And Chesterton was the hereditary fief of the Fenlon dynasty. It would, in fact, be Sandra’s one day. Caleb wasn’t sure if he should thank Julian for providing a further distraction away from Danai’s presence, or curse his cousin for making Caleb look even more a fool for his lack of concern for Sandra’s future.
“So it would seem to mean a great deal,” Kisho Nova Cat said. He offered it off-handedly, not really as part of the conversation. Staring up at the hall’s domed ceiling, unfocused gray eyes looking right through the sculpted ice moons of Denebola, he tilted his head slowly to one side as if following an image only he could see. “Especially to you, Caleb Davion.”
Yori Sakamoto laid a hand on Kisho’s arm, as if to warn him off. The Nova Cat warrior blinked, then shuddered as if in the grips of illness. “I am sorry, Kurita Yori– san.” He turned and sketched a half-bow to Caleb. “I did not mean—”
Kurita! If Kisho had searched for hours to find a better conversational hand grenade to throw into the small party of mixed nobles and warriors, he couldn’t have done better. Conversation ceased at once. Daoshen Liao and his entourage were forgotten as all eyes turned against Yori and her companion. Some curious. Some hostile. Most of them, like Julian, confused.
Not Caleb. The name slapped him across the face with a stinging rebuke, compounding his own error in not recognizing a scion of Liao. Now, he had been made a fool of by the Kurita delegation as well!
“Kurita,” Caleb said, tasting the name and finding it distasteful. “Not Sakamoto. Did you think we wouldn’t discover this?” he demanded.
Yori stood transfixed, her eyes wide. “Iie. It is not that.”
Surprisingly, it was Sandra Fenlon who stepped up and offered the young officer her support, gently grasping her hand. “What is it, then? Were you ordered to disguise your name?”
“I chose to,” Yori replied, casting her gaze at the floor. “My grandfather was Franklin Sakamoto, a bastard of the noble Kurita line. It seemed less a dishonor to the coordinator, to borrow my grandfather’s name, than to arrive bearing Theodore Kurita’s disgrace. I meant no insult to the rest of you.”
“Just like a Drac,” Caleb sneered. He pounced on the newest victim, the revelation of Yori’s secret eclipsing Kisho’s offhand rebuke. “Smile with one side of her face, lie out of the other.”
“And just like a Davion, to go on the attack to cover their own weakness,” Yori shot back.
Embarrassed she might be, for herself or her coordinator, but the woman was still samurai. She was going to be no one’s victim. Not easily.
“The Davions are never weak,” Caleb said, warming to the challenge. Carefully sidestepping his own vulnerability. “When we attack, we win. I would think the Combine, of all realms, would realize this by now.”
“How is that?”
“In the Jihad’s early years, after your Black Dragons prompted renewed aggression, we occupied Galedon, Matsuida, even Benjamin before pulling back to turn our strength against the Word of Blake. And during the Clan invasion it took intervention by the Federated Suns to save Luthien, and Theodore’s son on Teniente. In the War of 3039—”
Having wilted before Caleb’s initial onslaught, Yori bounced back quickly now that he had walked into her trap. “In the War of 3039, Hanse Davion committed more resources than was healthy for his realm. All in an effort to look strong against mounting criticism for the costs the Federated Suns bore from the Fourth Succession War. Oh, he had crippled the Confederation, hai. But even he later admitted that 3039 was a mistake.”
Caleb scoffed. “I know of no such admission.”
“Outreach,” Julian interjected. “3051. He reportedly said as much to Theodore Kurita himself.”
His cousin, the prince’s champion, took the side of a Drac over the Davion heir’s? Caleb stood stunned at the betrayal.
“And the coordinator,” Julian continued, regurgitating more of his studies of military and political history, “admitted that the Combine’s defense was little more than an empty shell. A bluff that just happened to work.” He smiled disarmingly. “You dig deeply enough, you can find blame and regrets enough to go around on either side of an engagement.”
As a peace-making attempt, Caleb felt that Julian could have done better. Like jumping in on his side with the appropriate facts and shutting down Yori Kurita. Had Julian missed the fact that Yori’s spirited debate had actually swung a few approving nods in her direction? Alaric Wolf and Jasek Kelswa-Steiner, and Lars Magnusson? Even Nikol Marik seemed ready to forget Yori’s deception. Dogs, banding together to snap at the heels of the stronger, more successful, Federated Suns.
Whatever small feeling of camaraderie had been in the group vanished at that instant for Caleb.
“I do not necessarily agree with that,” he said.
Yori, who’d looked for a moment as if she’d been ready to accept Julian’s analysis for the face-saving gesture it was, suddenly stiffened her spine. “Then I cannot, as well.”
“A Trial of Refusal?” Alaric Wolf asked Lars, sounding amused at the battle of wills playing out before them all.
But Lars Magnusson shrugged away the idea. “They both refuse. This seems more a point of honor to me.” He laughed. “He said, she said.”
“Do not discuss us as if we are not standing right here,” Caleb snapped, fuming. He felt a light sweat beading at the nape of his neck as his flush of anger burned hot and steady.
Alaric Wolf grinned, no doubt enjoying getting something back for his earlier treatment. “If you had made the challenge for yourself,” he said with acidic bite, “we would not need to. Though I suppose The Republic would be resistant to the idea of a live-fire trial taking place here on Terra.”
Tara Campbell glanced once to Jasek Kelswa-Steiner, as if expecting his support. “That would not be Exarch Levin’s preferred method for diplomats or warriors settling their differences, no.”
Jasek, though, offered a second plan. “Why not use simulators, then?” He ignored Tara’s glare. “No blood, no foul.”
“No fun,” Alaric added. But he nodded. “For honor only, then. They could refight a battle from the War of 3039.”
Yori hedged a brief second, then, “That would seem appropriate.” Though she said it half-heartedly.
“It would seem childish and pointless to me,” Caleb scoffed. “I see no reason to further subject myself to your juvenile games.”
Alaric smiled. “Then we will simply assume the Combine victorious.”
“How can there be a victory when there is no contest?” Caleb asked.
“Because as you agreed before, some are more equal than others.”
Caught out on his own words, Caleb felt the noose tightening. He had put off dealing with whatever trouble his relationship with Danai might bring, but now there was the Combine rearing its dragon’s head.
When you fight a dragon, you send your best knight.
“Very well,” Caleb agreed. “This shall be settled. But between military minds. For his”—interference—“his exemplary analysis of a few moments ago, I name Julian as my champion.”
Alaric sneered. “He is the prince’s champion, not the prince-ling’s.”
And for that slur alone, Caleb decided that Alaric Wolf needed to be taught some manners. “If his inclusion frightens you so much, Wolf, perhaps you should fight on the side of Yori Kurita and the Combine.”
Was that a flicker of doubt shadowing Alaric’s eyes? He glanced aside, as if searching for someone, then nodded. Subdued, but not submitting. “Aff. So be it.”
“The War of ’39 also involved House Steiner,” Callandre Kell jumped in. “I will second Julian, if he’ll have me.”
“And I—” Jasek stepped forward. “Sounds like fun.”
It obviously sounded like a lot of things to Julian, whose face clouded under a dark storm of emotions, but “fun” did not appear to be among them. Caleb stared back calmly, having trapped his cousin as a fitting punishment for his earlier offenses. La
ying hands on Caleb. Treating with the enemy. Prince’s champion or no, Julian should be reminded where his loyalties lay.
Sandra glared openly at Caleb, and then gave Julian a supportive nod. Tara Campbell waited, patiently, for Julian’s decision, while others also looked to the countess now as a kind of neutral party. A referee for the event.
“I’ll do it—” Julian agreed. His dark glance in Caleb’s direction promised words later. Quite a few of them, the heir thought. But of course he would fight for the honor of the Federated Suns.
Really, what choice had Julian ever had?
23
We support Devlin Stone! We support The Republic! And we support Exarch Jonah Levin!
Let anyone try to stand against us!
—Rally Cry, Republicans for Righteous Rule, Denebola, 4 May 3135
Terra
Republic of the Sphere
12 May 3135
The Genève Auxiliary Training Center was not for the common soldier. That much was apparent to Julian the moment escorts appeared to walk them across the grounds. Men wearing conservative dark suits, with military buzz cuts and restless eyes.
The training center bordered the well-guarded facilities of SIS, the Sphere Intelligence Service, and Julian quickly compared it to its analog back on New Avalon: the Advanced Simulation Project housed beneath the Watchtower, pride of the Federated Suns’ military arm. He also had seen the short bank of lockers in the outfitting room. Seventeen of them, with a thumbprint scanner set near each lock. No names stenciled or etched into the doors. Everyone knew to whom these lockers belonged.
Paladins.
Julian leaned in toward Callandre as they shouldered their way through heavy doors, back into the hall. “If I had to guess,” he said, “this is where they run simulations based on the intelligence recovered from other nations.”
“Guess that means you’ll be running this one without being able to hack the hardware first.”
He affected a wounded expression. “That was your specialty,” he reminded her. “Not mine.”
Sandra Fenlon, with her own plainclothes escort, waited for the warriors in the hall between the outfitting room and Simulation Center. Hearing the end of their conversation, Sandra shushed them both. “Don’t even joke about that here.” She glanced at the back of the two well-dressed men who led the way, obviously uncomfortable.
With reason. It had taken several days to set up the simulator grudge match. Not just to program the historical battle, but also to secure permissions. A few diplomats from The Republic made halfhearted attempts to cancel the event, but with Prince Harrison as well as Warlord Toranaga supporting the honor match, and both determined to view it from the SIS data center next door, there was no stopping this ball once it got rolling.
International relations at their finest.
The entire building was brightly lit, but cold, the hallways particularly so. The chill was emphasized by a tiled floor, steel walls painted a neutral beige, and overhead lights that flooded every corner. Dressed only in MechWarrior togs—shorts, cooling vest and combat boots—Julian shivered. The touch of cool air raised gooseflesh on his arms and legs. Callandre had on padded tanker’s gear, which gave her a bit more protection, but Julian caught her rubbing her arms. Only Jasek Kelswa-Steiner did not seem to notice the cold at all, ranging ahead with long, eager strides.
Their escorts split up at the next corner, where a stairwell shot off from the branching corridor. Just ahead, along the main hall, were the reinforced doors leading into the simulator room. One escort set his hand over a scanner built in next to the doors. There was a buzzing sound inside the walls.
The other escort waited at the stairs. “I’ll escort Miss Fenlon to the observatory.”
All four scions paused, and Sandra wished them luck.
“Don’t worry,” Callandre whispered, sneaking furtive glances from side to side. “I got us an inside guy. He’ll bring you a minirecorder to the observatory.”
“What’s that good for?” Sandra asked, wide-eyed, falling into the trap.
Julian smiled. “About fifteen to twenty. With time off for good behavior. Stop it, Calamity.”
Jasek laughed and Sandra scolded Callandre Kell with a sharp glare. But she couldn’t hold it. No one stayed mad at Calamity Kell for long. She shooed Julian on with a quick kiss on his cheek and a wave.
Julian turned around, clapped Callandre on the shoulder and turned her into Jasek and the doorway. “Time to get our game faces on,” he said.
“Let’s go to war.”
Yori Kurita rode out the hard shaking as her Grand Dragon tumbled backward and slammed into the ground, laid flat out on its back as the artillery barrage continued to shatter the ridgeline on which she’d stood. Fire and smoke rolled over her position. Gravel and blackened earth pattered against her ferroglass shield.
She heard frying sparks and smelled burning ozone as one of her auxiliary monitors crashed.
She tasted blood where she’d bit her tongue.
The simulation was that good.
Yori Kurita had not given Republic programmers enough credit. Or their hardware. She had expected simulators of similar or lesser quality than what she had trained on at the Sun Zhang academy. But The Republic had built theirs on some of the best ComStar hardware available before the Jihad, offering full sensory immersion, the smells and sounds and visceral feel of being in a live-fire situation.
The taste of blood, that was real. Being slammed back as the simulator pod rolled and jumped in its gimbaled framework, she’d truly bitten her tongue. It throbbed with dull pain.
Wrestling with her control sticks, Yori struggled her Dragon back to its feet. The grasslands burned in large patches for kilometers in every direction, but eight meters above the low ridgeline she looked out over the worst of the smoke. On the ground, vehicles tore through patches of flame while armored infantry used the ash-choked columns as screens.
Calling down her fighter screen in an attempt to silence the Long Tom artillery fire working over her line, Yori carefully walked her ’Mech down into the general fray. The sixty-ton Grand Dragon had lost serious armor across its shoulders and chest, but the machine was still plenty randy, with hard-hitting power behind it.
As a Davion Firestarter found out in the next moment as she speared it in the chest with her particle projector cannon, ripping through armor and myomer muscles and opening up a huge wound with molten edges, dripping crusted splashes of ceramic composite to the ground. A double handful of LRMs slammed into the wound right after, tearing apart the fusion reactor and releasing the golden fury deep inside the ’Mech.
It disintegrated in a violent explosion that overturned a nearby pair of Joust tanks and spilled riders from the seats of hoverbikes.
And left a large gaping wound in the line of Julian Davion’s main thrust.
“Ghost Company,” she ordered, “advance and fire.”
Her voice-activated mic picked up the commands, relaying them to her teammates and to the central computer that juggled all auxiliary units. Three heavy lances pushed forward, swinging into the Davion line, spreading the gap wider as they used their firepower to worry the Federated Suns positions. Two Warhammers and a Catapult, leading forward a pack of Demon assault tanks and several APCs full of Raiden battle armor. The mix of units was not perfect, historically, but did a good job of capturing the flavor.
Countess Tara Campbell, refereeing the match, had been very specific on that point.
“The historical records are not one hundred percent,” she’d expained the day before. “And The Republic’s best hardware is configured for modern-day units and for running auxiliary null-tactical slaves using today’s force-mix philosophies.” The successful simulation of any large-scale combat came down to the ANTS. Units run wholly on computer probabilities, based on overall strategic commands given by the “real” commanders.
Being offered a glimpse of the technology used by The Republic to train its knights, its palad
ins, was too good an opportunity to pass up. Yori knew that providing a report on the equipment to Warlord Toranaga would be of great worth. But a recent Sun Zhang graduate against the prince’s champion?
Of course she would lose this battle.
In the end, the honor-match participants had all voted to go with the better technology package. Eager to see what tricks The Republic had cooked up. So instead of fighting a specific battle from the War of 3039, Tara had boiled the entire war down into a single tactical game. Julian Davion was given deep munitions reserves and equipment with better tactical flexibility. Callandre commanded a veteran armor battalion, and Jasek Kelswa-Steiner the “Lyran front,” which consisted of two regular assault companies that he wielded at his own discretion—Atlas es leading Behemoth combat vehicles.
Their mission was to capture three cities, and they had two of those already, while Yori’s concern was to simply hold them off for as long as possible. She had been given two medium-strength battalions, one of which Julian had chewed up and spit out in the first hour, her own heavy command company, and a final company of “hidden” forces to simulate Theodore Kurita’s Ghost Regiments, which had been used back in ’39 to turn the tide of battle. Kisho commanded the Ghosts. Alaric Wolf she let freelance a combined forces company, with only the most general guidance to “devil the Lyran assault and keep them busy.”
So far, the wolf had done an incredible job. Jasek’s contingent was spread out over five klicks, trying to regroup, and Alaric had claimed five “kills” for himself.
Yori had only the one Firestarter and a Mobile HQ so far. A poor showing.
Desperate to improve her record for Toranaga, Yori pushed her weapons, fast-cycling them in order to add to the damage already being wrought by the twin Warhammer s. White-hot energy arced across the burning ground as her PPC sliced deep into the side of a retreating Centurion. Her missiles corralled and decimated a short squad of Cavalier infantry.
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