By Temptations and by War

by Loren L. Coleman

  Bannson liked a good bar. He liked a bad bar, so long as his money bought him safety. Not that he was a big drinker, he wasn’t, but there was something to be said for the feel of such a place. The ambiance. Dark, close and timeless. That was why you never saw clocks in a real bar. No timepieces, no windows to the outside world. When you walked in nothing else existed, and there you stayed (for several drinks, the management hoped) until you finally decided it was time to rejoin the real world. If you ever did. This was the kind of place envisioned by people who talked of clandestine meetings and shady, backroom deals. Smoke drifting up at the ceiling, pushed around by a slow-turning ceiling fan, and the scent of beer and stale popcorn.

  And it was costing Bannson Universal five hundred an hour to keep it closed for the day. Paid in ComStar bills. Republic stones, for obvious reasons, had recently gone out of favor on Palos.

  Bannson and Di Jones threaded between empty tables and chairs still half scattered into the narrow aisles. His guests already waited, which was how he wanted it. Ten hundred hours meant ten o’clock in the morning precisely to a military man. Bannson expected it to be clear from the start that he was not a soldier to be intimidated by rank. He was more than that, and Sang-shao Carson Rieves would be wise to know it.

  “Interesting place for our meeting,” Rieves said.

  He was a thick-necked, pug of a man, hands clasped behind his back and always rising up on the balls of his feet. Tense. Commander of the Confederation’s Dynasty Guard and ranking officer in the Gan Singh theater of operations, he had direct control over his own regiment and the Third Confederation Reserve Cavalry. He was also “first among equals” with the sang-shao of the Second McCarron’s Armored Cavalry—a Capellan way of being in charge without really taking charge.

  Meaning they weren’t required to do exactly as he commanded, but it really was a good idea to do so.

  Sang-shao Rieves eschewed his uniform today, dressing in a rumpled business suit that looked less out of place in the Lazarus than Bannson’s expensively cut clothes. Glancing at the bodyguard Bannson had deigned to bring along, “The Maskirovka did not appreciate being left out of this.”

  “You have your demands, I have mine.”

  Rieves had ordered this meeting under a very thin veneer of politeness, pulling Bannson from St. Andre for a face-to-face. The CEO could have hosted the officer in the lavish comfort of his private DropShip or emptied one of a dozen executive offices at the DropPort for less than the final price of the Lazarus. But he didn’t want the Capellan soldier putting on airs surrounded by luxuries bought with Bannson’s money. The Lazarus cost him more, but paid less in deference.

  “The Confederation has demands,” Rieves corrected him. “So far we are advancing along our timetable as planned, but that could change quickly should the local leadership discover new allies.”

  Jones laughed. Her red hair glowed softly in the bar’s muted light. She held up four slender fingers, one at a time, each tipped with black polish. “Wei, Palos, Shipka, Foot Fall,” she ticked off the names. “Four worlds taken in as many weeks. What’re you complaining about? That has to be some kind of CapCon record.”

  “And Gan Singh,” Rieves said, his pride in the Confederation attempting to trump Jones’s snide comment. “It will be ours by tomorrow’s end.”

  “Really?” She smiled, showing white, white teeth. “What about the Sixth Hastati Sentinels?”

  Bannson cut between the two, separating them as he moved to a nearby bar stool. He silenced the woman with a commanding glance. That information had been worth something, and she had given it away for free, just to score points.

  Well, it had worked. “The Sixth Hastati?” Rieves glowered. “We were told that New Canton would not involve itself in the affairs of Prefecture V.”

  “Because of some border raids being pushed on Elnath and Ohrensen?” Bannson asked. “I’ve heard that the Oriente Protectorate is pressuring Prefecture VI.” Oriente was one of the stronger duchies left over from the fall of House Marik. “You may inform your superiors that I will have intermediaries open talks with business leaders on New Canton. Perhaps the Sixth will be recalled.”

  Perhaps not, he didn’t add.

  “If the Sixth Hastati are under the localized command of Prefect Shun Tao, that gives him breathing room on New Aragon. Can he push out at Menkar or Wei?”

  A bowl of pretzels sat on the bar near his right elbow. Bannson helped himself to a few of the salty twists, considered how much to commit to this Capellan officer.

  Menkar, he knew, was the key to the Confederation’s push along the spinward border of Prefecture V, the so-called “Algot theater,” under the joint command of Warrior Houses Dai Da Chi and Hiritsu. It was the focal point of several trade routes, and had good on-planet industry that could be pressed into service to feed the Confederation juggernaut with consumables and basic equipment. Five hundred million C-Bills’s worth of expendable annual GNP, two hundred seventy-five of that currently under the control of Bannson Universal subsidiaries. Menkar was also one step off from Algot, which would be important for its working HPG.

  Wei was a different case. Solidly behind the Confederation’s return, the planet had become the logistics center for the antispinward front, moving supplies and troops into the fighting on Gan Singh and Shensi. Two of Bannson’s JumpShips had been “commandeered” by Capellan forces—creating deniability—to bring that logistics network up to five transport vessels. Call it an average of two-point-three DropShips per day passing through Wei’s system. That was approximately thirty thousand tons of cargo capacity. Each day. Bannson’s profits on that arrangement amounted to more than five million Ls—Liao dollars converted into neutral ComStar currency at point-six per, for a yield of three million—so far.

  Jacob Bannson had a head for figures. And for knowing when his interests lay in common straits with another.

  “I can’t tell what Prefect Tao will do,” he said. Though not for lack of money being paid out on New Aragon. “He could move against Menkar, but he has limited transportation to ferry troops around right now, thanks to a labor strike by some peace-loving employees of one of my shipping companies. I can keep that tied up for another week.”

  “Two would be more useful,” Rieves said, trying to dictate terms.

  Which was why Bannson had forbidden Maskirovka agents from being present. They might have been entrusted with enough authority to put real pressure on the CEO.

  “One. At best. In the meantime, I will continue to make inroads into Prefecture VI, but the antitrust restrictions slapped on me by the Senate will make it difficult.”

  “One,” Rieves said, testing the word. “One, one.” Eyes half lidded, he looked inward to how that played with his own timetable. “That is not easy, but possible. If you can deliver us to Liao by the twentieth of next month, and guarantee a stealthy insertion.”

  Liao. Bannson had long since guessed that Daoshen would push for the seat of Prefecture V. Now, through Rieves, the Chancellor looked for a guarantee. He exchanged a knowing glance with Jones. This was what you paid insurance for.

  “It may be possible,” he said, feigning some hesitation. “I have assets in place on Liao that should help mask your arrival. Yes.” He paused for effect. “He should do nicely.”

  “He? One man?” Sang-shao Rieves did not look impressed, or particularly confident. “Unless you own the Planetary Legate, what can you expect one man to do?”

  Bannson shrugged. “Ask your Chancellor. The Betrayer of Liao was only one man, after all.”

  “And you have such a man in place?” Rieves sounded dubious, but looked hopeful.

  Bannson smiled, took another pretzel and then brushed his hands clean as he left the bar stool. “Such a man?” he asked. “Yes. Something like that.”

  13

  A Blow Struck For Freedom

  The city of Opskillion is still burning. Although Lord Governor Hidic’s public address puts the blame squarely on elements of the
Second McCarron’s, independent sources verify that a contingent of militia infantry started the blaze by firing on their own supply trucks rather than let them be taken by “the enemy.”

  —The Nánlù Daily Apple, 21 June 3134

  Yiling (Chang-an)

  Qinghai Province, Liao

  Prefecture V, Republic of the Sphere

  21 June 3134

  Blood oozed from a gash over the student’s left eye, smearing down the side of his face as he tried to staunch the flow. Ritter Michaelson handed him a patch of gauze, liberated from the ambulances that came and went from the Conservatory grounds, and showed him where to apply pressure. He glanced around. Still, fifteen . . . twenty bodies stretched out on the Conservatory’s wet grass, attended by very few volunteers who were lucky to keep the two sides from each other’s throats.

  And hundreds more thronged around the Guardian, waiting their turn to join them.

  “We deserve representation. We demand recognition.” The amplified voice belted out in strident tones over the cheers and heckling. Though distorted slightly by the portable PA system, this Hahn Soom Gui had a timbre in his voice that caught your attention, held it. He paced the edge of the Men Shen’s pedestal, using it as his impromptu stage. “We will not sit back and allow ourselves to be ignored. Capellan unity is not treason. Capellan unity is Liao.” A long roar of approval drowned out all but the closest calls of derision.

  “Damn right!” a nearby student shouted, rising up on his elbow. He was tall but not very muscular, and had blood-soaked gauze shoved up into his nostrils. “Free Liao!” he shouted.

  “Tā mā dè!” the student with the gash over his eye shouted back, suggesting violent relations between the other cadet and his mother. “Bloody Crapellan!”

  The young man with the broken nose lunged forward, and another student lying nearby tried feebly to rise as well. The anti-Capellan supporter also surged to his feet. Michaelson got tangled in their way, trying to keep them from new blows. A fist glanced off his ear which burned with pain.

  Michaelson shoved the taller youth back, and when he came at the veteran again grabbed his broken nose in between two thick fingers and squeezed. The student sagged to his knees. As the smaller man tried to slip around Michaelson, the ex-Paladin brought him down as well with a firm kick to the side of one knee. Not enough to injure, just incapacitate.

  “Get up again, I’ll break it,” he promised.

  The furious cadet rubbed at his leg, but stayed on the ground. Michaelson backed the other student up by keeping his nose in a good grip and leading him back to the matted muddied grass where he’d been laid out before. “And you, this is your own little piece of Liao today. Plant yourself on it.”

  He let the youth go, stepped back and wiped the blood off on his trousers. A female student—Jenna, she’d said her name was—moved up to help him keep the two apart. She offered him a weak smile.

  “Xiè-xie,” she thanked him. Her breath misted in the cool air.

  He nodded. “Bú kè-qi.” Though he had forbidden himself the language more than two decades before, the hàn-yŭ courtesy rolled easily off his tongue. Maybe it was how darkly familiar this felt to his own academy years.

  He had wanted to judge for himself how serious the current threat was, with the local government cracking down on anything that smacked of resistance. Well, he had seen battlefields with less fury than what greeted him now. Despite the ugly shift in weather, hundreds—maybe a thousand students and local civilians—crowded around the old Men Shen BattleMech to stage a “duly-registered protest.” A few hundred vehement Republicans had shown up to disrupt things, and it hadn’t helped that the local administration chose today to replace the stone arch that framed the Conservatory’s main entrance. Ruined by Ijori Dè Guāng vandals a month before, two ConstructionMechs and a team of civilians worked to erect the new gate. What had once been the Liao Conservatory of Military Arts, later just the Liao Conservatory, was now cast as The Republic Conservatory.

  Most students were not taking well to that newest change.

  And not just students, either, he discovered. He knew a professional soldier when he saw one, and a few among the pro-Republic cadre were obviously military men in civilian clothes. Same with the pro-Capellans, though they had the greater numbers of a real mob on their side. Both sides thrust placards skyward, and on more than one occasion wielded them as clubs. Now law enforcement—the local jĭng-chá as well as some MPs—milled about on the edge of the large crowd to see what became of the rally.

  Not nearly enough, though.

  “Madness,” he whispered to himself as campus security once again shoved their way through the crowd with orders to disperse. Into its fourth hour, the crowd swelling on both sides every minute, the rally was not going to be diffused easily. Michaelson watched as Hahn Soom Gui gave up the microphone to another demonstrator.

  “The Republic blames us for their problems here,” the new youth shouted. A squeal of feedback growled out through the amplifier. He was not nearly as polished, but made up for it in enthusiasm. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe we should start working with the Confederation. Maybe they will actually listen to us.”

  He was pulled down off the Guardian’s pedestal by a pair of baton-wielding security guards. Another student leapt up in his place. “Yóng yuăn—”

  “Liào Su¯ n Z˘ı,” the crowd shouted back.

  “Yóng yuăn—”

  “Liào Su¯ n Z˘ı!”

  He was also pulled down and escorted away. Two other security guards grabbed a student who tried to intervene, and that left no one to interfere as Hahn Soom Gui once again took center stage and thrust both hands skyward in symbolic defiance. Michaelson nodded reluctantly as the crowd responded. They loved Hahn, they responded to him, but more than that they had seized on something deep within, and it came out in every cheer. Apparently, Sun-tzu would become something of an immortal.

  The Republic, the way it was handling things, kept him alive.

  Mai Wa had thought himself above reaction to pro-Capellan rhetoric. Six months as a guest of the Maskirovka put such empty words in perspective. Deeds. Action. Those were what were called for now. The kind of leadership as embodied by Evan Kurst, his old disciple.

  But this Hahn Soom Gui, he had a gift. Mai found himself being pulled along in the furor of the moment. Evan glanced his way, once, and frowned, clearly not liking that Mai was here, involved with his friends. Well, Hahn had contacted Mai Wa, not the other way around. And anything that drew Evan back into Mai’s circle of influence the elder man would use.

  “We did not invite the Confederation back to Liao,” Hahn said now, having once again taken the microphone. Campus security had confiscated one amplifier and a bullhorn already, but always the students seemed ready with another means of keeping the rally going. “We did not create the Ijori Dè Guāng.” Another glance passed between Mai and Evan. “The Republic did this. They did this by ignoring for too long our simple cries for justice and equality. To help guide our own destiny. Lao-tse says that it is when rulers take action to serve their own interests, then—then—their people become rebellious. We are not rebellious. But we are determined!”

  “Yóng yuăn, Liào Su¯n Zi!” The crowd no longer needed prompting to chant their refrain. They celebrated Hahn, who basked in their admiration and paraded around the feet of the giant, immobile Men Shen. He gestured to Mai Uhn Wa, lowering a hand to help the elder man up onto the pedestal, giving over the microphone.

  “I am a traitor,” he said simply. “I serve the Capellan people.”

  The self-damnation rose smoothly to his lips, practiced for so long under Maskirovka direction. A simple thing, to substitute Capellan for Confederation, and suddenly the crowd thought that he proclaimed his devotion to them, and so The Republic named him traitor.

  They cheered and roiled, like a pot left too long to simmer.

  “I have worked most of my life to bring the true citizens of Liao a voice. I have
been a warrior in your name, in your cause. I would give my all if you could celebrate your heritage without worrying, wondering, if someone has taken notice and marked your name in their book. I would shine a light over Liao so bright that only true citizens would dare face it. The Light of Liao!”

  “Liào Dè Guāng, Liào Dè Guāng,” a portion of the crowd chanted, making the connection he’d wanted them to between the Ijori Dè Guāng and any chance for a free Liao.

  “I was not here for the Night of Screams,” he said, striking to the core of the crowd’s emotions. Pro-Republicans stirred at the edge of the crowd again, flinging insults and a few hoarded rocks. Fists argued back. “I felt that loss deeply, I promise you. I was not here when Confederation forces landed, hoping to return some stability to your lives. It was not for me to be among you, as much as I wished, when you cried out for relief in the years of hard, brutal fighting which followed.

  “I was not here,” he said with patient regret, the amplifier conveying some of his shame, even through the distorted volume, “when Sun-Tzu Liao came home to you.”

  Even as he disavowed all participation in those dark events, he celebrated them.

  “The Chancellor heard your cries, your pain, and he came here to end your suffering. And here he ascended.” At the forward edge of the crowd, Evan started and glanced up at his old mentor. Something there. . . .

  “It is not for me to say what happened that day. You are more likely to know.” Evan pulled his mask back into place. Mai shook his head, and continued. “But I saw the results. I heard the people rise up on Liao and say, ‘This is enough!’ I watched as Confederation forces rallied to the memory of their great leader, struck down on a mission of peace, and forced on The Republic military another uneasy truce. And then I despaired. For once again you were robbed of your voice, disenfranchised and disregarded. And so we have been for another twenty years.”

  Now Hahn glanced around uneasily, Mai saw. Perhaps his empathy with the crowd noted its ugly shift. Mai had taken their energy, their fervor, and mated it with feelings of futility and their anger of abandonment. It wasn’t so hard a step, really. And while they might not be ready for it, not in truth, Mai had to take a harder stance. The Ijori Dè Guāng had to witness him at the forefront of a new resurgence in Capellan pride, or they would forever dismiss him as the man who ran out on them.