Principles of Desolation

by Randall N Bills

  Troops standing behind Sophia and the governor— green troops, some of the only militarily trained individuals on the planet who were not wounded—drew themselves to ragged attention as the Capellan soldiers approached. Sophia knew they were trying to be helpful, but the sloppiness of their display likely did nothing to make the Capellans think any more highly of the planetary militia. Of course, the recent routs, combined with the way the Capellans had swept through three cities in the battles a year ago, had probably told the invading force all they needed to know about Aldebaran's defenders.

  The dark-haired woman bowed, a motion practiced and graceful.

  "Governor Sampson. Legate Juk," she said. "I am

  Sao-shao Danai Liao-Centrella, commander of the Third Battalion of McCarron's Armored Cavalry of the Capellan Confederation. I was told you requested my presence."

  Yes! Sophia screamed silently. You blew the living hell out of us and we need to see what to do to get you to knock it off!

  Governor Sampson said much the same thing, only he delivered it in politician-ese. "Yes, Sao-shao. After the actions of the twenty-seventh and your subsequent movement on the city, we feel it is advisable to surrender to your forces. While we deeply regret the action, and while we abhor the Capellan aggression that makes it necessary, we have little choice."

  Sampson, Sophia knew, threw in that last sentence just to get a minor protest on the official record. The Capellan commander seemed to take no offense at it. In fact, she became oddly jocular.

  "Well, that's the nature of battle, isn't it?" she said. "One side always regrets it."

  Then Liao-Centrella became more formal. "We are pleased to reclaim a world that has ancient ties to House Liao. We know that periods of transition such as the one Aldebaran is facing are worrisome, but we have confidence the planet will prosper and that many residents will eventually gain full citizenship in the Confederation."

  Then, abruptly, she threw up her hands. "Blah blah blah," she said. "Wiggins, add some more stuff so that the official record makes me sound magnanimous and graceful while also full of Capellan nationalism, all right? Good. Now. Governor Sampson, I know this isn't easy, but it's the way things are at the moment. You'll understand if I don't directly apologize for anything. Or maybe you won't understand. Either way, you're not getting an apology. And Legate Juk, you did what you could with what you had. The building in Daipan last year was a nice touch, and I imagine you had a few more surprises waiting for us if we came into Jifang Po."

  "Not enough," Sophia said curtly, not at all warmed by Liao-Centrella's dropping of formality.

  "No, I suppose not. And you're mad at me because of the way things went, because you lost. That's the way it should be. Hate me if you need to. I understand. I'll understand it even more once I arrest you."

  Liao-Centrella raised her hand as Sophia started to protest. "Now, now, now, it's not like that," she said. "But you understand that it's bad practice to just let the military commander of a conquered planet run around free. It's only house arrest, your house or the governor's mansion—your choice. And if you decide you'll be happier away from Aldebaran—either of you—we'll make the necessary arrangements. After last week's battle, we really don't need any bitter reprisals, do we?"

  Sophia was confused by the Capellan commander's tone—not just the jocularity, but the directness of it. She was not used to anyone in diplomatic circles speaking so plainly, and if it hadn't been a victorious Capellan employing the technique, she might have appreciated it more.

  "Now, before the two of you head off, I'll need one more thing," Liao-Centrella continued. "I'd like to get a message to whoever's in charge of Zurich since Gul- voin flew the coop. If you two could discuss what happened here, that might spare us the necessity of going to Zurich and doing the same thing—only more easily, since they have neither the Triarii nor a decent militia. I'm sure that with your help we can make him see the light-

  Sophia couldn't stay silent now. "You want us to help you convince another world of the Republic to surrender to you? What on earth do you think would make us want to do that?"

  Again, Liao-Centrella took no offense. Her equanimity was unnerving. "Because you'll be saving lives," she said. "Zurich will be mine. We both know it. The question is, what will it cost?" She smiled. "Come on," she said. "I'm sure you'll feel better about it with a few guns pointed at your head."

  Sophia's faced drained of all color as her fists shook.

  Liao-Centrella held up her hands. "Joke, joke. Just a joke." She turned toward the man who had walked forward with her. "You see, Bell? Some jokes, in the wrong context, just aren't funny."

  * * *

  It had taken the rest of the day to prepare the communique for Zurich and to negotiate the finer points of Aldebaran's surrender, but finally it was night and Danai was relaxing in one of the concessions she'd wrangled for herself. She'd taken over the Winchester Arms, the hotel she'd commandeered during last year's invasion, as her temporary battalion headquarters. She planned on stuffing the hotel full of as many battalion members as it would hold.

  The hotel had been nice before, but it was much nicer with electrical power and functioning room service. She'd ordered a crab leg dinner sent up to her room, and she cracked each leg and sucked out the meat with gusto. She planned on meeting Clara and Sandra later, but for the moment a private dinner in her hotel room felt good.

  Victory on the battlefield wasn't a cure-all, but it was still awfully good medicine. The lives of Capellans lost on the battlefield, the humiliation Caleb had handed her, the torments Daoshen had put her through (she still avoided thinking of him as her father) and the revelation about Daoshen's rape of Ilsa still weighed on her—the icicle in her chest hadn't completely thawed, and she had doubts it ever would—but she had learned to live with it. She remembered once hearing of a man in one of Terra's ancient wars who received a fatal wound in battle—except that the wound took fifty years to kill him. Obviously not fully convinced that he was supposed to die, the man served as a university president and, if Danai remembered correctly, some sort of political official until his wound finally claimed him, making him the last and certainly most drawn-out casualty of that war.

  Maybe the wounds she had received this past year would kill her. If it wasn't that, it would be something else, since life itself was fatal. Until the wounds finally succeeded in snuffing her out, though, she determined to follow the example of the primitive soldier and live as if she didn't know she was supposed to die. She didn't have to turn into her parents {please, please, she thought, don't let me turn into my parents!). She did not need to forfeit who she was in order to serve the Confederation. She only had to follow her great-aunt's advice and hold on to herself. And victory on the battlefield was one thing that felt very much like herself.

  Something else would've felt right, too, but she wasn't sure what it was. She took another bite of crab, another sip of mao-tai. Neither of those filled the bill. Oh, well, she thought, maybe I'll come up with it later. She finished her dinner, then decided to head to the hotel bar to meet Clara and Sandra.

  As she approached the elevator (now that aero attacks were no risk, she'd taken a room on the top floor of the hotel, the better to get a view of her newly conquered planet), she saw a tall, wavy-haired man in a black dinner jacket and matching pants standing by the elevator doors. She couldn't help but admire the shape of his shoulders and hips as she walked toward him. This planet seemed to have its share of good points.

  Then the man turned, and Danai stopped in her tracks as she realized she had been ogling Jacyn Bell's backside. Damn civilian dress trips me up every time, she thought.

  She approached, waiting for him to say something insolent or smart-assed. But he just smiled and nodded and remained silent. She looked at his face an extra second, just to get a mental picture of what he looked like without his mouth moving. With his long face and amused eyes, he actually looked pretty good.

  The doors to an elevator opened,
they both entered and still he said nothing. They went down twenty-five floors in silence. The doors to the lobby opened. They exited quietly.

  Danai turned toward the bar, while Jacyn looked about to head out of the hotel. Then she turned back to him.

  "What?" she said. "What did I do?"

  He raised an eyebrow. "I don't know," he said. "Did you do something?"

  "I must have," she said. "No smart remarks? No casual put-downs? What did I do to deserve that?"

  "You're not actually telling me you wanted, me to do any of those things."

  "No. Well, yes. Maybe." She sighed. "Look, we didn't get off on the right foot for a lot of reasons, and plenty of them are your fault, but some are mine. But somehow, we got to a point where we have this thing, which is you make fun of me or say stupid things, and I sometimes make fun of you back or I treat you like an idiot. And that's kind of working for us, right? I mean, look at how the battle worked."

  A little bit of the familiar smirk showed on Bell's face. "I suppose it's kind of working for us, yeah."

  "So why are you changing it now? Why the silence, which is one thing I never associate with you?"

  He thought, and as he did so Danai saw an extraordinary thing—the face of Jacyn Bell became completely serious. No cocked eyebrow, no smirk, no eye that looked like it was about to wink. It was unnerving.

  "I thought of a lot of things to say, actually. I started to say a few of them. But then I stopped and thought and realized I probably shouldn't say any of them."

  "Why?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "Yes, I do."

  "Trust me."

  "No."

  "Yeah, right," he said, lapsing back into his sardonic tone. "Why start now? Okay, look, you want to know? Really?" She nodded. "Fine. Here it is. You come to the elevator, and I'm ready to kid you about something, so I look at you, and you're out of uniform, and you've got the silk that's clinging to you there"—he pointed to one part of her dress—"and there, and your eyes are doing that thing that your eyes do when things are going well for you."

  "My eyes do a thing?"

  "Yes. So I'm me, right, and being me, that means there's only a few things I can think to kid you about when you come out looking like that. So I get ready to kid you. But then I think about the last time I tried to kid you like that, and I think about how much a broken nose hurts and how I might not get lucky enough to have my beautiful features unmarred if I try it again, so I shut up. That's why I didn't say anything."

  A thought struck Danai. A thought about what it was that she had been missing, what her old self might do in this circumstance.

  "Try it," she said.

  He eyes widened. "What?"

  "Try it. You finally had decent timing, and you choked. But you get another chance. Try it."

  "Oh. Okay. Um, wait, hold on a minute." Jacyn fell silent.

  "Come on!" Danai said after a minute. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

  "It's a lot of pressure, being witty on demand, okay?"

  "Oh, you're never that witty anyway."

  "Not helping!"

  "Be a man! Suck it up! Just do it!"

  Then, in an abrupt switch, he was fully Jacyn Bell again, eyebrow raised, mouth twisted in a smug grin. "Nobody orders me around like that unless they're wearing a mask and holding a whip," he said. "Do you have either?"

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the elevator. "Come on," she said.

  "Does that mean yes?"

  "Get in here." Elevator doors opened, and they disappeared inside—the only two in the car.

  She was on him in a flash, catching him in a kiss that was artless but passionate. But then they made a few adjustments, moved legs here and hands there, the cool fabric of their clothing growing warmer as their bodies pressed against each other, and the second kiss worked out better.

  She pushed him back against the elevator wall and he gave way gladly. The elevator suddenly felt humid.

  Then the elevator door opened. Danai turned to leave, but they were only on the tenth floor. Some other people were coming aboard—three members of an infantry platoon.

  Luckily, she had pulled herself off Jacyn quickly, and she thought they looked normal unless someone looked closely and saw the flushed skin at the top of her chest or the fabric moving on top of her rapidly beating heart.

  The troopers saluted, and she briefly returned the salute even though she was out of uniform. She and Jacyn stood awkwardly, looking at their toes, until the doors opened again and the troopers walked off.

  Jacyn turned to her, one hand outstretched, but she held him off for a moment.

  "I want this to be clear," she said. '"We're not going to do this because you're so damn charming that you swept me off my feet. We're not going to do this because war is terrible and we want to experience something good. We're not doing this to gain any sort of advantage on each other, to force commitment or loyalty or anything. We're doing this because we want to."

  Jacyn furrowed his brow. "Doing what?" he asked innocently. "What are we doing?"

  "Shut up," she said, and then she let his hands—along with the rest of him—move forward.

  The elevator reached its destination soon, and they practically fell out of it, panting. They staggered down the hall and into Danai's room. The door closed behind them, their hands moved toward each other's clothes with specific purpose and Danai let her body take over. Which was good, because it knew quite well how to get what it wanted.

  He didn't stay long afterward, by her request— explaining fraternization to the rest of the battalion was a lot more difficult than pretending it didn't exist. As she lay on her bed in a pleasant haze, she thought maybe she had been wrong—what she had just done, nice as it was, hadn't been what she wanted. It had been plenty good, and she felt as lively as she had in years, but it hadn't been everything. She still wasn't sure what the rest of it was, but at least now it seemed like something that could be confused with sex.

  She thought about Jacyn, wondered where things would go from here, reminding herself of his unfortunate tendency to be a horse's ass. It doesn't matter, she thought. It will go where it will go. And that thought— the idea of two people deciding for themselves where something would go, based on their own wants and needs, instead of trapping themselves in a long dance of maneuvers or evasions to force the issue one way or another—was deeply satisfying.

  31

  Jojoken, Andurien

  Duchy of Andurien

  1 March 3137

  There must he a million weddings in the Inner Sphere every day, Danai thought. Joyous weddings, happy occasions where two people decide to get married because they love each other. Not ridiculous shams where beautiful women marry squat mushrooms for political advantage. Must be nice to live in that other world.

  Then she looked around at the Jojoken Gardens, with early spring flowers blooming in every imaginable color, bright blue and red birds circling overhead, white silken banners edged with gold fluttering in the breeze and a tremendous cake that had enough buttercream in its frosting alone to cause cardiac arrest in an entire regiment. She had to admit there were some advantages to living in her particular stratum of society.

  And this wasn't even to be a grand state wedding. The duke and Ilsa both wanted things kept secret until the right time came to reveal their new partnership, which sounded more accurate than calling it a marriage. It hadn't been difficult for the duke to set aside a portion of the gardens for an unnamed private government function. then make sure prying eyes were kept far from the tent where the wedding would take place. The cake itself had been shipped in a large—very large—crate.

  Danai had landed yesterday and traveled alone to a hotel near the gardens. She had no official accompaniment and she received no official welcome. As far as regular diplomatic channels were concerned, she wasn't there.

  Daoshen was lucky—not only was he officially not there, he was not there in truth as well. Danai mi
ght be able to slip into Andurien unnoticed, but the Capellan chancellor could never pull it off. Assuming, of course, that Daoshen would ever be willing to travel like a normal person instead of like the God Incarnate. Which he wouldn't.

  His absence was for the best, though. Even if it was a sham of a marriage, Daoshen. with everything he had done to Ilsa, should be nowhere near it.

  She hadn't seen Ilsa yet. She had not seen her, talked to her or communicated with her since talking to Erde last summer. She didn't know what she would say to her. How do you start that conversation?

  "So, I understand you're actually my mother . . ."

  "Is it really true that the guy I thought was my brother but is really my father raped you?"

  "I thought, when you're about to marry a man for whom you care nothing, we should talk about other ways in which our family is completely screwed up."

  None of the approaches seemed adequate, and avoidance looked better all the time. She had fought hard in the past year to gain some sort of equanimity, and this one encounter threatened to blow it all to hell.

  But today was the day. The wedding would happen in live hours, and Danai would have no choice but to see Ilsa then. When she saw her mother for the first time since learning who she was, her reaction would be unpredictable, and it was generally a bad idea to fly completely off the handle when heavy security was in the area. She would have to talk to Ilsa, and it would probably have to be now.

  She lingered in the gardens a little longer, smelling a few flowers, marveling at the size of some of the Andurien bees.

  Then she went off to have a nice family chat.

  * * *

  "I'm sorry, you can't see her."

  "Of course I can. I'm not the groom. He's the only one that's prohibited from seeing her. Not me. Let me in."