LE5790 - Illusions Of Victory

by Loren L. Coleman

  Not that they would stick, not while Vandergriff was still in the Grand Tournament. The powers that be on Solaris VII—namely the stable owners—would see to it that nothing interfered with the selection of a new Champion. Too much money rode on this week's events, and the percentages certain to find a way into the Solaran bank accounts of government officials, law enforcement chiefs, and even the world's media moguls would almost guarantee that no idealistic young reporter would make too much of a late-delivered blow.

  Julian remembered his own early days and knew the score. The most Vandergriff risked was a fine for unsportsmanlike conduct, though if he'd thought ahead and covered the right bet, the 'Warrior could easily make up for it. Nero leaned in toward the screen, willing the answer from Vandergriff while he waited as anxiously as any spectator.

  Vandergriff's Striker moved with a slow precision that looked odd in an eighty-ton 'Mech. It spoke of a comfortable synergy between man and machine that few MechWarriors ever achieved. Well, Julian had never claimed that Vandergriff wasn't a fine Mech Warrior—in his day. Almost casually, the Striker hooked one of its arms under the shoulder of Neils's Caesar, then lifted and rolled the fallen 'Mech onto its side.

  The words Julian Nero spoke on seeing the smashed-in cockpit had nothing to do with ratings, syndication, or playing to the viewing audience. The phrase slipped out without thought, an ages-old epithet.

  "Blake's blood," he whispered as the image zoomed in to fill his screen with twisted and torn metal supports and the jagged edges that were all that was left of the ferroglass cockpit canopy. The enhanced video caught the tinge of color along one jagged shard.

  Well, not Blake's.

  * * *

  All in all, a good evening's work.

  Working her way clear of the Coliseum, Megan Church climbed over the metal bench someone had used as an improvised battering ram, then slipped through a shattered doorframe. The door was twisted nearly free from its hinges, and no loner barred either entry or exit. The angry shouting and pain-filled yells behind her were matched by similar noises ahead. Chaos had gripped the Steiner arena and spread into the surrounding streets of Silesia.

  As she went, Megan nearly tripped over two unconscious security men crumpled against the outer wall. She checked and found them still alive, though missing their sidearms. A dark bruise blossomed on the side of one's ashen face. Megan spotted two guide-rope posts nearby, part of the makeshift fencing that was used to funnel a crowd into some semblance of a line for admission. They'd been used as clubs not too long ago, she decided, then abandoned in favor of the guards' better weapons.

  The security men were in no immediate danger, so she decided to leave them. A quick shakedown netted her three betting slips and a tonfun-styled nightstick. That was better than her sap filled with lead shot or the wooden walking stick she'd lifted off an unconscious man inside. She threw the cane away and slipped the cosh into a pocket of her black leather jacket. Gripping the heavy plastic baton by its cross-grip, she continued on her-way.

  Ducking behind fluted columns and sidling along a wall, Megan worked to avoid the free-for-all taking place outside the eastern entrance under a light evening rain. The riot had spread outsidfe faster than she'd have thought—the riot she'd helped to create. A shove here, some choice words there—it wasn't hard to spark a fight or keep it going in Silesia's Romanesque arena, where the violence of live BattleMech combat heightened tensions and set everyone on edge.

  But even with many outside the arena listening to the live soundcasts, mere reports of the riot wouldn't have sparked so much violence. People shoved and hit, striking out at any threat real or imagined, kicking those already fallen. The same people who'd been lined up for the late-evening ticket, waiting to replace the cheering and jeering crowd that had witnessed Victor Vandergriff's amazing win.

  Allies and enemies were easy enough to distinguish; people came to the games wearing T-shirts and jackets bearing the images of their favorite fighters or the colors of a favored 'Mech stable. Some wore patches of House alignment, openly declaring their allegiance to Archon-Princess Katrina Steiner-Davion or Chancellor Sun-Tzu Liao or Captain-General Thomas Marik. Not surprisingly, Megan noticed that the most violent brawlers were shouting anti-Seiner and anti-Davion curses at each other. The unrest created by Katrina's theft of her brother's throne continued to plague Silesia and the Black Hills, but it wasn't simply one side against the other. Megan knew there were Silesians who supported Prince Victor, just as some Black Hills residents touted Katrina. Those factions were just more silent. More careful.

  So, any opposing nationality was fair game, and there were even factions within a single nation. Megan saw one man fly into the sidelines of the fight shouting. "The Blessed Blake and no quarter!" Flailing at anyone within reach, he plunged into the heaviest fighting, then was swallowed up in the brawl. Megan couldn't tell which side the man supported.

  She doubted the man ever knew himself.

  A different man stumbled into her, shoved out of the main fracas, and she quickly pinned him against one of the large columns using the long edge of the security baton. At one point six meters she wasn't exactly a tall woman, and the man had at least forty centimeters and thirty kilograms of advantage. But her compact frame was trained to wiry strength, and the baton gave her an additional edge. This guy wore a jacket displaying the old sword-and-sun emblem of the Federated Suns. Fair game.

  He shrugged Megan's arm away and made a grab for her shoulder, but his fingers slid on the rain-slicked leather of her jacket. She spun the tonfun around, cracking him across the elbow with the baton's heavy plastic. He yelped in pain as his arm dropped to his side, numbed by the blow. Jabbing the baton into his soft gut, Megan left him retching on the sidewalk. A quick spin of the tonfun would have knocked him out, but she wanted him to recover quickly enough with a burn to rejoin the fight with a vengeance.

  Vaulting a low concrete barrier, she gained one of the enormous parking lots near a line of cabs that continuously dropped off and picked up passengers, the drivers seemingly oblivious to the riot. If they thought anything of the fistfights illuminated by their headlights, it was likely to wonder if any brawlers left standing would need a cab. She brushed her hands free of some grit, dusting off any responsibility for tonight's violence. Relaxing her vigilance nearly cost her, and she dove aside with only centimeters to spare as an arriving cab braked too late and slammed into the concrete divider.

  Instead of jumping out to check the damage to his cab or to Megan, the driver turned to argue loudly with his passenger. Something about Stephen Neils getting just what he deserved and so what if the FedRat died? Them's the breaks. That was news to Megan, that Neils had been killed at the end of the match. No wonder the crowd was out of control. It would make her work easier.

  A loud popping noise punched a hole through the cab's front window and stretched a spiderweb of cracks across the glass. Now the two men inside were wrestling for control of a gun. Ignoring the argument, Megan picked up a chunk of broken cement and hurried toward the head of the line of cabs. She chucked the heavy fragment back into the crowd on the other side of the barriers, aiming for one of the heated fights where the names of Prince Victor and Archon Katrina were on everyone's lips.

  Ducking into a cab, she ordered the operator to drive—just drive. It was time to go. Someone back there was about to become much more upset, she decided. Lyran or FedRat, it didn't make much difference to Megan this time. A stone was a non-lethal object for the most part. The injury would only fuel the rage in that particular fight and in the riot overall. And that was fine.

  It was, after all, what she had been paid to do.

  4

  Ishiyama, Kobe

  Solaris City, Solaris VII

  Freedom Theater, Lyran Alliance

  13 August 3062

  Day Three of the Grand Tournament and already Michael Searcy was back in Kobe, fighting at Ishiyama arena. He'd defeated Jarman Bauer here on Day One, but Yoki Susu
ma was proving a much tougher opponent.

  Sweat-salt had dried on his face, burning at the corners of his eyes, but his full-body coolant suit maintained his body's temperature well enough against the waste heat escaping the Dragon Fire's fusion engine. However, even his high-technology life-support system couldn't keep his muscles from aching in the drawn-out battle. For the sixth time this evening Michael prowled the tight confines of The Knot, searching for his opponent. The Knot, a tangle of rock-faced chambers and tunnels of Gordian complexity, was the most difficult stretch of Ishiyama and the one no 'Warrior had ever truly mastered. He kept using its twists and turns to evade Susuma, hoping to infuriate the Combine Mech Warrior—and the Combine audience as well.

  Michael had been expecting to fight Evelyn Czerny tonight, but that was before she'd tangled with Susuma in the Davion arena the day before. Coming out of nowhere, Susuma had staged a major upset by blasting the number-two-ranked Czerny out of her Albatross and completely out of the tourney. Susuma wasn't even ranked in the top two hundred, and it was already something of a miracle that he'd won a spot in the Grand Tournament at all. Though maybe it shouldn't have been such a surprise. Kurita-affiliated MechWarriors had begun to dominate the games ever since the Draconis Combine legalized broadcasting of the Solaris matches within their realm. It was like they were riding some kind of warrior high.

  That would have to end.

  In an interview with the Federated Suns News Service, Michael had vowed to end Susuma's mayfly streak. It wasn't the usual anti-Drac rhetoric, but the promise of a pro against a flash-in-the-pan upstart in over his head. All in all, Michael thought, snakes weren't so bad.

  With Susuma's upset and the difference in their rankings, the Combine fighter was given the choice of venue. Ishiyama was the deadliest arena on Solaris VII, with the greatest home-arena advantage for its usual fighters. It was the obvious choice for Susuma. And tonight he had acted in typical Combine fashion, going for an immediate and decisive win. The samurai traditions of House Kurita vaunted such efforts. Stormin' Michael Searcy had countered in the most obnoxious fashion possible.

  He ran away.

  Never for long, though, and not so far that anyone could accuse him of cowardice! That specter still haunted his thoughts. But Michael meant to have this win, to proceed along the Grand Tournament to the prize. He would be Champion, he was sure of it. Only then would he feel vindicated for his humiliation after New Canton. And victory meant fighting the battle his way, not Susuma's. Michael would retreat, then come back again to nip at his enemy's Maelstrom before fading away once more. First he shaved a half-ton of armor from the Maelstrom's left flank. Then he delivered a pair of light gauss slugs, one hammered into each leg. Always watching for the advantage.

  For the most part it was a straight-up match. Susuma held an edge in maneuverability while Michael owned it in firepower. In armor, however, they were even. Michael didn't intend to be drawn into a close-range slugging brawl where the Maelstrom's better movement curve would be decisive. The Knot provided for his escape each time. He was no fool. He was the future Champion.

  Susuma might think Michael was merely trying to dodge him, not realizing it was all part of a plan. There it was, the turn-off he'd been looking for. He took a hard left that took him into a tunnel barely large enough for his Dragon Fire to move through without scraping its sides against the artificial rock. If he'd judged correctly, it would slope down into the grand chasm, where he'd already skirmished a couple of times with the Combine gladiator.

  The chamber did slope downward, and quickly, but not into the chasm he expected. Instead it took him to the edge of a giant underground lake, its black waters rippling under a roof of artificial stalactites. The lake was two hundred meters across at the widest point, and who knew how deep. Four chambers opened up onto its waters. The main chamber was lit with a bright phosphorescence along the walls and ceiling that resembled glowing algae or moss, except nothing in nature could have made such a glow. It was all part of the effort to make Ishiyama's terrain seem natural. Michael had never been in this part of the vast underground complex and didn't think now was the moment to start exploring it.

  He backed up, preparing to turn around and try The Knot again, when his sensors screamed for his attention.

  He wasn't the only one who'd taken a wrong turn out of the labyrinth of passages above. As if summoned to this dark place, Yoki Susuma's Maelstrom stepped down to the water's edge, just across a short, sixty-meter stretch of the lake. With both 'Mechs slightly out of line with each other, it became a-race to see who could twist the fastest and bring weapons to bear. A race Susuma won, using the extra swing his arms gave him to snap off a shot with his right-arm laser. A ruby beam lanced out, flashing across the water to cut away at the fresh armor on the Dragon Fire's right leg.

  The damage threw a slight tremor into the 'Mech's stance, easily compensated for by the neuroreceptors build into his bodysuit's cowl. Michael held for a full salvo, waiting that extra second until he could bring his torso-mounted weapons into play. The large pulse laser he'd added after his fight with Bauer, replacing his close-range lasers, stabbed out a flurry of sapphire darts, flashing away armor off the Maelstrom's chest. His light gauss rifle missed wide, sending the silvery blur of its propelled nickel-ferrous slug ricocheting back into the dark passages of Ishiyama. The Defiance Disintegrator autocannon made up the difference by pounding a stream of twelve-centimeter slugs into the other 'Mech's right side. The lethal barrage smashed away the last of the Maelstrom's remaining armor, digging deep and then chipping away at the physical shielding of the reactor. He saw the blossom of waste heat show up on an auxiliary screen like a white heart opening up over the Maelstrom's profile.

  That would hurt it, Michael knew. The 'Mech depended on lighter weight but heat-inefficient weapons.

  As the echoes of his autocannon fire faded away, Michael backed his 'Mech into the passage from which he'd come. Susuma fired one last shot, trying to catch Michael before his profile disappeared, but the laser missed short and only succeeded in melting a scar into the rocky wall instead. Just out of sight, Michael stopped the Dragon Fire, counted five long and painful heartbeats, then throttled up into a run that would take him straight back down to the lake's edge. Now he would see if his earlier patience in this fight had paid off.

  And it had. Frustrated with chasing Michael and wanting to come to blows in a decisive match, Yoki Susuma had plunged into the water trying to catch the Dragon Fire before it made the safety of The Knot. When Michael burst back into the cavern, his cross hairs already leveled for an angle into the lake, Susuma was halfway across, wading through the deep water.

  Trapped by his own impatience, the Kurita fighter could do nothing but try and slog forward while firing his weapons as fast as they would recharge. It was the stand-up fight he wanted, but on Michael's terms, one where the Maelstrom's faster movement curve was negated. It was just the kind of finish that spoke of champions, that spoke of the Champion.

  Multi-colored light flared in the cavern, a ruby lance trading with the sapphire darts of Michael's pulse laser. Armor ran molten orange on both sides of the engagement, dripping off the Maelstrom to be quenched by black waters. Steam rose up, wreathing the seventy-five-ton 'Mech in a haze quickly dissipated by the arcing cascade of lightning from Susuma's energy cannon. The azure whip dug into the Dragon Fire's already-wounded right side, probing for the ammunition bin but not quite able to pierce the armor protection. Michael's heavy-bore autocannon tore into the Maelstrom's right arm, cutting through the titanium humerus and dropping the PPC into the lake. His gauss slug found its target this time, punching right through the last of the center-line armor to smash the gyroscopic stabilizer into ruin.

  The gyro tore itself into a rain of high-velocity metal spitting out from the wound, and the Maelstrom collapsed beneath the water's surface.

  Yoki Susuma splashed to the surface a moment later, while Michael was still trying to decide which would play
better to the media—standing there victorious over his opponent or wading in to help the other 'Mech to shore. Then he decided that wading in would only give Susuma a chance to swipe at him to try and knock the Dragon Fire to equal footing—or lack thereof. The Mech Warrior's appearance solved the problem, though Michael winced briefly in sympathy, imagining the problems of drying out the other 'Mech's cockpit.

  But that minor twinge of conscience vanished with the thought that he was victorious. Again. Day Four tomorrow and he would fight the winner of tonight's Karufel/ Metz ticket. That match was sure to be hard-fought, the rival House Liao stables squaring off against each other in the Jungle. After that Vandergriff or Mayetska. Then Theodore Gross? In his mind's eye Michael saw himself walking into the finals having dethroned the current Champion. In fact, so preoccupied was he that he didn't even notice Susuma swimming to shore, where he stood dripping, offering a formal bow in acknowledgement of his defeat.

  Michael's mind was already on victories to come.

  * * *

  The private viewing box Blackstar Stables had reserved for the evening was large enough to double as a private lounge. Michael wasn't surprised when Drew Hasek-Davion met him at the door to claim his share of the victory.

  "Well fought, Michael," Drew said as applause for the Davion favorite swept up from behind him.

  A flush of pride warmed Michael's face as he glanced around the room. The next Ishiyama battle—a filler to kill time between Championship matches—was already underway on a giant holovid screen covering one entire wall. The sound was muted, and the fight played out against the buzz of idle conversation. Other Blackstar fighters were also present, ones Drew Hasek-Davion wanted to show off or spotlight on the coattails of Michael's success. The usual media hacks were also there and would surely try to weasel a private interview. The rest were minor nobles, local politicos, and other associates of Drew Hasek-Davion. Few people Michael routinely dealt with, or wanted to. But it didn't matter what he thought of these people; he knew he'd done a good job.