A Bonfire of Worlds

by Steven Mohan Jr.

  "You thought of this," said Verena with wonder in her voice.

  Alaric simply smiled.

  "Is it not dishonorable to resort to trickery?" asked Verena.

  "We are not hidebound Jade Falcons, after all. Although," Alaric rolled his eyes, "hidebound Jade Falcons are not what they once were, either. We are now denizens of the Inner Sphere. And when in Rome ..." For a moment she thought he sounded like Katrina.

  "So Khan Ward negotiated a truce with the Mariks."

  "More than that. They recognized our borders, we even won favorable trade terms."

  "To make up for the civilians we will lose when we turn against the Lyrans."

  Again Alaric smiled.

  "Incredible," Verena whispered.

  The shrill call of an alarm sounded throughout the bridge. Lope's commander picked up the 1MC mike. "This is the captain. All hands, prepare for jump."

  Alaric stared at the viewscreen and Helm's dim orange primary. "There is only one thing I regret," he said in a low voice.

  Verena turned away, not daring to look at him. She, too, stared at the screen.

  "Because of our close association with the Lyrans and the Exiles this operation had to be planned in absolute secrecy. My orders came from Khan Ward, himself." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I would have liked to tell you."

  Then he reached down, and without turning to look at her, he squeezed her hand.

  Lope jumped. And right then reality twisted into a terrible, impossible shape and there was nothing in the universe but Alaric standing there, holding her hand until—

  —they were on the other side and she was trembling with the affects of the jump, ashamed that this man who meant so much to her could feel her weakness. He said nothing, did not turn to look at her.

  But he squeezed her hand harder.

  Verena drew a deep breath, steadying herself. Her eyes were still locked on the viewscreen, this time centered on Amity's brilliant red sun. She swallowed. "If you forgive me, Galaxy Commander," she said softly, "there is a problem with your plan."

  Alaric turned to her and raised a blond eyebrow. "Oh?" he said, a faint smile touching his lips.

  "Whatever else they may be, the Lyrans are not fools. They will have staged tripwire units on the worlds most likely to be attacked."

  "You think so?" asked Alaric.

  "It is what you would have done," said Verena.

  She expected him to answer, but he said nothing. After a moment she opened her mouth to speak— But the cry of the jump alarm cut her off.

  "This is the captain. All hands, prepare for jump."

  This time when they jumped, Alaric's laughter filled all space and time.

  Monolith-class JumpShip Archon's Reach Zenith Jump Point

  Dar-es-Salaam, Bolan Military Province

  Lyran Commonwealth

  23 May 3140

  Archon Melissa Steiner stood on the bridge of her JumpShip and looked out on the stars. Her stars, not to put too fine a point on it.

  Again and always.

  Trillian drifted up to the Archon and handed her a 'puter. "Your Highness, an update on that matter we discussed."

  Melissa took the device and clicked through a number of screens. What she saw was a logistics report. Everything a military needed to operate: parts, munitions, fuel, even paint was flowing coreward to units on the Jade Falcon border.

  And away from Vedet.

  Trillian had done a masterful job. Every item of material was tied to a specific requisition. And in order to cover the hit on Vedet, supplies were being pulled from Bolan militias, too. Even some front-line units would lose some support to preserve the illusion that it was a widespread need for supplies that was causing the shift, not a political vendetta.

  Vedet's offensive would bleed from a thousand cuts and Melissa's fingerprints would be nowhere to be found.

  Melissa handed the 'puter back to Trillian. "This will play."

  Trillian's mouth hardened into a thin line. She looked away.

  Melissa drew a deep breath. "Do you have a concern?"

  Trillian glanced around the bridge carefully gauging what she could say in an open setting. "LIC is reporting that something is going on between the Falcons and the Horses. And I read von Texeira's analysis."

  The diplomat's report had warned that Malvina Hazen had made an overture to the Horse's during the Falcon's civil war. If the two Clans were to join forces ...

  "You think we focus our attention on the wrong border," said Melissa softly.

  Trillian said nothing. She would not criticize Melissa in public, however obliquely.

  "There was no avoiding this trip, Trillian."

  Trillian nodded her head, acknowledging the point.

  There really was no substitute for face-to-face meetings. The attitude of Melissa's lords confounded her. She had expanded their reach in this region and had beaten back House Marik, a perennial enemy of Bolan Province. And to top it off, they would grow wealthy as they assimilated the new worlds she had conquered. And if she could pull off her little plan for ComStar, the Commonwealth might very well become the most powerful realm in all the Inner Sphere.

  And still some of her lords could do nothing but wring their hands.

  Well. Now she understood which ones could be brought along into the new world her vision had provided and which would have to be left behind.

  Another benefit of face-to-face meetings.

  "In any event," said Melissa, "there may be troops to move coreward soon enough, since the Wolves should keep House Marik off-balance for some time."

  "I hope so, Highness," said Trillian softly, and it was Melissa's turn to purse her lips. Later we shall have a discussion about your attitude, cousin. However bright and useful you are, you are not Archon.

  Melissa raised her voice. "How soon will be jumping,

  Kommodore?"

  "First run jump calculations have been completed, highness," said Leutnant-Kommodore Derrick Kohl. "I expect to complete the check set shortly. Assuming we obtain a match, we will jump within ten minutes."

  "Very well," said Melissa evenly.

  Melissa's security detail required that all calculations be duplicated to minimize the chance the Archon would be lost in a jump accident. It was tedious, but there were limits to even her authority, and the Diplomatic Guard took their jobs very seriously. They had even cleared the Dar-es Salaam's zenith jump point of all traffic to prevent a terrorist from destroying her vessel with a close jump.

  She glanced at the screen. In time to see it flash with light.

  "Jump detection," sang out the tactical action officer. "Zero Eight Nine at seven two thousand kilometers."

  "Scheiße," exploded Kohl. "Action stations. Herr Bern, direct all DropShipsto launch, save Archon's Fist. Put them between us and that verdammt ship, now."

  Reach's holotanksuddenly filled with blue icons as DropShip after DropShip launched, racing to protect their Archon from the new intruder.

  Kohl jabbed a finger at his navigator. "Load first set of calculations and standby for emergency jump."

  "Jawohl, herr Kommodore," sang out the navigator.

  Then he snatched the handset from the red bridge-to-bridge phone perched in the overhead and dialed up a new frequency. "Fist Actual, this is Reach Actual. I have Alpha Lima Charlie embarked."

  Alpha Lima Charlie. Archon of the Lyran Commonwealth.

  "I am prepped for emergency jump." He listened to something, barked out a "Jawohl" and turned, still holding the phone. "Highness, we will wait for the intruder to clear jump. In the event we are facing an overwhelming threat, we will risk an emergency jump. If the threat is small, we will transfer you to Archon's Fist."

  Melissa nodded. "Very well."

  "She has cleared jump, Kommodore," reported the TAO. "Merchant-cass, Lyran colors, two Mules, IFF confirmed."

  One of the guards from Melissa's security detail, grabbed her arm. "Highness, please, this way."

  "Wait," she co
mmanded. It earned her a second of hesitation. She pulled her arm away from the guard and drifted to the railing.

  Kohl snatched up the red phone and dialed up another frequency. "Contact off my starboard beam, this is Lyran Naval Vessel One One Eight Six. You are in restricted space. Power down all systems immediately, or you will be fired upon."

  He pointed at his comms station. "Put this channel up on speaker."

  A bridge speaker crackled and suddenly Melissa heard a panicked voice say: "This is Kaptain Robert Ditch of the Hessian Fortune. I'm relaying a report from an LIC agent. I report Contagion Outbreak. Quarantine not set. I say again, Quarantine is not set."

  Melissa felt an icy hand suddenly close around her heart. Contagion Outbreak. Enemy forces had crossed the Commonwealth's rimward border. Quarantine is not set. The Enemy had bypassed her string of tripwire worlds. She clutched the railing, her knuckles white.

  "Is the Archon embarked?" asked the shaky voice from the speaker. "I have amplifying information."

  Melissa's body suddenly felt strange, like it didn't belong to her. This isn't real. This can't be real. "This is the Archon," she said firmly.

  "We just— They hit everything at the jump point— We barely got out. An LIC officer on the charging station ordered me to relay a message before he was shot. He said they're in Uhuru and ... Nestor, Concord and Togwotee and ... McAffe.

  "Who?" snapped Archon.

  "It's the Wolves, Archon. The Wolves. They're attacking everywhere."

  The Scent of Prey

  Woe be to those who ignite the inferno of war, for the flame cares not who it burns.

  -Captain-General Jessica Marik, Address to the Nation, 27 May 3140

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ComStar Secret Research Facility Omega One

  Luyten 68-28, Exact Coordinates Unknown

  Prefecture X

  22 June 3140

  No one had ever accused Adept Peter Frazier of being especially smart, but he was loyal, and so ROM had found a way for him to serve the Will of Blake. So what if that meant carrying pieces of radioactive garbage to the Prisoner? The way Frazier figured it, he was ushering in the glorious future just like anybody else.

  The Prisoner, on the other hand, was especially smart, in fact he was supposed to be a genius, and where exactly had it gotten him? The Prisoner had been tortured and beaten, by his own sister, no less. (And didn't that just make you think about the messed-up way things turned out?) And while Frazier had to carry radioactive crap around, the Prisoner had to take it apart and try to make it work.

  Maybe being smart wasn't such a good deal, after all.

  Frazier unlocked the Prisoner's room and stepped inside. The man was sprawled out on his workbench, eyes screwed shut, head pillowed on his left arm, his right hand hanging down beneath the bench. The Prisoner, the smart Prisoner was obviously sliding into despair. For one thing he smelled rank and his hair was greasy and matted. Frazier didn't think he'd showered lately. Also his bed was still made; the Prisoner never slept in his bed anymore.

  And there was an ugly yellow bruise along his jaw. Frazier happened to know there were more bruises like that one, on the Prisoner's body, on his face.

  In places he didn't want to think about.

  For all his supposed brains, the Prisoner had resisted the Will of Blake and it was destroying him. Even a regular guy like Frazier could see that Prisoner had lost the thing that prisoners needed above all else.

  Hope.

  Frazier set the tray filled with recovered memory cards on the edge of the workbench so the radiation wouldn't scramble the Prisoner's brains any more than the beatings already had.

  Then he paused. He really didn't want to wake the Prisoner, but he was supposed to tell him that he had to work. Also, he wasn't sure about how radiation worked, but he didn't think the guy should be sleeping so close to crap from the wasteland.

  For a full minute these twin impulses warred within Peter Frazier's slow mind. In the end, he leaned over the sleeping man to gently shake him awake.

  It was the last mistake he ever made.

  * * *

  Tucker's heart was racing in his chest, his breathing shallow as the big adept stepped into the room. The thug slammed something onto the workbench and Tucker almost screamed. Hold it together. Tuck. Hold it together.

  There was an impossibly long pause during which the adept neither moved nor spoke. He's deciding whether or not to kill me, thought Tucker.

  The adept leaned over him. Tucker couldn't see him, but he could feel the big man's gravity, like a gas giant pulling a fleck of stone into a decaying orbit. Tucker's nerves sang with tension and the urgent need for release.

  The adept touched his shoulder-

  Tucker jumped, his right arm swinging up in a fast, unsteady arc, his hand clutching a weird device that was half-shiv and half-gizmo. He plunged the razor-sharp blade into the adept's thigh, narrowly missing the femoral artery. It didn't matter.

  Because the capacitor built into the device instantly discharged, sending an eighty-two-milliamp current sizzling through the adept's groin and shocking his heart into arryth- mia.

  The man's eyes widened and he toppled over. Tucker only had a moment to smell burning flesh and the electric odor of ozone before he jerked the adept's slug thrower out of its holster, turned, and fired into the mirror.

  The weapon roared, a sharp punch of thunder followed by the tinkling rain of falling glass. The recoil wrenched Tucker's arm up. The echo of the weapon's voice rang in his ears.

  The observer on the other side of the glass was a woman, mid-thirties, not especially pretty, but still somebody's daughter. She wore a gray ROM uniform.

  For a second they both froze, staring wide-eyed at each other.

  Then Tucker remembered the things Patricia had done to him and jerked his weapon over, his gunsight on the woman's body. The observer dove for an alarm.

  But she was not faster than a bullet.

  The first shot caught her high in the neck, releasing a red spray of arterial blood and spinning her around. The second shot caught her in the torso, smashing her to the ground. It only took him a few seconds to scramble up over the jagged shards of glass in the window's frame, but by the time he checked for a pulse she was already dead.

  Tucker went to her computer console and plugged in the little device in his pocket. Hands shaking, he typed a command into the terminal's keyboard, executing a program.

  The little drive and the program it contained represented months of his life. Every night he would go into the bathroom and build his little 'puter from cobbled-together parts, stealing moments to write careful code.

  Now he was going to see if it worked.

  Sweat crawled down his sides as he waited. Each second was a pulse of blood in his ears. Doesn't matter, he told himself. He clutched the weapon so tight his knuckles hurt. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Either way, I won't go back. I don't care if it works.

  (Please please please work.)

  Suddenly alarms wailed, loud shrieking sirens. Tucker looked wildly around.

  But no one came.

  His eyes found the computer screen over the console. A schematic of the facility came up below flashing red words: "SECURITY BREACH. SAVAGE DEFENDER PROTOCOL." Red "X"-icons blinked over all the doors on the schematic, indicating they were locked down tight.

  All except for nine doors that traced the most direct route from his cell to the base's vehicle bay where a hoverjeep waited. The line of freedom cut south through the building.

  Tucker went to the room's half-open door, peering out at the bright hallway through the small hinge-side opening between the door and its frame. The shriek of the alarms made him want to jump out of his skin, but he forced himself to wait. Wait.

  He counted ten Zebebelgenubi, then darted into the hallway, turning right. North.

  He sprinted ten meters to the locked door at the hall's end. Breathing hard, he leaned against the door, his right hand resting on its sta
inless steel handle, watching the glowing red light embedded in the doorplate.

  It flashed green.

  Tucker jerked the handle down and shouldered the door open. A ROM operative stood with his back to him, trying to punch a code into the far door's keypad. The man wheeled as soon as Tucker's door clicked open. This time there was no hesitation.

  Tucker shot him down.

  He hurried down the hallway, stepping over the operative's prone body, and waiting for the door's light to blink from red to green.

  For the first time since he'd attacked Frazier, Tucker began to believe he might just make it out. The code he'd written would hide the random door openings from security. Even if that ruse were somehow defeated, the doors only opened for five seconds—difficult to notice unless you were looking for it. Besides, Buhl would look for him moving south. His troops would be trying to get to the vehicle bay.

  And in two minutes, a hoverjeep was going to blink off the bay's vehicle list. If he were very lucky they would continue the search in the desert.

  The doorplate blinked green and Tucker pushed through. Moving one door at a time he made his way to the hangar where a Leopard waited. He'd hide in one of the engineering bilges. Hangerto DropShip, DropShipto JumpShip, JumpShip to freedom.

  It was going to work.

  Tucker opened the last door and heard the roar of high-velocity engines and the low diesel growl of service vehicles. He stepped through.

  The hanger's retractable roof arched high overhead. Right now it was closed, but the giant hanger doors were open, revealing blue sky over black tarmack. The hanger was a cavernous space, big enough to accommodate three DropShips side-by-side.

  Right now there was only one.

  Tucker's eyes skipped over an eclectic collection of smaller craft—a Mark VII torn apart for maintenance, a hot dog-shaped S-7A, a couple of sleek Shivas—and settled on the Leaopard. The aerodyne DropShip was painted ComStar white.

  A wide smile spread across Tucker's face. It was really working.

  He would have to be careful. There were maintenance techs spread throughout the building. Red emergency lights