By Temptations and by War

by Loren L. Coleman

Who wins?

  “The people,” he whispered to the departed Legate. “The people win.”

  And he truly believed it.

  17

  Convergence

  Heavy fighting continues on Algot and Menkar, on Shensi and Gan Singh. Tsitsang has been abandoned to the Confederation, while Hunan and St. Andre remain heavily garrisoned against attack. And as The Republic Armed Forces rotate through New Aragon, refitted to be thrown back into the fight as soon as possible, one wonders what Prefect Tao hopes to accomplish against such a determined foe.

  —Jacquie Blitzer, battlecorps.org/blitzer/, 27 June 3134

  Xiapu

  Huáng-yù Province, Liao

  30 June 3134

  A Triarii company had thrown itself into the path of McCarron’s Armored Cavalry. The battlefield was less than three hours old when the Zahn Heavy Transport lumbered over a small rise, the truck rocking wildly back and forth as it powered its way over a rare patch of pristine field. Its massive wheels crushed down the tall grasses and dug twin furrows into the wet soil.

  Mai Uhn Wa sat in the front cabin, holding himself back into his seat with arms braced on the forward panel. He stared out through wiper-streaked ferroglass. When the truck braked to a muddy halt he shouldered open the door, leaving the vehicle and its reckless driver behind. Whit Greggor and another resistance fighter clambered out of the Zahn’s back. Even the burly tough looked a bit pale after the ride.

  An icy drizzle pattered down, dousing a few stubborn fires, washing the haze and smoke from the air into oily ground cover. Rainbow puddles stood inside of giant footprints and half-track scars. The cordite smell of burnt gunpowder and solid-fuel missile exhaust lingered over everything. Mai Wa heard the distant chop of rotors, scanned the heavens, and counted five VTOLs thundering their way southeast toward the nearby city of Xiapu. Smoke-contaminated rain trickled down his brow, stung his eyes.

  Mai grabbed the longer strands of his graying hair back into a loose horsetail, and then tugged a service cap over his head to hold it away from his face. The older man stood in his basic camouflage fatigues, surveying the wreckage laid out over the golden range.

  The corpses of two BattleMechs lay facedown on a gentle slope nearly a kilometer distant, one of them obviously a Firestarter from the shoulder profile that stuck up above the rise. It explained a large swath of burnt grasses that stretched a black, smoldering hand over several square kilometers to the east. Closer up were the gutted shells of a Scimitar, a MASH vehicle. An overturned Regulator II, which might see combat again, and a Po II, which had thrown a track, but otherwise looked fine. The Po was painted in dark metallic blue, trimmed in green, and proudly bore a dark knight emblem crested with a red plume, the crest of McCarron’s Armored Cavalry.

  “Sao-shao McCarron will be over this way,” the noncom san-ben-bing said, catching up with Mai Wa and nodding toward the Po.

  Mai Wa nodded to Greggor. “Wait for me,” he said. Greggor had a loose guard on his tongue, and Mai did not need him making this any harder. He followed after the driver.

  A small group of men stood near the tank, walking around the sixty-ton machine and pointing out more damage. The san-ben-bing jogged on ahead, approached the smaller man who wore simple tank crew togs of green, padded fatigues with tight cuffs and a high collar, a beige, armored bodyshell vest, and a metal-reinforced forage cap. The serviceman pointed back toward Mai Wa, who walked forward at a more sedate pace.

  Rather than wait, Terrence McCarron walked out to meet him with a cautious, appraising glance and a hard-muscled handshake. He wasn’t as small as Mai had thought, actually. He’d merely been standing among some very large men who now trailed protectively in his wake. Infantry, only recently stripped out of their battle armor.

  “N˘ı shì Mai Uhn Wa?” the armor commander asked. “Néng rèn-shi ni.”

  “Shí-fēn găn-xiè,” Mai said, surprised, thanking the man for his courtesy. He had expected a more hostile reception. His name was not exactly in clear air. “You were told to expect me?”

  “By our Maskirovka liaison, yes.” He glanced in the direction of the departed VTOLs. “He is thankfully overseeing our provisioning needs in Xiapu.”

  Which could be interpreted in more than one way. Mai looked over the on-world senior Confederation officer, heir to the Cavalry after an older brother. Terrence McCarron was in his early thirties, perhaps late twenties. He wore his reddish hair shorn tight and a nonregulation earring in his left ear. A gold hoop. He radiated both youthful arrogance and a veteran’s seasoned strength, the perfect commander for an advance force that would be operating without support for some time. The kind of man others followed without question.

  Mai nodded at the damaged Po II. “Yours?” he asked.

  “Mine. Not the most unique design out of Ceres Metals, but she is a tough old bitch.”

  “I was made to understand that you had BattleMech forces at your command.”

  “Nothing more than a lance, and I sent them down to Nánlù where the local factories turn out good armor and not half bad electronics. That’s the kind of salvage they can live off. Better than the sleeping orchards and skittish livestock around here.” If the Confederation “captain” found it odd to be questioned by an old warrior without unit or rank, he didn’t show it.

  No local BattleMech support, and a tank commander by choice, McCarron had steel wrapped around that spine. A pity he looked so comfortable in this command. “From what I have read in Chang-an headlines, you are doing more than knocking down naranji trees and frightening horses.”

  “I should hope so. The local militia, they make it easy. Garrison posts spread too thin. Supply convoys underguarded. MechJocks.” He dismissed them with a casual wave. “They always underestimate the value of good armor and solid men.”

  “And it helps that most locals aren’t really interested in reporting your location.”

  “That it does. There are also the ones who come out after my people in old farm trucks, carrying shotguns.” A sharp gust blew rain into his face. He wiped it away with a calloused hand. “Sometimes it seems like we can tell which district we are in by how the people react. Of course, that is why we are here, after all. To disrupt military operations and gather intelligence for the Dynasty Guard.”

  “Who will arrive when?” Mai asked, perhaps a touch too eagerly.

  McCarron seemed an agreeable fellow, but he was not so open as he acted. “When they do,” he answered cagily. “I understand they are supposed to deliver to you a good deal of equipment?”

  Mai Wa counted under his breath, stilling his anger. “They are. And it would be of service if I could find out when to expect it. We have encountered . . . a situation.”

  “You have taken control of the Liao Conservatory,” Terrence McCarron said, proving that his own intelligence gathering had indeed kept up with current events. “A mistake, to trap yourself where the enemy can find you.”

  Shrugging a falsified indifference, Mai shook the water from his service cap and then replaced it on his head. He was trying not to think about what was going on at the Conservatory without him. Evan had very clearly not wanted him present for the meeting with Legate Ruskoff, and had put Mai in touch with resistance cells outside of Chang-an as a way to sidetrack him. Except that by doing so, he’d given Mai some bargaining power where it might really matter.

  “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” he said, and shivered. The rain grew heavier, tapping heavy fingers on the brim of his cap, and the wind was picking up. He felt the cold in his joints. “We improvise, and we adapt. Which is why I have come here.” The older man clasped hands behind his back, wanting not the smallest tremor to give away his very desperate need. “What if we could help each other?”

  Terrence McCarron glanced at his two nearby bodyguards. One of them, a very large woman with a shaved head and flat features, raised an eyebrow. Mai caught the exchange, and wondered: a confidante, or advisor? The other had dark skin and a fiery look in
his eyes. McCarron nodded something reassuring and, with a pointed look, dismissed the two. Both left with obvious regret. Now it was just him and Mai Wa.

  “Jeremy is one of my infantry commanders, and he is too close to our Maskirovka friends. You understand?”

  Mai nodded. Mask agents were a fact of life, though usually you had nothing to fear unless you acted against the Confederation’s better interests. “I am a traitor,” he said with heavy reservation. “I serve the Confederation.”

  “Just so.” McCarron nodded as if Mai had just given the best endorsement. He walked over toward his Po II. “Things happen, things that have no direct bearing on men in the field. N˘ı do˘ng ma?” he asked, again wanting to know if Mai Wa understood.

  In hàn-yŭ, there was less room for error. You did not hedge by words, only in tone. “Wo˘ do˘ ng le.” Mai made certain that he sounded very, very sure.

  McCarron squatted down to take a closer look at the ruined tread. It looked to Mai as if a main hub had taken accurate laserfire. Or a very lucky shot. “Good,” the younger officer finally said. “Now what can you offer?”

  “Not as much as I’d hoped.” But then, if Mai Uhn Wa had discovered as much support among the resistance cells as he’d hoped, he wouldn’t have needed McCarron at all. “I’m tied in to the Ijori Dè Guāng and the Conservatory’s network now. There are also some tentative reaches into this so-called Cult of Liao.” Evan hadn’t volunteered anything on the Cult, but it was apparent there were crossover ties in the two organizations.

  “Right.” The other man nodded. “Sun-Tzu, the Immortal One. They are the ones who claim to have sightings of the Chancellor. What can they do for us?”

  “They can supplement whatever other intelligence assets you’ve developed,” Mai offered. “And they would be willing native guides, the Ijori Dè Guāng especially. They have been skulking around Liao for the better side of two years now. Convoy schedules. Back roads. They have a great deal to offer. We can also coordinate efforts in planning and support from the Conservatory, for as long as we hold it.”

  McCarron stood, looked down on Mai. “So it would be in our better interests to help you hold the Conservatory, then. Troops and armor?”

  “I’ll settle for surplus equipment and sharing intelligence,” Mai countered, sensing the other man’s hesitation. “And I’ll ask for nothing that can’t be repaid after the arrival of the Dynasty Guard. You’ll share in whatever they bring us. Of course, you’ll have a better idea of when that will be.”

  “Soon,” McCarron promised, still seeing no need to share such strategic information. He squinted up into the heavily laden skies, as if searching for their DropShip already. Rain washed his face with icy fingers. “All right. We feed at the trough first, but you’re welcome to whatever we don’t eat.”

  Mai Wa smiled. Spoken like a true workhorse regiment. “With so much of Liao left to be harvested,” he said, “there should be enough for us all.” Even a return of Warrior House Ijori.

  18

  Suiting Up

  No, I do not believe that Prefect Tao completely respects our situation on Liao. He is a soldier, and we need good soldiers. But all he sees is the Confederation come again, when quite obviously it has never truly left us.

  —Governor Lu Pohl, Liao, 2 July 3134

  Yiling (Chang-an)

  Qinghai Province, Liao

  2 July 3134

  Evan Kurst hung on to the back of the hoverbike, feet braced and arms aching as he pulled his chest into the back of David’s seat. The small, military vehicle was built for one, but a passenger could hitch if the driver was very careful. David Parks was borderline. Air blasted out from under the metal skirting as they cruised over the Grinder and David opened the throttles. Evan clenched his eyes shut and pictured the checkpoint gate as it sped blessedly closer.

  The Liao Conservatory’s campus had an hourglass shape to it, with its administration and educational campus squeezing into the YiCha suburbs. The training grounds opened up from the southern edge of the city proper where commercial districts leaned in from east and west to form the narrow waist. The Grinder, a wide expanse of rough-topped ferrocrete where cadets marched parades, divided the campus’s manicured lawns and cobblestone walkways from a long fence line of chain-link and razor-tipped wire. Beyond the fence line was a small military post complete with garages, service depots, an armory and BattleMech hangars.

  The lift fans calmed down to a mere growl as David slid the vehicle up to one of the gates and reversed exhaust to power bake. Evan opened his eyes. Two infantrymen stood watch in Infiltrator battlesuits, looming over Evan and David. Identification was hardly needed, as Evan had become one of the best known cadets on campus. His stunt with the ConstructionMech had been a good start.

  Coming out and finally admitting his involvement with the Ijori Dè Guāng, that had been a much larger boost.

  Still, he dug out his badge. The Full Access Pass was a new design, and handed out very carefully. It gave Evan’s small coterie and perhaps a dozen others the right to move anywhere on the tightly controlled Conservatory grounds.

  The Infiltrator infantry saluted and waved them through, raising the gate.

  David gunned the hoverbike’s engine, powering forward. Evan had to duck to clear the lifting bar.

  “I can’t pilot a ’Mech with brain damage,” he shouted in his friend’s ear.

  David barely turned his head to shout back. “So how did you get in the program to begin with?”

  He’d pay for that. Evan wasn’t completely certain when or how, but Parks would pay.

  Through the gate, the pretenses of a prestigious university disappeared. Reinforced roads, good for marching BattleMechs, cut between plots of scrub grass and tangled brush. This was the business side of the campus, where cadets trained in hands-on lessons. There were no barracks or clubs. This wasn’t a true garrison post, after all. Cadets came here to grab equipment and take to the field for parade, maneuvers, and live-fire ranges.

  And now, to report for patrols and scouting assignments that put them into harm’s way.

  A pair of DI Schmitts rolled along one side of a wide avenue, heading in for maintenance. A squad of Purifiers crossed the road behind them, disappearing with a chameleon’s grace into the brush. Evan tried to follow the blur of color, but lost them as their mimetic armor adapted.

  David lifted one arm from the hoverbike’s controls and stabbed his hand at ten o’clock. From behind a stand of tall alder a Tian-zong stomped into view, swept the area with sensors, and then lumbered off to the southeast.

  This is what Evan’s actions had wrought: cadets worried for an attack by their own military. Legate Ruskoff would not back down easily. Fortunately, Mai Wa had brokered a deal with McCarron’s Second, one which Evan honored through the Ijori Dè Guāng in order to procure more military equipment for the campus standoff. No one looked too closely at where the new materials came from.

  Sound military policy: don’t ask, don’t tell.

  The five-story hangar rivaled campus buildings for its massive size, dark gray, steel-reinforced ferrocrete, bunker-style construction, no windows. Just a set of massive doors that rose sixteen meters above the local tarmac.

  “Door number one,” David called out as he drifted the hoverbike into a coasting glide. The engine cooled down into a whispering purr, generating just enough lift to keep the skirting from digging into the paved road. “Techs, ’Mechs, and ladies’ lingerie.”

  “What you infantry wear under your battle armor is your own business,” Evan shot back, stepping down from the skirt and flexing some life back into his arms.

  David goosed a one-eighty and the hoverbike grounded almost perfectly between the yellow stripes of a parking space, nose pointed back out. He powered down the engine, then pulled out the activation chip, but left it dangling on one of the control sticks. “Do your aerobics later. Get in there and meet your ride.”

  Evan was delaying. He nodded, and led his friend ar
ound the corner, into the cavernous bay.

  It was like stepping into a fabled chamber, where suddenly you were Jack serving the Giants’ table. The smell of oil, grease, and hot metal assaulted Evan. Technicians wheeled around handcarts and drove bright yellow forklifts and, in the darker recesses of the hangar, someone stomped around in a LoaderMech with a massive crate clenched in viselike hands.

  IndustrialMechs were racked into bays on either side of the massive doors. A ForestryMech, and a modified Construction machine with one arm replaced by an autocannon and the second arm being worked on. Evan quickly dismissed them for the machine facing him from across the expanse of stained ferrocrete. A Ti Ts’ang, brought in by an officer defecting from the Triarii. Named for the King of the Earth’s Womb in Han mythology the ten-meter-tall ’Mech sported an obviously Capellan-influenced design. The head was fashioned after a helmet of ancient Chinese armor. Angled shoulder-plates resembled a mantle similar to those worn by Capellan nobles. It also carried a double-bladed ax in the right hand, although no Mongol barbarian had ever carried such a weapon with its laser-sharpened titanium blade.

  Evan was one of the three MechWarriors now authorized to pilot the sixty-ton avatar.

  “Go on,” David said, rocking Evan forward with a shove. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “You aren’t heading back?”

  David laughed and nodded toward a small team of technicians making final adjustments to a set of Fa Shih battle armor, a gift from the Second McCarron’s. “Are you kidding? I’ve waited days to get checked out on that gear.”

  “Ready in ten,” Evan told him.

  “I’ll be gone in five.” David sketched a casual salute, then jogged over to the waiting techs. It was still a game to the larger man, but finally he’d found the chance he’d always wanted.

  A ’Mech-rated technician waited for Evan at the foot of the Ti Ts’ang. She wore a red-stained jumpsuit that looked as if its arms had been soaked in blood. Packing grease, actually, the kind that protected fresh myomer.