Masters of War

by Michael A. Stackpole

  “You’re naive, Trillian, if you don’t think there will be a threat we can use them against.”

  “And you, Archon, forget the lessons of history.”

  The older woman raised an eyebrow. “I’ll accept your insolence only because your comment intrigues me. What history am I forgetting?”

  “The first Punic War. Rome defeated Carthage and demanded such steep reparations that Carthage could not pay its mercenaries for the war they’d just waged. The Carthaginians had to fight a war against the hired soldiers. How do we pay the Wolves when there is no war?”

  The archon returned to the side bar and refilled her glass. “You, my dear, forget a different lesson of history. Do you remember what happened to the Mongols who conquered China?”

  “They established a dynasty.”

  “True, but it was said of ancient China that those who conquer China are conquered by it. Culturally they were, and so shall the Wolves be conquered.” The archon extended the decanter toward Trillian. “Look at what has happened to the Wolves-in-Exile.”

  Trillian shook her head, more to refute the notion than to refuse the ice wine. “The Wolves-in-Exile were given a mission that melded them into the Arc-Royal Theater. It was the mixing of two warrior cultures. Your previous comments tell me you don’t believe our Wolves have become lambs.”

  “Nor do I expect these new Wolves to become lambs.”

  “What then?”

  “I expect them to become our Wolves.” The archon raised her glass in a silent salute. “I don’t dream of being First Lord, but as long as there are those out there who do, I will do what I must to thwart their dreams. Surely this is not a vice.”

  Trillian shook her head. “But neither should it be mistaken for a virtue.”

  “A very good point.” The archon sipped, then smiled. “We’ll just have to make certain it is a reality.”

  6

  Baxter

  Former Prefecture IX, Republic of the Sphere

  15 December 3136

  Verena sighed. It didn’t look good at all. She’d been traveling far too long and offloading her Koshi had been an ordeal. Myomer fibers in one leg tore so that the leg dragged, striking sparks and scraping a white scar across the ferrocrete.

  And now this. The billet assignment had her bunking in a large dorm with her troops. She had her own room—she could see the doorway from where she stood—but packing crates and other debris had been stacked in front of it.

  Between her and the doorway lay the dorm and her troops. The rectangular room was filthy, and not just from where the crates had been dragged in. The scrape marks actually carved away the floor grime. The bunks hadn’t been made and the yellow tinge of the sheets suggested things hadn’t been laundered in a while.

  But why should the sheets be clean? The troopers aren’t. They had to be the most sullen and unkempt lot of warriors she’d ever seen. She’d not expected her new command to come up to the standards of the Steel Wolves, but these soldiers looked worse than homeless folks searching garbage containers for meals. And they definitely smell worse.

  She dropped her duffel bag in the doorway and removed her beret. She folded it and tucked it into her belt at the small of her back. She clasped her fists over it, then looked around at what were now her people. She stood taller than all but a couple, but the bigger ones didn’t worry her. They’d grown fat and their eyes were dull.

  The only one she found the least bit dangerous was lounging on a bed halfway into the room. Small and slender, with dark hair and eyes, he watched her openly. He wasn’t challenging her, just sizing her up. Those who were going to challenge her were shifting around, pretending they didn’t feel a flutter of fear at the breadth of her shoulders, or the fact that she wore her blond hair short enough that getting a handful of it would take some doing.

  The little one has to be Kennerly. Colonel Bradone had warned her about him. As far as the leader of the mercenaries was concerned, he could do without Kennerly even though the guy was Demon Company’s best pilot. “He’s a snake, and a venomous one at that. Kill him if you have to.”

  Weariness washed over her. After she’d been dismissed from the Steel Wolves she was certain she’d find a new position quickly. Other warriors were being snapped up by elite planetary guards and mercenary units, but no one seemed interested in her. Bradone had actually rejected her first application to join the Badgers, then had asked her to come to his headquarters two weeks later. He’d not lied about the horrible position he was offering her, and she took it, even though it was a step up in responsibility from the position she’d had in the Wolves.

  You were wrong about me, Anastasia, and I’ll prove it.

  She cleared her throat. “My name is Captain Verena. I have been assigned to command Demon Company.”

  “Go away. We don’t want you.” The speaker, a heavyset woman who was busy braiding greasy red hair, didn’t bother to look at Verena as she spoke. “Captain Farras is coming back.”

  Verena slowly shook her head. “Captain Farras has been bound over for trial on manslaughter charges. He will not be coming back for a long time.”

  A man levered himself up off his bunk and hooked his thumbs behind his belt buckle, holding back his stomach. “That’s where you’re wrong. We’re fixing to saddle up and go bust him out of the jail in Overton.”

  “That will not be happening.”

  The big man lifted an eyebrow. “Who’s going to stop us? You?”

  “If you force me to, yes.” Verena kept her voice even and soft, making them work to hear her. “Of course, I do expect you to force me. That does not worry me. The shape you are all in, the condition of this barracks, the only thing I have to fear here is catching a disease.”

  Kennerly leaned his head back against the wall. “The dead don’t get sick.”

  “Very true, Kennerly.” She hardened her gaze. “This would explain why you all appear somewhat healthy.”

  The redheaded woman looked up from her braid. “Now, that just doesn’t make any sense. We ain’t dead. We’re the Demons. Bradone might not like us because we’re hard-drinking and antisocial, but we’re also the best fighters he’s got. We’ve pulled his ass out of the fire in more exercises than anyone can imagine.”

  Verena nodded. “I know. I have reviewed the exercises. You use unconventional tactics. . . .”

  “Hell, we just disobey orders. . . .”

  Verena shrugged. “I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. It does not matter. Cowardice is cowardice, and quite obvious.”

  The Demons looked at her very surprised, so she took a step into their domain. “Cowards. If you were not, you would already be beating on me. Right, Kennerly? They are all just talk. They get wound up, but need a spark. Any warrior worth his sweat already would have thrown a punch.”

  Kennerly just chuckled.

  Verena looked at the big man. “You must be Harkous.”

  Puffing himself up, he smiled and began to rock back on his heels. “I am indeed—”

  Before he could complete whatever comment he was going to make, Verena went for him. Two steps and she launched herself in a flying kick. Both feet landed in his ample gut, snapping his body forward. He flew back, catching his calves on his bunk, dragging it askew. His body slammed into another trooper, a woman whose chin collided with his head. She went down without a whimper, and Harkous landed on her.

  Verena landed on Harkous’ bunk and bounced up. She got one foot on the floor, then caught the redhead in the face with a roundhouse kick. That dropped her cleanly onto her back. With the two of them down and Kennerly across the room, Verena vaulted back over Harkous’ bed and kicked a third trooper in the side of the head. He reeled away, and then the fight was on.

  She got her back against a wall and ducked beneath a woman leaping from the side, who landed in a tangle with another trooper. A man tried to tackle Verena, but the wall held her up. She slammed an elbow into his spine, then kneed him in the face. Blood gushed from his
shattered nose and he went away.

  The next three came as a group, and Verena got poked in the gut with a broomstick. She snatched at it and broke it in half, then used it to parry the next attempt to stab her. The shorter stick brought her assailant closer, so she drove her forehead down into the woman’s nose. Verena saw stars, but the woman fell back.

  From then on Verena lashed out blindly with fists and feet and the half of the broomstick she’d retained. Several of the Demons went down with a single punch, but two men, the Everett twins, kept coming. They actually seemed to enjoy mixing it up with her—at least until a knee to the groin took one out of the fight, and a blow with the stick half tore an ear off the other and spun him around. He looked at her with wide eyes, one of which she blacked with a punch that knocked him across the room to the foot of Kennerly’s bunk.

  Verena sniffed, then wiped at her nose. The back of her hand came away bloody. The Demons were all on the floor, some of them groaning, most of them bleeding, save for a couple cowering and Kennerly lounging on his bunk.

  She waved him forward. “Come on, it is your turn.”

  Kennerly shook his head. “Not me, Captain. I’ve got no problem with you.”

  “I find myself disinclined to believe that.” She pointed around the room with the stick. “They never would have thought about busting Farras out of jail. They never would have taken a step toward organizing such a thing. You thought of it, just as you thought of having them block the door and jump me. Your turn.”

  Again Kennerly shook his head. His gaze became sharp, and he met her stare easily. “I have no problem with you, Captain. I understand why you’re here and what you hope to accomplish. I’ll be interested to see if your experiment works.”

  “What I have to accomplish? I will make the Demons into a crack unit.” Verena tossed the stick aside. “Do you doubt that?”

  The man laughed. “No. That you’ll accomplish quite simply. They’re cows. You’ve cowed them. You want them to wash and clean and go out on parade, they’ll do it. They’re small minds. You called them cowards, and proved they are cowards. They knew it, and now they know you know it. So they’ll toady up to you, all ‘Yes, Captain and No, Captain.’ This place will be so clean you could perform surgery on the floor and the beds will be so tight you could toss a DropShip on one and it would bounce into orbit.”

  The Demons who were still awake watched them, and seemed more afraid of Kennerly than they were of her. They nodded with his words, watching and hoping she would accept them. A couple of them who had refrained from fighting were already trying to tidy things up, but they were doing it quietly so no one would notice.

  Uneasy, Verena wiped her nose again. “And what about you, Kennerly? Will you toe the line?”

  “Oh yes, Captain, of course I will.” He gave her a predatory grin. “I will be the best of the best. You’ll end up making one of us a lieutenant, and it will be me. You’ll find I have organizational skills and can motivate people. You’ve seen that already. And, let there be no mistake about it, I want to be your lieutenant. I want to work closely with you, Captain. I want to be there to see if you accomplish your goal.”

  She shook her head. “You have already said I will.”

  “Your goal for the unit, yes.” His eyes glowed darkly. “Your goal for yourself, though, Captain, that is the one I want to see if you achieve. I don’t think you will. You’ve already made one misstep, and you will make more.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come now, Captain, do you suppose we don’t know who you are? They may not, but I do. I know you were sent away when the Steel Wolves were dissolved. You’re an enclave Wolf. You’re not good enough to be one of them. If you were any good at all, you wouldn’t be here, not with us. Colonel Bradone had rejected your application a priori, not wanting castoffs from the Clan iron wombs in his command. Not prejudice on his part, mind you—he’s served with Clanners before. He just knows, we all know, that if a Clan warrior is any good, she remains a warrior with her Clan. If she isn’t, she teaches. If she can’t teach, well, she has to sell her skills. Much like being a prostitute, isn’t it?”

  Verena’s hands tightened into fists. She wanted to pound Kennerly for saying those things, but a voice inside her agreed with him. Beating him will not invalidate the truth. Anastasia had seen the truth and sent her away. The only means by which she could change that judgment of her was by proving how good she truly was.

  Demon Company would be her salvation.

  And Kennerly will be your damnation.

  Verena opened her hands. “You read the files I sent to the colonel with my application.”

  Kennerly nodded solemnly. “I found them most interesting. Educational, really. Unlike the colonel, I’ve never been around Clanners. And, if you are wondering, I did want you to join us. I hadn’t expected Captain Farras would actually kill someone. I just wanted him to get into a fight in Overton so the colonel would bust him down to lieutenant and find someone else to command the Demons. You, in fact. Farras, as your lieutenant, would have led a mutiny. I thought it might be fun to watch.”

  “You are deprived of that pleasure.”

  “Oh, but this will be so much more fun.” Kennerly opened his arms. “I will be perfect, you know. And now that you know I was thinking of Farras leading a mutiny, you’ll have to suspect me of planning the same thing. But I won’t. I won’t betray their loyalty.”

  Kennerly rose from his bunk and kicked one of the Everett twins. “Stop holding your groin. It’s the most useless part of you. Sew your brother’s ear back on. You, Watson, you know what a mop is?”

  A slender, rat-faced man slowly rose from behind a bed. “A mop’s that thing I used to make your mom happy.”

  “That’s cuz you rode it away thinking it was a pony. Now you’ll use it the right way. Clean up the blood.”

  “Bugger off, Kennerly.”

  Kennerly’s expression hardened and his voice dropped. “Clean. Now.”

  Watson shivered, but went looking for a mop.

  “You see, Captain, they won’t like me. They never have. I’m not one of them.”

  “You are like me, are you?”

  “Not at all, Captain.” Kennerly drew himself up at attention. “I know what I am. I know my limits. I know what I fear. I know what amuses me. I know how to bend limited minds to my will and how to get what I want. I take my amusement very seriously, and you’ve just become it.”

  “And you think I need you?”

  He held up a hand. “No. I know you better than you know yourself. Right now you’d like to hit me, just to prove you’re tougher than me. But that would just be a physical display of your gross insecurity. Your dismissal from the Steel Wolves is like acid dripping through your soul. It’s eating you alive. You are in free fall, and you’re grabbing at limbs on the way down. Beating up these losers broke your fall, or delayed it a bit. You now know you’re tougher than them. It’s a meager validation of your self-worth, but it will suffice, for a time. Whipping them into shape will be further proof of your worth. Winning exercises and battles will keep it there. That’s what they represent to you.”

  Verena suppressed a shudder. “And what are you?”

  “I remind you that you are an imposter.” Kennerly chuckled. “No matter what you do here, you’ll never prove to yourself that you’re good enough. That validation won’t come until Kerensky tells you she was wrong and invites you back. And that is a dream that will never become real.”

  Verena shook her head. “Believe what you want, but you are wrong.”

  “No, I am not. You hate that I’m right.” Kennerly shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter, Captain. You’ll do what you must.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll do what I must, too. Farras was too easy to destroy.” Kennerly smiled much too eagerly. “I hope your destruction will be much more entertaining.”

  7

  Domain, Clan Wolf Occupation Zone

 
15 December 3136

  Alaric successfully hid the surprise he felt—unlike Bjorn and Donovan, who both looked as if they’d just learned they were freebirth. Despite his own racing pulse and the tightness in his chest, he catalogued his rivals’ reactions and labeled them weaknesses.

  The trio of young men had been summoned to Khan Seth Ward’s headquarters. Alaric had arrived last. The other two lived nearby, whereas Alaric had remained at the clinic. The summons triggered hours of discussion with Katrina as she coached him through how to act.

  She even dismissed his anxiety at the delays their sessions were causing. “If you are first to arrive, you may get points for punctuality, but you do not get to make an entrance. You, Alaric my dear, must make an entrance.”

  And so he had. He wore a dress uniform and was pleased that the wolf-fur trim actually kept him somewhat warm on the journey halfway around the world. Likewise, the two elementals his mother detached from her retinue were impressive in their dress uniforms, and trailed him from the helicopter back two respectful paces. They then joined the pair of elementals the khan had sent as guides. By the time he entered the conference room, his rivals had been waiting awhile and had availed themselves of refreshments. This meant that when he arrived, they had to hastily set down their cups, brush crumbs from their lips and straighten their jackets.

  Advantage, Alaric. Mother would be pleased.

  Bjorn shook his hand first, grasping it firmly and pumping it several times past the three that Alaric thought quite sufficient. Tall and blond, Bjorn had a breadth of shoulders that suggested he’d be more at home in elemental armor than a ’Mech’s command couch. His grin put Alaric off because it came too easily and revealed poppy seeds caught in the man’s teeth.

  Donovan, by contrast, would have been utterly unremarkable save for the aquiline nose that dominated his face and suggested mixed blood from Jade Falcon flowed in his veins. His enormous nose set his brown eyes a bit wide in his head, encouraging Alaric to dismiss him as stupid. What saved him from that misjudgment was how the man’s eyes darted around, taking in all details. While he did smile when he shook Alaric’s hand, the expression came slowly and was calculated, betraying the man’s nature.