By Temptations and by War

by Loren L. Coleman

  “What? Did the Dynasty Guard land forces before the crash?” He sounded prepared to mobilize the entire military reserve on a moment’s notice, ready to defend Chang-an.

  “No, sir.” Nguyen hovered between door and desk, then stepped forward to place the noteputer in Ruskoff’s outstretched hand. “No Dynasty Guard forces.”

  “Well, who then?” Ruskoff snapped out, pressing his thumb over the verifax reader and opening the report. His eyes remained on his junior aide who obviously had the news already.

  “No one. Legate, it’s already on the news channels. Video journalists arrived at the same time as our security team, and the lifeboat occupants are in Chang-an under MedCross protection.” He was beginning to ramble off topic.

  Tsung stepped in. “There were no military forces,” he said. “It was a MedCross vessel, Legate. We downed a civilian craft, bringing refugees from Gan Singh. Capellan refugees. Displaced residents.”

  No one in the office spoke. Daniel tried, several times, but always fell back into a downward spiral of chasing thoughts, trying to see how his information could have been so off-target. No! This could . . . not . . . be.

  He must have whispered it aloud. Tsung nodded. “It is, and worse,” the Governor’s Aide promised. “People are storming the capital’s streets.” He looked sick.

  “Chang-an is in flames.”

  Pelago Estates

  St. Andre

  Prefecture V, Republic of the Sphere

  Sitting in his library, the lights dimmed so that only the spot pointed at his desk provided any real illumination, Jacob Bannson watched the clock tick down toward the bottom half of the hour—the final moment, when not even Republic caution could save the doomed Astral Prize. If she wasn’t dead already, scuttling charges would blow. Enough prefabricated evidence would be left behind to point at The Republic militia. Ritter Michaelson’s report, made to the local authorities days before, sealed the verdict. It never truly mattered what was, but only what the public believed.

  Perception was a tool of the mind. And Jacob Bannson was a master in wielding it.

  Three . . . two . . . one . . . time.

  Bannson raised his glass, wine glowing red as blood inside perfect crystal, and toasted the memory of Ezekiel Crow with a satisfied laugh. “Ad infinitum, perdere travus.”

  Through infinity, walk in perdition.

  25

  New Year Resolution

  One of the dedicated JumpShip couriers that links Genoa and Liao took weapons fire this morning. The vessel was forced to flee the Liao system by hot-loading its drive. Damage to the vessel is described as “minimal.” There is no official word yet as to what prompted pro-Capellan nationals to seize the local Recharge Station. Genoa’s Legate Gryzick has suspended civilian traffic to Liao until a root cause is determined.

  —The Republic Voice, Morning Issue, Genoa, 25 July 3134

  Chang-an Qinghai

  Province, Liao

  25 July 3134

  And so began the New Year’s Riot.

  Shouts and the distant wail of sirens hung over Chang-an like a roar of bloodthirsty approval celebrating ancient blood sport games. A pall of dark, sooty smoke ruined the morning’s blue sky, and gray ash continued to drift down into the streets from fires started the night before in another commercial district. Ash scattered into the gutter, forming small drifts that people kicked through as they stormed the streets, looking for vengeance, for justice, or just for opportunity.

  Mai Uhn Wa waved his Hahnstock gyrojet pistol in the air, signaling a cadre of freedom fighters toward another nearby delivery van—this one with flat tires and a smashed-in windshield. Ijori Dè Guāng members jostled through a stream of looters more worried about carting video equipment from a nearby appliance store than they were of heavily armed men on the streets. A few local thugs were dragooned at gunpoint. Two men with SRM shoulder launchers stayed on guard while rifles were slung and pistols holstered. Two dozen hands seized the vehicle, rocking it back and forth, building momentum for the huge push that rolled it over with a metallic crash and more broken glass.

  “Get it into the intersection, up against the first one,” Mai commanded. “Xiàn-zài. Now.” Staccato reports echoing in the distance might be automatic weapons fire, might be simple strings of firecrackers. He would take no chances.

  Metal slid easily against the blacktop. They jockeyed the van into position to form one half of a two-vehicle roadblock. Nothing that would hold against rioting crowds, but enough to provide the irregulars cover against any of the urban assault vehicles that cruised through the city.

  What began as a gut reaction to the Astral Prize incident—Capellan residents striking out in fury over the loss of so many innocent lives—had escalated quickly when police and local militia attempted to enforce order. These were people already under a great deal of stress. Once the lid came off, years of resentment boiled forth like water from a bursting dam. Within hours of the DropShip crash, most of Chang-an had fallen into the hands of a mob.

  Mai Wa had been quick to take advantage of the chaos, and the militia’s lack of preparation. In this environment, a small force could accomplish a great deal of damage. Several streets back along their route a pair of Ranger VV1’s burned, the result of an ambush staged out of doorways and storefront windows. Inferno rounds layered them in fiery gelatin, melting tires and cooking off the ammo. A Demon had lasted only long enough for an Ijori Dè Guāng member to get close with a sticky-bomb—a stick of tetraglycerin in a small burlap bag, slathered in axle grease and a twenty-second fuse burning in one end. Slapped against the forward cab, it caved in the entire side.

  One more vehicle taken for the cause.

  Whit Greggor jogged over, SRM launcher cradled against his shoulder and balanced with only one arm. “Runners say something’s heading our way,” the large man told him.

  “Something.” Mai Wa shook his head, adjusted his armored vest. The body armor already felt heavy. “That is informative.”

  But what could he expect from civilian conscripts? Mai Wa’s organized assault on the Rangers had gathered him an instant army as rioters flocked toward anything that smacked of organized resistance. These people spent freely of their frustration, banked during their years of outrage and shame. Not interested in looting for their own gain, but ready—finally—to take back some pride, and their world. Such fury burned itself out quickly, though. Two days. Maybe three.

  Longer, if Mai Wa kept the level of fury escalated through attacks such as these.

  More runners from the west—people Mai had spread out to warn him of incoming trouble. All had the same thing to say: a vehicle, moving fast, returning fire only when challenged directly. This trickle of manpower and some rioters gathering behind the makeshift barrier gave Mai resources to work with.

  “Greggor, set up behind the blockade. You and Phelps, standard loads, no inferno.” Too many people running loose here. He didn’t need to start a crematorium and turn the crowd against him. He tolled off a handful of civilians, sent them to gather others and keep the two nearby streets plugged up with live bodies, making a dead-end courtyard out of the intersection. “The militia won’t power through.” He was guessing. “They’ll turn and run first.”

  And it was all he had time for, as a shout of “Tank!” and “Pegasus!” warned him of the hovercraft’s arrival.

  “I want it taken,” Mai shouted for the benefit of his people. He coughed, clearing the taste of ash that clawed at the back of his throat. “When it brakes for the turn, swarm round it!”

  The armored scout craft was painted white and gold, and bore the Roman profile crest common to the Principes Guards. Racing into the intersection from the western street, it turned a tight one-eighty spin and used its drive fan to powerstop rather than mow through the rioters and looters. People in the east-facing street were blown off their feet by the sudden zephyr.

  The Pegasus would be vulnerable only for a few seconds. “Now, now, now!” Mai shouted.
“Xiàn-zài! Xiàn-zài!” His small military team raced forward under the cover of rioters who threw paving stones and bottles—some filled with gasoline, bursting into a spread of flames that might scorch the hovercraft’s paint, but could do no lasting damage.

  Showing disciplined restraint, the Pegasus crew did not use its twin SRM launchers to drive the crowd back. Such carnage would only fuel the mob. The gunner used the nose-mounted laser to spray a few warning swarms of emerald fire at the feet of the onrushing crowd. One of the rifle-toting irregulars went down with a savaged knee joint—more by accident than any clear intention of the gunner. Someone picked up the rifle and began firing it at the ferroglass cockpit, popping off small bursts of two or three rounds at a time.

  The crew had had enough, and the Pegasus fishtailed around in search of an escape path. It pushed forward, driving over two civilians who stood in the way. With a buzzing growl like a lawnmower running over a stick hidden in tall grass, the Pegasus’s lift fans sucked the bodies into their blades and chewed them into grisly pieces. A spray of red splashed over the black asphalt.

  But the Ijori Dè Guāng crew, coming in from the sides as they’d been taught—taught well, Mai noticed with no small amount of personal pride in Evan’s accomplishment—grabbed at vents and grills or leapt up for a full-body grab on the vehicle’s sloped side. The Pegasus spun madly, throwing several of them back off as it cookie-cut a path closer and closer to the impromptu barricade.

  Greggor stepped around one side, took aim and waited for the launcher he held to acquire lock. Thumbing the activation stud, he sent one missile directly into the back of the hovercraft, damaging the steering vanes.

  The Pegasus looped into a wide curve, slammed nose first against the side of the barricade, and stalled for several painful seconds.

  Enough time for a freedom fighter to plant a small sticky-bomb on the crew hatch, light it and scurry back behind the swinging turret. Mai heard the loud pop. Two men wrestled the hatch open and another sprayed the inside with flechettes from a needler. The Ijori Dè Guāng began pulling wounded men from the vehicle, passing them to waiting hands.

  Several rebels had vehicle training. Mai pointed out two of them. “Get that hovercraft back to the Conservatory. Watch yourselves at the gate. Go.”

  He readjusted his armored vest again, appointed another man to command the intersection, and then led his diminishing team further into Chang-an. A new street. New recruits. More mayhem to spread on the back of the mob’s rage.

  Eventually, Legate Ruskoff would order in BattleMechs and massed infantry to quell the disturbances. Most of the in-city forces were currently gathered around the capital buildings, but they would be released when the Governor assured herself that no organized force threatened her position. Mai certainly planned to avoid the White Towers District. He recognized the limitations of what he had to work with.

  “Yet look at what we have accomplished,” he said aloud, then coughed again. It made him wonder. How much more would the Confederation regiments on Liao gain this day? The next?

  “And how long before the militia comes for us?”

  Because they would have to, Mai knew. The Conservatory could not be allowed to stand in rebellion for much longer. Not after this day.

  The sky darkened, dusk turned to artificial twilight as a gray haze thickened over the suburbs of Yiling. Still dressed in MechWarrior togs, Evan Kurst pulled the motorpool jeep over the curb and parked on the grass outside of Bartoe Hall, Jenna’s dormitory. His joints were stiff and muscles tired from several hours in the hot seat, patrolling the southern approaches in case Legate Ruskoff took it upon himself to bring the Conservatory to heel under the cover of today’s confusion. But he’d seen nothing more threatening than a Joust, and that was a defecting crew coming in to add their support to the students’ local resistance.

  On-campus defenders had been kept far busier. From the front of the dormitory Evan looked between an administration wing and one of the lecture halls, out toward the western gate. An M1 Marksman had forced its way through, deciding that the unrest in Yiling was especially brutal because of the Conservatory’s closeness. Calling on other Republic loyalists to rally, it made the first attempt to penetrate the grounds.

  Its corpse continued to smoke, even now. The taste of burnt fuel oil hung heavy in the air, and left a slick grime coating Evan’s teeth and tongue. Two sharp reports made him glance into the sky, thinking of artillery fire. Colorful red and blue chrysanthemums blossomed and melted over Yiling.

  New Year’s fireworks. That was all.

  Evan took the inside stairwell three steps at a time, pushing his tired muscles as he forced his way up to the fourth floor. Jenna had a north-facing room at the end of the building, the better to accommodate a late sleeper. Other female cadets sat outside their rooms, talking about the riots, the resistance. Most wore infantry and tank crew fatigues. Evan traded sketchy salutes with Tori Yngstram, another MechWarrior cadet.

  Tori glanced down the hall and nodded at an open door. “She’s there.”

  Evan slowed his pace, a load of worries dropping away. One of the reports he’d picked up was that Jen Lynn Tang had not appeared for her patrol, and her backup had been called in to take her place in the Locust. With sporadic fighting on the grounds, the chance that she’d gotten caught off-campus by the riots, or the very real possibility that, like Mark Lo, she had finally opted out of the fight, Evan had not known what to believe. But she was here. She was safe.

  She was standing at her window, drapes ripped away and left in a pile against the wall. Jenna wore regular fatigue pants and a sports bra. A padded jacket lay draped over the chair at her desk, stained and grimy and crusted along one sleeve with dried blood. She heard Evan enter the room, but did not look back.

  “Franklin Delaray,” she said, catching Evan rubbing flakes of dried blood between his fingers. He had picked it off the jacket sleeve. “I was coming back inside the walls—went out to check our forward posts—and a pair of Condors hit the main entrance right behind me. Franklin was in a Regulator II. It took a savage beating, but he refused to back off. A Pack Hunter showed up, then a Jessie. They drove the Condors off.”

  Evan said nothing. Waiting her out.

  “Franklin was hurt,” Jenna continued. Finally, she turned away from the window, stepped to one side of the glass and leaned against the wall. “Missile shrapnel penetrated the Regulator’s hatch. We pulled him out and sent him to the infirmary. They needed a gunner, so I pulled on his jacket and helped out.”

  “That’s where you were needed,” Evan said. He rubbed a hand up over his head, pushing back tangles of sweat-matted hair. “So you saw the main push?”

  “Wasn’t much of one.” Jenna brushed it off with a shrug. “Condor. Couple of Double-V Rangers. One Koshi. Our hoverbikes pinned the armor against the wall, and we drove the Koshi back out with the Pack Hunter supported by armor and some late-arriving Infiltrators. After the Condor went up in flames, the Rangers surrendered.”

  She rocked herself forward, stepped back to the window. She left enough room for Evan to join her, which he did. “He’s out there, isn’t he?”

  From her room, Evan stared out over the lower buildings and the north grounds. Salvage crews were busy removing the burned-out shells of ruined vehicles and loading up anything worth saving on JI 100 recovery vehicles. “Yeah, Mark is out there somewhere.”

  “Mark? Mark is back on campus. He brought in about a hundred displaced residents from Chang-an.” She must have sensed his surprise. “They headed our way only because they didn’t know where else to go. Mark told them we’d get them food and a place to sleep. I was talking about Mai Uhn Wa. I heard that he’s been gone since early this morning.”

  Ah, Mai. “Mai is out there somewhere, yes.” Evan stared at the distant rooftops and higher buildings in the YiCha suburbs. A three-story building burned about two kilometers away, but it looked like it might be under control. No heavy fires had been set locally, for
which he was thankful. Distant Chang-an was not quite so fortunate by all reports, suffering widespread damage in several commercial and industrial districts. Was that where Mai had disappeared to? Taking some of the Ijori Dè Guāng cells to join in the madness? Testing, and training, his future Warrior House.

  “I’m glad Mark’s all right,” he offered her. And he was. Above all else, Mark was still Evan’s friend. It would have been much easier if Evan could hate him.

  Jenna nodded. “Me, too. And I’m glad you made it back in. But now David and Hahn are out there, and who knows what will happen?”

  She stepped into him then, resting her head back against his shoulder. Her braided hair smelled of sweat and smoke. The heat of her skin burned against his arm. It was nothing meaningful, Evan told himself, just a friend needing someone to lean against, but suddenly the room seemed a whole lot smaller. He drew an arm around her, offering her comfort.

  “Evan, when we began this . . . when you began this . . . did you expect this? All of this?”

  He looked at the orange flames licking up into a dusky gray sky, smoke feeding the haze. Another skyrocket burst over Yiling—green sparks that glittered like emeralds. He saw their Pack Hunter jog across the open grounds to the north, chewing up turf and cracking walks as it passed near the Guardian. A pair of Saxon APCs followed. A new patrol.

  “No,” he said truthfully. “I didn’t.” In fact, Evan still expected much worse.

  As if reading his unspoken thoughts, Jenna nodded. “How much longer?”

  “A couple of days,” he said automatically. “After their attempts today, they’ll wait until some kind of order is restored.”

  Which gave him enough time, he hoped, to work something of his own out with Mai Uhn Wa. There was still so much between them, good and bad. One of them had to bend. After hearing Mai’s plans for the resurrection of House Ijori, Evan had known who that must be. And maybe he had what Mai needed to bring it off.