Tactics of Duty

by William H. Keith

  The sergeant handed the ID to the fourth soldier, standing at his back. "Blaine! Check this!"

  Blaine dragged the card through a small magreader and studied the screen. "Says he's one of ours, Sarge! Lieutenant Walter Dupré, Second Company, Third Batt!"

  "Lieutenant Dupré huh?" the sergeant growled. "I don't know you."

  "I'm new, Sarge," Dupré said. "Signed on two weeks ago."

  "MechWarrior?"

  "That's right. Used to be with the Lyran Guards, but I got smart and went merc. The Legion's more my style."

  The sergeant relaxed just the slightest fraction, but the muzzle of his rifle stayed centered on Dupré's head. He shot a glance at Dupré's civilian clothing, then back to his face. "You're off duty?"

  "That's right. Came down to watch the simgame."

  "What happened here?"

  Still moving slowly, Dupré pointed. "I was sitting down there, up high in the bleachers near that door."

  The sergeant did not follow Dupré's gesture. "Go on."

  "When the shooting started, I could tell it was coming from this box. I was wearing my sidearm, so I ducked quick through the door and came up here to see if I could help. Went through this door—lucky the guy hadn't locked it. Caught him just as he was turning away from the window in there. It ... it looked like he already had taken out some people who were in there first."

  "Turn around."

  "Huh?"

  "Turn around!"

  Dupré did as he was told. Rough hands frisked him with thorough professionalism. Then his captor grabbed his raised right arm and pulled it down. Dupré felt the cold bite of a wrist shackle and heard the snick of the locking mechanism snapping home.

  "Sorry to have to do this to you, buddy," the sergeant said, taking Dupré's left arm and cuffing it to the right behind his back. "Gotta make sure, though, you know?"

  "Of course, Sarge. SOP. You have to check me out."

  "That's right. You just hang easy, though. If your story checks out, guy, you're gonna be a hero!"

  "I just did what I thought I had to do," Dupré said with a smile. He let the smile vanish. "Say! It looked like that guy was shooting at the Colonel! Did—"

  "I saw the Colonel shootin' back," The sergeant said with a grin. "He can't be too badly dinged up, eh?"

  "Oh! Good. That's ... good!"

  "It'll take more'n one lone crackpot with an autoshotgun to lay the Colonel out," Blaine added. "That's for damned sure!"

  "Shame you fried the bastard," one of the other troopers said. "Son of a bitch cut loose on a packed crowd with fletch-loads." He grimaced. "Bastard got off too easy, if y'ask me!"

  "No one asked you, Cellini," the sergeant said. "Let's go, uh, Lieutenant. Security'll check you out ... and if you're clean, the drinks're on me!"

  "That, Sarge," Dupré said with a heartfelt sigh of relief, "would suit me just fine!"

  * * *

  "Dad!" Alex leaped up from his seat, eyes wide as the scene displayed on the lounge bulkhead dissolved in a chaos of screaming, surging, terrified people and thumping gunfire. The camera continued recording the scene with impassive and impartial clarity. Horrified, Alex watched rapid-fire shotgun blasts sweep across Grayson Carlyle's game station and—apparently—knock him from his seat and under the table. He saw the gunfire turned on the crowd, saw civilians die in bloody tangles, and wondered if his mother was there, somewhere in that panicking mob.

  "Easy, son," McCall said, a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder. "There's not aye y' can do for them noo "

  Alex almost choked with frustration, rage, and fear. "We've got to—"

  "Lad, lad ... what we're seein' here happened close on t' half an hour ago! Light lag, remember?"

  The camera view zoomed back for a longer panoramic shot, and Alex continued watching, his breaths coming in short, hard pants. The image was so clear and clean, it was impossible to think that it wasn't happening now. But the signals carrying that scene had been crawling out from Glengarry for twenty-seven minutes before they'd reached the Skye Song.

  The events he was seeing must be resolved by now. Must be, one way or the other....

  The gunman was in that media box above the crowd; Jaime Wolf made his appearance, firing his laser at an impossibly difficult range for a hand weapon. And there was Dad! Sliding out from beneath the table and snapping off several shots at the balcony. And Mom ... she was there too, leaning over the crowd barrier, blazing away with her 9mm slug thrower. Several troopers around the perimeter of the arena were firing as well, all concentrating their return fire on the balcony, which jumped and shivered and erupted in clouds of sparkling shards of glass. Armed and armored foot soldiers could just be glimpsed storming onto the walkway that led to the back of the box. The camera angle was such that he couldn't see what was happening back there.

  "Ladies and gentlemen!" the male announcer's voice said, rising above the roar of background crowd noises. "This is terrible ... simply terrible! One minute we were watching a war game ... and the next, oh God! God!"

  The man's voice cracked and broke. The female announcer took over. "Rob, from here it looks like soldiers have broken into the balcony where the gunfire was coming from. It looks ... yes! It looks like they may have captured the man who did it. I see them leading someone away with his hands tied. Ladies and gentlemen, we're trying to get some word on casualties. It looks—I repeat, it looks as though someone tried to assassinate Colonel Carlyle, opening fire on him from a balcony here at the Civic Arena. I can see MedTechs running out onto the arena floor. I see Colonel Carlyle. He's, yes! He's on his feet! It looks like he's been wounded, but he's on his feet, he's walking toward the crowd barrier now."

  "Linda," Rob's voice interrupted, still sounding shaky and weak. "I've just had word from the floor. Dozens of civilians were killed or wounded in that vicious, unprovoked attack. Both Grayson Carlyle and Jaime Wolf are unhurt ..."

  "The Colonel has been wounded, Rob. I can see blood on his arm and face, but he's on his feet and making his way to the edge of the crowd. He's ... I think ... yes! I see his wife, Lieutenant Colonel Kalmar-Carlyle. She was in the bleachers just where the assassin fired into the crowd, and it looks like ... God, it looks like she's covered with blood too and she's moving like she's hurt...."

  "I've got to get back," Alex said. He barely spoke the words aloud, but McCall heard.

  "Alex, Alex, use what's inside your thick skull for once! We cannae turn about in mid-trajectory, am I right? An' there's nae a bit we can do aboot what's happening back there! What you're seeing there on tha' screen, what you're hearing ... it's already over!"

  Alex swallowed hard, his fists clenched at his side, his eyes burning, but he managed to nod. "Sorry, D-Davis."

  "It's all right, lad. I feel th' same way. It's aye frustratin' havin' t' watch, bein' unable t' help."

  "We can still radio a message," Alex said. "Can't we? Make sure ... make sure they're both all right."

  "Of course we can, lad."

  "Say," the man with the loud shirt said, coming up behind McCall. "Did I hear that kid shout 'Dad' when the shooting started?"

  "Eh? Oh, aye, aye. His father was in the audience. He's a mite worried aboot him, as y'can weel imagine."

  "Oh yeah. That's real tough. Gosh, and it's too bad our little wager's off too, eh, Scotty? I mean, they never finished the game."

  McCall reached out with one powerful arm and clamped down on the man's shoulder, his thumb grinding against bis collarbone. "If I remember th' terms of our agreement," he said reasonably, "the wager was on whether or not the Colonel would charge straight on or go around the flank. I think we were able to settle that question before the excitement began, weren't we noo?"

  "I ... ow!" The man grimaced with pain. "Yah! Yeah, I guess so. Here!"

  "Thank you, sir. It's aye a pleasure doin' business wi' th' likes of you!" McCall accepted the C-bills and riffled the edge of the stack with an expert thumb, counting. "One hundred, right. And, just by the
by, sir, the name's nae 'Scotty'!"

  * * *

  "Colonel?" Gunnarson said. "He's here, sir."

  "Send him in."

  "You're lucky to have such men, Colonel," Jaime Wolf said from the other side of the room. "There's no telling how many would have died if it hadn't been for that man's quick thinking."

  "Thank you, Commander. I'm just glad it wasn't worse."

  Grayson Carlyle stood up behind his desk, glancing briefly at Lori who was sitting across from him. Both sported multiple bandages. Grayson's head was circled by a band of white gauze, and his left arm was in a sling to take pressure off his wounded shoulder. According to Ellen Jamison, who'd patched him up afterward, he'd caught just the fringe of a cloud of high-speed flechettes.

  Strange. He'd never even felt the wounds until after the shooting and shouting had stopped. One had furrowed his left temple, another had snicked off part of his ear lobe, and three had punched clean through his left shoulder. Had he caught the full load square-on, his head and upper torso would have been shredded into bloody hamburger.

  He'd gotten off remarkably lightly, actually. Lori had suffered the more serious injury, with two ribs cracked by the press of the crowd during the panic. Ellen had ordered her to stay in bed, but, typically of her, she'd insisted on coming here, taped up beneath her tunic like a mummy. She also wore bandages on her forehead and right hand, where she'd suffered some nasty abrasions in her close encounter with the crowd and the crowd barrier.

  A man in a Legion lieutenant's uniform strode into the office, stopped, and rendered a crisp salute. "Lieutenant Dupré" reporting as ordered, sir."

  "At ease, Lieutenant," Grayson said. "At ease. May I present Supreme Commander Jaime Wolf?"

  "Honored, sir."

  "And you know our executive officer."

  "Good evening, Colonel. I heard you were hurt as well."

  "Nothing serious, Lieutenant," Lori replied. "Thank you."

  "I'm told," Grayson continued, "that you're the one who nailed the gunman today. That was good work."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Wasn't that a bit hair-brained, though, charging through a door armed with a laser pistol? What if there'd been more than one in there?"

  "I only heard the one weapon, Colonel. I thought if there was more than one up there, they'd have a couple of heavy weapons."

  "The gunman also had a needler," Jaime put in. "A nasty weapon. He killed three media correspondents with it, then broke out the shotgun. He also—" Wolf stopped, looking puzzled.

  "Problem, Commander?" Grayson asked.

  "Not really. I was curious, though, as to why the gunman would stop shooting with the autoshotgun at one point and take a crack at me with the needler. Funny. I didn't think about it at the time."

  "Perhaps his weapon jammed?" Lieutenant Dupré suggested. "Or he was out of ammo?"

  "That could well explain it," Wolf said, nodding.

  "In any case, we're grateful to you, Lieutenant," Grayson said.

  "I'm only glad I could help, sir."

  "Your security check showed you were an officer with the Fifteenth Lyran Guards," Lori said. "Eight years?"

  "Almost nine, Colonel."

  "They're stationed where? Hesperus II?"

  "That's right."

  "What made you leave?"

  "Oh, the bureaucracy, I guess. The inflexibility. I needed an outfit where I could stretch out and swing a bit, y'know? So I went there."

  "I see. An ambitious man."

  "Yes, ma'am. I aim to boss my own company, some day."

  "I'm sure you will, Captain," Grayson said.

  The man blinked, then broke into a broad smile. "Why, thank you, sir!"

  "I'm sorry I can't give you a company to go with a company commander's rank, Captain Dupré," Grayson continued. "But Captain Rivera doesn't have time-in-grade for his next promotion yet, and I don't have any other vacant slots. Besides, I don't like advancing my officers to field command slots until I've seen them in action. In battlefield action, that is. However, consider yourself on the list for a company slot, as soon as I've seen you work and we have one open. I've also moved the refit on your Zeus up to top priority."

  "Thank you very much, sir! I'll do my very best!"

  "I know you will, son," Grayson said. "Dismissed."

  Dupré saluted, whirled about, and strode out the door.

  "Pleasant fellow," Wolf said. "Would he consider a transfer to the Dragoons, perhaps?"

  "He might, Jaime," Grayson replied with a grin. "But I wouldn't. He's mine!"

  They laughed.

  * * *

  In the outer office suite, Captain Walter Dupré checked out at the security point, then rode the lift down to the officers' quarters, exultant.

  Yes! Yes! Yes!

  9

  Zenith Jump Point

  Glengarry System, Skye March

  Federated Commonwealth

  1020 hours, 19 March 3057

  "So everything here is just fine," Lori said, smiling with warmth and affection. "Your father and I are both safe and well. Just a little wrinkled around the edges."

  A burst of static passed through the translucent, three-D image standing on the holoprojector in the DropShip cabin Alex and McCall shared with four other male passengers. Alex was alone at the room's single, tiny desk and communications console, however, for McCall had gently but firmly ushered the other passengers into the passageway outside to give him some privacy.

  A careless motion set him drifting, and he reached out with one hand to snag the edge of the desk, stopping his slight rotation. The Skye Song had been in zero-G now for nearly eight hours, ever since she'd docked with the Jump-Ship Altair early that morning, standard.

  Microgravity was the proper word, of course, Alex absently corrected himself. He could have measured the local gravity—or the ship's thrust, which amounted to the same thing—had he possessed the proper instruments. JumpShips did not orbit the local star between jumps but hung suspended at zenith or nadir jump points, collecting the flood of radiation necessary to charge their Kearny-Fuchida drives in great, dead-black solar sails a kilometer or more across. For eight days now, the Altair had hung suspended at this point, her sail unfurled between herself and the sun, maintaining position with a gentle, almost unfelt thrust of charged particles streaming aft through the circle piercing the sail's center.

  So slight was that thrust, however, that the passengers aboard the Skye Song, which now clung to one of the Altair's docking collars like a tick on a much larger dog, were for all intents and purposes in zero-G. Hours ago, even the fractional acceleration of the station-keeping thrusters had ended as the ship began preparing for its jump to the Gladius system. Servomotors had carefully furled, folded, and stowed the sail. Glengarry's orange sun shone with a pale, wan ghost of its usual warmth, almost half a billion kilometers "below" the ship's stern, no longer blocked from view by the solar sail.

  Through an image that had traveled twenty-eight minutes to reach him, Alex's mother kept speaking.

  "Security thinks the attack was arranged by members of The Hand. The assassin was identified as a small-time hitman who'd worked for them in the past. We think The Hand must have had a lot of money riding on Commander Wolf in the sim tournament, and they had this man positioned so that if your father was about to win, he could shoot him and stop the game."

  Alex raised his eyebrows at that. He wished he could reply to his mother directly, wished he could question her in detail about the attack, but the unbending laws of physics restricted even the most intimate conversations across such distances as these to one-way visual letters. Lori Carlyle had transmitted this message half an hour ago—more, actually, since what Alex was watching now was a recording downloaded to his console from the Skye Song's comm center; it would be another half hour before his questions could reach her, and still another before he could hear her response.

  And by that time, of course, he would no longer be here.

  T
he Hand was the informal name given to the loose alliance of criminal gangs that ran Glengarry's underworld. Every inhabited planet in the Inner Sphere had some element of organized crime, often descended from similar groups that had followed the tide of man's outleap to the stars from Terra centuries ago. Like most such, The Hand was vicious, cutthroat, unprincipled, close-knit, secretive, vindictive, and quite dangerous. It was also not stupid, but what Alex had just heard sounded pretty damned stupid to him.

  Would Glengarry's organized crime family risk something as dangerous to their continued existence as the attempted murder of the Baron of Glengarry—simply to avoid losing a paltry few million C-bills? That didn't make any sense at all!

  "Security is checking into it, of course," Lori continued, unperturbed by Alex's frown of concentration since she couldn't see it. "They're rounding up some of the known leaders of The Hand for questioning, but we don't really expect any concrete results. The important thing is that your father and I are both safe.

  "All together, twenty-six people were killed in the attack, and another hundred eighty-one were wounded. Vernon Artman thinks the guy who did it was 'just plain disconnected from his primary logic circuits,' to use his words. He doesn't think The Hand would risk killing so many people for no good reason. He's been wondering if there was some sort of deep, dark plot here."

  Alex nodded. At least somebody back there was thinking! Good old Sarge!

  "We're looking into that angle too, of course," she continued. "Both your father and I are being kept under close watch since the attack. You don't have to worry about us. They're taking good care of us.

  "That's about all for right now, Alex. Thanks so much for your call. I'm sorry you were worried, and I wish we could've had at least a little time together. You can well imagine that your father is going to pay dearly for sending you off to Caledonia just two days before I got back! But we'll make it up when you return.

  "Goodbye, Alex. Good luck on your mission, and give my best to Major McCall. We'll be looking forward to when you get back!"