."

  "Why?"

  "Page count on a book is an illusion, Highness. The length depends on the size of the typeface used and whether or not the type font is proportional or not. Literally the same number of words can be spread out over any number of pages, making a fat book thin or a short book long.

  "This got me thinking, and I started to go back through the memory dump disk. I pulled up the various fonts Reg had on the disk and discovered one called No Secrets. Now Reg had given me a painting titled No Secrets X, which I took to be the tenth in a series by that name, but it also could have been a directive to use No Secrets the font, in ten-point size, to reformat his encryption keys. I did that and ran decrypts and we now have everything."

  "Everything?"

  Jerry Cranston nodded. "Newmark was good. He kept complete records with a key to the codenames they used to defeat listening devices. He has a detailed description of the plan to have your mother killed and how it would be paid for. It checked out perfectly with what we learned five years ago. Newmark directed Sergei Chou to send an assassin after the Archon, and the payment was arranged thanks to your sister. Chou bought worthless wetlands, then a corporation bought them from him for an inflated price, then gave the land to the government of the Federated Commonwealth to become a nature preserve. The corporation got a tax deduction for the donation and the CEO was ennobled and given a land grant at Katherine's suggestion."

  "We've got her, we've finally got her." Victor blinked away amazement, then frowned. "But, with Newmark being dead, she'll claim we've manufactured this evidence. And, without a nation to back me, I can't even bring this up before the Lords of the Star League."

  He smiled ruefully. "Hell, I don't even pay your salaries anymore. You're really working for her."

  Curaitis shook his head. "Think you've got a monopoly on resignations, do you?"

  Francesca's eyes sharpened. "I will not work for the woman Who murdered her mother and had my friend Reg Starling murdered. Agent Curaitis and I have been talking about a number of things we can do to get more evidence on your sister. We might not be able to get her for killing your mother, but we can gather evidence of her trying to hush up her link. Obstruction of justice doesn' t seem like much, but, in this case, it could be enough to trip her up."

  The Prince sat back and rubbed a hand along his jaw. "There's a part of me that wants to wash my hands of all of this, of all the trouble, but she murdered my mother. We're the only people who know that for certain—well, outside my sister, that is. If you're going to go after her, it will have to be quiet. When you get enough evidence we can ask her step down or threaten to go public. You'll need a light touch— you're not going to pot her from a rooftop with a rifle, are you?"

  "No, Highness." Francesca shook her head. "Your sister, she likes Byzantine plots and all. We've got a gem for her. We'll keep her off balance and get as much proof against her as we can. When we've got her dead to rights, we'll turn it all over to you and you can decide what to do."

  "Okay, that works." Victor smiled carefully. "Jerry, do I actually have any money or anything to help them out?"

  Francesca shook her head firmly. "Don't worry, Highness. Reg gave me enough to land his killer, or at least to start. We'll get funding as we need it along the way."

  Jerry smiled. "Keep receipts."

  Curaitis glared at him. "Where we're going to go, and with what we're going to do, there won't be any receipts." Victor leaned forward. "Then be very careful." Francesca glanced at Curaitis, then gave Victor a smile. "We will, Highness, as if our very lives depended upon it."

  26

  Palace of Serene Sanctuary

  Imperial City, Luthien

  Pesht Milit
ary District, Draconis Combine

  16 April 3061

  Victor Davion straightened up slowly, pressing a gloved hand to the small of his back. He let the muscles of his back stretch out for a second and luxuriated in the pain that slowly faded. Then he rocked back and unfolded his legs, heaving himself to his feet. His thighs protested mightily and he staggered a step backward, spraying white, crushed-marble stones back behind himself.

  Smiling, he pulled the glove from his right hand and offered it to Kai. "This is a pleasant surprise."

  "Good to see you, too." Kai jerked a thumb at Tiaret's retreating form. "Someone blacked her eye but good. Your work?"

  Victor shook his head. "Curaitis. They went best out of five falls and that was his best shot."

  "Oh. So how long will he be in the hospital?"

  "She took it easy on him. He limped away." Victor tipped his big straw hat back and let it dangle against his shoulder blades by a piece of cord lying against his throat. "How was your time on Komadorishima? Omi says it can be beautiful this time of year."

  "It was wonderful. If you don't pay attention to the minimal tech, it would be easy to believe you were vacationing a couple of millennia ago in feudal Japan." Kai frowned. "Aside from lights and some really basic stuff, they've got no electronics there at all. I guess that's why you didn't call me before you resigned. I didn't know about it until I got back to Imperial City, in fact. No holovision receivers or players out there."

  The hurt in Kai's voice stabbed deep into Victor. "I wanted to talk to you about that, Kai, but I didn't want to spoil your time with Deirdre and David and Melissa. How are they, by the way."

  "Fine, Victor. Thanks for asking. Don't change the subject"

  "Right, sorry." Victor waved Kai a bit deeper into the garden, toward a stone bench, and waited until his friend had taken a seat before he continued. "Kai, I know you. I know you would have offered very good and very cogent arguments for why I shouldn't resign. I would have listened to them all and weighed them and your final comment would have carried the most weight. You would have said to me, 'Victor, whatever you decide, I'll support you.' "