A Call to Arms mda-2

by Loren L. Coleman

  Nikola scoffed. “You would do that how?”

  “By challenging you for command in a Trial of Position.”

  “You cannot. You have no standing here.” She paused, hedged. “Unless…” Only one thing might back up such a claim: unless Tassa Kay was Clan, and a Wolf.

  A fact Tassa proved by reaching up to pull her necklace charm out from her shirt: a clear, faceted data crystal, banded with golden trim.

  The star captain grounded herself back in the conversation, putting together an earlier comment by Tassa Kay with her recent orders. “You plan to accompany us back to Tigress.” It was not a question; almost coming out as an accusation. Her resolve hardened. “You believe Kal Radick will support you so easily?”

  With a quick yank Tassa broke the chain, then tossed the military codex to Nikola. “You will find your answers in there.”

  It took a single moment to power up the computer built into Torrent’s office desk—her office desk!—and slip the faceted data crystal into a small slot along one edge of the spotless surface. The holographic emitter charged to life, throwing up a white screen over which scrolled two-dimensional pages of text, dates and a directory of video reports. Tassa Kay’s military history, dating back from Achernar, through a military operation on Dieron and before that on the Republic world of Marfik.

  And more. Tassa’s original Trial of Position as a Mech Warrior and Star Colonel. Also her full genetic history, and a note of her victory in winning a Bloodname from the House of—

  “You are…“ Nikola began, then swallowed dryly to coax greater strength out of her voice. “That is, we have another…”

  Tassa shook back her mane of dark, red hair and awarded Nikola Demos a poisonous smile.

  “The name you are looking for,” Tassa said with a generous helping of serious humor, “is Kerensky.”

  Epilog

  Blackout

  ComStar HPG Station: Stryker-A7

  Achernar

  19 March 3133

  Helping Raul over the larger piles of rubble and through the twisted wreckage that had once been the HPG station’s front entry, Jessica Searcy worked to keep her opinions from showing. There was still too much left to work out between Raul and herself, but she had hope for the first time in days, and she didn’t care for the way he pushed himself only one day after so much dehydration and blood loss. He was, if nothing else, a patient. He was also a man she had cared for—did care for—deeply.

  The compound looked better from the outside, Jessica decided, getting her first look at the ruined interior. Fire-blackened walls and a missile-scarred street was all that remained to tell of the recent battle, that and a scorched superstructure running up one side of the support tower into a twisted framework on the back of the mammoth dish.

  The interior destruction was far worse, striking her like a heavy slap in the face.

  Consoles sat darkened at every customer service desk. Some monitors had blown outward, as if from a massive power surge. Dark, greasy smoke stains blackened the ceiling overhead. The acrid, ozone smell of an electrical fire hung thick and cloying in the air.

  Glass slivers littered the floor and stuck into seat backs as if shot there from a gun. The damage reminded Jessica of the various shards and splinters she had removed from Raul’s neck and shoulder, once the corpsmen dragged him out of the Jupiter’s cockpit: twelve deep lacerations, counting the shard he had pulled from his own shoulder. Yes, he’d have a good scar by which to remember the day. And why did she feel guilty about that?

  She hadn’t actually meant for him to get hurt.

  Well, she also believed—truly believed—that Raul hadn’t meant for her to get hurt either. But was she ready to stop making him feel guilty about it?

  “What the blazes is he doing here?” Raul asked, tensing beneath her touch.

  Erik Sandoval-Groell picked his way over a collapsed portion of the wire-hung ceiling, dusting chalky residue from his hands and glaring daggers at Raul. The young lord had a smudge of charcoal over one ear where he shaved up his hairline. His topknot had seen better times, sweat-matted and streaked with plaster.

  A burly infantryman—their driver and courtesy guard—stepped between the two men until Raul waved him aside. Erik somehow managed to look down his nose at the taller soldier, but afforded Raul something akin to respect. Not of equals, certainly, but better than he awarded the average man.

  “Do not worry. Your Governor Haidall allowed Legate Stempres and I the courtesy of twenty-four hours before liftoff. Stempres is still packing. I thought I’d use the time to make certain the HPG was down.”

  Raul nodded, as if expecting no less. “What about your toady, Michael Eus? Any sign of him?” The Governor’s expulsion edict, arranged the previous night and which Jessica had read about this morning, had not stopped with Erik Sandoval and Brion Stempres. All Swordsworn military forces and quite a few civilian managers of companies with economic ties to the Sandovals were joining them. All but Michael Eus, who had gone to ground.

  “I’m certain he will turn up,” Erik promised darkly.

  At the most inopportune time, Jessica felt certain. She watched Raul survey the room, and nod at a nearby ComStar manager who left his technicians and joined the small group. “Quite the mess,” he greeted Raul, trading a handshake that belonged more in a mahogany-trimmed boardroom than a ruined station. Raul introduced him as Hanson Doles, chief operations manager for Stryker Productions. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d be glad to be out of business.”

  “We’ll have you running again as soon as we can spare enough engineers and material to patch up the dish,” Raul told him.

  Doles slumped a bit. “From our own early evaluations, that may prove to be optimistic. We were fortunate enough to be spared when the net went down, but whatever gave us immunity, well, the blackout looks to have a hold of us now. We get no test return from Ronel, or out of Genoa.”

  Jessica had been wondering about that. The interior of the compound looked bad, true, but in a superficial way, like a scalp wound that bleeds worse than its actual severity.

  “You can move the dish?” Jessica asked, and felt Raul tighten under her touch.

  “The dish was locked onto a strong signal from Ronel when it went down,” Doles told her. “Our margin of error allows us to still try and use it, at least for another four days. Once per day we swing through a good position for Ronel and for Genoa. But so far, no return. We may be down for good.”

  Erik appeared cheered by the news, though he frowned again at Raul’s easy shrug. “Of all the scenarios I ran through in my mind,” Erik said, “that you would force the charges to detonate was not one of them. Even after I chased you—Tassa Kay, whoever was in that Leigonnaire–from the city, I didn’t see it coming.”

  “That’s called détente.” Raul glanced around the open room. “With the HPG out of our way, there’s nothing left to fight over.”

  The nobleman smiled, thin and cold. “You win your world back, and I go home to Tikonov as a hero of the people. Of my people.” He caught Jessica’s look of confusion, and politely addressed himself to her. “My orders were to deny this station to the Steel Wolves. It was the reason I thought the Swordsworn and Republic could work together.”

  “Not a mistake you will make again,” Jessica said frostily.

  “No. Not again,” Erik agreed. “Still, it was my foresight that prevented a loss of the compound to Torrent’s Steel Wolves, and our arrival at the spaceport which turned the battle. A modest victory, considering the forces I had to work with. In Caesar’s Game, I believe that should be worth some kind of prize. A promotion, and perhaps a barony.”

  Of course, he left out the part about being forced into that battle. From necessity, Jessica decided. It was easier to play up his action in a positive light.

  “When Devlin Stone returns,” Raul said, “your uncle will be lucky to keep a summer home inside the Republic.”

  “I’ll give him your message.” Eri
k gave Doles a nasty grin. “Since no one else around here can.”

  “Do that.” Raul shrugged aside Jessica’s helping hand. “Let him know that the Republic will stand no matter how badly small men try to tear it down. The next time one of you comes for Achernar, you will find us ready.”

  Laughing, Erik waved Raul’s warning aside as if it carried no weight with him at all. “What you don’t understand, Ortega, is that without your working HPG, Achernar is not worth anything at all. Not to the Swordsworn, or to The Republic.” Erik left the two of them on that note, rubbing grit out of his hair as he made his way toward the ruined entry.

  “All the damage, all the deaths you can lay at their feet,” Jessica said. “Stempres and Sandoval. And both walk away. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “No,” Raul agreed, “but that’s the province of nobility. The noble courts might be able to deal with them, eventually, once the Republic can reassert some control.” He shifted his weight during the awkward pause. “He was right, you know. Without the HPG, we’ll have trouble keeping the Republic’s attention long enough to do something about rebuilding.” But there was hope in his voice when he said it.

  “You don’t sound too worried.”

  “We’ll make do,” Raul promised. “One way or another.”

  Hanson Doles tore his gaze away from Sandoval’s back. His eyes could have been lasers for all the fire Erik’s parting comments had raised in them. “In the meantime,” Doles said, “how would you like to be our first return customer? One thing our computer work has managed to do is reconstruct your general delivery message, Mr. Ortega. You will need to use my office system, but you can finally view the full recording.” He moved toward a nearby closed door.

  Raul nodded. “This shouldn’t take a minute,” he promised Jessica, stepped away and then paused. “Would you like to come?” he asked her.

  “Show it to me later,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do to help out here, then we should go by the hospital.” She reached up to rub a finger over the golden caduceus, still pinned to her collar. “As long as I’m still wearing this, I should earn it.”

  Raul leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You earned it.” When he left, it was with greater strength than he had shown before, walking unassisted and with the hint of a smile on his lips.

  Jessica waited until Hanson Doles had let Raul into the office, and then caught up with him as he directed a clean-up crew. “Is there anything you need here in the way of medical attention?” she asked.

  “Medical attention? No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Good.” Jessica smiled. “Everyone already taken care of then. Are they in River’s End General? I’d be happy to look them over personally, this afternoon.”

  “No,” Hanson said again. “That is, no one was injured.”

  “At all?”

  Hanson shook his head slowly, and with no little amount of regret. Then he found something else to do and excused himself.

  Jessica walked over again to a nearby station, counting the glass shards longer than her finger, and looking at the shredded cloth on the back of the seat. And another one. And one over there. Some splinters looked as if they had been hurled a dozen meters or better.

  “And no one was injured?” she asked herself again, and reached up to rub at the caduceus.

  “That Tassa Kay chose to return with the Steel Wolves to Tigress is not a comforting fact,” Lady Janella Lakewood told Raul. “It bodes ill for The Republic. You trust her to keep quiet?”

  Sitting in Hanson Doles’ chair, letting the day’s fatigue drain down through his legs and into the station’s tiled floor, Raul nodded. “I do. Her role was a necessary part in the deception, and her only concern was to keep the Swordsworn from retaining control over the facility and Achernar.”

  So while Tassa kept Sandoval busy, her infantry had moved into position planting dummy charges and stripping away the sabotaging devices. Then the big show of fire and smoke—or smoke and mirrors, Raul thought with a grim smile—to convince them all of the illusion that the HPG had been damaged.

  Lady Janella Lakewood looked more composed this time than during their last conversation, contacting Raul through the Ronel station itself rather than from a field relay. “A worthy gamble,” she said. “One I would be tempted to use on Ronel, except that two factions here couldn’t care less—so far—for the advantage of the HPG. An old enmity,” she explained, “between Sandoval’s Swordsworn and the Dragon’s Fury.”

  “All enmities seem to be old ones, these days.” Raul shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder if Devlin Stone did not leave us a legacy of chaos. Does that make me a poor citizen?” he asked.

  “It makes you human, Raul. Devlin Stone left us with a lot of unanswered questions. He also left us the hope of a better future, but it still comes down to personal choice. Your choices have been exemplary.”

  Raul shook his head, feeling a sharp stab of guilt. He heard the door open back behind him, and then close. He knew it would not be Hanson Doles, and the facility manager had instructions from Raul to allow only one person to follow him, but he still said exactly what had been on his mind. “No, Lady Lakewood. I have made mistakes that have cost people their lives, and some their trust.” He buried his darker memories of Charal DePriest, and Jessica. “I didn’t do so well.”

  Janella Lakewood smiled sadly. “We rarely do, in the beginning, but we learn and we endure. Along the way, we can find absolution. You did not shirk your duty to Achernar or The Republic. You persevered in the face of personal loss and injury. What more do you expect of yourself?”

  “Better.” Raul laughed at himself. “I expect better.”

  “Good, because I am going to give you that chance.” Janella Lakewood’s blue eyes radiated a new confidence. “It will be good for myself, and others, to know we have hands in the area that we can trust implicitly. I’d like to name you a Knight-Errant of the Sphere, Raul. Subject to confirmation by Exarch Redburn, of course.”

  A cold thrill spiked through Raul’s backbone at the offer. A Knight of the Sphere! Not only was such a position beyond Raul’s original dreams, the responsibilities rose up and threatened to roll over him like Juggernaut’s carriage. “I never thought…” he began, then cleared his throat. “I did not want…”

  Behind him, a new voice trumped his own. “That is Raul’s way of saying that he accepts, Lady.”

  Raul had hoped that Jessica would change her mind and follow him, though he had not figured on her hearing—or accepting for him!—such an offer.

  On the flat-screen monitor, Lady Lakewood stiffened with surprise as Raul stood and moved the chair aside, allowing Jessica to join him in the real-time conversation. “You have a strange way of keeping secrets, Mr. Ortega.” Her voice was a noticeably bit colder than before.

  “It’s not his fault,” Jessica said. “Not entirely his fault. When I found out that no one had been injured here, despite the explosions and fires and collapsed walls, I knew that a majority of the damage had been staged.” She offered the other woman a discreet smile as her hand crept over to take Raul’s in a clasp. “I can fix some documents at the hospital. A death or two in the public records should help.”

  “Besides,” Raul added, feeling the warmth of Jessica’s hand in his, “if I cannot decide who I can place my trust in, what good is my judgment to you?”

  Janella Lakewood considered this, and nodded, reluctantly. “Then you do accept?”

  Raul turned Jessica to him. “I still think it’s my duty to stand up for the Republic,” he told her, “but I have to admit, I don’t want this as much as I once would have.”

  “I’ll feel better knowing that some of the luster has worn off the dream. Maybe you will stay safer that way.” She hesitated, then, “I don’t know how much stock I’m putting into the Republic yet, Raul, but I’ve definitely decided to stand for Achernar. You can do the same, only more so, as a Knight.”

  He remembered another of her old arguments.
“In my duties, I might be called away from Achernar.”

  “It might be good for me to not see your face some times.” Jessica smiled. “So long as you come back.”

  “I think this is a yes,” Raul said. “I accept, Lady.”

  “Then I commend Achernar into your hands,” she told him. “It may take some time to pass your Knighthood through proper channels, but I’ll get something to your world governor on the next possible JumpShip. In the meantime, maintain the Blackout—this charade of a Blackout—while I see how things develop on Ronel. And do your level best to prepare for anything.”

  Raul couldn’t help smiling at the suggestion—at once sobering and amusing. “I’ll learn quickly,” he promised her.

  “That is good,” Lady Janella Lakewood said. “Because I’m not certain how much time The Republic has.”

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  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 2006-02-07

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