LE5790 - Illusions Of Victory

by Loren L. Coleman

  Stopping near the gate, Karl stretched out his hand. "You'll keep in touch?"

  Michael gave Karl's hand a warm clasp that he held for a moment longer than normal. "I will, my friend. And I'll be watching, too. I expect great things from you, and someone's got to keep the others honest." He smiled ruefully. "Trust me, they need it."

  Karl glanced toward the gate, where the first passengers were making their way out to the boarding gantry, then back to Michael. "What will you do?"

  "Best I can, Karl. Always the best I can."

  One final pump and then Michael broke their handclasp. He turned toward the gate and continued on alone, without looking back. He'd come to Solaris intending to prove himself by winning the highest honor the world had to offer. In some ways he'd lived the hero's life in the arenas, but that had also meant living according to what others thought of him. He hadn't won the Championship, but he'd learned some hard lessons, ones that only the arenas of the Game World could have taught him. The knowledge was hard-won, but it was a prize no one could ever take away from him.

  If not Champion, then what? Karl had asked him. If not Stormin' Michael Searcy,' theft just who was he?

  Michael now had his whole life to find the answers.

  Epilogue

  Green Mansion, Black Hills

  Solaris City, Solaris VII

  Freedom Theater, Lyran Alliance

  31 August 3062

  A Dragon Fire stood guard at the gate, protecting Green Mansion even though the riots and looting were now a week past. The 'Mech stepped aside, and the gate rolled open with mechanical smoothness to permit the luxury sedan to enter the grounds. The Dragon Fire's pilot watched the sedan on his head's up display rather than visually tracking through the cockpit canopy. Doing that deprived him of detail better seen by naked eye.

  That was how he missed the figure hunched low at the tail of the hovercar, coasting along on roller blades. She was being towed by the sedan, as she had been for the last block.

  It was the simplest of plans. Megan Church was allowing Drew Hasek-Davion himself to escort her onto the grounds of his estate. As the Avanti settled down onto its skirting, she used it to shield herself from security cameras, then dodged to the side behind a small mechanic's station. She rubbed grit from her eyes, residue of the dirt and small gravel kicked up by the hovercraft's fans. It was a small price for her first successful penetration of Green Mansion since entering the employ of Hasek-Davion.

  She stashed her small backpack in the garage, waiting for the master of the house to enter into his empty mansion.

  * * *

  Drew realized Megan's presence into his second break, which missed and sent the ball off bouncing off the side rail before glancing into the racked set. He sensed more than saw her. First it was a slight motion at the periphery of his vision, the awareness of someone leaning against the supporting pillar of the open entryway. That was strange because only his driver and the guard on post in the security room were on the grounds today. Then he heard a rasp of leather against the pillar's textured finish, and the ghostly image resolved into Megan Church.

  He frowned at the table, then at Megan. He'd been expecting her, which was the reason the estate was almost empty, but he should at least have gotten a warning. The security agent would be reprimanded severely for this lapse. "Very good, Ms. Church, though it's no longer necessary to play these little games. My"—he paused—"employees are allowed to use the front door."

  Megan shrugged. "I prefer discretion whenever possible. Makes for fewer mistakes in the long run." She smiled slightly. "And you never know what kind of opportunities might avail themselves of a discreet entrance."

  Drew ignored whatever that was supposed to mean and tossed his cue stick onto the table. "Shall we?" He motioned toward an arch leading to the drawing room, then grabbed up his walking stick propped against the wall and followed Megan into the next room. He laid the walking stick across the corner of his desk, the silver lion's head close to his reach, and pulled out a small stack of papers from one of the drawers. "Passport. Identification. DropShip passes. Everything you need to get you to New Syrtis. I have quite a bit of work for you there, capitalizing on the growing unrest George Hasek is attempting to control."

  The provocateur shook her head in a curt negative.

  "We've gone over this already. I would prefer to remain in the Alliance. In fact, I intend to stay on Solaris VII."

  "I've told you before, the faces—the nationality— shouldn't matter. You've played your part well on Solaris. Now it's time for a larger role." His disapproval of Megan's obstinacy told in his lecturing tone. "Never allow business to turn personal."

  "But my work is very personal, by nature, Mr. Hasek-Davion. And while there is some draw to the prospect of stirring things up on New Syrtis, Solaris—the Alliance—is my home."

  Difficult woman! After everything Drew had done for her, all he was offering, and still she found a way to complicate matters. Here on Solaris VII he would have to walk carefully for a time, but if she could be half as effective in the Capellan March as she had been in escalating the violence on the Game World . . . "People are looking for you, Megan. They don't have your name— not yet." The threat was rather blatant, but judged necessary. He would have her on New Syrtis. "Friends and associates of the late Mr. Stroud."

  She waved off the concern. "They have already found me. In fact, they found me first. About a year ago."

  "A year? But you've only worked for me . . ."

  The threat in her admission became clear with the chill that settled into Drew's spine, shivering his large frame. Her calm refusals. Megan's arrival by stealth. For the first time he felt acutely the loss of Garrett, who had always chaperoned his assignments with Megan Church, and the absence of his mansion security staff. Only one man in the security control room and Aubry Larsen on post in the street. If he could somehow signal for help—

  The chime on his wireless broke Drew's train of thought, the large man's strained nerves causing him to startle.

  "Answer it," Megan said.

  Mechanically, he lifted the tiny device from the clip on his belt and brought it up to his ear, never taking his eyes away from the dangerous woman. He summoned enough strength of voice to bluster, "This is Drew Hasek-Davion."

  "You were Drew Hasek-Davion," a cold voice answered. Stroud! Alive, and turning his own weapon back at him. "Equal footing, Drew. Time to settle accounts." The click of a disconnect and the line went dead.

  Nothing in his life brought the anhedonic stable owner actual pleasure, but Drew felt terror acutely enough. It froze his muscles, and set his thoughts stuttering through a list of past failures leading up to this grand climax. He had never understood before the concept of one's entire world falling apart. Jerry Stroud's voice, however, back from the assumed grave and delivering his final promise to see an end to the master of Blackstar Stables, shattered every victory he'd thought to have won these last few weeks. And worse. The other stable owners would bleed him dry, leaving Blackstar a ruined husk of its former power, if they left it intact at all.

  And only if he managed to avoid the trap set for him here, in his own home. Stroud had called this the final game, and Drew's own life hung in the balance, with no champion to defend it.

  "I can pay you much more than Stroud." He tasted the metallic dryness of fear choking his breath. Hoped to buy his way out; the easy solution. Everyone had a price, after all.

  But it wasn't always hard currency. Megan shook her head. "It's not about the money, Mr. Hasek-Davion. It's personal." She paused, as if uncertain what to say next. Then, "Something you never understood. I followed your orders because it meant hurting FedRats. Never a Lyran, not directly. It was never an act, inciting riots by pretending to be a Steiner loyalist. It was real, every ounce." She offered him a pitying smile. "You saw what you wanted to believe."

  Her words freed Drew from the near paralysis that had gripped him. Her taunt was that Drew had critically misjudged
the difference between appearance and reality. And more than once. He'd lost Nero and Searcy and Garrett, and every other plan had gone astray throughout his life. Only this time the consequences were high. Too high. The strength, of fear flooded him, and he grabbed up the walking stick never far from his side. A quick pull, and the hidden cane-sword slid free of its wooden sheath. He brandished it at Megan, cutting the air between them as he backed for the door of the drawing room. The silver head felt slick against his sweaty palm, but he gripped it with life-crushing force.

  "Insurance!" he barked at her. "I am never without a way to protect myself. That is something very few people take into account, my dear. And as I said before, people don't know your name yet, but they will, Ms. Church. They will."

  Drew fled the room, backing down the short hallway until he'd rounded a corner, then he ran for the nearby security room. The door stood open, a clear violation of his orders. He paused in the doorway, chest heaving with the sudden and unusual exertion. Empty! Powered down, the darkened monitors stared at him with blank, unseeing eyes. Megan had been here first!

  Panting, wiping at the terrified sweat dripping down his face, he took shallow breaths trying to ease the painful binding of his heaving chest. In his mind, he heard Megan's footsteps behind him, echoing through the mansion like the thundering footfalls of a BattleMech. They pursued him, hounded him down the long hall leading toward the mansion's western entrance. Escape was the only thought in his mind when he burst into the garage and ran for the Avanti hover sedan. More footfalls echoed in his ears. Louder. Were the Skye Tigers closing on his estate? What had happened to Aubry Larsen in the Dragon Fire? He glanced around wildly.

  No chauffeur. No sign of anyone. Except somewhere back in the mansion Megan Church still prowled. She was coming for him. They would all be coming for him.

  Drew wrenched open the door on the driver's side and saw the keycard still inserted in the dash. With one final fearful glance toward the empty doorway, he climbed into the sedan. Pain lanced through his breast, a death's grip on his pounding heart. Even then, Drew would not give in, would never make it so easy for his enemies.

  He stabbed at the starter controls, defiant to his final second.

  * * *

  How easy.

  Megan stood a safe distance outside the mansion, near the edge of a hedge maze where she stopped at the moment of the explosion. She heard the roaring cacophony as fire gutted the garage, debris and smoke belching through the shattered door, setting Green Mansion ablaze. It was Drew Hasek-Davion's funeral pyre. The demon of the Black Hills. In her eyes, no one more deserving.

  The driver and security agent lay on the ground just behind the manse. They were safe enough there and would soon be found. If it wasn't the emergency services arrived in answer to the explosion, then it would be Hasek-Davion's private guard or any of the neighborhood's idle curious—those always looking for a new show.

  The Dragon Fire was first on the scene, of course, and Megan faded back into the grounds before the 'Mech could spot her. She moved quickly to the back wall and climbed over into the street, confident she hadn't been seen. She dusted off her jacket and strolled back around toward the front of the estate. Only the guilty fled. She joined the throng of spectators already blocking the gate, reviewing her handiwork.

  Of course Hasek-Davion had run for the sedan. The man was a coward—one of the first things she'd seen in him those several months ago. He cowered behind his net of security, striking out at anything that seemed a threat. He was also soft, sending messengers where secrecy did not demand his own presence and living vicariously through his stable of pet 'Warriors. When threatened, he would only run so far as necessary.

  And the choice of a car bomb had, in fact, been his own. Jerry Stroud had predicted it the night the match between Searcy and Vandergriff spilled out into the street. In his plan to assassinate Stroud, the master of Blackstar had named his own death. She remembered well her talk with Stroud.

  "Hasek will come for me, Megan," he'd said. "And I'm sure he'll use you to do it. If he makes that mistake and orders my death, you will begin immediate plans to bring him down the same way. On equal footing. Just as he wanted."

  Megan shuffled aside with the rest of the curious crowd as the first police cruiser wailed by. Yes, she had sold another piece of herself to Jerry Stroud for this act, but then everyone was responsible to a higher authority somewhere. At least this was in the service of her own people. Solaris-born, she was Silesian.

  A Lyran.

  If her hands got a little dirty, that was the job and she collected a good wage for her efforts.

  And that, she silently told Drew Hasek-Davion, was life on Solaris VII.

  About The Author

  Illusions of Victory is Loren Coleman's fifth BattleTech® novel in the series published by Roc Books. He is also author of Into the Maelstrom, the first in FASA's Vor™ novel series. In addition, he has written game fiction and source material for such companies as FASA, TSR, and Wizards of the Coast.

  Loren currently resides in Washington State with his wife, Heather Joy, two sons, Talon LaRon and Conner Rhys Monroe, and a new daughter, Alexia Joy. He works in the company of three Siamese cats, who collaborate in his writing by offering the frequent paw and occasional body check against his keyboard.