Bred for war

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Thomas' mouth opened, then hung open for a second with no sound coming out. Finally Thomas closed his mouth and concentrated before deciding to speak again. "It could seem that way, I agree. What sign would you have of me to prove I do not intend to throw you to that rapacious wolf?"

  "There is the matter of setting a date for my wedding to your daughter."

  "Yes, Isis." The Captain-General nodded thoughtfully. "Six months from now we shall announce that the wedding will take place roughly another six months hence."

  "That is acceptable, but covenants are easily broken. Not that I would accuse you of such a thing, but if there were a coup ..."

  "You are correct. Take Isis with you to Sian. You may hold her hostage as Victor has my ..." Thomas' words trailed off and he covered his face with his hands.

  There is something else going on here. Did my operation actually discover that Victor had substituted a double for Joshua? Could Davion have been that stupid? Sun-Tzu kept the elation off his face. "She would not be a hostage, Thomas, but cherished as my bride-to-be."

  "Yes, I know you would keep her safe." Thomas sniffed, then looked up at Sun-Tzu. "I will cover your expenses for creating this added pressure, and my troops will stand by to repel Davion invaders if they decide to strike at you. I will also coordinate with the Capellan military to move troops around to make life more difficult for Davion intelligence."

  "Very good." Sun-Tzu nodded. "When do I leave?"

  "Within the week. Precentor Malcolm can help you send out orders to your subversives so their activities can begin before you arrive in Sian. You should be there by mid-September, I would think, but I need matters underway before then."

  "It shall be done, Thomas." Sun-Tzu smiled proudly. "Together we will teach Victor lessons his father never learned."

  17

  .. .Self-preservation, the first law of states even more than of men; for no government is empowered to assent to that last sacrifice, which the individual may make for the noblest of motives.

  —Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History

  Zurich

  Sarna March, Federated Commonwealth

  18 August 3057

  The way Cathy's look of utter surprise melted into one of total relief told Noble Thayer he had made the right decision to head out to the Rencide Medical Center in spite of the emergency situation. He set the box full of Chinese food cartons down on the counter and gave her a quick hug. "You look like you could use that, kid."

  She threw her arms around his shoulders, but kept her body and the bloodied surgical gown she wore away from his white shirt and blue jacket. "When I had someone call and tell you I'd have to miss our date, I didn't expect to see you today."

  Noble disengaged himself enough to give her a quick kiss. "It's tomorrow already, darling." He shrugged. "I had to come out. I knew you and the others would be hungry and the Mandrinn's Dragon doesn't delivery, so ..."

  "It was a zoo, but we came out of surgery ten minutes ago and everyone's in the lounge. Come on." She let him heft the box again, then led him from the Emergency Room lobby, past some bloody gurneys, and around a corner to the staff lounge. The scents of coffee and sweat competed with each other, but blood offered a pungent undercurrent for it all. Anne Thompson and Rick Bradford sat staring at the sugar container in the middle of the round table as if they could make its contents boil by willpower alone.

  Noble slid the carton onto the table and into their lines of sight as if fearful it would combust. Both of them blinked, then looked up at him. It took a few seconds more before they recognized him, then both broke into smiles.

  Rich peered in over the edge of the box. "Definitely what this doctor would have ordered if he'd been strong enough to punch a number into a phone."

  Noble shrugged. "It was the least I could do. The news was full of reports about the Zhanzheng de guang attack on that New Syrtis branch bank. I gathered you got the serious cases while the superficial stuff went to Daosha Public."

  Anne nodded as she helped Cathy pull smaller cartons from the box. "Daosha Public is really a clinic with limited in-patient space. Our trauma center is better than theirs, and we have the new magnetic-resonance imaging center. The only chance the bus driver had was our ability to pinpoint shrapnel with an MRI scan and pull it out."

  Bradford sat back in his chair. "If Deirdre had been here, she could have saved him."

  Noble walked over to the lounge kitchenette and pulled down a stack of plates. "The vid reports said the bus driver threw himself on the grenade the Zhanzheng de guang tossed into the midst of those school children. Catch a blast like that in the belly and I'd say you'd be lucky to survive evacuation to a hospital."

  "You're right, but he did survive long enough to get here. He was a fighter and I really wanted to give him a chance." Rick shook his head and stared down at his hands. "Then again, he was so ripped up inside that he'd never have walked again and I'd have had to resect his bowels into a colostomy. And with the kidney damage, he'd have been on dialysis for the rest of his life."

  "I can't understand how someone could do that." Cathy opened a steaming carton of lemon chicken, filling the room with its sharp, sweet scent.

  Noble handed her a serving spoon. "He felt it was his duty to protect those children."

  "No, I meant how could the Zhanzheng de guang people do that—toss a grenade into a crowd of children? They were only second-graders."

  Anne snapped a pair of chopsticks apart and rubbed them together to remove the splinters. 'They do those things because they're terrorists."

  "They robbed the bank to get themselves some operating capital. It was also a statement, because attacking banks makes people feel less secure. That breeds anxiety and instability." Noble spooned a bit of General Tso's chicken onto his plate. "They want to expose the local government's inability to protect its citizenry. They expose the hollowness of the government's claims that they represent security and it bleeds over into other areas. Then they offer themselves as a logical alternative to the government."

  Anne looked up at him. "But killing seven-year-old school children hardly makes them seem an appealing alternative."

  "Well, they don't see it that way. The act only proves that children are not safe away from home. Families would pull their children from schools if they thought there was a risk of bombings or other attacks. This increases discontent. If the parents back the terrorists, their children won't be targets anymore."

  Noble held his chopsticks poised over his plate. "I've done some reading about the Zhanzheng de guang and their leader, Xu Ning ..."

  Rick Bradford looked up. "Research for your next Charlie Moore novel?"

  Noble blushed. "Well, yes." He glanced over at Cathy.

  She shrugged. "It's a good book. I was just drumming up business for you."

  Anne wiped her mouth. "I'll buy it."

  "Me, too." Rick pointed at Noble with his chopsticks. "But you were saying about Xu Ning?"

  "Xu was a student of political science here on Zurich when the Federated Commonwealth took the world. He went on to become a professor of polisci, but became more and more disenchanted with the feudalistic government of the F-C. His writings, all of which were brilliant, became increasingly anti-Davion. About the time Hanse died, Xu was connected with a bombing on the campus of Zurich University up on Quayloon. He fled here, to the southern continent, and started up the Zhanzheng de guang with Capellan funding and Sun-Tzu's full support."

  Cathy wiped her mouth. "So you're saying Xu Ning knows what he's doing?"

  Noble shook his head. "He thinks he knows what he's doing. From one of the things he's written I gather his solution to our very stratified society is the abolition of all rank and class differences. And he wants it to be more than just a cosmetic change—he wants everyone equal. That means we'll all have to start from scratch and be educated in the proper ways of thinking."

  "Do you mean re-education camps, like ComStar tried to establish on
Clan-occupied worlds?"

  "I don't know anything about that, Rick, but I wouldn't bet against it." Noble caught a piece of chicken up in a tight chopstick grip. "I don't even want to think about what Zurich would be like if Xu Ning's revolution succeeds."

  Rick looked up, back toward the emergency room. "If it's more of this, I'll be too busy to care."

  "Well, with any luck, it will never happen." Noble shook his head. "And, if it does, let's hope somebody out there decided to fight fire with fire."

  Tharkad City, Tharkad

  District of Donegal, Federated Commonwealth

  Katrina used the holovid viewer's remote control to play Thomas Marik's message again. She did so automatically— the information delivered in the first playing had stunned her. So much so that she could barely believe what she'd heard and hoped, in viewing it again, that she would hear a different message in Thomas' words.

  A weary Captain-General stared out at her from the monitor. "It is with the utmost respect that I have recorded this message to you, Duchess Katrina. Your kindness and personal message to me at the time of my wife's death touched me deeply. It also revealed to me how different you are from your father or brother, and so much more like your mother. For this I am thankful.

  "It is difficult for me to communicate the following to you, but I must because without this information, you cannot properly judge this situation. I have incontrovertible proof that your brother has substituted a double for my son Joshua. As I have not been informed of the reason behind this exchange, it leads me to conclude that my son is, in fact, dead. This means your brother's action is a threat to my internal security because replacing Joshua with an imposter would allow your brother to one day place a Davion dupe on my throne in order to enslave my nation to his will."

  Thomas' face tipped up, as if the man hoped gravity would keep the tears trapped in his eyes. When he looked again at the screen, a single tear did roll down his scarred cheek and toward his ragged ear. "I will be presenting my evidence to your brother and will demand from him political and planetary concessions in the form of reparations for what he has done. He must be punished for his inhuman activity—in this I believe you would agree. The nature of his punishment will depend upon his response to my inquiries, but punished he will be."

  Katrina shivered at the adamance in Thomas' voice. He is actually considering going to war with Victor over his son's death. He doesn't want to, but he can be pushed that far.

  "In formulating my demands upon your brother, it has come to my attention that I might end up asking him for the concession of worlds in which you have a proprietary interest. As I do not view myself in conflict with you and, indeed, see us as friendly neutrals, I do not want to cause you any hardship. I am aware that the Federated Commonwealth is an alliance governed from two worlds by two different people, but I remember the days before the union. You make it easy to imagine that it is your grandmother, Katrina Steiner, who is again guiding the Lyran Commonwealth. My father knew better than to provoke her anger, as I do not wish to provoke yours.

  "That is why I am contacting you to ask which of the Sarna March worlds you consider part of your realm so that I do not include them in my demands on your brother."

  Thomas looked down at his folded hands, then back up again, obviously choosing his words carefully. "Being born into my family, where brother set himself against brother, and son against father, I have come to especially value family loyalty. If you feel you must relay this message to your brother, I will understand. In many ways it might be best were you to do so, for it would absolve you of any wrongdoing.

  "I have no desire to create a rift between you two, and I will not play you off, one against the other, but I do not consider you two of a kind. Your actions have shown you to be benevolent where your brother's are nothing short of cruel. So, though you may seek to present an united front against me, know I bear you no malice for the actions of one you cannot control.

  "I bid you farewell, Katrina, and extend my fondest wishes for your health and prosperity."

  Katrina killed the holovision monitor, then returned to her desk. Punching a few buttons on her computer, she brought up a holographic map of the Inner Sphere. She narrowed the focus to the border the Federated Commonwealth shared with the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation.

  With this overlay, the corridor of worlds connected the Lyran districts with the old Federated Suns narrowed considerably. Though the vastness of space and the ability of JumpShips to traverse thirty light years in the blink of an eye made frontiers meaningless, the laws of a nation-state did extend into the void. If Thomas convinced Victor to return to him worlds lost in 3030, the Free Worlds League would hold sway over some of the shipping lanes carrying commerce between the Steiner and Davion halves of the Federated Commonwealth. Ships could still get through easily enough by passing through the Terra system, but that would make some routes longer than necessary.

  Still, nothing that cannot be overcome. She studied closely the worlds of the Sarna March—old Capellan Confederation worlds her father had conquered—and evaluated each of its worth. The few that had value in terms of industry or strong export economies, like Woodstock and Nanking, were too far from her borders for her to lay claim to them. Besides, Victor would contest her claim, and she did not want a direct confrontation with him.

  Other worlds that had value for her were located up near Terra. In her role as ruler of the Sarna March, Melissa had often visited New Home and Keid, worlds whose people had revered her like a goddess. They'd transferred their devotion to Katrina upon Melissa's death, which was reason enough to keep them. Caph traded heavily with both planets, so it too had to be kept in the package.

  Katrina knew that if she were to somehow wrest control of those worlds away from her brother, she would need military force to hang on to them. The planet Northwind stood between Victor and her trio of worlds. Home to the feared Northwind Highlanders, the planet had been hotly contested for years. Katrina knew that if she took it under her control, then released the various Highlander units from their assignments on other worlds so they could return home to see to their own affairs while Thomas and Victor sorted things out, she would win their loyalty. The Northwind Highlanders would be a sharp needle to jab at Victor if he tried to bring her into line.

  Katrina also realized that these would be the first steps in pulling her half of the Federated Commonwealth out of the alliance formed when her father and mother had wed. That thought filled her with dread for a moment, then she saw with calm clarity that the breakup was inevitable. So inevitable that Katrina had long viewed her route to power as via the role of conciliator and peacemaker. By being the one to bring the realms back together after Victor had torn them apart, she would supplant him.

  This new move would be a variation on that theme, but a risky one. Should Thomas and Victor negotiate a settlement, her brother could then use his military strength to bring her to heel. It was true that he had transferred most Davion loyalist troops out of her Lyran districts, but he still commanded enough forces within it to make her life difficult. Such armed tactics might also set off the Skye separatists again, and she would face the dilemma of trying to put them down if her realm were to survive.

  Victor's weak point, she well knew, came in terms of JumpShips. When their father had invaded the Capellan Confederation in 3028, more than eighty percent of the Federated Suns' JumpShips had been dragooned into service for the invasion. That had wreaked havoc upon interstellar commerce, but it had also made the invasion possible. If Katrina were to issue orders diverting ships away from her brother's portion of space, he would be harder pressed to move against her militarily. Once denied to Victor, those same JumpShip assets would let her move troops to counter his advances.

  Katrina knew full well that Victor's military strategems were not the only ones she must consider. Thomas' message made that abundantly clear. If she chose to ally herself with Victor, her Lyran districts were at risk. Thoma
s could decide to reignite the Skye Rebellion by supplying the separatists with capital and equipment, and use the Skye March as a big cork to keep Victor from getting troops to Katrina to repel a Free Worlds League invasion., If she remained neutral toward Thomas, and he went to war with Victor, that struggle would occupy all of Victor's attention, freeing her to continue weaving her own designs.

  What Katrina wanted, ultimately, was whatever was best for her people. She knew it would have surprised Thomas if he knew her true thoughts on Victor's use of a double. It horrified her, of course, but not because it was cruel to hide Joshua's death from his father. The use of the double disgusted her because Victor had committee such a gross blunder where no blundering had been necessary. Had he simply announced Joshua's death, Thomas might sooner or later have initiated the attempt to regain the former League worlds, but his demands would have been far less than they were likely to be now, and the results far less dire.

  Such lack of judgment made her wary of her brother and his ability to guide the Federated Commonwealth into the future. Most disturbing was that Katrina would not have expected Victor to make this kind of mistake. It was out of character for him, but if he could err that gravely, close association with him was a troubling prospect.

  "Perhaps I've given you too much credit, brother, but no more." Sitting at her desk, Katrina began composing the script for her reply to Thomas. "Win Thomas over if you can, Victor, and I will still appear to be your friend. Fail, and you will stand alone in facing his wrath."

  Marik Palace, Atreus

  Marik Commonwealth, Free Worlds League

  Thomas looked up when Precentor Malcolm entered his office. "You have something for me?"

  "Word has come back from Tharkad that Duchess Katrina Steiner has received your message." The Word of Blake official opened his hands to show they were empty. "We have no word yet of her response, but neither have we heard that she has forwarded your message to her brother."